A MALAYSIAN STORY: "ALLAH" in the Bible, A really pointless argument.

So this totally happened in Malaysia.

    Hello Internetland., It's me again SonOfTerra92 that obscure science slinging, bunk bashing,  guy on Science Epic. If you have watched the above video you can tell that I am a Malaysian. In the video I hint at the kind of hijinks we experience here in Malaysia when it comes to the politicization of religion.

     What a way to start the new year. Bravo, Malaysia, bravo. We've have definitely strong this time.

    Just a recap of what happened on the 2nd day of January.  Islamic religious department JAIS (of which is the religious department of my home state, Selangor represent) raided the office of the Bible Society of Malaysia in Damansara and confiscated a couple hundred Malay language bibles that were claimed to use used the word "Allah".

     20 JAIS people and 2 police offices barged into the Bible Society of Malaysia centre making arrests under the suspicion that they were propagating Christianity among Muslims.

     I am a science communicator. As far as these kinds of things go my role in them can usually be stretched so far as to battling creationists ideas, "Young Earthers" and the occasional moon landing conspiracy. You might be wondering why I would soil my hands in the affair of two religions taking stabs at each other? Would not it be better to leave them be? There are after all more experienced people that can comment on these events.

      This issue concerns me because of how it may affect the future of the country that I currently live in and ultimately my life as a bystander in religious debate in Malaysia.

      JAIS conducted the raid (not anything like the 2011 Indonesian action Movie) under the claim of the Selangor Non-Islamic Religions (Control of Propagation Among Muslims) Enactment 1988, a state enactment that prevents the use of Arabic words like Fatwa, Alhamdulillah, Insyaallah and most importantly "Allah"  in non-Islamic religious practice.

     Muslims in Malaysia have been made to think that  think that the word "Allah" is sacred to them and they are willing to legislate laws to rightfully defend it.

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     I am not a big fan of organised religion nor am I religious to begin with but  it doesn't take an expert (Or an ex-Muslim) to realize that a raid by an Islamic religious authority on a non-Islamic organization is a clearly in violation of something. At the very least its violating common sense. When I initially heard of this story that was that came to mindrst. Regardless of whatever law written or unwritten that we have in Malaysia, JAIS clearly has no jurisdiction over the Bible Sociey of Malaysia.

     Their actions were not a not just legally inappropriate but also morally unjustifiable.

    When it comes down to the actual raid I am reminded of the scene with the cops in Project X. In more civilised cases all the Christians had to do was pull off a Costa.

That's how it's done.

     If this raiding attitude persists how much longer before JAIS starts knock knock knocking on peoples homes (parody anyone)?

     What turned this issue from bad to worse was the long running debate of the use of the word "Allah" in non-Muslim religious practice. Which brings me to my next no-brainer. In a freethinking world the words protected by the 1988 state enactment are just that, WORDS.

     The 1988 enactment was put in place to supposedly protect the Muslim majority from potentially negative external influences. It is a clear example of  how far Malaysia still has left to go in its moral and ethical development.

     What we have here is a subtle attempt at thought control via word control. Forget 1984, this is 2014. The scary thing is that people actually buy into it. Most of the Muslim majority here consist of the see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil type. Trust me I've been around enough them.

     Because of  this attitude there exists a generation of Malaysian Muslims who don't care to ask the big questions and to me this represents a challenge in communicating science. The inroads towards sceptical inquiry among Malaysian Muslims are blocked. They can go to school and score straight A's in Astrobilological Nuclear Engineering but at the end of the day the key scientific values of scepticism and scrutiny are hard to communicate.

     That worries me because we still end up with a  people can be manipulated.

Question Everything, even the actions of  elected Leaders.

     Those are just my two cents on the issue. That's all from me. SonOfTerra92 signing off.And I'll see you next time.

10/1/2014