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‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.’

I refer to the comment by Md Asham Ahmad's letter ‘Do you (really) believe in Allah?’ .

The article triggers the quote by Shakespeare, fondly used by a microbiology professor when explaining taxonomy.

The point of that quote is that, while created things have names, and are assigned by man, essentially, a dog is an animal, man's best friend, which barks, even though it is called "anjing" or "gou" or any other name in any other languages.

It is a mysteriously, mysterious, mystery, that you and I could relate to what a dog is, a cat, a table, by just a mere mentioning of the name in any languages. Unfortunately, a television may not be relatable to all mankind. This, as proposed by Thomas S Kuhn, is a paradigm.

However, the paragraph above falls short of explaining the Creator, God, 'Yahweh', 'Elohim', or 'Allah' - in so far the names above were assigned by man. Nonetheless, the essence of a paradigm still holds.

Suppose two Christians were to converse with one another, God (though we might jokingly ask 'God as in upper case G'?), is understood as the God in the Bible, the Creator, etc, as far as an individual understood the character, and essence of God.

If two individuals with different religious backgrounds refer to God or gods, each in their own way will understand it as much as what they understood who god is.

Certainly, 'Allah' is of Arabic origin, just like globalisasi is of English origin, all transplanted into Bahasa Melayu, which essentially the same as Bahasa Malaysia.

Regardless of whether it is Bahasa Melayu or Bahasa Malaysia, should we confuse language with religion?

According to Dr Ng Kam Weng from the Kairos Research Center: “Indeed, if legitimacy is to be accorded to the first user of the word `Allah', then Muslims should not be allowed to call their God `Allah'.

“After all, the pre-Islamic Arabs and speakers of Arabic cognate languages (like Syriac and Nabatean) had already been calling their God `Allah' (with equivalent cognates), and the Muslims who came later used the term `Allah' in a sense that deviates from its historical usage.”

If language confers the divinity of the Divine One (which is illogical, for the Almighty need no language or expression of words to satisfy His Holiness), then certainly we must abolish Bahasa Malaysia being the national language, for not all Malaysians are Muslims! Otherwise, the word 'Allah' must be expunged from Bahasa Malaysia.

Certainly, it is an absurd assertion to imply the word "Allah" as exclusive even though it is an Arabic word.

We ought to recognise that language is a mere medium to communicate with one another, and understand one another. The virtue (as Plato puts it in 'Meno') of things are independent of each other, and words are used to communicate.

As I've presented above: What is the virtue of a dog? A dog is a mammal, which barks, etc, you get the picture, for you know what a dog is. But what is the virtue of 'Allah', being a word in Bahasa Malaysia, to a Malay (for orang asli are Bumiputeras) Christian?

It is the 'Allah' of the Bible. But what of 'Allah' to a Muslim? Certainly it is 'Allah' of the Quran; for each understood their respective Gods according to what is revealed in their respective Scriptures and Bahasa Malaysia is the vehicle that which communicates His message to all men -be proud of that!

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