The recent and still on-going conundrum surrounding the term ‘Allah’ is mind boggling.

On the one side it has been that this word has been used by Christian Arabs, Christians Indonesians, Christian Malaysians especially in Sabah and Sarawak, and by the Sikhs to mean God. If we look even cursorily there can be many more cultures and communities all over the world using Allah to mean God.

On the other side we have the narrow Malay-Muslim mind with the thinking that this word only refers to the Muslim God Allah Almighty.

To the Malay mind Allah is a virtual name of his monotheistic God. Abdullah Mohd Zin, minister in the prime minister’s department and quoting on the authority of the prime minister himself, puts it thus: ‘it has long been the practice of this country that the word Allah refers to God according to the Muslim faith’.

There can be some confusion here for while the former stance relates to God describing an entity of transcendence, the latter refers more to it being His Name. This confusion can easily flare into conflict as it has done in this round of serious debate.