Malaysia: All in the name of Allah, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Malaysia: All in the name of Allah

By Gwynne Dyer

The row over a Malaysian High Court’s decision allowing non-Muslims to refer to god as ‘Allah’ is getting ugly. The Government must stop playing along with Islamic extremists

In the late-1980s, when I was in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, a friend suggested that I drive out into the desert near Jubail to see the oldest extant Christian church in the world. And there it was, surrounded by a chain-link fence to keep casual visitors and foreign archaeologists out. Experts who saw the site before it was closed said that the church was built by Nestorian Christians, and was probably used from the 4th to the 9th century.

Its existence embarrassed the Saudi Government, which prefers to believe that Arabia went straight from paganism to Islam. But it confirmed the assumption of most historians that Christianity was flourishing in the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before the rise of Islam. So what did these Arabic-speaking Christians call god? Allah, of course.

I mention this because last week the Malaysian High Court struck down a three-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah when they speak of god in the Malay language. The court’s decision was followed by firebomb attacks on three Christian churches in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, and on Friday protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading “Allah is only for us.”

Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the attacks on the churches, but he supports the ban on Christians using the word ‘Allah’ in Malay and is appealing the High Court decision.

http://newageislam.com/malaysia--all-in-the-name-of-allah/islam-and-pluralism/d/2363

Iran thinks the US and Israel must be bluffing, unless they are crazy, Islam and the West, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and the West

Iran thinks the US and Israel must be bluffing, unless they are crazy

By Gwynne Dyer

This explains the bravado of Iran’s little propaganda show on July 9, when it test-launched a number of ballistic missiles, including one that has the ability to carry a nuclear weapon and the range to strike Israel. This elicited the usual veiled threats of an attack on Iran from both Washington and Jerusalem, but the Iranians don’t believe them any more.

The Shahab-3 missile that the Iranians tested has flown before, and it could indeed reach Israel. However, it lacks a proper guidance system, and probably could not penetrate Israel’s anti-ballistic missile defences. More importantly, as the US National Intelligence Estimate of last December affirmed, Iran has no nuclear weapons, and closed down its programme to develop a nuclear weapons capability in 2003.

The main purpose of the tests was to strengthen the position of hard-liners in domestic Iranian politics. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the organisation that carried them out, wants to keep the confrontation with the United States and its allies alive because it fears that other elements in the regime might bargain away Iran’s right to enrich nuclear fuel for civilian use.

If neither the United States nor Israel intends to attack Iran, this is a cost-free strategy: you win the domestic political struggle and nothing bad happens to you internationally. If you miscalculate, however, you get a war out of it. What are the odds that the Iranians are miscalculating?

President George W. Bush seems to have convinced himself that something must be done about the “Iranian threat” before he goes, but he faces the almost unanimous opposition of the US military and intelligence establishment, who are horrified by the prospect of an unwinnable war against Iran. Last December’s National Intelligence Estimate was a deliberate attempt to undercut the Bush administration’s relentless propaganda about the “Iranian nuclear threat.”

http://newageislam.com/iran-thinks-the-us-and-israel-must-be-bluffing,-unless-they-are-crazy/islam-and-the-west/d/246