Monday, August 13, 2007

The Light of the World is Dhimming

A reader in the Netherlands named H. Numan just sent us an email with this translation from the Dutch.

Believe it or not! The following story appeared this morning in the Algemeen Dagblad:

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Muskens: Let’s call God Allah

Hilversum — According to Tiny Muskens, the bishop of Breda, we can just as well call God Allah. “Allah is itself a beautiful word for God. Why shouldn’t we all together say: from now on we all call God Allah?” said Muskens on Monday during an interview in the program “Network”.

The bishop, who will retire soon, looks back on his experiences in Indonesia. “I worked eight years in Indonesia, and prayed together with other priests. In the Eucharist of the Holy Mass God is there named Allah. Why don’t we look at this example and do the same thing? Why can’t we celebrate mass together?”

Muskens continues, “God doesn’t really care how we address him. He is above that. Those are our worries. We are all worried if God would mind it, that it might be blasphemy. Absolutely not. We invented those different names so we can quarrel about it.”

Sounds crazy
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He thinks using the word Allah in the Catholic Church will not take place soon. “This sounds absurd, of course. You’ll never get away with it. But come back in another century or two, and look again.”

Muskens, who suffers from bad health, recently requested that Pope Benedict XVI retire him as bishop of Breda. The 71-year-old Muskens will join the Pauline Community of the Congregation of Benedictus in Teteringen. If his resignation is granted, Hans van den Hende will become the new bishop of Breda.

Mr. Numan adds this afterthought:

Why not call God Quetzalcoatl? Or maybe Baal or Moloch? After all, they are supreme deities too.

And almost as bloody as Allah.

14 comments:

xlbrl said...

OK, we'll trade. We will call God Allah, and they will call God Jehovah. Not.
I too don't expect God cares what he's called. I do expect he knows the difference between tolerance and cowardice.

Profitsbeard said...

There are two good Dutch words for this clown:

Lafaard.

And:

Klootzak.

The first is "coward".

The second would be "scumbag" (i.e.: a "sack" for the two very important things this cleric is clearly missing), although it means worse in Nederlands.

In effect, he says:

Let's all commit civilizational suicide to please our future Muslim overlords.

Tolerance of intolerance is total ignorance.

rickl said...

Muskens, who suffers from bad health, recently requested that Pope Benedict XVI retire him as bishop of Breda.

I'd request that too, if I were Catholic.

Dr.D said...

Yes, God the Father of Jesus Christ does care what he is called. One of the fundamental characteristics of the Christian religion is that it is a revealed religion. This means that God shows himself to mankind, and that includes telling his name. At various points in the revelation he has given different names for himself, the most prominent being, "I am." Jesus calls him Father, and Jesus also speaks of the Comforter, all leading the idea of the Holy Trinity. We cannot just change the names of God willy-nilly to suit some PC feel good ideas without changing the fundamentals of the faith. Allah is definitely not a Christian concept in any way at all.

ziontruth said...

Ah, a subject I've touched a few times on my blog--the name of God.

Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians have always used, and never had a problem with, "Allah" as the name for God. They tell me it's the exact equivalent of the English proper-name, capital-G God, which in turn has a Hebrew equivalent, while there is another word, "ilah", meaning just "a god" or "a deity"; and "al-Rabb", meaning "the Lord", is often used for the four-letter name.

"Allah", unlike the four-letter name and some others that come up in the Bible, isn't a specific name, just as English "God" isn't. In one of my posts, I actually did a jab at Islam with it, speaking of "the battle for the One True Allah" (here) and "all those who truly worship Allah love life" (here). But I admit that, since I don't write in Arabic, those uses were artificial.

And that's the problem here: while the Arabic-speaking Jews' and Christians' use of "Allah" is a natural result of their language, just as the German uses "Gott" and the Italian uses "Dio", the call for English-speakers to use "Allah" instead of "God" is not. Rather, this call fits in with the Islamic convert's path of learning Arabic, using Arabic terms for religious concepts and changing his name to an Arabic name. This isn't just about speaking a different language, therefore using "Allah" just like a Russian uses "Bokh"--this is about the basic Arab imperialism of Islam.

And that is why this is an insidious move.

(Side note: since last time it came up here, I learned that writing "G-d", which I still often do out of habit, is not mandatory; only the Hebrew names have sanctity and need to be avoided where they could be printed and then abused. Whatever the case, there aren't going to be Jewish worldwide riots about it. ;-) )

Unknown said...

Some may think the church may help us fighting Islam, myself thought so sometime.

But actually it seems church is also part of the problem.

Anonymous said...

God wouldn't care a flying fart how we name things. But Allah would. Allah is a demonic entity and demonic are obsesses with names and symbols; its how they identify themselves.

God has no need for such identification. God is eternal and god is the love we are sometimes lucky enough to glimpse. The very sacred and pure indescribable love that can in its purest form include everything.

Those that walk towards god can never be identified with names symbols or numbers. Demonic entities that would have us walk away from god are obsesses with names, symbols and numbers.

And also they constantly talk about the light. The light, names, symbols and numbers. That's what makes up demonic philosophies.

Talking about "the light" is of course a way to get away from mentioning "the love" that they know would destroy them.

Anonymous said...

One of our primary weaknesses in this fight is the weakness of the Christian church - this goes for Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. I cannot comment on the Orthodox church but that is worth some thought since the orthodox have some long and direct bloody history with Islam.

An accurate description of the fight is that classical Islam is leveraging 1) weakness in the church, 2) "political correctness" and 3) the movement of strong multiculturalism to make another run at world subjugation.

Vol-in-Law said...

"Why not call God Quetzalcoatl? Or maybe Baal or Moloch? After all, they are supreme deities too.

And almost as bloody as Allah."

Quetzalcoatl isn't a bloodthirsty god like those other three - you're probably thinking of the Aztec war god Hiutz(etc) or sun god Tezcatlipoca, who are both big on the blood & slaughter. Quezt(etc) wants flowers, not bloody hearts, hence the Aztecs hated and feared him. - ViL

Yorkshireminer said...

I wouldn't take Muskens too seriously he has always been good for a quote, a bit of a lose cannonball you could say. He caused an uproar on the television when he said that it was fine for the poor to steal if they were hungry. I don't think he had heard of the 10 commandments. I think the head catholic honcho here some cardinal had to shut him up when he suggested that the use of condoms should be allowed to combat aids, good common sense as far as I am concerned, but political dynamite as far as the catholic church is concerned. A decent sort of fellow a bit wishy washy, but no political savy, as always he had set his mouth in motion before engaging brain.

Devilfish said...

And the dhimmitude continues...

Unknown said...

I'd request that too, if I were Catholic.

There is an age at which bishops are expected to retire. 75, if memory serves.

Unknown said...

I understand the Arabic word for a generic god is illah. The god named Allah existed long before Mohammed as one of several hundred pagan illah of the Kabba of Mecca.

Allah was the moon illah of the Kabba until he got promoted by Mohammed and the others got banned. There is no illah but Allah has nothing to do with God of the Hebrew or Christian Bible.

Elkanah said...

Perhaps someone should alert the Bible Society of Indonesia, Peter, because Indonesian Christians insist on obeying their Islamic overlord and call YHWH Allah, when Indonesian has a perfectly good word for deity, or god.
Politically correct thinking pastors and theologians are the worst enemies of the cross and are leading a bunch of people, who enjoy their sleep over studying the Word of God, into the desolation of Islam.