Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for girls (especially my daughter) wearing burkas, but this is just silly.
The Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens [I wonder if Muskens translates to brain?], wants people to start calling God Allah. He says the Netherlands should look to Indonesia [yeah, look to the Muslim countries as the model of tolerance], where the Christian churches already pray to Allah. It is also common in the Arab world: Christian and Muslim Arabs use the words God and Allah interchangeably.
Speaking on the Dutch TV programme Network on Monday evening, Bishop Muskens says it could take another 100 years but eventually the name Allah will be used by Dutch churches. And that will promote rapprochement between the two religions. …[one wonders, in another 100 hundred years when sharia law rules the Netherlands, if you will have any choice?]
More than 30 years ago Bishop Muskens worked in Indonesia and, there, God was called Allah, even in Catholic churches [womynpriests worship mother earth in some places, I am still not cool with it]. The Dutch should learn to get on spontaneously with different cultures, religions and behaviour patterns:[yeah, the Dutch are notoriously closed minded, they need to light up…uh.. I mean lighten up.]
“Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa (Almighty God) for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years [wait, did he say he has prayed to other priests for 20 years?]. In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can’t we start doing that together?” …[sure…when the notoriously tolerant people ‘over there’ start praying the rosary and eatin’ ham sandwiches, count me in for a discussion over terminology. Until then….]
Bishop Muskens proposal will undoubtedly receive a warm welcome from the Islamic community in the Netherlands. [I bet… the same warm welcome that Jane Fonda received from the North Vietnamese.]
Boy I can’t wait until there aren’t any bishops left who remember the sixties! This is proof that they are still smokin’ dope in the Netherlands!
August 15, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Recently, in Indonesia, there was a huge Nurnberg-type rally of Moslems, calling for the establishment of a world-wide shariah government.
So naturally, I prefer:
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Catholicism. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war. “
Muslims have been mounting a war of aggression against my religion for 1400 years. I don’t want to reconcile, unless it involves Islam gettin’ humbly into the confessional. And I’ll be beheaded before I pray to “Allah”.
August 16, 2007 at 5:17 pm
A few seemingly contradictory comments:
a) The term ‘Allah’ should not be used by Dutch Christians. My linguistic knowledge is scarce, but my guess is that Dutch already has a perfectly servicable word for ‘God.’ And I also believe that Latin, the cultural patrimony of European countries, isn’t bereft of a proper term either.
b) The only kind of rapprochement appropriate between Christianity and Islam is honesty that the two are not rapproche-able. The type of movement that the bishop seems to have in mind seems to be the kind that is dogmatically relativistic. Not good.
c) Nevertheless, the use of the word ‘Allah’ for the Christian Godhead is appropriate in certain contexts; which is to say, just about anywhere where the Christian populace speaks Arabic or has a heavily Middle-Eastern patrimony. For instance, in my own Antiochian Orthodox jurisdiction or in the Melkite Catholic context. Without any compunction whatsoever, and without any fear that I was entering into religious relativism, I have often said “Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Mushtakay Allah” (Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. Glory to Thee, O God!). But that is because that is the language of the particular Christian people, not because we were trying to do something so foolish as to have rapprochement with Isalm!
— Fr. Joseph Bittle, Eastern Orthodox Priest, Antiochian Archdiocese
November 17, 2008 at 3:38 am
Hi, I’m Indonesian and I’m a Catholic. I find the comments that you made about Indonesia were “distasteful” to say the least.
e.g.:
[yeah, look to the Muslim countries as the model of tolerance].
Even though Indonesia is ~90% Muslim, we have an imperfect yet good tolerance to other religions. Example for this would be: having different religious observances as holiday like Islam Idul Fitr, Christian “Paskah”(Easter), Hindu “Nyepi”, and Buddhist “Waisak”. Moreover, we have hundreds of ethnicity and each ethnicity comes with its own local language which most of the time is totally different than our lingua franca (Indonesian). So in the most imperfect way, we (Indonesia) are still a quite tolerant country.
More than 30 years ago Bishop Muskens worked in Indonesia and, there, God was called Allah, even in Catholic churches.
This is true up until today. In reality, there has been controversy from both sides, Muslim not wanting Catholic/Protestant to call their God “Allah” and Protestant not wanting to call God as “Allah” and instead use the “tetragrammaton”, which I think is not correct as well, especially in light of the recent liturgical exhortations for songs to refrain from using the sacred tetragrammaton.
[sure…when the notoriously tolerant people ‘over there’ start praying the rosary and eatin’ ham sandwiches, count me in for a discussion over terminology. Until then….]
Excuse me? Can you elaborate more on what you mean on this particular sentence, for this is very condescending of you to say to Indonesian.
Alas, I agree whole heartedly with Fr. Bittle. That summed up my opinion on this matter.
So as blatant as it is, I hope that the world will know that we are Christian by our love and not by our condescension to other country (in this context: Indonesia).