ALLAH AND THE SCIENCE OF MEANING

It is apparent that there is an air of uneasiness, to say the least, among the Muslim population ever since the ruling was made regarding the use of the word Allah. The government have cautioned the people to be very, very careful when dealing with this issue considering the emotions and challenges that are affected by the ruling.

ALLAH has always been used by Muslims here & worldwide to mean God in the context of the Islamic religion. The muslims' call for solat five times a day is always preceded by 'ALLAH HUEKBAR' lending credence to the argument that this is the terminology used by the muslim world.

Interestingly, in the realm of Semantics (the study of meaning), the naming of persons or objects, for instance, depends very much on the language, culture and interest of the speakers. A famous linguist, Professor F.R. Palmer ( Emeritus Professor of Linguistics Science, University of Reading ) once argued that .....'The classification of objects in terms of the words used to denote them differs from language to language. If, for instance, we take the English words stool, chair arm-chair, we shall not find precise equivalents in other languages.The French word 'fauteuil' might seem to be equivalent to English 'arm-chair', but whereas the presence of arms is probably an essential characteristic for 'arm-chair' that is not necessarily so for 'fauteuil'.

It can, however, be maintained that there are no real synonyms, that no two words have exactly the same meaning. Indeed it would seem unlikely that two words with exactly the same meaning would both survive in a language or culture.

So is ALLAH synonymous with God ?

Just a little something to ponder on ....... !