What’s In A Name
A man came home from work and his children ran to him and called out ‘Ayah! Ayah!’.
As a result of that, his neighbour got very upset and sternly ticked him off, “Can you please tell your children not to call you ‘Ayah’ anymore?”
The man asked, “Why?” The neighbor retorted, “Because my children call me ’Ayah’ too, and they might get confused and mistaken you to be their father.”
Burial rites, religious ceremonies, name callings are meant for humans. Our Creator (All Praise to Him) couldn’t care less if you mispelt his name or couldn’t remember his name after a beer or two. Even if you were to keep repeating His name and walk out of a 32 storey building, you would still meet your fate, ala Teoh Beng Hock style.
So in the end, who has the last laugh, the Creator. He must be thinking, I gave all these two-legged creatures a brain and a heart and all they could use it for was to compete on who has the right to call my name … hello, anybody home!
batu gaint
January 21st, 2010 at 3:12 am
haha…that is a good one!!!
wisely
January 21st, 2010 at 8:27 am
I support Nazri call since the issue is more on Sabahan and sarawakian, a compromise or how to solve this issue? give and take better than win-lose or lose-win!
Chipmunk
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:13 am
I figured there is more than just the government action to ban the use of the word All@h.
If one is to consider the legality and also how our country is governed, question is whether the Federal Government has any business to dictate how anyone apart from Muslims are to worship? Anyway, that is the duty of our soveriegn king to ensure the Ustaz and Imams do their job well to ensure all Muslims stay faithlul in the faith and not be confused over terms and well, who is their “ayah” for that matter…
The sinister point in this to question is whether there is a more pressing issue of freedom of worship and also human rights to express themselves, which is a primal right of any good citizen of Malaysia. WIth the Federal Government sticking their noses into areas where they should not, like telling people how they should worship or what phrases to use, imagine in future when Chinese Muslims translate the word for God as “Shen”. What will we call the chinese deieties if it “confuses” chinese muslims?
This is not a religious issue as many Islamic scholars agree the word use to make reference to God is as generic as Ayah…
Good analogy Si Pin… but someone has to stand up for the human rights point of view instead of politicising it as a religious issue.