Pandering to Islam

So finally, McDonald's has corrected their mistake, and brought the Pig back into their Chinese Zodiac toy set:

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20100122/tap-singapore-mcdonalds-pig-c3bb44c.html

However, McDonalds is not the only American company that is going to great extents to avoid "offending" Muslims, but has no problems with "offending" non-Muslims. Even Google, who claims to be against censorship and says it is a strong supporter of free speech (as in their recent skirmish with the China government and threatening to pull their company out of China over censorship issues), seems to be pandering to Muslims.

If you go to "www.google.com", and then type some words into the search box, Google has a special feature called "Google Suggest" that will automatically display a list of sentences that starts with the words you typed in the search box.

Now, if you type the text:

christianity is

(note: remember to type a space after the word "is"), you will see a list of sentences, many of them unfavourable, shown by Google Suggest.

If you next type:

buddhism is

you will also see the suggestions, again many unfavourable, being listed.

However, if you type the text:

islam is

(remember to type a space after the word "is"), you will see that Google has censored the suggestions list!

You can try this for other religion names ("hinduism", "taoism", etc). You will see that the suggestions list has been specifically censored by Google for only the Islam religion.

*************************************************

Why did McDonalds pander to Muslims and made such a pig-headed move in the first place? I believe this is because it thinks that "offending" Muslims can lead to more disastrous consequences than "offending" the Chinese or the Hindus (Hindus consider cows a sacred animal and do not eat beef. If McDonalds is truly sensitive to religion as it claims, it will not serve beef to not offend Hindus).

Look at the recent troubles in Malaysia, where 10 churches were vandalised, fire-bombed, and burnt, over a legal ruling on the word "Allah". Instead of settling the dispute calmly and civilly in the law arena, deeds almost amounting to terrorism were acted upon by some Muslims, who were clearly offended by the legal ruling which seemed to favour the Christians and unfavourably to the Muslims.

Indeed, in the past few weeks, we hear of:

- an American Muslim army major who killed 13 people and wounded 30 others in his own army camp, in the name of Islam ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_shooting )

- the Nigerian Muslim who nearly suicide bomb himself in a plane with 289 passengers in the name of Islam ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab )

- daily terror bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq by Al Qaeda in the name of Islam

In the West, Muslims often complain that they are unfairly treated, and that they are victims of Islamophobia. However, the word "phobia" means an "irrational fear". With violent reactions by Muslims over issues such as the above and these:

- naming a toy bear with the name "Muhammad" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case )

- the Danish cartoons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy )

we can see that a fear of Islam is not an "irrational fear". Islam is indeed a religion to be feared, because it does incite its believers to do dangerous deeds.

Thus, Google is probably right to censor the suggestion list for "islam is ". It might save their office premises around the world from being fire-bombed by Muslim extremists, who appear to take offence at anything done by non-Muslims that even remotely appears to encroach upon the Islamic religion.

*************************************************

The Malaysia issue of banning non-Muslims from using the word "Allah" to mean God is shortsighted, and shows a hardening of Muslim fundamentalism creeping in the country ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_v._The_Herald ).

Unfortunately for the UMNO government, which is creating this unnecessary controversy, "Allah" is not an exclusive Islamic term!

To begin with, most of those who insist "Allah" is uniquely Muslim or Arabic seem unaware that the words for "God" in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic are so closely related as to be virtually indistinguishable. The Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have different conceptions of God, certainly, but etymologically speaking, the Arabic Allah shares the same root as the Hebrew Elohim and the Aramaic Alaha.

Elohim derives from eloh (Hebrew for "God"), Alaha is an emphatic form of alah (Aramaic for "God"), and Allah ("The God") is linked to ilah (Arabic for "God").

'All three of these Semitic words for "God" - eloh, alah, and ilah - are etymologically equivalent,' writes Dr Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, a Muslim scholar. If one heard Elah or Alah in Aramaic (pronounced Al-aw) it would sound almost exactly the same as Allah in Arabic (pronounced Al-lawh or Al-lah, depending on the context).

It is difficult to say Christians cannot say "Allah" when Arab Christians have been doing so for thousands of years and when Christ, who spoke Aramaic, would probably have said Alah, Elah, or Alaha. Both Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 tell us that at the ninth hour on the cross, Christ cried out:

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? ("My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?")

where Eloi being the personal possessive of Elah. Still, it would be as meaningless to say that Christians have a better claim on the distant common root of Elohim, Elah or Allah, because Christ came before Prophet Muhammad."

- Janadas Devan - "What's In A Name" - Sunday Times - 24 Jan 2010

(See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah )

Ironically, the situation between the UMNO politicians and the Catholic Church reminds me of an action of the Catholic Church back in 1633 when it punished the scientist Galileo Galilei to life imprisonment because Galileo says that the facts are that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and not the Sun revolving around the Earth as taught by the church and written in the bible.

Now, UMNO wants to punish Christians because the Christians say that the facts are that the use of the term "Allah" by non-Muslims predates Islam by thousands of years, and is not exclusive to Islam as UMNO wants the situation to be.

UMNO can behave like the enlightened political body it claims to be, and teach its Muslim members the historical truth of Islam and its origins, and help foster a harmonious society together with the other religions, and build a country that celebrates its multi-religious make-up. Instead, because of the hardening religious stance, they are now telling their members that only Muslims have an exclusive lock on the "Allah" term and only Muslims can be permitted to use it, ignoring history and reality that this is not true (in the Middle East, Arabic Christians and other non-Muslim faiths still call their God as "Allah" today).

This posture is just like the Catholic Church's stance back in the 1600s, dogmatically teaching its members that the Sun revolves round the Earth, ignoring science and reality that this is not true.

When religion comes into the picture, truth gets thrown out the door.