YA, ALLAH…WHO’S TO STOP IMAM EDMUND OF MASJID SAINT PATRICK FROM GIVING A KHUTBAH AND ISSUING A FATWA.

…AND LEADING HIS FLOCK TO PERFORM THE HAJ AND DO THE TAWAF AROUND THE VATICAN SQUARE?

Allah may be the generic name for God first used by the Pagans. Mekkah may be the center of focus for all Muslims; yet, ‘Mecca’ is not what it is, but a center of everything.

This prompted a host of a television program in England to joke that a certain city in an undescribed Arab country has become the ‘Mecca for Terrorists!’

But what about Pastor or Father Edmund? Can he also be called Imam Edmund?

And if he has visited The Vatican, can’t he also be called a Haji? Haji Edmund?

Can the church of the Catholics and Christians be described as ‘masjid’ or mosque in the near future?

And what about other Islamic terms such as ‘fatwa’, ‘khutbah’, ‘haji’, ‘tawaf’, ‘sembahyang’ or ‘solat’, ‘berkhatam’ and so on?

And what about 'puasa' or fasting? Many non-Muslims also use the term 'puasa' if they are not eating. But this is not 'puasa' like the Muslims know it.

The non-Muslims also pray or ‘sembahyang’ or ‘bersolat’ but their ways are totally different compared to those of the Muslims.

And more and more non-Muslims opt to circumcise or ‘bersunat’, a practice that was introduced before Islam.

Can’t they also be described as generic words that people of the other religions too can use in the near future, so we can have this announcement: ‘Imam Edmund of Masjid St. Patrick will be giving a khutbah and issuing a fatwa…’?

In fact, many Arab names have their origins from Jewish and Christian names, because these two religions first appeared before Islam, and they are not originally Arab names either, but the names of the Pagans.

And if the non-Muslims have completed reading their Bible or other holy books, can’t they also say that they had ‘berkhatam Bible’ instead of ‘berkhatam Koran’ and so forth?

Yes, they can.

And what about the Holy Kaabah?

It was never a focus of Islam, but a focus of the Pagans who placed all sorts of statues and icons inside of it, before Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, destroyed them, to claim the Holy Kaabah as the center of focus of all Muslims.

The Unbelievers have more right to reclaim the Holy Kaabah to turn it into whatever they want because they have the right of ownership to it, as much as the Jews who were in the great majority in Mekkah as well as Madinnah, who can also claim these two cities as their own.

Unfortunately, they are not able to do this. But they can do it to the Palestinians by seizing their land and creating the Zionist state of Israel and getting support from America and then the United Nations, so this state has become legitimate in their eyes.   

And Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, too was originally not a believer, until he received enlightenment from ‘Allah’ to become the first Muslim in the world, at the ripe age of forty-four years. His parents were all Pagans, too.   

The truth is that the Catholics and also Christians of Malaysia are not people of the Book, the original Catholics and Christians of ancient or Biblical times have been displaced, as Muslims know it, with many having reverted to Islam.

In fact, most of the ancient Jews too had left Judaism to revert to Islam, which is the extension of the earlier religious beliefs, who were given the Taurah and Injil, followed by the Koran.

However, the original versions of the Taurah or Torah and Injil (or Bible) have disappeared, and the new versions are not authentic.

It also explains why there are so few Christians or Jews in the Middle East today. They were dominating in all the Arab countries that we know today.

And most of the Catholics and Christians are Nuevo-Catholics and Nuevo-Christians, who are those who are outside of the original areas where the original Catholics or Christians lived, with many infusing their Pagan beliefs.

Yet, those in the west are also fond of mixing Catholicism and Christianity with secular atheistic ideals, leaving the churches their forefathers had built and prayed in to be left unattended with many being sold to Muslim groups that turned them into ‘masjid’ or Islamic centers. 

The Jews in the Middle East today are so few. The ones that now inhabit the land of Israel today are not the descendants of the original Jews, who have mostly reverted to Christianity.

However, most of the Jews who became Christians later moved on to revert to Islam, as a natural process, leaving with so few Arabs who are Christians.

But the so-called Arab-Christians are truly descendants of the ancient Jews, who refused to speak in Hebrew having left Judaism, so over the centuries they have been accepted as Arabs who are Christians.

The Coptic Christians of Egypt have Jewish ancestry and they were not Arabs, but since they speak in this language, they are described as Arabs, too.

It is like the Chinese-Muslims in China, who were originally not Chinese, but Arabs, Persians and Turkish.

However during the Qing and Ming Dynasties, they were forced by the Chinese emperors to assume Chinese identities and wear Chinese clothes and speak Chinese, so that over time, they have been accepted as Chinese, even though their ancestors are not Chinese but Arabs, Persians or Turkish.

And who are the original Jews in the Middle East today? They are the Hassidic or Orthodox Jews.

Ironically, these Hassidic Jews or the Hassidim do not look eye-to-eye with the other Jews who they describe as Zionists who believe in Zionism more than Judaism that they know.  

They also do not believe and support the continued existence of the Zionist state of Israel, and those who are living outside of this state, refused to step foot in it until this country has been returned to its rightful owners, the Palestinians who they want to live under until the advent of their Messiah.  

The other New Jews are recent converts to Judaism, and who are mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia, who converted to the religion so they could get Israeli citizenship under the Law of the Return which allows any Jew from anywhere in the world Israeli citizenship automatically, including those who are recent converts to the religion.

So few Jews from around the world have gone back to Israel; those who go there to assume Israeli citizenship are there for economic reasons.

No wonder also most Jewish people in America have declined to return to Israel, although they support the continued existence of the Zionist state.   

And who was the person who first translated the Bible into Bahasa Melayu? Munshi Abdullah.

Munshi Abdullah was the scribe engaged by Thomas Stamford Raffles to translate the book into Melayu so that it could be used to spread the religion to the Jawa and other native groups in Indonesia and also East Malaysia.

And Munshi Abdullah did not have much grasp of Islam so he used the term ‘Allah’ for God.

Maybe Munshi Abdullah did not use ‘Allah’ to mean God, but it could have been rewritten by some other person, to confuse the Jawa and other native tribes into thinking that they were praying to Allah, a concept they had known all their lives.

It is true that the Arabs and also Jews as well as Christians of ancient or Biblical times had used the word or term ‘Allah’, but they were referring to a different God, and they were the real people of the Book.

Today’s Catholics and Christians cannot lay claim to be people of the Book, because they use different versions of the Bible, which is not the Kitab Injil which is known by all Muslims, and it is no more in existence, including the original Taurah, which the later-day Jews call Torah.

In fact, the Arabs that we have today in the Middle East are also not originally Arabs. They are people of different warring tribes, who had their own languages and beliefs.

However, Islam united them, and over time because the Holy Koran was written in Arabic, their ancestors started to use Arabic over their own dialects that they have left to become extinct, save for those which are still being used by tribes who live away from modernization.

The Pope of the Catholics and the leaders of the Christians in the west and America have never uttered the name ‘Allah’, ever, and no Catholic or Christian has ever been known to hang the name of ‘Allah’ or ‘The House of Allah’ in calligraphy in their churches or houses, even in their languages, and never mind in Arabic.

These Catholics and Christians never said, ‘Ya, Allah!’ when they are in pain or in dire straits. They called on their ‘Dear Father, art thou in Heaven…’ for help and guidance.