COMMENT | ‘Allah’ issue an opportunity for positive dialogue

COMMENT | ‘Allah’ is the Arabic word for God and it is used by Muslims as well as Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews.

However, in the context of Islamic theology, ‘Allah’ is specifically used to refer to the God of Islam, who is considered to be the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians.

So, while the word ‘Allah’ itself is not exclusive to Muslims, its specific usage within Islamic theology and practice is closely associated with the faith.

That paragraph above is what an artificial intelligence (AI) generated when I typed in: ‘Is Allah a word only used by Muslims?’ Sorry! Everyone is using AI now for everything and I just got caught up on the bandwagon.

It’s a great tool for research although a lot of verification still needs to go into the results that it generates. At the moment, nothing still beats the human element when it comes to journalism.

I remember covering the issue of the word Allah being banned from being used by the Catholic church’s newspaper The Herald as a reporter back in 2007.

At that time, it was argued that the word Allah was exclusive to Islam and allowing the usage of the word could lead to confusion and religious tension.

I was a little bit perplexed. A year before that, I had travelled to the Middle Eastern countries of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran...