///It is also clear that the use of Allah is not meant to confuse Muslims or to poselytise (to convert) the muslims. It is to serve the need of East Malaysia Christians to pray to Allah/// – Dr Chen Man Hin.

That is correct. One cannot seriously expect them – following Nazri’s half way house compromise of permitted usage of the word in East Malaysia and prohibited uage in West Malaysia – to face this dilemma : when they go back home to East Malaysia they call their God “Allah”, and when they come back for work in Peninsular, they think and call Him something else – Tuhan!

They will be more confused by Nazri’s compromise solution.

One has to weigh which bears the greater chance to be true relating on this issue of “confusion”: Muslims geeting confused or poselytised by East Malaysian Christians using the common word in reference to the Almighty OR East Malaysian Christians getting more confused that their God is Allah in East Malaysia but Tuhan in Peninsular, that the fact of South China Sea dividing two geograpical place can change the name of their God?

On balance of probabilities, the latter is likelier the case, and hence ought to be avoided.

Yet (though logic dictates it) the Govt is against it, based on another form of logic, the UMNO’s logic based on Ketuanan.

As what Philip Bowring says in “Malay Provocation” in preceding thread, its a brand of logic based on “an attempt to give religious backing to the message of Malay racial preference” that though “barely in accord with the universalist notions of global Islam” however “keeps the loyalty of many Malays otherwise resentful of growing income gaps.”

Philip Bowring also touches on 3 other adverse consequences, the first being “continuing large scale exodus of capital and of talented non-Malays” (proven), the second, the negative impact on economy once “a major recipient of foreign capital” now “a source of flight capital”, unsustainable when commodity prices go down etc (also evinced by govt showing lack of money by cutting back on Civil service allowances, increasing indirect taxes etc), and the third spectre not proven but looming – in Philip’s words “in the longer term danger, at least as perceived by some leading Malays, such as the former Finance Minister Tunku Razaleigh, is that a combination of religious intolerance and resentment of federal exploitation of their natural resources will generate secessionism in the Borneo states”.