Dutch bishop: Call God ‘Allah’ to ease relations

I hate political correctness. It's destroying our country, and the world in a lot of different ways. When we have to constantly walk on eggshells, and watch every word we speak for fear of hurting or embarassing or insulting someone it'
s crazy. This Dutch Bishop says that everyone should call God "Allah" and we can all just get along better with the Muslim world. Note to the Bishop...not even Muslims think this is a good idea. What happened to standing for something you believe in? You worship Allah and he worships Buddha and she worships Yahweh, and that's great! I give you every right to worship or not worship in your own way and give me the same favor. We can't bend to every wind that blows by, sometimes we have to stand tall in the winds of stupidity and say "THIS IS NOT RIGHT!" It reminds me of the episode of South Park where the adults are afraid that the TV Show "Family Guy" will show a version of Muhammad and thus outrage Muslims into riots, so the town LITERALLY buries their heads in the sand to keep safe. As one character says about the freedom of speech "Either it is all ok to mock, or none of it is!" and I really agree with that. I take the position that it's hard to offend me, if I am laughing. You can call your God Allah if you want, but don't expect me to and certainly don't command me to.

Dutch bishop: Call God ‘Allah’ to ease relations
Roman Catholic leader stokes already heated debate on religion
Updated: 9:29 a.m. MT Aug 15, 2007

AMSTERDAM - A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.

Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word "Allah" while celebrating Mass.

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem."

A survey in the Netherlands' biggest-selling newspaper De Telegraaf on Wednesday found 92 percent of the more than 4,000 people polled disagreed with the bishop's view, which also drew ridicule.

"Sure. Lets call God Allah. Lets then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun," Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper.

Gerrit de Fijter, chairman of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, told the paper he welcomed any attempt to "create more dialogue", but added: "Calling God 'Allah' does no justice to Western identity. I see no benefit in it."

A spokesman from the union of Moroccan mosques in Amsterdam said Muslims had not asked for such a gesture.

Religious tensions on the rise
Signs of tension had already surfaced in the last two weeks after the head of a committee for former Muslims was attacked and populist anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders called for the Koran to be banned.

Bishop Muskens, who will shortly retire, has raised eyebrows in the past with suggestions that those who are hungry may steal bread and that condoms should be permissible in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

Some Dutch Muslims welcomed his comments as a valuable gesture of support coming just days after Wilders branded the Quran a "fascist book" in the vein of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which legitimizes violence.

Wilders, whose new party won nine seats out of the 150 in parliament in last November's elections, is well known for his firebrand remarks on Islam.

He said an attack by two Moroccans and a Somali on the head of a Dutch group for "ex-Muslims" had spurred him to write.

Issues of immigration and integration had faded from the Dutch political agenda over the last year, after a period of unprecedented social tension sparked by the 2004 murder of Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker critical of Islam, by a Muslim militant.