One nation, under God
I read an editorial in some respectable newspaper somewhere that critiqued the pledge of allegiance and the late addition of “One nation under God.” (And, once again, I am proving to be a horrid blogger because I did not blog it at the time and cannot find it now…) The writer provided a whole list of groups who could be offended by this reference including Muslims. This, the writer claimed, was because it mentioned God and not Allah.
Allah means God. It’s just the Arabic word for God. My Koran is translated into Persian and English. In the Persian translation, Allah is Khoda. Khoda is the Persian word for God. In my English version, however, Allah is Allah. The Torah is the Tawrat. Jesus is Isa. Mary is Maryum. Moses is Musa. Abraham is Ibrahim. Jonah is Younes. And on and on. This poor translation makes it seem as though Islam is something other than a continuation of Judeo-Christianity.
In the Koran, God is still angry with his chosen people (an anger begun in the Old Testament or Tawrat). That has not changed. I expect he will remain angry. I think most members of the tribe would agree with me in this statement. The Koran continually refers to God’s need to hold a mountain over the heads of his chosen tribe in order to get them to accept his word. That’s nothing new, is it?
(No matter what kind of feminist I am, I cannot accept that God is a she. If that’s true, then I must be a man.)
So, the long and the short of it is, that there may be many reasons to be critical of the comment: One nation under God. But one of them is not that it leaves out Allah.
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