Malaysian conflict

The conflict in Malaysia is one of the top religion stories in the last week. As I understand it, in the Malay language, "Allah" is the equivalent of the generic English word "God," not a more specific term like Jehovah or YWHW to Jews or Jesus to Christians. However, many Muslims feel that this name should only be used to refer to their understanding of God. There has been a dispute in their courts over whether Christians can use this name, and violence has even broken out among those unhappy with the court's ruling. I couldn't find an appropriate Lego image, even though there's a beautiful mosque in Malaysia that's just crying out to be transformed into a MOC, so here is a model of the Perdana Putra created by Andy Grubb (a builder at Legoland California), built for the announcement of the upcoming Legoland Malaysia. This isn't a religious building, but is really their equivalent of the White House or 10 Downing Street, though it is obviously influenced by Malay and Islamic architectural styles.



BTW, I'll be interested to see What they do with Legoland in Muslim-dominated Malaysia and Dubai. The Miniland displays are at the heart of each of the Legoland parks, and these are really brought to life by the clever designs of the Miniland scale people (see MinilandBricks for much more on this). However, Islam frowns on representational art - it's not directly forbidden, but you really don't see much of it. So we'll have to wait and see what they do.