Monotheism is the theological belief of three major Abrahamic world religions, Judiaism, Christianity and Islam, that there is one God.

So, is it the same God for all three? Well, yes. But some call God by different names.

“The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an, asserts the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world; a unique and indivisible being who is independent of the creation. The indivisibility of God implies the indivisibility of God’s (called Allah in Arabic) sovereignty which in turn leads to the conception of the universe as just, coherent and moral rather than as an existential and moral chaos(as in polytheism).”

The key phrase in that snip is in parenthesis. In Arabic, God is called Allah.

Thus we find ourselves in the center of a new outburst of violence that is totally confusing.

“Four churches in and around Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia have been firebombed in the continued reaction to a court ruling that Christians may use the word “Allah.” …

“Angry protests and cyber attacks on the website of the Herald, the Catholic newspaper involved in the case, followed the Malaysian High Court’s Dec. 31 ruling. The court said that the paper, Malaysia’s largest Catholic newspaper, may use “Allah,” also a traditional Malay word, to name the Christian God.”

Firebombings of churches over the name of God.

As Catholic Culture notes:

“… the word “Allah” predates Islam and has been some Christian tribes’ principal term to refer to God.”

Furthermore…

“The word has been used for centuries in Malaysia, as well as by Christians in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Indonesia as the equivalent of the English word God. But many Malaysian Muslims, who make up 60 per cent of the population, say that Allah should be reserved to refer exclusively to the Muslim deity and that use of it in a Biblical context encourages conversion to Christianity, a crime under the country’s Islamic laws.”

So they’ve de facto changed centuries old law?

Islamic leaders should denounce these attacks. Go back to what New York Times analyst Thomas Friedman recently said.

‘You keep telling us what Islam isn’t. You need to explain to us, and to yourselves, what it is.’