` == I have some things to say ==  Firstly, I find it hard to believe that Allah is the same God as my God, i.e, the Judeio-Christian God. Secondly, Why can't Muslims put up with Religous humor like Christians, Jews, and other straight thinking folks?-  :: With all due respect, Muslims are no less humour-tolerant than many groups throughout the history of other religions.  One of the funniest people I have ever met was a Muslim.  The trick is that fanatical muslims have no sense of humour, much the same way fanatical christians, jews, sikhs, or anyone else have poor senses of humour.  It is in fanaticism that we close our minds, and therefore lose the joy that comes with an open mind.  :: On the topic of Allah - you're going to have to deal with it.  (Well, you don't HAVE to, I suppose... )   I know you may find it hard to believe, but you need to move past the lens of your experience with muslims or with others' ideas about islam.  The fact that you call non-muslims ``straight thinking folks`` should clue you in to the fact that you are taking a prejudiced view.  Have you studied the Qur'an?  I don't mean leafed through a copy at the book store, but actually studied it, with people who have also studied it with an open mind?  In the Qur'an, you find Jesus praised and loved, prophets sent by God to the hebrews (Noah, Isaiah, Elijah, Abraham, Moses, etc.) respected and honoured.  At the end of days, according to Islam, Jesus even returns just like in Christianity.    ::I'm not saying there aren't differences - big ones.  It's just that there's a difference between God's identity and His names.  Allah isn't God... Allah is a name of god.  God has many names.  In fact the word God didn't even start out as a name, it was a word - a noun.  In english usage, we started to use it as a proper noun, as a name.  That's an english thing, 1500 years after Jesus (around when English started to be modern English).  Arabs say ``the God`` in arabic.  That word, in Arabic, is Allah.  Christians from Arab lands use the same word to describe God the Father.   Jews sometimes have trouble thinking that Christians talk about the same God, because Christian concepts of God's nature and attributes are so different (in some formulations of Christianity) than the God of the hebrew Tanakh.  Nevertheless scholars and anyone who reads the texts realizes that even if their conceptions of God differ, they are trying, in their human and frail way, to describe the same unique being that created the universe.  The same is true with Muslims.  Cheers.    ::crazyfurf, so you think Muslims don't fall under the straight thinking folks category? Anyway I don't see how this will help contribute to the article! so remove this section?     maybe you should not ask any quetions or edite any pages of wikipedia, because after reading this i can see that your bias and possibly a racist.  == Allah not a contraction of al-ilah! == Insert non-formatted text here Wiki has alread stated, which is a proven fact, that Arabic speaking Jews or Christians used the name Allah before Islam. The following is a refutation of the al-ilah contraction theory and the allegation that Allah was a moon god (If this be then all Arabic speaking Jews and Christians will go to hell) Since Robert Morey Book Islamic Invasion is the leading propaganda on this topic we will use him as a bases of refutation.  We have had the pleasure in reading his book called ``Islamic Invasion``. However his arguement was unheard of before his book was published. His sources that he quotes, that he misquoted and twisted out of their context, support no such allegation of his.   What Morey did was took various sources of information to asert a theory in the following.  :1) The name (Allah) is linguistically, not etymologically, said to be in theory a contraction of the two Arabic words ``al ilah`` that means ``the god or The G-d``.  :2) In Arabian pagan worship there was a supreme Idol called by the names Sin, Nanna, and Hubul which was known as a moon deity.  :3) This moon god was given the designated title ``al ilah``  :4) the moon god was worshipped in Makkah at the Ka'abah known as Hubul  :5) the symbol of Islam is the Crescent  :6) the symbol of the moon god was the crescent  :These are Morey's foundation to his arguement that he tied togther in his so called detective work.   Unfortunately Morey was not the scholar that people thought he was. His research was not researched at which his prejudice thinking lead him to propagate something that was not. Also to remind everyone that the PHD label which was nicely adver