Allah argument in Indonesia

"Christians and Muslims sometimes misunderstand Allah to be purely Islamic. Instead, it is the Arabic word for God and a close semantic relative of the Hebrew El. In many Central Asian countries, Muslims use Khuda, the Persian word for God, rather than Allah. Christians in Palestine and other Arabic-speaking communities also refer to God as Allah."

This Recent article highlights a debate over the name 'Allah' in Indonesia.  Seems the Muslim government there has legislated that Christians may not use the name Allah.  Silly arguments like these are propagated by both Muslims and Christians only serve to distract from the main issues at hand. We use the name Allah for God simply because that is his name in Arabic.  Using any other name would be awkward and unaccepted in the culture.  Muslims actually have 99 names for God, most of which line up with biblical concepts. 

Christians may argue the name Allah doesn't communicate the proper characteristics of the God of the Bible, but this is why God has many names.  He is hard to describe in one word!  God is El 'I am', he is Allah (Al- ilah or 'the God') he is also Jireh 'the provider', 'the god who hears' and 'the god who sees' along with many other names he reveals in the Scriptures. 

Surely we don't need to fight or worse legislate how Christians or Muslims choose to refer to God.