[Not A Snowbird]

In a society where we have many names for the divine, I think it will be hard to pick one.”

I think this woman missed a few Sunday school lessons if she thinks Allah is just another name for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

[mkleesma]

“For me, it is much more about shared values. In a society where we have many names for the divine, I think it will be hard to pick one”

How about I AM?

[Reily]

again whatever happened to “discipline” in these Catholic orders? (Not Catholic so being naive here!)

It seems if there ever was someone who needs to be issues a religious “Cease & Desist” order that you are outside the Catholic lanes in the road is someone whose very life should symbolize those lanes!

I mean she is chewing up Catholic internal resources that support her and doing the opposite of what the Catholic Church teaches!

[Mrs. Don-o]

It's actually a little more complicated than that, since Arabic-speaking Christians do indeed use the name "Allah" (which means, in Arabic, THE God) for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and had been doing so for more than 500 years before Mohammad was born.

In other words, Chrstians have a better historic claim to the word "Allah" than Muslims do.

All that, though, has been pretty much buried under Muslim cultural hegemony -- at least in the West, where we so rarely see people from the ancient Arab Christian communities, which date back to Apostolic days.