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"There are some fundamentalist Christians who have decided that Allah is actually a pagan moon god who was worshiped on the Arabian peninsula before the rise of Islam. But Muslims (and most scholars) believe Allah is the same God that Jews and Christians worship -- the word means "God" in Arabic."
This is because "Allah" is literally derived from the same Semitic root-word as the Hebrew name for God, "Elohim." The word "Yaweh" (a.k.a. "Jehovah") means "Lord." Prior to the codification of the Bible, the Israelite townsfolk worshiped "Yaweh", while the rural pastoralist Judeans worshipped "Elohim" (a.k.a "Eloh" or "Allah").
So when the Hebrew Bible says "The Lord and God are one", it is really saying "Yaweh and Elohim are one." In other words, by declaring the unitary identity of the two fromerly distinct tribal deities of two different Semitic groups (Judeans and Israelites), these ancient tribes were putting all their eggs (deity names) into one basket known as monotheism.
Islam strongly affirms this sentiment. While not denying the Christian view that "God is Love", the view that "God is One" is arguably the most fundamental principle within Islam.
So if the argument can be made that any earlier Semitic groups of the Near East worshipped celestial bodies and referred to them as "GOD" (e.g. "moon god"), then the same must be said of the polytheistic ancestors of those who wrote the Old Testament; they transformed their pagan deities into the unitary God of Western consciousness.
The notion that polytheism is a fragmentary and incomplete form of monotheism is also common to Islamic thought.
The same is true for the European groups who themselves later adopted this Semitic form of Near Eastern monotheism; in English, we have both the big "G" and small "g" god(s). The church Latin form "Deus", where we get "deity" is the same root as Greek "Zeus", king of the gods; the D-Z shift is linguistically common.
Following the logic in the e-mail, does this mean that the fundamentalist Christians who read the King James Bible (translated from Latin) are actually worshipping a philandering old dude who rules from Mount Olympus, throws lightning at people for fun, and likes bowling?
