The Malaysian government has told a Christian publication, Herald, that it may not use the word Allah to refer to the Christian God. The story is carried by the BBC [1] and, later, the New York Times [2], though I first heard about it on the sterling Language Log [3].
I’ve not been able to get my hands on the wording of the prohibition. It’s been put variously by the news sources, which typically say that the rule is that non-Muslims may not use the word Allah; but this, as Language Log pointed out, doesn’t seem right: the Herald would likely be allowed to say “Muslims worship Allah.” The gist seems to be that only the Muslim single deity is to be called Allah and that other single deities may not have that title (even though, as we’re told, Allah was used to refer to the Christian god in Arabic before Islam came into being).
This conjunction of the hyper-rational and the irrational is frought, you might say. Different gods? One god with different names? Can’t really go outside and look. Comes down to power in the end. Which is best directed at the real, I’d say.