Would like to share some insights on this too. I’m a Christian from East Malaysia, and yes we do use Allah commonly in songs, prayers and church services as well. Here are some explanations to some issues raised here:

1) Why use Allah instead of Tuhan?

In the Bible, God is referred to as Lord, God and LORD. There is a distinct meaning of these references for specific reason in the Bible.

Lord = Refers to a person of honor and respect, translated as ‘Tuhan’ in BM Bible.
God = A plural form referring to the majesty of God. In original Bible text which (Hebrew) is Elohim, which is translated as ‘Allah’
LORD = Is a replacement for God’s sacred name, to avoid misuse of the name, is translated in same way (all capitalized) to ‘TUHAN’

If we were to translate God to Tuhan directly in the Bible, it WILL effect the meaning and context of verses in the Bible, as ‘Tuhan’ is already used as a translation to Lord.

2) Why Munshi Abdullah or Indonesians translate God to Allah?
Here’s a good explanation:
http://myblog.mazlizaothman.com/?p=42

3)Why Catholics insist on using the word Allah now?

Christians have been using the word Allah in its BM publications for at least 50 years now. It didn’t start just 2 years ago. The question we should be asking is, why ban it now, not 30 or 20 years ago? It is already stated in the law that all Christian publications be limited to Christians ONLY, and that’s how it has always been. It only became an issue just recently when some ministers just decide blindly to make it an issue.

I try to be as brief as possible, hope this helps!

Our language is an open language which means that it has many borrowed words from different languages including Sanskrit, Chinese, Portuguese, and, especially, Arabic. We even use Yahweh, too, and that’s Hebrew. It is purely linguistic reasons that we use the world Allah for God. Even Christian Arabs use “Allah” for God.

“Tuhan” is equivalent to Lord and if you read the English version of the Bible, God and Lord are both used since each word conveys a certain degree of meaning. The diction of Alkitab will change if we were to change all of the “Allah”s to “Tuhan”s.

The point is the word “Allah” has been integrated into the Malay language and changing it would cause confusion among the Malay Christians. My suggestion is to leave it they way it is. We don’t use the word “Allah” to insult Muslims or to solely convert people, but only to practice our religion in our native tongue.

Is that so hard to ask for?

Lastly, if Muslims say that Allah is only referring to their God and not the God of the Christians or Jews, are they suggesting that there is more than one God other than theirs? So there’s more than one God; a God each religion? If that were true, the “banning of Allah” argument is hypocritical because it implies polytheism.

Please, stop the burning of churches. I’ve experienced that first-hand, it’s not pleasant. Not only does that bring misery to the Christians, but to Muslims as well because they are portrayed even more negatively, seeming to only use violence to counter-attack an argument instead of promoting an open, civilized dialogue to remedy simple misunderstandings.