Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?

This event was incredible enlightening and I loved hearing thoughts from all different perspectives. There was a Todd H Green, scholar of Islamophobia (very different from an Islamicist), our very own Lynn Huber- professor of early Christian traditions, a Muslim woman- Shereen Elgamal, and a male Christian pastor- Ronald Shive. All four of these people had the same answer: yes. Muslims and Christians do worship the same God. I have three points to make, the last of which will lead into a question. First, I would venture to disagree with the panelists. I agree with all the evidence provided, but I would yield a different conclusion. Of course, there is no debate on whether Muslims believe that they worship the same God as the Christians. It is stated in the Qur'an very clearly that Allah send scriptures through Jesus and that the Christians, as well as the Jews, are people of the Book. Only that their book has been corrupted and Allah sent a new revelation with Muhammed. The issue is what Christians believe. Of course, there is no consensus as with so many other beliefs in Christians, for example infant baptism. But, it is interesting to note that the comparison between Christians and Jews having the same God and Christians and Muslims having the same God was brought up twice. Green asserted that Christians believe that their faith supersedes that of the Jews and provides better interpretations and should therefore understand Muslims claiming to supersede Christianity and provide even better interpretations. I would argue that while it is possible for Christians to understand and sympathize with this claim, they do not have to agree. Green even mentions that Jews don't believe what the Christians claim, so it would make logical sense for Christians to not believe what the Muslims claim. Furthermore, there is a great difference in the Christians who adopted the Jewish text as their own and the Muslims who claim that the Christian text has been corrupted. One other difference is that, as Huber mentioned, the early Christians were all Jewish. Initially Christianity was just another group of Jews. The early Muslims, however, were not Christians. The early Muslims were polytheists and "pagans". But, leading in to my second point, multiple people brought up the question: "so what?" Why does it matter whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God? We talked about the process of "othering" and that if Muslims and Christians worship the same God then that will mean Muslims are part of the community and have to be included. People want an excuse for discrimination. I would hope that Muslims can be included even if they don't worship the same God. The final point that I want to bring up is that passion that was raised at the end of the discussion. No pun intended, up until that point, it seemed that the panel was just preaching to the choir. But a man in the audience raised a question, trying to justify his fear based on his experience in war. The panel was quick to assert that violence justified by religion does not only come from Islam, but has come from Christianity and comes from people who terrorize without being labeled as terrorists (San Bernardino, Charleston, Chapel Hill). But, I think phrased differently, this man raised a good question, which I will leave to you all. When there is a group that terrorizes and labels themselves within a certain religious group, how are we supposed to act? As religious studies scholars, I don't think that we can say that they do not belong to that group. But, also, they are not representative of the religion as a whole. Isn't natural, though, that we fear when we are attacked? We did it after Pearl Harbor and we are doing it again. So how are we supposed to react?