Answer #3 for the People of Chelm and Any Other Curious Souls
Today's extremists may wish to ignore the long
common history of Judaism and Islam. There have been periods of great tension
as today, but also there have been times of great mutual prosperity and
tolerance, as in the flourishing Muslim-dominated societies of medieval Spain
or the hundreds of years when the Ottoman Empire was ascendant. However the
history is interpreted, the common Semitic origin of the Qu'ran's Arabic and
the Bible's Hebrew is indisputable. Mary LaHaj, an American Muslim woman who
spoke at the brotherhood breakfast some time ago, pointed out two very striking
examples of this common linguistic heritage. The consonant group ShLM (Shin,
Lamed, Mem) appears as the greeting "Shalom", or peace in Hebrew and also forms
the core of the word Islam, the religion of peace or surrender to God's will,
and of the word Muslim, one who surrenders. You can also recognize the same
root in the Arabic name for God, Allah, and our own "Elohim".El is the generic
Semitic name for God.Even before the
periods of Abraham and Moses, back in the Akkadian language of the very early
second millennium BCE, there are references to Ilu.