Gentiles and Islam

No, they are not Gentiles. They are Semites, descended from Abraham through Ismael, as well as from his second wife Keturah, the most often mentioned being Midian.

 

Arabs, although Semites (as were the Assyrians, Canaanites, Babylonians, etc.), they are Gentiles; that is, they are not Jewish.

And the vast majority of Muslims are not Arab.

 

I don't see Semites as Gentiles. Not Jewish, for sure, but Semites. There is no doubt the modern, common use of Gentile means "non-Jew."

But the word "Gentile" comes from the Latin gentilis, which is a cognate of the Greek word gennao, which means "born." As Ismael and Midian were "born" into the linage of Abraham I have a hard time seeing them as Gentiles in other than the "non-Jew" meaning of the word.

 

I see your point, but it seems that the term "gentiles" meant simply "nations," that is, other nations aside from Israel. Israel was not ethnically distinct from its neighbors (with the exception of the Egyptians and the Philistines, and it appears that the Philistines had largely assimilated into the Semitic culture), yet Israel was ordered not to intermarry with the other nations (which it did, repeatedly).

Nations such as Edom and Moab, though related to Abraham, were still Gentiles. Herod's father (an Edomite) converted to Judaism, but his ethnic background made him deeply unpopular with the Sadducees. Herod's marriage to a Hasmonean princess was undertaken, in part, to counter public belief that he wasn't "Jewish" enough to be the king of Jews.

 

No. That's not an Islamic concept. Besides, 85 percent of Muslims are not "Ishmaelites."