Certainly a sizable percentage of the students who enter my community college world religions courses each semester are often startled to discover that so many similar religious beliefs and parallel religious practices are actually shared between Jews and Muslims.

For example, just off the top of my head, I can think of at least ten significant things that Judaism and Islam either share in common outright, or for which both religions at least possess some strikingly similar mutual parallels. Part one of my five-part series covers the first two: worshiping God and the Christian beliefs about Jesus.