It didn't occur to me to mention this here until just now, although I learned it a few days ago. The Arabic word for "church" is kineessa*. This is the same word as Knesset, which is the name of the Israeli Parliament. Both come from an Aramaic word meaning "to assemble".
I don't have any particularly detailed or meaningful point to make about this. It just makes me smile.
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*I don't know whether kineessa means specifically Christian church or just "worship," since our professor supplied the word in aid of a classmate who was trying to say that he had gone to church on Sunday. I remain undaunted. Even if the etymology can't make me smile over Abrahamic religious history, it can still make me smile over the relationship between representative democracy and Abrahamic faith. So there.
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