Umma is a Hebrew word, borrowed by Islam

Submitted by sara (United States), Dec 31, 2010 at 01:33

Actually DNM, Ummah in hebrew is an old word meaning nation and there are many derivative words. Ummot is the plural, meaning nations; (for example, the U.N. in hebrew is Ummot Meuhadot = Nations United). It does come from the word Am, as you noted since in hebrew the Aleph can have a vowel of Oh or Ooh, eh, eeh or Ah. The phrase 'Am Ha-Aretz (only old ashkenazis would pronounce the T as S) usually refers to the people of Israel or the common man, like saying someone is a mensch.

As always, the concept of Umma was taken by you-know-who from the Torah and Tanach to express it as an Islamic concept.

P.S. My pet peeve is the persistent quotations from Muslims that existed way before in Jewish texts.

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