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Comment by sn41 | Hacker News Reader

Not only are there Islamic themes, there are also Jewish themes. The name "Kwisatz Haderach" is based on Hebrew. (This is mentioned in the list.)

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There are a number of religious themes blended in Dune. The main religious text is the Orange Catholic Bible, which by name implicates Catholicism/Christianity, but also includes Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism. It even includes hypothetical blends of Islam/Buddhism and Christianity/Buddhism. Frank Herbert never fully explains how all religions eventually ended up blended into one, but he does explore the religion quite a bit, and some background is given in the prequels that his son wrote.

I enjoy it, because I feel very clever when I recognize how some idea in Dune can be traced to an existing religion or philosophy.

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Orange_Catholic_Bible

Edit: to speak more to your main topic, I believe the Bene Gesserit tradition of following matriarchal lineage comes from some part of Judaism.

'Catholic' does not neccessary refer to Roman Catholic and/or Christianity. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_(term)

It does 99.9% of the time, with the 0.1% exception coming from people that are being pedantic. The Wikipedia page you linked to is part of a series on Christianity, and it's pretty clear in Herbert's writing that the Orange Catholics do have Christian influences (alongside the previously mentioned Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism).

In the later books, perhaps the ones by Brian Herbert, they discover a planet of Jews, mostly unchanged for 15,000 years, except they have created some self-fashioned bene gesseret-like women.

last Frank Herbert book Chapter House Dune and from what I remember it was more like an underground society of Jewsish people who kept their beliefs completely unchanged over the thousands of years, as opposed to all the other religions and societies. I think it was politically organised along matriarchal lines but there were still male rabbis. I shoul read it again it's been decades!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapterhouse:_Dune

The story line was really fascinating, especially the conflict and eventual merger with "The Whores".. However, when he wrote the last two books, beginning with the beautiful introductional ode to Herbert's deceased wife, .. it's clear his heart wasn't in it, and he was ready for the end (of either writing, or his days on the earth).

Arabic and Hebrew both have a common ancestor: proto-Semitic

There's an interesting link of correspondence between them, the letter: ش in Arabic corresponds to ש in Hebrew (and Ш in Cyrillic) having more or less the same sound.

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