Why does Icelandic and Arabic accents sound the same?

Coriolan said:
Except for the rolled R's I don't hear the similarity.
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The way she said "hardcore" reminded me of a Bedouin in my class, her face on the other hand is drastically different from his ... one of them is a lot cuter than the other hehe.

The R and the K are similar in both accents.
 
Not sure all the 'k' are the same but they are velar - as Coriolan I think the most of ressemblance is in the rolled 'r' -
I think they are nevertheless closer than a French speaker trying to speak english, and the fact they speak a not too bad english ('r' aside) complicate things - as a whole arabic and english/germanic 'k' are very velar the most of the time so? Scot speakers of N-E could be close too, I think.
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Slightly different comparison, I am always struck by how the Maltese accent (speaking English), is very similar to many Arab speaking countries. Yes, I understand that makes some sense on one level, but still, the link to Arabic is a distant one, and you don't get that same accent amongst Sicilians (for example), which have a shared history with Maltese. In fact, curiously, I don't find much difference in accent amongst most Italians speaking English, it appears to be a similar sounding accent regardless of region.
 
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