by Allah's will
I received a mail from a Muslim friend of mine today, We are planning to meet each other in someplace at a certain time, so he tells me that he will be there 'by Allah's will'. In Egypt, we use the Arabic equivalent 'en sha2 allah' all the time, I use it all the time, it is considered politeness and common-sense. An assertion of a fact that u have made your plans but it is not absolute, there is always a chance of it not happening. For me it is just a social expression, no more .. no less. no need to get theological debate about it.
But somehow the English equivalent that my friend used stroke me as odd. Although it is an accurate and correct translation of the arguably most used Arabic expression in the Egyptian daily life, it seems too alien to me. Too strange. It gives me a chilling impression of a mighty god called 'Allah' that have nothing to do but to stop small plans simply because he can.
Somehow I can now understand why many westerners non-Muslims have this dark image about Islam, most western culture have no equivalent for 'en sha2 allah' so when they stumble upon such expressions they don't really get the true meaning of it (the social one). This is only partly their fault, and partly Muslims fault for they do a poor job handling such situations.
IMHO the worst thing Muslims do when addressing the western culture is when using the word 'Allah' instead of 'God'. This leaves the impression that Islam worships a strange god named 'Allah', How many realize that Allah is the exact and lateral translation of God, that if you open the dictionary you will find God=Allah, that the Arabic version of the bible uses the word Allah for God ?
I remember the first time I found people insist on using Allah instead of God, it was in my high school English courses, I fist thought is was a joke. And it wasn't.
posted by shiro at 12/22/2005 04:17:00 AM
2 Comments:
I agree. Sometimes when I look at the phrase in English and deeply think of it I find it sounds a bit strange (but not from a theological prespective) and I imagine how a westerner would react when he/she hears it. And that is the case even when someone tries to read the translation of the Quran in English. This is why I totally agree with those who say that to really understand Quran you should study and understand the Arabic language.
There are many things that westerners do not understand about us (Arabians). This is natural, there are too many differences between the two cultures and their background. And I do agree also that this is partially our fault as Muslims and I discussed this in one of the posts in my blog. I never insist on saying Allah instead of God when talking to a foreigner (I may say it in a conversation between me and you because we both know that they are synonyms).
What's wrong with saying God anyway if it means the same thing? You'd be surprised how many are unaware of this simple fact that we might take for granted. By the way, nice to see your blog up and running. I thought you got too busy and forgot about it. :)
What's even worse is when people use 'Insha Alla' to mean 'yes' in Arabic.
I don't know if you count them as westerners or not, but Catholic Latin Americans use the equivelant of Insha Allah in Spanish often. I'm sure at least Mexicans do.
Nice to find your blog after all (via Sally). Since you didn't link to it when you commented on mine, I assumed you didn't have any but had that itch still :)
Post a Comment
<< Home