Having just come from a conference in Cairo, I can agree that everyone will want to give you directions, regardless of what they know, and everyone says “insha’allah” every second word. However, the worst culprits of the second act are British Muslims at the conference who seemed really insecure about any identification they had.
Related Posts
Hijab
There is an op-ed written in a NY Urdu language paper (English translation) that deals with the issue of hijab. I’m looking for the Urdu version, but the English translation reminds me very much of what some of the early debate was like in NY in English. You would throw out a whole bunch of arguments and see what would stick. The arguments have become much more sophisticated and targeted, helped both by time and the easy accessibility of more academic material. I think this article is important, not because of what it says, but because of the language and…
Outrageous!
A Muslim teacher in a public school in Ohio kept a Qur’an on his desk and refused to remove it after repeated requests. As a form of discipline he branded a student with a star and crescent moon. I can’t believe that this isn’t generating more outrage. It’s a clear violation of church and state separation, he’s sounds unbalanced, and it’s clearly the result of a faith that demands a public declaration of itself and imposition on others. Oh, wait, sorry, it was a Christian, with a Bible, and he branded a cross. Nothing to see here. Perfectly normal and…
Farq
Farq, not the Colombian para-military FARC, from Arabic, means difference (فرق). Looking through our log files, I noticed that we’d been getting a lot of hits from search engines where people were asking the difference between “muslim” and “moslem.” Presumably they were interested in “Qur’an” and “Koran” as well, but we wouldn’t have met that criteria until just now. 🙂
3 thoughts on “You will read this, Insha’allah”
Comments are closed.
Hello.. I am a new reader! I actually feel that ‘insha’allah’ is pretty nice and underused. I live in London with people who are only ‘born’ Muslim (in that it’s cultural, but they are not religious) and I was thinking about bringing it back. But perhaps it has never gone away? And it might drive me crazy if I had to hear it every second word.
Salaam Fatima, and welcome. Thank you for your presence and your comment. I love “insha’allah” as it’s a nice way of reminding ourselves of God’s omnipotence. However, I fall into the camp of “man proposes, God disposes,” rather than “as God wills.” I’m a little bit of a free-willer.
Cairo was funny because I actually did hear people using it to refer to the past and to statements of fact, such as “it’s finally cool.” Oddly, it was the Muslim from Britain who used it the most in this manner, and after having spent some time with them, I think it had to do with the fact that these particular individuals were attempting to prove they were authentic.
I understand that. My family is South African and they have a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Arab Muslims, and they go into complete ‘insha’allah’ overdrive around them because of this. I find that ‘hierachy’ that some people seem to think exists with Muslims from different places very troubling, actually.