1. Introduction

With the advent of Islam in the seventh century, the Arabic language and culture underwent a radical and revolutionary transformation. By the end of Muhammad’s prophethood in 632 C.A., every tribe in the Arabian Peninsula had rejected polytheism, embraced monotheism, accepted the Shari‘ah, an all-embracing socio-political, legal, religious, economic and spiritual order, and placed the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, at the core of the community of believers. The Qur’an, “whose genuineness is above suspicion” (Nicholson 143), became the basis of religion, law, jurisprudence, education and language and acted like a divine filter, accepting what was in accord with Islam from Arab culture and rejecting what was not. Being the first book ever published in the Arabic language, the Qur’an established the standard of classical Arabic, the guide to good grammar, the path of eloquence, the source of style and the lifeblood of the lexicon, exercising “a unique influence on the history of the Arabic language and literature” (Nicholson XXIII). A linguistic document of incomparable importance, “[i]t was viewed as a source of grammatical and lexicographical information,” “[i]ts stylistic inimitability notwithstanding, it even came to be treated as a standard for theories of literary criticism” (Rosenthal 321).

As a literary monument, “the Koran…stands by itself, a production unique in Arabic literature, having neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom” (Gibb 36). Unsurpassed in its rhetorical richness, even non-Muslim Orientalists have described the Qur’an as miraculous. Hottinger admits that when “[c]onsidered from the point of view of its Arabic eloquence, the Koran is indeed a miracle” (24). Louis Massignon’s acknowledgment that the Qur’an is not the work of Muhammad, single-handedly disavowed centuries of Western scholarship aimed at undermining the origin of this divine diwan.1 In light of its lavish lyricism, the prowess of its poetic prose, the rhapsody of its rhythm, the multiplicity of meanings it manifests, its imposing impact on society, scholarship and science, in every respect, “there is…no single book that is as influential in any religion as the Qur’an is in Islam” (Nasr 23). Thanks to the Qur’an, the success of Muhammad’s mission, and the spread of Islam under the “Orthodox” Caliphs, the Arabic language became the sacred language of the entire Muslim world. “Due to this single book,” explains Wilson Bishai, “Arabic rose from almost complete insignificance to be the holy tongue of the second largest religious community in the world” (92). As a result, “in many countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, as well as the Middle East, the chantings of the Qur’an in Arabic are heard daily in homes, over loudspeakers and in official gatherings - a clear evidence of the profound impression this single book from Arabia has left upon millions of the world’s inhabitants” (92).

The language of the Qur’an is held in such high regard that many Muslims call it lughat Allah, the language of Allah.2 In the Holy Qur’an, Allah reveals that the Qur’an existed prior to creation in the form of a Guarded Tablet (85:21-22). In the Sunnah, the Tradition of the Prophet, Muhammad says that “Allah recited Surat al-Tawbah [The Repentence] and Surat Ya-Sin [Mystic Letters Y.S.] one thousand years before creation” (Ghazali). According to French Orientalist Jacques Berque, “[t]he Arabic language scarcely belongs to the world of men; rather, it seems to be lent to them” (190). As a holy language, directly dispensing God’s word and law, this classical language is invested with supplementary levels and layers of implicature not always evident to the outside observer. While Greek and Latin were infused with a new vocabulary as a result of the rise of Christianity, the saturation of spirituality into the Arabic language, which took place, via the Qur’an and the Sunnah, with the arrival of Islam, may be unparalleled in human and linguistic history.

2. The Holy Qur’an

The religion of Islam strongly recommends the recitation of the Qur’an with assurances of rich rewards for remembrance of its Revealor. The very first word of the Qur’anic revelation is the imperative Iqra’: “Read!” “Recite!” and “Proclaim!” the word of Allah (96:1). Almighty Allah asks Muhammad and the Muslims to believe in the Qur’an (6:92), to “Listen to it with attention, and hold your peace: that you may receive mercy” (7:204), to “recite the Qur’an in slow, measured, rhythmic tones” (73:4), to “move not thy tongue concerning the [Qur’an] to make haste therewith” (75:16), to “earnestly seek to understand the Qur’an” (47:24), to “study it as it should be studied” (2:121) as it is easy to understand and to remember (19:97; 44:58; 54:17, 22, 32 and 40).

The Prophet Muhammad encouraged Muslims to read, recite and memorize the Qur’an. He said that “Reciting the Qur’an is the best form of worship” (Ghazali); “The Qur’an is the best of intercessors, superior to prophets and angels…” (Ghazali); “He who recites the Qur’an belongs to the family of Allah and His sincere servant” (Ghazali); “The best of you is the one who learns the Qur’an and teaches it” (Bukhari, Ghazali); “Do not envy but … a man to whom Allah has granted the Qur’an and who recites it in prayer day and night” (Bukhari and Muslim); and “Recite the Qur’an until it prevents you from evil” (Ghazali). When asked how people can purify their hearts, the Prophet told them to remember death and to recite the Qur’an (Bayhaqi). Besides reciting parts of it every day during the five ritual prayers, devout Muslims read the Qur’an regularly as an act of personal piety as well as for special occasions. All Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab, are encouraged to study classical Arabic as it is the language of the Qur’an, the scholarly language of Islam, and the lingua franca of the Muslim world. As Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765-66) explained: “Acquire knowledge of Arabic for the final word of Allah has been revealed in it” (qtd. in Pooya Yazdi 765).

While the Bible may indeed be the best-selling book of all times, few Christians read it regularly and scarce are those who, even among priests and ministers, have read it completely, from cover to cover.3 Among Muslims, though, memorization and recitation of parts of the Qur’an are required in order to complete the five daily prayers. Furthermore, the complete recitation of the Qur’an serves as a rite of passage for Muslim children. As such, the sacred scripture of the Muslim faith is the most read book in the world. Having been raised with its recitation, “[t]he Book, a breviary of maxims, prayers and stories will forever supply the adult with a tribunal to which he can submit his experience of the world” (Berque 191). As Laffin points out, “[t]he influence of the Koran cannot be over-emphasized. It is known to the least educated people and even to illiterates because it has for centuries been the main text in the village schools, and in weekly ‘sermons’ in the mosque” (44). If we consider that the most common noun in the Qur’an is Allah, and that the Qur’an is the sourcebook of divine attributes and expressions, with every mention of the Deity becoming a possible formula - Allah loves, Allah guides, Allah is Merciful, and so forth - we can imagine the central role its regular reading and recitation over the past 14 centuries has played in the diffusion of the Allah Lexicon.4

3. The Sayings and the Sunnah

3. The Sayings and the Sunnah5

While the Holy Qur’an played a seminal role in the spread of the Allah Lexicon, the Sayings and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad helped to solidify and dessiminate it within the Arabic language and culture. These traditions, both prophetic and divine,6 are divided into general and specific sayings, all of which came to supplant the pre-Islamic sayings.

3.1 Pre-Islamic Pagan Sayings

Pre-Islamic Arabs had many greetings and expressions, some related to religion and some not. According to ‘Imran b. Husayn, a Companion of the Prophet, the Arabs in the pre-Islamic period used to say “May Allah make the eye happy for you” and “Good morning” but when Islam came the Muslims were forbidden from saying that (Abu Dawud). “May Allah make the eye happy for you” is demonstrably an Allah expression and is one of the few pre-Islamic expressions which invoke the name of Allah, who was already considered the Supreme Being among the Arab polytheists, much as Brahma was among the Hindus. The prohibition of this phrase, despite its use of the name of Allah, expresses a deliberate attempt on the part of the Prophet to purge the Arabic language of pre-Islamic greetings and expressions and to replace them with a new, entirely Islamic, corpus. While the Prophet was successful in eradicating the expression “May Allah make the eye happy for you,” it has partially survived or resurfaced in the Levantine expression Ya ‘ayni, “O [light of] my eyes.” As for Muhammad’s prohibition of “Good morning” or sabah al-khayr, it appears to have been temporary in nature, no longer applicable after the almost universal acceptance of Islam among the Arabs, and meant merely as a means of differentiating the Muslim Arabs from the pagan Arabs.7

The greeting of peace, also used among Jews in the form of shalom aleichem, was introduced among the Arab Muslims as al-salamu ‘alaykum. It succeeded in supplanting the pre-Islamic greeting “May Allah make your eye happy” but did not successfully replace sabah al-khayr or “good morning” which was described by Ibn Ishaq (d. 768) as “the greeting of paganism” (319). In fact, on one occasion ‘Umayr approached the Prophet and said “Good morning.” The Prophet replied that “Allah has honored us with a better greeting than thine… It is salam, the greeting of the inhabitants of paradise” (319) to which ‘Umayr responded “By Allah, Muhammad, you have taken to it only recently” (319) an indication that the salam greeting was novel, entirely Islamic, and started by the Prophet, following the Qur’anic commands

“When those come to thee who believe in Our Signs, say: ‘peace be on you’” (6:54),
“When a greeting is offered you, meet it with a greeting still more courteous, [at least] of equal courtesy” (4:86);

“If ye enter houses, salute each other-a greeting of blessing and purity from Allah” (24:61).

The minimum required response to al-salamu ‘alaykum is wa ‘alaykum al-salam, “and peace be upon you,” as “[t]his is a kind of precise Islamic form” (El-Sayed 19).

On another occasion, Kaladah bin Hanbal visited the Prophet and neither greeted him nor sought permission to enter. Upon this, the Prophet said: “Go back and say ‘al-salamu ‘alaykum; may I enter?’” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud). The Prophet repeatedly reinforced the salam salutation with such sayings as “[The best part of Islam is] to provide food and say salam” (Bukhari); “Indeed the nearest of people to Allah are those who begin with salam” (Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Ahmad); “When one of you meets his brother, he should say salam to him” (Abu Dawud); “The young should say salam to the old, the passer-by to the one sitting, and the small [group] to the large one” (Bukhari); “When one of you arrives where people are seated, he should say salam to them. And when he wishes to leave, he should say salam to them” (Abu Dawud); “When you enter to where your family is, say salam. It is a blessing on you and on the people of your house” (Tirmidhi); “When you enter a house, say salam to its inhabitants, and when you go out, leave its inhabitants by saying salam” (Bayhaqi); and “Saying salam comes before talking” (Tirmidhi). When asked for a definition of the straight path, the Prophet responded that it was saying “Peace be upon you” (Bukhari and Muslim) and said that saying salam when greeting people was an attribute of a believer (Bukhari and Muslim) and that “The nearest people to Allah are those who are the first in sending their salam” (Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, and Ahmad).

During the pre-Islamic period, the Arabs used to swear by Allah, their pagan gods, the Black Stone which is housed in the Ka‘bah, and the names of their parents. The pre-Islamic oaths to Allah, some of which have long disappeared, included: yaminu Allah [I swear by Allah]; its plural form aymanu Allahi; its variants [ay]manul [ay]minul [ay]munu or shortened forms a[y]mul a[y]mil a[y]ma; or the shortest forms mu/ma/mi; as well as haramu Allahi [By the Sacredness of Allah]; ‘amra Allahi, ‘amraka Allah or la ‘amru Allahi [By the Life/Age of Allah] and wa-hajjati Allahi [By the Pilgrimage to Allah] (Masliyah 87). The most common oaths to pagan gods included: Wa al-Lat, Wa al-‘Uzza, Wa Manat [By al-Lat!, By al-‘Uzza’!, By Manat!]. However, “even for deities, or God, there is hardly a place” in pre-Islamic poetry where oaths are merely used to show the determination and inflexibility of the poet’s ego” (Hottinger 22). In fact, “[a]mong the pagan Arabs the use of oaths became so common that it almost ceased to have any solemn meaning” (‘Ali 1784). In other words, such oaths were more rhetorical than strictly religious. Swearing by the names of family members was frequent, the most common of which included: wa ummi, wa abi, wa jaddi [By my mother!, By my father!, By my grandfather!].

Clearly, these common pre-Islamic conventions could not continue under Islam and needed to be cast away, resulting in the following prophetic decrees: “Do not swear by your fathers or by your mothers or by rivals to Allah, and swear by Allah only, and swear by Allah only when you are speaking the truth” (Abu Dawud); “Allah forbids you to swear by your forefathers. If one of you swears, he must swear by Allah or keep silence” (Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud); “Do not swear by your fathers” (Bukhari); “He who swears by his honor [amanah] is not of our numbers” (Malik); “It is detested to swear by other than Allah’s names and attributes, whether by the Prophet, the Ka‘bah, the angels, the protection [of Allah], one’s life, or soul…the most detested of all is swearing by the amanah [of Allah]” (Nawawi); “If anyone swears by a religion other than Islam falsely, he is like what he said” (Bukhari and Malik); “Do not swear by your fathers; and whoever wants to swear should swear by Allah” (Bukhari); “Whoever swears saying in his oath ‘By Lat and al-‘Uzza’ should say ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah’” (Bukhari); and clearly, the most categorical of all, “He who swears by anyone but Allah is a polytheist” (Abu Dawud). The ancient oaths to Allah and heathen deities were replaced with wa Allah by itself or followed by an appropriate attribute, such as wa Allahi al-‘Azim, “By Allah, the Great,” applicable to the particular circumstance. Rather than diminishing human beings, the new Islamic oaths elevated God, reinforcing the concept of Allah as Supreme, as the focus of all life and activity.

With a few exceptions, pagan invocations disappeared from the Arabic language when the monotheistic mind-set dominated, bringing to an end what some have described as a fragmented, disorderly worldview composed of arbitrary polytheistic powers.8 Swearing in the name of family members, however, has not ended, and it continues to be common cultural practice despite prophetic prohibition. Despite being forbidden [haram] or strongly discouraged [karahatan shadidah] to swear by amanah, it is common in Iraq and the Middle East to swear by amanat Allah. In Baghdad, people often swear by amanat Allah, [Allah’s Honor], wa Allah wa amanatuhu, [By Allah and His Honor], and amanat Allah wa Rasulih [By Allah’s Honor and His Messenger’s] (Masliyah 86).

While “[t]he spiritual bases of the pagan beliefs and of the new religion, Islam, diverge widely” they had “one bond…in common - the Arabic language. In both eras, the Arabic language was the creative nucleus around which and from which these two opposed spiritual ideologies grew” (Hottinger 25). It is quite evident that the ocean of Allah expressions in the Arabic language grew as the result of the rejection of polytheism and as a perpetual reminder and reinforcement of Muhammad’s monotheistic mandate. It would appear that pre-Islamic Arabic was peppered with aphoristic, proverbial, and idiomatic expressions for every occasion and that, when those became haram, a void was created for which the Allah Lexicon supplied filler.

A relevant side-note to the intense focus on Allah during the period of transition between pre-Islamic times and the advent of Islam concerns the issue of declaration, that is, a declaration of faith in the face of dangerous opposition. While Islam tolerates and even prescribes taqiyyah, the dissimulation of one’s faith, in times of fear, false conversions to Islam, on the other hand, are condemned.9 As Alfred Guillaume explains, “Muslims look with a tolerant eye on a man who conceals his belief through force majeur, but to pretend to be a Muslim is a crime” (242). “The hypocrites,” however, “will be in the lowest depths of the Fire; no helper wilt thou find for them” (4:145). The Qur’anic condemnation of hypocrites (2:8-20; 2:204-206; 3:167-168; 4:60-63; 4:70-73; 4:88-89; 4;141-143; 4:145; 9:64-65; 9:67-69; 58:14-19; 59:11-14) may motivate Muslims to assert their Islamicity through verbal expressions of faith.10

3.2 General Sayings

The general sayings encourage, in broad terms, the remembrance of Allah at all times and places, inwardly and outwardly, mentally and verbally, implicitly and explicitly.11 In Muslim, it is related that the Prophet said that: “Whenever people sit and remember Allah, the angels surround them, mercy covers them, tranquility descends upon them, and Allah makes mention of them to His Company [of angels].” In Muslim (d. 875) and Bukhari (d. 870), he states that: “He who remembers Allah, and he who does not, are like the living and the dead.” In Ahmad (d. 855), he says that the best deed is “To leave the world while your tongue is busy with the remembrance of Allah.” In the same book, he says that the best people on the Day of Judgment will be “those who remember Allah greatly.” In Bayhaqi (d. 1066), Allah’s Messenger says: “For everything there is a polish, and the polish for the hearts is the remembrance of Allah.” The remembrance of the Almighty is a source of divine love. As the Prophet explains, “He who remembers Allah much, Allah loves him,” and he said: “The night that I ascended to my Lord I passed by a man extinguished within the light of Allah’s Throne. I asked, ‘Who is this, and is he an angel?’ I was told ‘No,’ and I asked again, ‘Is it a Prophet?’ I was told ‘No,’ and I said, ‘Who then?’ It was said: ‘This is a man who, while he was in the world, his tongue was constantly mentioning Allah and his heart was attached to the mosques’” (Ghazali). Reiterating the Qur’anic verse in which Allah says “Remember me and I will remember you,” the Prophet relates that Allah told him that:

I am for my servant as he thinks of Me and I am with him when he remembers Me, so if he remembers Me in his mind I also remember him in My Mind and if he remembers Me in an assembly I also remember him in an assembly much better than this [ie. in the assembly of angels]. (Bukhari and Muslim)

He also said that “The men and women who remember Allah very much” were the best servants and the highest in rank in the eye of Allah on the Day of Judgment (Ahmad). Al-Mundhiri (d. 1258) relates in al-Targhib wa al-tarhib that the Prophet said that: “The one who remembers Allah among those who forget Him, Allah shows him his seat in paradise during his life”; “The one who remembers Allah among those who forget Him is like the fighter behind those who run away”; “The one who remembers Allah among those who forget Him, Allah looks at him with a look after which He will never punish him”; “The one who remembers Allah among those who forget Him is like a light inside a dark house”; “The one who remembers Allah among those who forget Him, Allah forgives him sins to the amount of every eloquent and non-eloquent speaker,” meaning, the entire number of non-speaking animals and speaking human beings; and “The one who remembers Allah in the marketplace, will have light in every hair of his head on the Day of Resurrection.” The Prophet also said: “Remembrance of Allah is firm knowledge of one’s belief, immunity from hypocrisy, a fortress against Satan, and a guarded refuge from the fire” (Samarqandi qtd. in Haddad). And the remembrance of Allah is the best of actions, as the Prophet preached:

“Shall I not inform you of the best of your actions, the most pure in the sight of your Master, the one which raises your ranks highest, that which is better for you than giving gold and silver [in charity], and better for you than your meeting your enemies, so that you strike their necks and they strike yours?” The companions urged, “Of course, O Messenger of Allah! [Inform us!]” He replied, “It is the remembrance of Allah.” (Abu Dawud)

In Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din, Ghazali (d. 1111) reports that the Prophet said that: “One who remembers Allah among the heedless is like a living tree in the midst of dry ones”; “One who remembers Allah is like a warrior in His path”; “If anyone wishes to enter the garden of paradise, let him remember Allah much”; “Fill your tongue with the remembrance of Allah day and night”; “The remembrance of Allah in the morning and the evening is better than fighting with a sword in the path of Allah and giving wealth in charity”; “If a party of men remember Allah for the pleasure of Allah, a heavenly messenger proclaims: ‘Your sins have been forgiven and you have been given virtues in lieu of your sins.” According to ‘A’ishah, a wife of the Prophet, “The Messenger of Allah used to remember Allah, the Great and Majestic, at all moments” (Abu Dawud).

3.3 Specific Sayings

The specific sayings in which the Prophet prescribes formulas, expressions and invocations for the purposes of personal piety and for particular occasions are applicable in any conceivable context. These expressions include:

Allah

Islam clearly rejects the concept that God’s name should be suppressed. As a reaction to the Jewish prohibition of mentioning the name of the Almighty, the Prophet urged his followers to call upon Allah abundantly and not to be stingy. In fact, according to Islamic traditions, the absence of the Allah Lexicon is one of the signs of the latter days and impending doom. As the Messenger explained, “The Hour will not rise before ‘Allah, Allah’ is no longer said on earth" (Muslim); and through another chain, “The Hour will not rise on anyone saying: Allah, Allah” (Muslim). For a Muslim, the Allah Lexicon forms part of a spiritual cycle. The very first word Muslim children hear upon birth is Allah as the adhan (azan) and iqamah, the calls to prayer, are chanted to them; and for the dying, the very best of actions, according to the Prophet, is to “leave the world while reciting the name of Allah” (Ahmad). Clearly, Allah is the main mantra of Islam.

Ya Allah / O Allah

Ya Allah is one of the most common Allah expressions and is particularly prevalent in the prayers of the Prophet, for example, his prayer: “O Allah, guard me from Your Punishment on the day when you raise up your servants” (Abu Dawud). It is also called for prior to having sex, in the formula “O Allah, ward off Satan from us and ward off Satan from what you bestow on us” (Bukhari). In Arab countries, women in labor use this phrase for strength during the worst of their pains. Clearly, calling upon Allah at such a moment is not the same as yelling out of weakness: rather, it is a demonstration of divine consciousness.

Allahumma / O Allah

Allahumma, perhaps the Arabic form of the Hebrew Elohim, is another form of saying “O Allah” and is an oft-utilized anaphora in Muslim prayers. There are many ahadith citing prayers of the Prophet commencing with Allahumma, including Allahumma aslamtu nafsi ilayka when going to bed, Allahumma laka al-hamd, when going to pray, and labbayk Allahumma labbayk, when going to hajj, among numerous other examples.

Wa Allah / By Allah

Wa Allah or “By Allah” is very common as an Islamic oath. Oaths made to Allah are routine in Arabic and Muslims are reassured that “Allah will not call you into account for thoughtlessness in your oaths, but for the intention in your hearts; and he is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (2:115), a Qur’anic verse interpreted by the Prophet to refer to futile oaths such as “man’s speech in his house: ‘No, by Allah’ and ‘Yes, by Allah’” (Malik).

The adhan / The Call to Prayer

The adhan, or the Muslim call to prayer, forms part of the Allah Lexicon, and contains some of the most common Allah expressions: Allahu Akbar and la ilaha illa Allah. It consists of the following standard phrases, with the Sunni/Shi‘ite variants noted in brackets:

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar

Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest

Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah

Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah

I bear witness that there is no god but Allah

Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasulu Allah

I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah

Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasulu Allah

I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah

[Ashhadu anna Amira al-Mu’minin ‘Aliyyan Waliyyu Allah]

[I bear witness that the Leader of the Believers, ‘Ali, is the Friend of Allah]

[Ashhadu anna Amira al-Mu’minin ‘Aliyyan Hujjat Allah]

[I bear witness that the Leader of the Believers, ‘Ali is the Proof of Allah]

Hayya ‘ala al-salah, Hayya ‘ala al-salah

Come to Prayer, Come to Prayer

Hayya ‘ala al-falah, Hayya ‘ala al-falah

Come to Success, Come to Success

[Hayya ‘ala khayr al-‘amal, Hayya ‘ala khayr al-‘amal]12

[Come to the best of actions, Come to the best of actions]

[al-salatu khayrun mina al-nawm]

[Prayer is better than sleep]

[al-salatu khayrun mina al-nawm]

[Prayer is better than sleep]13

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar

Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest

La ilaha illa Allah, La ilaha illa Allah

There is no god but Allah, [There is no god but Allah]

Repeated 5 times per day in the Sunni world and 3 times a day in the Shi‘ite world, the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and lifelong repetition of the call to prayer becomes ingrained into the mind and spirit of Muslims. This is further reinforced by the recommendation to repeat the words of the adhan as they are recited. As the Prophet taught, “When you hear the adhan you should repeat the words as the mu’adhdhin pronounces them” (Abu Dawud).

La ilaha illa Allah / There is no god but Allah

The shahadah or profession of faith, la ilaha illa Allah, there is no god but Allah, is the essence of Islam and its first pillar [rukn]. As William C. Chittick explains, “All else depends upon it and derives from it” (23). According to Faruqi, “Tawhid is that which gives Islamic civilization its identity, which binds all of its constituents together and thus makes them an integral, organic body, which we call civilization” (73). The profession of faith is found in the Qur’an, in the Sunnah, and in supplications. It forms part of the adhan, the iqamah, and the ritual prayers. The shahadah, the testimony of tawhid, the act of affirming that Allah is one, absolute, peerless and without partners is at the very root of what it means to be Muslim. In Islam, faith is pervasive; it is both private and public, and it behooves the believers to testify to their belief in tawhid.

The shahadah is repeated in normal discourse on a daily basis by Muslims. It is used to express awe, surprise, sadness, and a myriad of other emotions. It adorns flags, stationary, mosques and other buildings. It is utilized in business transactions and to assert one’s honesty. When Moroccan vendors count money, they often say: one, there is no god but Allah; two, and he has no partners: wahid, la ilaha illa Allah; juj, la sharika lah… In Egypt, the first part of the shahadah forms part of a comical popular song associated with numbers which says wahid, la ilaha illa Allah; ithnayn, the two grandsons of the Prophet…arba‘ah, the wives we can have, and so forth.

In Tirmidhi (d. 892), Nasa'i (d. 915), Ibn Majah (d. 887), and Hakim (d. 1014), the Messenger of Allah says: “The best remembrance [of Allah] is [saying] la ilaha illa Allah [There is no god but Allah].” In another tradition by Tirmidhi, the Prophet explains that “When a servant of Allah utters the words la ilaha illa Allah [there is no god except Allah] sincerely, the doors of heaven open up for these words until they reach the Throne of Allah, so long as its utterer keeps away from the major sins” (Tirmidhi and al-Mundhiri). It is also reported that the Prophet said, “Renew your faith.” “How can we renew our faith?” they asked. The Prophet replied: “Say always: la ilaha illa Allah” (Ahmad). The Prophet commanded the emigrant women to be regular in remembering Allah by saying tahlil [la ilaha illa Allah], tasbih [subhana Allah], and taqdis [Allahu Akbar], to never be forgetful of Allah and His Mercy, and to count them on their fingers, for the fingers will be questioned and will speak (Ahmad, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, Hakim, Shawkani, Suyuti).

The Prophet said: “Whoever says: la ilaha illa Allah wahdahu la sharika lah, lahu al-mulku wa lahu al-hamd, wa huwwa ‘ala kulli shay’in qadir - There is no god but Allah, alone, without partner. His is the sovereignty, and His the praise, and He has power over everything - a hundred times a day will have a reward equivalent to the reward for freeing ten slaves. In addition, a hundred good deeds will be recorded for him and a hundred bad deeds of his will be wiped off, and it will be a safeguard for him from Satan that day until evening, and no one will be better in deeds than such a person except he who does more than that” (Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, Nasa’i and Ibn Majah).

The shahadah is also utilized in the following Prophetic prayer used when facing distress: la ilaha illa Allah rabb al-‘arsh al-‘azim; rabbu al-samawati wa rabbu al-‘arsh al-karim [There is no god but Allah, Lord of the Majestic Throne; Lord of the Skies and Lord of the Noble Throne]. The words la ilaha illa Allah should be the last words heard and uttered by the dying. As the Prophet taught, “Recite to those who are dying ‘There is no god but Allah’” (Abu Dawud), assuring that “If anyone’s last words are ‘There is no god but Allah,’ he will enter paradise (Abu Dawud).

Considering that tawhid or the oneness of God is at the epicenter [wasat] of Islam, it comes as no surprise that Muslims have developed many oaths revolving around it. Iraqi Muslims swear by al-wahid wa al-ahad, the One and Only; by al-haqq al-mutajalli or al-haqq alladhi tajalla, the truth of the One revealed through Oneness; by tafarrada bi al-wahdaniyyah, the One singled out in Oneness; by alladhi la ma‘buda siwah, by the One who alone is worshipped among a multitude of other manifestations (Masliyah 91-92).

Bismillah / In the name of Allah

Despite Theodor Noldeke-Schwally’s claim that the basmalah was of Jewish origin, Naiki concludes that “we have no convincing evidence that the basmalah is the translation of the Hebrew b’shēm YHWH” (Naiki 59). He also rejects the idea that the form may be an Arabized version of the Persian pat nam i Yazdan, “In the name of God” (59). Following common sense, Naiki concludes that since the invocations bismi al-Lat and bismi al-‘Uzza existed during pre-Islamic times, the bismillah developed in the Arabian Peninsula (60). To be more precise, it first manifested itself in Arabia as part of the Qur’anic revelation. As Ayatullah Pooya Yazdi explains, “Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim was never before used or known to any of the other creeds of the world” (10).

In fact, as late as the 6th year after Hijrah, the Quraysh refused to allow the term Bismillah to be used in the treaty drawn between the Muslims and the Makkans at Hudaybiyyah. When Imam ‘Ali was summoned by the Prophet to write “In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful,” Suhayl ibn ‘Amr, the deputy of Quraysh, objected, saying, “I do not recognize this” (Ibn Ishaq 504). Ultimately, as a matter of compromise, the term used was Bismika Allahumma, “In thy Name, O Allah,” which was then current among the Quraysh (504). In fact, the Qur’an itself bears witness that the phrase Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim was totally unknown to the Quraysh, to such an extent that they resented the request to use it. As Almighty Allah explains: “When it is said to them, “Prostrate ye before al-Rahman!” They say, “And what is al-Rahman?” Shall we prostrate to that which thou commandest us?” (25:60). Making both Allah, in the Hijaz, and al-Rahman, in the Yamamah, equivalent to one another was a vital step in uniting Arabia under one confessional Islamic agency (see also 17:110; basmalah).

The expression “In the name of Allah” is recited prior to commencing any action, good or bad. It is even employed by some [less than pious] Muslims prior to consuming alcohol and drugs which is considered a mortal sin in Islam.14 This remembrance of God in moments of sin is indicative of the Muslim’s belief that Allah is All-Seeing and All-Knowing. Even in evil, Muslims acknowledge their wrong and place their hope in the mercy of the Almighty. For the Muslim, even the most mundane action has spiritual significance. As Paul Balta explains,

Avant de manger, d’écrire, de travailler, autant d’actes qui sont pour lui sacrés, le bon croyant dit: Bismillah… [“Au nom de Dieu”]. Si la modernité est confondue avec la sécularisation et la perte du sens du sacré, les musulmans la refusent: “Une societé qui n’intègre pas le sacré est considerée comme perverse.” (90).

[Before eating, writing, working, any act considered as sacred, the good Muslim says: Bismillah… [“In the name of God”]. If modernity is confounded with secularization and the loss of the sense of the sacred, Muslims reject it: “A society which does not integrate what is sacred is considered corrupt.”]

As for eating, the Prophet instructed: “Invoke the name of Allah and eat with your right [hand]” (Muslim). In Abu Dawud (d. 817), he asks his followers to “[m]ention Allah’s name, eat with your right hand and eat from what is next to you” (Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud). In another tradition, he says, “[w]hen any one of you eats, he should invoke the name of Allah, the Exalted. If he forgets to invoke the name of Allah, the Exalted, at the beginning, he should say [when he does remember], ‘In the name of Allah, in its beginning and its end’ [Bismillahi awwalahu wa akhirahu] (Abu Dawud and Tirmidhi) and warns them that “[t]he devil considers the food lawful when Allah’s name is not mentioned over it” (Abu Dawud).

According to Imam al-Hasan ibn ‘Ali: “It is the duty of every Muslim to have certain manners when he sits down to eat, four of which are obligatory: to know that Allah is the Provider; to be grateful to Him; to say bismillah when you start to eat; and to praise Allah for giving you health so that you could eat your food” (qtd. Bostani 97). Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765-66) explained that “[w]hen a person says bismillah before drinking and after swallowing a sip says alhamdulillah, and then drinks another sip starting with bismillah and when finished says alhamdullilah and repeats the same for a third time, the water which enters his stomach will thank Allah and the drinker will be rewarded” (qtd. Bostani 98).

The formula “In the name of Allah” is recommended when entering one’s home, retiring for the evening, and covering foodstuff, as per the following prophetic instructions: “Shut your door and make mention of Allah’s name, for the devil does not open a door which has been shut; extinguish your lamp and make mention of Allah’s name; cover up your vessel even by a piece of wood that you just put on it and make mention of Allah’s name, and tie your water-skin mentioning Allah’s name” (Abu Dawud). The Prophet further explained: “When a man enters his house and mentions Allah’s name on entering and on his food, the devil says: ‘You have no place to spend the night and no evening meal,’ but when he enters without mentioning Allah’s name, on entering the devil says: ‘You have found a place to spend the night,’ and when he does not mention Allah’s name on his food, he says: “You have found a place to spend the night and an evening meal’” (Abu Dawud). The Prophet also said that when a man leaves his house he should say “In the name of Allah, I trust Allah; there is no might and power but in Allah” [Bismillah, tawakkaltu ‘ala Allah; La hawla wa la quwwata ila bi Allah] (Abu Dawud).

The formula “In the name of Allah” is required prior to engaging in lawful sexual relations with one’s wife. As Almighty Allah says in the Qur’an, “Your wives are a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will; but do some good act for your soul beforehand” (2:223). The “good act” prior to commencing intimate activity is saying “In the name of Allah.” If one fails to mention the name of Allah prior to having sex, Muslims are warned by the Prophet that the activity becomes subject to the will of the devil. As such, the following prophetic prayer is prescribed, “In the name of Allah. O Allah, protect us from Satan and also protect what you bestow upon us from Satan” (Bukhari).

The Qur’anic formula, “In the name of Allah” is also said by Muslims “whenever they are setting out on a trip, about to undertake a dangerous task, or beginning a speech. This formula is printed at the top of business letterheads and included at the beginning of reports and personal letters - it even appears on business receipts” (Nydell 88). The bismillah formula is also pronounced upon sleeping, the supplication being, “O Allah, in your name I die and live” [Allahumma bismika amutu wa ahya] (Bukhari). It is used when slaughtering animals, hunting, and setting out dogs (Abu Dawud). “In the name of Allah” is the typical header for literature: letters, legal papers, wills, essays, books…15 Even erotic works like The Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Haroun al-Makhzumi’s The Fountains of Pleasure, and Shaykh Nefzawi’s (d. 16th c.) The Perfumed Garden, commence with the words “In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful” and draw upon a rich variety of Allah phrases. Nefzawi’s work is especially interesting in its eroticism expressed in words of divine praise.16 Besides serving as an epithet, the expression bismillah is the most commonly employed in traditional Islamic medicine. It is also called for when placing a corpse in the grave (Abu Dawud). In short, as the Prophet says, “Any activity not begun with the words ‘In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful’ is severed [from its blessings]” (Ibn Kathir).

Insha’ Allah / Allah willing

As we have seen earlier, the Qur’an compels Muslims to defer to the Divine when referring to the future.17 The normative use of the insha’ Allah expression, like any norm, is enforced at an early stage of socialization by Arab Muslim parents (Gregory and Wehba 96). The native Arabic speaker “learns the expression very early in his childhood, and it is learned in the context of religious truth. In other words, God’s truth is present in the context of expression-use in the deepest, most religious sense, so it means that truth is present in the social encounter” (102). According to established norm,

the expression is uttered appropriately when one makes any plan for the future. For example, according to Muslim belief, only God has control of knowledge concerning future affairs; therefore, when any kind of human design for the future is made, the expression insha’Allah must be uttered to show one’s deference to God. (95)

Among Arabic Muslims, “No one thinks of making a definite appointment: it is qualified by insha’ Allah” since “[n]othing is inevitable or fixed; all is subject to a Providence before which men are small. However automatic it may be, reference to the deity is good form. Even atheists [and there are some] invoke the Allah they deny” (Desmond 13). Although “the canonical use of the expression is primarily religious, it is obvious that it is used in other common language contexts in another way” (Gregory and Wehba 97).

As Mohammed Farghal has demonstrated in his study, “The Pragmatics of inshaallah in Jordanian Arabic,” the expression has drifted extensively from its semantic import by acquiring a wide spectrum of illocutions, thus becoming a pragmatically multi-purpose expression (253). Farghal has shown that the expression serves as a general discourse marker, functions as a directive, operates as a marker of tag questions, acts as a politeness marker, and works as a mitigator, as an expressive, and even as an apology.

The insha’ Allah expression, like the rest of the Allah Lexicon, is problematic for outsiders, that is, all those who are not Arabic-speaking Muslims, even those who belong to the community of believers or the ummah. Research conducted by Gregory and Wehba encountered

a differential interpretation in comparing the meaning of the expression as used by the native speaker…and the foreigner... Egyptians use the term between themselves and transmit a meaning which is very different from the foreign version, and this is the source of some of the difficulties with the expression on an intercultural basis. Use of the expression intraculturally between foreigners from Western type cultures has taken on the meaning of something like maybe [with a low probability] I’ll come, insha’ Allah, which according to Egyptian informants is an incorrect use of the expression. (103)

The expression can also be used pejoratively which can be confusing to the non-native speaker of Arabic (Farghal 255). In whatever way it is employed, insha’ Allah is the hallmark of Arabs, regardless of where they come from and/or what dialect they speak (268).

Allahu Akbar / Allah is the Greatest

The takbir or saying of Allahu Akbar, namely, that Allah is the Greatest, is one of the slogans of Islam,18 applicable to numerous situations, from expressions of awe to battle cries during jihad or sacred struggles. In Ahmad (d. 855), Abu Dawud (d. 817) and Tirmidhi (d. 892), the Prophet says: “Gabriel came to me and commanded me to order my Companions to raise their voices in takbir.” According to the sixth Shi‘ite Imam, the expression Allahu Akbar is also said when admiring something in order to avert the evil eye (Ispahany 158-59).

A‘udhu billah / I Seek Refuge in Allah

The seeking of refuge in Allah is required prior to reciting the Qur’an, in moments of fear, and when exposed to evil. At times it is specific, as in “I take refuge in Allah from Satan the Rejected,” and at times more general as in the prophetic prayer “O Allah, I seek refuge from you from all kinds of evil” (Bukhari and Muslim). It is also recommended when entering the washroom in the form, “O Allah, I seek refuge in You from all kinds of evil” [Allahumma inni a‘udhu bika mina al-khubthi wa al-khaba’ith] (Bukhari and Muslim).The Prophet also taught Muslims to take refuge in Allah as protection from being misers, from laziness, the anti-Christ, cowardice, old age, debt, overpowering afflictions, the difficulties of life and death, sin, epidemics, diseases, hell fire, wealth and poverty, as well as to increase guidance, when performing ablutions, and so forth. If someone requests refuge for the sake of Allah, it is incumbent on Muslims to comply. As the Messenger explained, “If anyone asks for refuge for the sake of Allah, give him refuge; and if anyone asks you [for something] for the pleasure of Allah, give him” (Abu Dawud). The expression “I take refuge in Allah” is extensively used in Islamic medicine.

Alhamdulillah / Praise be to Allah and Yarham Allah / May Allah have Mercy

The Prophet recommended people to say alhamdulillah at all times. It is said when getting dressed, “He who puts on clothes should say ‘Praise be to Allah’” (Abu Dawud). It is obligatory for Muslims to praise God after eating. The Prophet himself used to say “Praise be to Allah, who gave us to eat and to drink and made us Muslims” [alhamdulillahi alladhi at‘amana wa saqana wa ja‘alana muslimin] (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi). Alhamdulillah should also be said upon sneezing. As the Prophet said: “Invoke a blessing on the one who sneezes” (Abu Dawud). He further explained: “When someone sneezes, he should say ‘Praise be to Allah,’ and his brother should respond ‘Allah have mercy on you.’ When he says, ‘Allah have mercy on you,’ he should reply, ‘Allah guide you and better your affairs’” [yahdikumu Allahu wa yuslih balakum] (Bukhari).19

There are several traditions in which the Prophet blessed people [tashmit] who sneezed (Bukhari). In one case, when two people sneezed, he only blessed the one who praised Allah (Bukhari). He explained that “Allah likes sneezing and dislikes yawning, so if someone sneezes and then praises Allah, then it is obligatory on every Muslim who hears him to say, ‘May Allah have mercy on you’” (Bukhari). The Jews, who were opposed to his prophecy, used to sneeze in the presence of the Prophet, hoping that he would say “Allah have mercy on you!” but he would always say “May Allah guide you and grant you well-being!” (Abu Dawud). The Prophet also used the prayer “Praise be to Allah who gives us life after death and unto Him is the return” [alhamdulillah alladhi ahyana ba‘da ma amatana wa ilayhi al-nushur].

The expression, “Praise be to Allah” is also recommended when seeing the new moon, when going out, and when returning home (Abu Dawud). As a general endorsement and encouragement for praising Allah, it is reported that the Prophet said: “The best prayer is alhamdulillah” (Nasa’i, Ibn Majah and Hakim) and warned that “Every important matter which is not begun by an expression of praise to Allah is maimed” (Abu Dawud). While the Arabic alhamdulillah

seems quite similar to the English thank you…it is conventionally used in ways in which the English expression is not; it can function as a response to an enquiry after one’s health, to indicate that all is well, or as an indication that one has finished eating, to decline an offer of more food by an over-zealous host. (Davies 83)

Along with bismillah, alhamdulillah is among the first formulas learned by Muslim children. These religious formulas of reverence are far more stressed by parents than those for requesting and thanking people.

Rahima Allah / May Allah have mercy

The expression Rahima Allah or “May Allah have mercy upon…” occurs in many prophetic traditions invoking mercy upon those who do good deeds. This includes the Prophet’s saying, “May Allah have mercy upon the man who is generous while selling, buying and making a demand [of his balance from the people]” (Bukhari). The invocation is also used when a deceased person is mentioned, much like “rest in peace” but with a clearly religious sense devoid in the English. In Islam, “peace be upon him” is limited to prophets and, for Shi‘ites, Imams; radiyya Allahu ‘anhum, “May Allah be pleased with them,” is used for Companions of the Prophet and rahima Allah is used for ordinary mortals.

Al-salamu ‘alaykum / Peace be upon you

While the greeting al-salamu ‘alaykum may fall outside the Allah Lexicon when used in the general sense of “May peace be upon you,” it merits inclusion as it can imply “May the peace [of Allah] be upon you” or mean quite directly “May Peace be with you” in the sense that al-Salam, the Peace, is a Divine Attribute of Allah. In fact, some Arabic speakers insert Allah into the peace greeting, saying salamu Allah ‘alaykum to specify this intention. A variant “goodbye” in Arabic is ma‘a sallamah or bi al-sallamah [(go) in peace and safety], the response to which is Allahi yusallmak [(May) Allah give you safety]. The taslim, the saying of salam, is also a part of the ritual prayer in the form of al-salamu ‘alayka ayyuha al-nabi or “Peace be upon you o Prophet” which is part of the Allah Lexicon, for praising the Prophet is praising Allah (Qur’an 33:7). It should be noted that a living person is usually addressed by the plural form al-salamu ‘alaykum as one is addressing both the person and his/her guardian angels. The singular form, al-salamu ‘alayka or al-salamu alayki, is used to send one’s salutations to a deceased person.

The Prophet said, “The first person to greet is the best in the eyes of Allah and His Messenger” (qtd. Bostani 95); “The laziest of people is the one who does not…greet”; (96) “The cheapest of people is the one who does not greet” (96) and “One who leaves a gathering after sending a greeting, deserves any reward sent upon those who remain after his departure” (96); “whoever greets you with the formula al-salamu ‘alaykum will be rewarded ten times. Whoever greets you with the formula al-salamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu will be rewarded thirty times” (96). The Prophet said: “Do not respond to a person who speaks to you until he has greeted you appropriately” (95). He also said, “Whoever visits you and does not greet you, do not offer him food until he greets you” (95). According to Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq, “One of the signs of humility from a Muslim is that he greets everyone he meets” (95).

The goal of the salam greeting is evident: to foster fraternity and good will among Muslims.20 The Prophet explained, “You will not enter paradise until you have faith and you will not have faith until you love for your brother what you love for yourself. May I not direct you to a thing whereby you will love one another? Disseminate the practice of saying ‘Peace be upon you’ amongst yourselves” (Muslim). Social harmony was encouraged through such teachings as “Eat together, and do not separate, for the blessing is in the company” (Ibn Majah).

With social welfare in mind, the Prophet encouraged Muslims to greet each other with words of peace and to shake hands, for as he explained: “The best [way] of greeting is shaking hands” (Ahmad and Tirmidhi); and “The two Muslims who meet and shake hands with each other are forgiven before they separate” (Ahmad). The Prophet also used to greet children as he passed them by (Bukhari and Muslim). While Arab culture considers it inappropriate or offensive for men to address non-mahram [unrelated] women, it is reported by Imam Ahmad (d. 855) and al-Kulayni (d. 941?) that the Prophet was in the practice of sending his salam to women as he passed them.21 Even Imam ‘Ali (d. 661) used to salute women, avoiding only adolescent girls for fear of appearing flirtatious.22 Almighty Allah describes the salam as the greeting of the inhabitants of paradise (7:46; 10:10; 14:23; 36:58). Clearly, the centrality of the salam salutation illustrates that peace, not violence, is the essence of Islam.

Astaghfirullah / I ask forgiveness from Allah

The Prophet encouraged tawbah, repentance to Allah, via the supplication, astaghfirullah or “I ask forgiveness from Allah.” The Prophet himself, despite being ma‘sum, or divinely protected from sin, according to the general consensus of Sunni and Shi‘ite scholars, repeatedly repented to Allah.23 He swore that, “By Allah, I ask Allah’s forgiveness and turn to him in repentance more than seventy times a day” (Bukhari). The grace of God and the mercy of Islam are manifest in the sacred hadith where Almighty Allah says:

O Son of Adam, whatever you asked Me and expect from Me I forgave - respecting that which you owed to Me - and I don't care [how great this was]. O Son of Adam, even if your sins pile up to the sky and then you seek My forgiveness I will forgive you, and O Son of Adam, even if you have sins the size of the Earth, but you meet Me without associating any other thing with Me I will forgive you. (Tirmidhi)

While prayers like astaghfirullah may become formulaic, the Imams from the Household of the Prophet stressed the importance of saying such things with sincerity.24 One particularly poignant example relates Imam ‘Ali’s (d. 661) reaction to a fellow Muslim who was repeating astaghfirullah without taking into careful consideration what these words actually mean. The Imam said:

Do you know what istighfar [asking forgiveness] is? Istighfar is meant for people of a high position. It is a word that stands on six supports. The first is to repent over the past; the second is to make a firm determination never to revert to it; the third is to discharge all the rights of people so that you may meet Allah quite clean with nothing to account for: the fourth is to fulfill every obligation which you ignored [in the past] so that you may now do justice with it; the fifth is to aim at the flesh grown as a result of unlawful earning, so that you may melt it by grief [of repentance] till the skin touches the bones and a new flesh grows between them; and the sixth is to make the body taste the pain of obedience as you [previously] made it taste the sweetness of disobedience. On such an occasion you may say astaghfirullah. (665)

As the Prophet explained, sincerity and constancy are the keys to opening the doors of divine grace. As he explains, “If one supplicates without fail for forgiveness from Allah, He finds a way out for him to get out of every distress and difficulty, and gives him sustenance through ways utterly unthought-of” (Abu Dawud, Nasa’i, Ibn Majah and Hakim).

Jazaka Allahu khayran / Allah will reward you well

Rather than using a simple shukran or thank you, which is devoid of deference to the divine, the Prophet taught that “When someone does you good and you say ‘Allah will reward you well’ to the person, you have done the utmost in praise” (Tirmidhi). In other words, the greatest way to thank people is to call upon God to reward them.

Subhana Allah / Glory be to Allah

The expression subhana Allah, or Glory be to Allah, is prevalent in supplications and forms part of the ritual salah [prayer] in the form of subhana Allah or subhana rabbiya al-a‘la [wa bi hamdih] or “Glory be to my Lord Allah, the Most High, and to Him is the praise” and subhana rabbiya al-‘azim [wa bi hamdih] or “Glory be to my Lord Allah, the Mighty.” According to the Prophet, “There are two phrases that are light on the tongue but heavy on the scale of rewards and are dear to the Gracious One. These are: subhana Allah wa bi hamdihi, ‘Glory be to Allah and to Him is the Praise,’ and subhana Allah al-‘azim, ‘Glory be to Allah, the Glorious’” (Bukhari, Muslim, and Tirmidhi). The Prophet said: “I love repeating: subhana Allah, wa alhamdulillah, wa la ilaha illa Allah, wa Allahu Akbar [Glory be to Allah, and Praise be to Allah, and There is no god but Allah, and Allah is the Greatest,’ more than all that the sun shines upon’ (Muslim and Tirmidhi).

The Prophet said: “Shall I tell you the words that Allah loves the most?” I said: “Yes, tell me, O Messenger of Allah.” He said: “The words dearest to Allah are: subhana Allah wa bi hamdihi” [Glory be to Allah and to Him is the praise] (Muslim and Tirmidhi). In Tirmidhi’s (d. 892) version, we also find the following: “The words dearest to Allah which He has chosen for His angels are: subhana rabbi wa bi hamdihi, ‘Glory be to my Lord and to Him is the praise.” The Prophet said: “Whoever says: ‘Glory be to Allah, the Great, and to Him is the praise’ will have a palm tree planted for him in paradise” (Tirmidhi). The Prophet said: “Perform enduring good deeds [al-baqiyyat al-salihat] more frequently.” They asked, “What are these enduring good deeds?” The Prophet replied: “Takbir [Allahu Akbar], tahlil [la ilaha illa Allah], tasbih [subhana Allah], alhamdulillah, and la hawla wa la quwwata illa billah” (Nasa’i and Hakim). The Prophet said:

During the Night Journey, I met Ibrahim who said to me: ‘O Muhammad, convey my greetings to your Community, and tell them that the paradise is of pure land, its water is sweet, and its expanse is vast, spacious and even. And its seedlings are: subhana Allah [Glory to Allah] wa alhamdulillah [and Praise to Allah] wa la ilaha illa Allah [and there is no god but Allah] wa Allahu Akbar [and Allah is the Greatest].’

Tirmidhi (d. 892) and Tabarani’s (d. 971) version adds “There is no power nor strength, save through Allah.” The Prophet said: “The dearest phrases to Allah are four: subhana Allah, wa alhamdulillah, wa la ilaha illa Allah, wa Allahu Akbar” [Glory be to Allah, and Praise be to Allah, and There is no god but Allah, and Allah is the Greatest] (Muslim). In the version of Bukhari (d. 870), Muslim (d. 875), Tirmidhi (d. 892), and Nasa’i (d. 915), we find this addition: “Whoever says: subhana Allah wa bi hamdih-Glorified is Allah with all praise to Him - a hundred times during a day, will have all his sins wiped off even if they were as numerous as the foam on the surface of the sea.”

Al-shukrulillah or Shukranlillah / Thank you Allah

Rather than a simple secular shukran or “thanks,” many observant Muslims express thanks by saying jazaka Allahu khayran, “Allah will reward you well,” baraka Allahu fik, “May Allah bless you” or shukran wa al-shukrulillah, “Thank you and thank Allah,” following the guidance of the Prophet who teaches that “He who does not thank people does not thank Allah” (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, and others).

Inna lillahi / From Allah we come

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji‘un, from Allah we come and to Him is our return, is a Qur’anic verse which is recited upon the mention of death (2:156). The Prophet taught his followers to say “From Allah we come and to Him is our return” upon hearing of the passing of a person (Malik).

Masha’ Allah / It is Allah’s Will

The expression masha’ Allah, it is the will of Allah, is used when witnessing an event of astonishment or general favor, and unlike alhamdulillah is never used or said for bad events. It may be expressed upon seeing a person who is ill or handicapped. It may also be used sarcastically when referring to someone who is acting a fool with the sense of “Poor sap” or “You poor idiot.” When meeting a person’s small child, etiquette calls for praise carefully mixed with blessings, including “May Allah keep him” or “This is what Allah wills,” reassuring parents that there is no envy (Nydell 121).

La‘nat Allah ‘ala…/ May Allah’s curse be upon…

While the Allah Lexicon is overwhelmingly positive, it does include a considerable body of curses, including la‘nat Allah ‘ala, “May Allah’s curse be upon,” and khadhala Allah, “May Allah forsake,” among many others.25 Muslim scholars are divided as to the legality of cursing in Islam. Those who oppose it point to traditions such as “Do not invoke Allah’s curse, Allah’s anger or hell” (Abu Dawud), the Prophet’s refusal to curse the Makkan unbelievers with the words “I came as a mercy to mankind” (Muslim), which alludes to chapter 21, verse 7, of the Holy Qur’an, and the following tradition:

Verily when a servant curses a thing, the curse rises up to Heaven and the doors of Heaven are closed before it, then it falls down to earth and its doors are also closed, then it goes to the right side, and afterwards to the left side but when it does not find a place of entrance, it returns to him who is cursed, and if he deserves that [it falls upon him], otherwise, it returns to the one who curses. (Abu Dawud)

Those who endorse cursing point not only to traditions, but to the Holy Qur’an itself which presents the damning of infidels, hypocrites and apostates as a godly act. As Almighty Allah explains,

In this world We made a curse to follow them: and on the Day of Judgment they will be among the loathed [and despised] (28:42);

Those who reject faith, and die rejecting, on them is Allah’s curse, and the curse of angels, and of all mankind (2:161);

How shall Allah guide those who reject faith after they accepted it and bore witness that the Messenger was true and that clear signs had come unto them? But Allah guides not a people unjust. Of such the reward is that on them [rests] the curse of Allah, of His angels, and of all mankind. (3:86).

The expression ahlik or “Make them perish” is also fairly common in the Qur’an and is mainly applied to wrongdoers in general, rather than being more specifically aimed at blasphemers and polytheists, as la‘ana [to curse] and khadhala [to forsake] are (Christie 262).

In the books of hadith, there are many examples of Allah, the Prophet and the angels cursing evil-doers. In Tirmidhi (d. 892), we read that the Most Noble Messenger cursed [la‘ana] ten persons in the case of wine: the one who extracted the juice, the one who demanded its extraction, the one who drank it, the one who carried it, the one to whom it was carried, the one who served it, the one who sold it, the one who used its income, as well as its buyer and seller. In Muslim (d. 875), he cursed [la‘ana] the person who took interest, who gave interest, who kept a record of it and who bore witness to it. In Ibn Majah (d. 887), the Prophet says that if a person sells something defective without informing the purchaser, he remains under the anger of Allah and the angels curse him [tal‘anuhu] incessantly. In this same book, the Messenger of Allah says that the person who hoards commodities is cursed [mal‘un]. He also cursed sodomites, catamites, lesbians, zoophiles, cuckolds, transvestites, tyrants and oppressors, alcoholics, women who do not observe Islamic modest dress and men who allow their women folk to go out in public without hijab, among hundreds of others.26 In all such instances, the phrase “Cursed…” serves as a rhetorical device like the formulaic “Blessed are those…”

In a document described by al-Tabari (d. 923), which was drafted by al-Mu‘tadid as an exhortation against Umayyad sympathies, it is stated that La‘anahum Allah…‘ala lisan al-nabi, “God cursed them…by the words of the Prophet,” and that upon seeing Abu Sufyan riding a donkey driven by Mu‘awiyyah and Yazid ibn Mu‘awiyyah, Muhammad said, La‘ana Allahu al-qa’id wa al-rakib wa al-sa’iq,” “May Allah curse the leader, the rider and the driver” (Tabari 2170). All of these invocations find their roots in the Qur’an.

There are an ample number of curses in the Shi‘ite Sunnah. Some of these are curses directed to wicked people in general, such as Imam ‘Ali’s (d. 661) saying that “Allah has cursed the corrupt, the corrupter, and the one who incites corruption” (qtd. Bostani); others are specific, targeting the enemies of Ahl al-Bayt such as those who massacred Imam Husayn (d. 680), the grandson of the Prophet, along with his family and friends. According to Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq,

Whoever remembers the thirst of Husayn while drinking water and curses those who martyred him will receive one hundred thousand blessings, one hundred thousand of his sins will be forgiven, his rank will be raised one hundred thousand times in paradise and Allah will resurrect him with a radiant countenance. (qtd. Bostani 99).

In light of the Qur’an and the Sunnah, a general prohibition against cursing cannot even be considered. Rather, the legality or illegality of cursing in Islam depends on its context: on who is being cursed and for what reason. Indiscriminate cursing is clearly condemned by Allah and His Messenger as seen in the aforementioned verses and traditions. The cursing of inveterate and unrepentant evil-doers as well as violently hostile enemies of Islam clearly comes across as a godly act in the holy book and the ahadith.

After the demise of the Prophet, a certain amount of cursing, both formal and informal, did take place. Al-Tabari (d. 923) cites cases where individuals were formally cursed [using la‘ana, to curse] by the Caliph and their formal cursing from the pulpit of mosques (2048). One particularly abominable act was the Ummayad practice of cursing Imam ‘Ali (d. 661) and his family from the pulpit and having soldiers kill any Muslim who refused to do so (Jordac 290-91; 310-312; Tijani 177, 231).27

At the time of the Crusades, there were cases of Muslim writers, such as the Damascene jurist ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami in his Kitab al-jihad, who appear to have coined new modes of expression such as ahlakahum Allah, “May Allah make them perish,” and mahlikahum ajma‘in, “May Allah quickly bring about their total destruction” (Christie 255). The verb’s root is the second most common curse in the Qur’an, but is only used in varying forms three times throughout the entire scripture (25:29; 17:22; 3:160) (260). Despite its Qur’anic origin, this particular curse “failed to catch on” (Christie 255). Muslim writers also used the invocation qabbahahum Allah, “May Allah reject them as being repugnant,” which comes from a Qur’anic reference to the Pharaoh and his followers who opposed Moses (28:42). In the early period of the Crusades, it remains the least common expression of the three. As Christie explains,

It can only be assumed that since its root only occurs once in the Qur’an, it sprang less readily to the minds of writers than did the other two expressions. In addition, as the original Qur’anic reference is to removal on the Day of Judgment, rather than in the near future, this made it less popular than the more immediate khadhalahum Allah, “May Allah forsake them.” (262)

In Ibn al-Qalanisi’s chronicle, Tarikh Dimashq, he curses the Franks in a similar style, saying wa Allahu ta‘ala yuhsinu al-idhlala minhum wa yaj‘alu al-bawara ‘alayhim, “May Allah do good by granting victory over them, and quickly bring about ruin and destruction upon them” (256). Be it khadhalahum Allah, “may Allah forsake them,” la‘anahum Allah, “May Allah curse them,” or qabbahahum Allahu, “May Allah make them repugnant,” the roots of the verbs khadhala [to forsake], la‘ana [to curse] and qabbaha [to reject as repugnant] are all present in the Qur’an and “[i]t is reasonable to assume that anyone writing during the period [of the Crusades] would have a reasonable knowledge of the Qur’an” (Christie 258). Of these three most common curses, “by far the most common root is that of the verb la‘ana [to curse], and this is the verb which is used most commonly for suffixed invocations” (258-59). The majority of later writers preferred la‘ana, “to curse,” as opposed to khadhala, “to forsake” (261). Eventually, as relations improved between the Muslims and the Franks, it may be that writers began to think less about the meanings of the invocations they were using, and so they became a ‘label’ (261).

In contemporary times, we find an abundance of curses being used throughout the Arabic Islamic world. While some of these are sanctioned by the Scripture and the Sunnah, the vast majority of them fall into the category of forbidden phrases. These include the expressions of colloquial or regional usage an‘al dinak [or more commonly Allah yan‘al dinak], “May Allah curse your religion,” ishtawa madhhabak, “May your faith be grilled,” abēl ibdinak, “Damn your religion”; and inn‘al-rabbak, “May your Lord be cursed,” all of which are often used (Masliyah 2001: 288) - mainly in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Palestine. Although they are common among a certain segment of society, such expressions are obviously not employed by everyone, especially people of class, culture, and faith. Besides these few examples of cursing God and religion, the Arabic language contains curses and insults attacking one’s honor, curses and insults pertaining to health; curses against property, curses involving bodily defects and professions; curses and insults employing animals, curses against parents, curses wishing death, curses and insults directed against plants and inanimate objects, curses and insults against bodily parts, curses borrowed from other languages, and a handful of curses against the honor of non-Muslims and people of different origin, all of which fall into the category of forbidden or haram curses.

The origin of these evil oaths is as yet unclear. According to Masliyah, “the majority of Iraqi Arabic curses show traits of Biblical maledictions as far as motifs, purport, and significance are concerned” (2001: 308). In his view, such curses are part and parcel of Semitic culture and were retained from pre-Islamic times. According to ‘Abd el-Jawad, Swearing in Arabic has evolved “degeneratively” or has undergone “semantic bleaching or derogation” both qualitatively and quantitatively. Out of what is supposed to be the formal and sacred oath which is religiously restricted in quality [not to swear by anything other than the Almighty Allah and quantitatively [to refrain from swearing and making Allah the frequent object of their oaths] evolved the current practice of very frequent swearing not only by Allah but also by persons, objects, values, etc., thus violating the restrictions of quality and quantity. In many aspects, speakers seem to have retained or reintroduced the pre-Islamic practices. [The emphasis is ours] (239)

Despite the fact that these condemned curses employ the name Allah, they are the antithesis of Islam and form part of a counter-tradition.28

The Salawat or Prayers for the Prophet

According to the Holy Qur’an, “Allah and His Angels send blessings on the Prophet: O Ye that believe! Send ye blessings on him, and salute him with respect” (33:7). When the Muslims asked the Prophet Muhammad, “How are we to salute you?,” he replied: “Say: ‘O Allah, bless Muhammad and the family of Muhammad” (Bukhari and Muslim). In the Sunnah, the Prophet told his followers that “When you hear the mu’adhdhin, repeat what he says, invoke a blessing on me, for everyone who invokes a blessing on me will receive ten blessings from Allah” (Abu Dawud). When asked how Muslims should bless him, Muhammad told them to say Allahumma salli ‘ala Muhammadin wa ‘ala ali Muhammad [O Allah, bless Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad]. The Prophet said: “If people sit in an assembly in which they do not remember Allah nor invoke a blessing on the Prophet, it will be a cause of grief for them on the Day of Judgment” (Tirmidhi).

The Prayer Beads: The Tasbih, Masbahah and Sibhah

While some people have attempted to argue that the prayer beads are an innovation or bid‘ah in Islam, the use of the rosary for the purpose of remembering Allah is clearly documented in the Hadith literature.29 Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas, for example, reported that once the Prophet saw a woman who had some date-stones or pebbles which she was using as beads to glorify Allah. The Prophet said to her, “Let me tell you something which would be easier or more excellent for you than that.” So he prescribed her a lengthy dhikr:

subhana Allahi ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-sama’,

subhana Allahi‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-ard,

subhana Allahi ‘adada ma khalaqa bayna dhalik,

subhana Allahi ‘adada ma huwa khaliq,

Allahu Akbaru ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-sama’,

Allahu Akbaru ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-ard,

Allahu Akbaru ‘adada ma khalaqa bayna dhalik,

Allahu Akbaru ‘adada ma huwa khaliq,

alhamdulillahi ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-sama’,

alhamdulillahi ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-ard,

alhamdulillahi ‘adada ma khalaqa bayna dhalik,

alhamdulillahi ‘adada ma huwa khaliq,

la ilaha illa Allah ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-sama’,

la ilaha illa Allah ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-ard,

la ilaha illa Allah ‘adada ma khalaqa bayna dhalik,

la ilaha illa Allah ‘adada ma huwa khaliq,

la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-sama’,

la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi ‘adada ma khalaqa fi al-ard,

la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi ‘adada ma khalaqa bayna dhalik,

la hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi ‘adada ma huwa khaliq.

[Glory be to Allah as many times as the number of what He has created in Heaven / Glory be to Allah as many times as the number of what He has created on Earth / Glory be to Allah as many times as the number of what He has created between them / Glory be to Allah as many times as the number of that which He is creating. The above is repeated four times substituting “Glory be to Allah” by “Allah is the Greatest” in the first repetition, “Praise be to Allah” in the second repetition, “There is no god but Allah” in the third repetition, and “There is no might or power except in Allah” in the fourth repetition.] (Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah, Ibn Hibban, al-Nasa’i, and Hakim)

Safiyyah bint Huyayy, the Prophet's wife, said: “The Prophet came in to see me and in front of me there were four thousand date-stones with which I was making tasbih” [counting subhana Allah]. He said: “You make tasbih with so many! Shall I teach you what surpasses your number of tasbih?” She said: “Teach me!” He said: “Say: Subhana Allah ‘adada khalqihi - Glory to Allah as many times as the number of His creation” (Tirmidhi, Hakim and Suyuti).

In the Holy Qur’an, Allah tells the Prophet to “Remind people, for reminding benefits them.” The reminder of Muslims has various forms, public and private. A public form of this reminder is the adhan. The prayer-beads, known in Arabic as masbahah, sibhah and tasbih, were employed by the Companions of the Prophet as an act of private remembrance. It is for that reason that the tasbih was called by them mudhakkir or mudhakkirah - “reminder,” and there is a narration traced to the Prophet wherein he said: ni‘ma al-mudhakkir al-sibhah: “What a good reminder are the prayer-beads!” Shawkani (d. 1839) narrates it from ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 661) as evidence for the usefulness of prayer-beads in Nayl al-awtar (2:317) from Daylami's (d. 1115) narration in Musnad al-firdaws and Suyuti (d. 1505) cites it in his fatwa [edict/ruling] on prayer-beads in al-Hawi li al-fatawi (2:38). Al-Daylami narrates in Musnad al-firdaws through Zaynab bint Sulayman ibn ‘Ali, and from Umm al-Hasan bint Ja‘far from her father, from her grandfather, from ‘Ali, and it is traced back to the Prophet: “What a good reminder are the prayer-beads!”

La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah / There is no might or power save Allah

The expression “There is no might or power save Allah” was described by the Prophet as a jewel from the throne of paradise (Bukhari, Muslim, and Ghazali). The Prophet said, “When a man utters at the time of his death that ‘there is no might or power save Allah,’ the fire of hell will not touch him” (Ghazali).

al-asma’ al-husna / The Most Beautiful Names of Allah

The ninety-nine names of Allah which appear in the Holy Qur’an constitute an important part of the Allah Lexicon. As we read in the Qur’an, “Call upon Allah, or call upon Rahman, by whatever ye call Upon Him [it is well]: for to Him belong the most beautiful names” (17:110).30 There are numerous traditions in which the Prophet refers to the divine attributes, including: “Allah is al-Jamil [the Beautiful] and loves beauty” (Muslim).31 It is related by the Prophet that “Allah has ninety-nine names, one hundred less one; and he who memorizes them all by heart will enter paradise” (Bukhari). With such a prophetic promise in mind, it is common practice, particularly among the Sufis, to chant the most beautiful names of Allah in unison during religious gatherings. In Iraq, people swear by Allah’s most beautiful names, wa haqq asma’ Allahi al-husna (Masliyah 89); by al-Muhlik al-Mudrik, the Destroyer, the Annihilator; by al-Muhyi al-Mumit, the One who revives the dead and causes death; by alladhi yuhyi al-‘izam, the Reviver of Bones; by al-Hayy al-Qayyum, the Living, the Eternal; by alladhi yaqdir ‘ala kull shay’, the One who is able to do all things; by al-Sami‘; by al-‘Alim, the Hearer, the Omniscient; by Allah al-‘Aziz, by Allah, the Most Powerful; and by Rabb al-‘izzah, the Lord of Power; by Jalal Allah, the Might of Allah; by Rabb al-samawati wa al-ard, the Lord of the heavens and the earth (90). Arabic-speaking Muslims employ the most beautiful names of Allah in various circumstances: Ya Latif [O Most Gracious] is typically used to express grief or fear; Ya Rahman [O Most Compassionate] and Ya Rahim [O Most Merciful] are typically used to implore mercy from the Almighty; Ya Razzaq [O Provider of Sustenance] is typically used when asking for sustenance and so forth.

Almighty Allah is called upon with such frequency that even these ninety- nine names do not suffice. In fact, religious leaders, led by their love for Allah, have made use of further divine names and descriptions, both implied and from the holy book. For Shi‘ites, the foremost of these authors are the Imams from the Household of the Prophet. This is particularly the case with al-Husayn ibn ‘Ali (d. 680) and his son ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin (d. 710?), who left us poignant testimonies to their sublime spirituality and divine devotion. The development of divine attributes was not merely the domain of the divines. Even average Arabic-speaking Muslims coined divine attributes which are not found among the beautiful names of Allah mentioned in the Qur’an including, for example, the Andalusian inscription La ghalib illa Allah, there is no Conqueror but Allah, which adorns many structures from al-Andalus or “Islamic Spain.”32 The most beautiful names are commonly used as personal names preceded by the word ‘Abd, which means servant or slave, as encouraged by the following words of the Prophet, “Verily, the names most liked by Allah are ‘Abd Allah and ‘Abd al-Rahman” (Muslim). Regardless of where they live, most Muslims, be they Arabs or non-Arabs, bear Arabic names related to religion.33

In the previous pages, we have covered some of the major Allah expressions. Evidently, the list we have provided can in no means be considered exhaustive as entire dictionaries or even encyclopedias would be required to adequately document the richness of the Allah Lexicon. The Allah expressions we have included establish a clear link between the Qur’an and the Sunnah and the Allah Lexicon and demonstrate the depth of the Islamic impact on Arabic identity, the issue we will now examine.

4. The Allah Lexicon and Identity

4.1 The Arabic Language and Identity

The Arabic language, the root of Islamic identity, is divided into two main varieties: classical or Modern Standard Arabic, the high variety, and colloquial Arabic, the low variety. Classical Arabic, known as fushat al-turath, is the traditional religious language used by Muslim scholars. It is the language of the Qur’an, static, frozen in time, and artificially maintained by the ‘ulama’. Modern Standard Arabic, known as fushat al-‘asr, is the language of the educated elite. Based on classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is a living literary language which includes some simplified grammatical forms for example, dropping the distinction between the two preterites and includes a modernized lexicon. With the exception of some minor differences in pronunciation, MSA is consistent throughout the Arabic world. Colloquial Arabic, known as al-‘ammiyyah or al-darijah, consists of the following major dialect groups: North African, known as maghribi or Western Arabic, and Levantine, known as Syrio-Palestinian or Eastern Arabic. Within colloquial Arabic, there are further subdivisions, such as ‘ammiyyat al-muthaqqafin, the colloquial of the educated, and ‘ammiyyat al-mutanawwirin, the colloquial of the basically educated, and ‘ammiyyat al-ummiyyin, the colloquial of the illiterate (Holes 15). Further dialectal differences are due to geographic factors, the urban/rural dichotomy, and the role of religion. In Egypt, for example, Cairene Arabic differs from Southern Egyptian Arabic; and in Morocco, the dialect differs between the eastern and western regions. Considering the multiple levels of the language which are experienced as a continuous whole, the schematic label of “diglossia” is inadequate when applied to Arabic (14; Parkinson 72-73).

While dialectal differences are often attributed to education and social class, in the Arabic world, language also functions as a religious identifier. In Lebanon, for example, it is often possible to distinguish between Christians or Muslims on the basis of their language, through Christians’ insistence on using greetings such as sabah al-khayr and masa’ al-khayr as opposed to al-salamu ‘alaykum and their avoidance of the Allah Lexicon. In Morocco, Jewish people can be identified, among other things, on the basis of their pronunciation of the fricative kha in place of the laryngeally constricted gutturally aspirated ha. Iraqi Christians and Jews speak different dialects than Muslims do.34

Even among Muslims themselves, it is possible to determine if people are Sunni or Shi‘i based on dialectal differences, particularly related to the use of the Allah Lexicon. For example, when a Sunni hears the name of the Prophet, he responds with either ‘alayhi al-salam, “upon him be peace,” or salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa-sallam, “blessings and peace be upon him.” The Shi‘ites, however, typically bless Muhammad as well as the Family of Muhammad with salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa alihi wa sallam or “peace and blessings be upon him and his Family.” When the name of ‘Ali is mentioned, Sunnis simply say radiyya Allahu ‘anhu, “may Allah be pleased with him,” or karrama Allahu wajhahu, “may Allah honor his face,” while Shi‘ites would typically say ‘alayhi al-salam, “upon him be peace,” which equally applies to all members of the Ahl al-Bayt, the People of the House [of the Prophet]. The mention of controversial persons such as Abu Sufyan, Mu‘awiyyah and Yazid might elicit a radiyya Allahu ‘anhum [may Allah be pleased with them] from some extremist Wahhabis, Deobandis and other nawasib or enemies of Ahl al-Bayt, but would likely result in a la‘anahum Allah [may Allah curse them] from a Shi‘ite.35

When the adhan is heard, Sunnis merely repeat its words. The Shi‘ites do likewise but break out in moving chants of Allahumma salli ‘ala Muhammad wa ‘ali Muhammad or “O Allah, bless Muhammad and the Family of Muhammad.” Shi‘ites can also be recognized by their refusal to respond to al-salamu ‘alaykum, for reasons of mourning, on the Day of ‘Ashura and their own body of Allah expressions, including cursing the killers of Husayn (d. 680) upon drinking water, in the following words: Salawatu Allahi ‘ala al-Husayn wa ahli baytihi wa ashabihi wa la‘natullahi ‘ala qatalati al-Husayni wa a‘da’ihi or “May Allah bless Husayn, his Family and his Companions, and curse those who killed Husayn and those who were pleased with it” (qtd. Bostani 99). Whether they are Sunnis, Shi‘ites, Christians or Jews, the ability to identify the religious affiliation of an Arab can be as simple as asking a few indirect questions which might elicit the utilization of the Allah Lexicon. As such, it makes it exceedingly difficult for outsiders, however fluent they may be in the Arabic language, to pose as Arabs, as the Arabic language serves as an identity marker revealing national origin, class, education and religion.36

4.2 The Allah Lexicon and Outsiders

Several scholars have studied politeness formulas and their uses among native and non-native Arabic speakers. In every case, their conclusions and concerns were the same: outsiders have difficulty absorbing the Allah Lexicon, fail to use it when required or do so incorrectly, a problem which is religious and cultural as much as linguistic. In Arabic, for example, the range of responses to compliments and favors is much vaster and more specific than it is in English.37 One of the problems faced by non-native Arabic speakers is generalization, failure to draw the contextually appropriate expression from the corpus of the Allah Lexicon, whereas an Egyptian, for example, “would probably use formulas which are more specific in content” (El-Sayed 11). At the root of this problem is the fact that “[b]ecause all these formulas emanate from Islamic Arabic culture, they do not have equivalents” in English (11). As Richard S. Harrell explains,

It is an important cultural pattern that compliments or words of praise should be accompanied by a deferential reference to God. Without the reference to God, such statements appear crude, and in older, more traditional social circles, they are taken as bad omens which bring misfortune. References to God of this sort are usually not directly translatable into English. (352)

One of the fundamental differences between both languages is that in English the word “God” is usually restricted to either oaths, both profane and serious, or to formally serious situations (331). Arabic, on the other hand, “employs references to God and to religion in general, in a wide variety of everyday situations” (331). Oaths such as “I swear by the Glorious Qur’an / the Chapter of Ya-Sin / the Verse of the Chair” are unmatched in English and “[i]t is likely that native English-speakers will find them difficult to grasp” (Salih and ‘Abdul-Fattah 119). While similarities between some expressions are sure to be found, “[m]any of the Arabic formulas involve references to religious concepts, especially those that are culture-specific, whereas the corresponding English ones do not” (El-Sayed 11). El-Sayed notes that “[a] failure to grasp the often-subtle differences between first language and target language formulas can lead to serious misunderstandings and misjudgments” (1) and “[w]hat is more dangerous is that the partial equivalence of two formulas in two languages may be mistaken for a total one” (7). Part of the problem lies in the fact that “adult second language performers seem to use politeness features before they have acquired their co-occurrence rules and appropriate variation” (4).38 As a result, “[a]nalysis of politeness formulas needs to incorporate the set of rules and conventions governing the situations in which they can be used” (6). This also applies for compliments which are culture-specific objects. Ahmad ‘Aly Mursy and John Wilson are categorical that “any understanding of compliment behavior must take account of such things as values, tact, courtesy, and general group, as opposed to individual, values” (133). This may be because Islamic culture, as opposed to Western culture, places the interest of the group above the interest of the individual and values responsibilities and obligations to the community.

As many Allah phrases do not have equivalents in other languages, foreign speakers of Arabic must be cautioned about drawing upon first language formulas. As Davies explains, “[i]f an Arab language learner translates and uses his first language formula in the target language, the result may be a fairly inappropriate contribution to the conversation, one which seems exaggerated or stylistically odd, or one which seems to make no sense at all” (80). The inappropriate use of the Allah Lexicon can lead to many problems. As Davies explains,

Learners with a good mastery of the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of a language may nevertheless be extremely unsuccessful in their interactions with native speakers of that language if they do not have some understanding of their norms of politeness; indeed, as would be the case with stylistic errors in general…it is likely that the more proficient learners are in other aspects, the greater will be the danger that their failure to use the appropriate strategies may be perceived, not as evidence of lack of proficiency, but rather as a sign of disrespect, hostility, or other negative attitudes. (76)

Davies warns Arabic students that: “a pair of similar formulas in two languages rarely turn out to be completely equivalent in all respects” (77). She also cautions that “a fixed formula in one language is not readily paired with any corresponding formula in another” (80). She explains that “the true significance of a formula is determined by a complex of cultural and social conventions and that the outsider should therefore be wary about misinterpreting it as evidence of the user’s personality or individual attitudes” (77). She cautions that “a feature which is perceived as courteous by speakers of one language may not be so judged by speakers of another” (77) and warns that “learners whose first language lacks a formula…risk being perceived as abrupt or impolite if they omit what is felt to be essential in the other language” (80). A simple use of barakallahufik in response to a trivial service might seem ironical or sarcastic instead of polite” since “In Moroccan Arabic…small gestures will typically not warrant thanks at all” (Davies 85). A mere la or no can be terribly rude in Arabic culture where the polite response to a request one cannot or will not grant is Allah yu‘tik or “May Allah give you” based on the Qur’anic verse “And even if thou hast to turn away from them…speak to them a word of kindness” (17:28). You may not have given them what they want, but at least you gave them a blessing.39 Non-native speakers can also encounter problems with greeting rituals. As Khalid S.A. Hassanain warns in his article “Saudi Mode of Greeting Rituals,” “[v]iolations of…social greeting rituals lead to undesired consequences or to a provocation of violence resulting in misunderstanding or misinterpreting of the verbal and non-verbal behavior in the Saudi setting” (68).

The proper use of the Allah Lexicon is also particularly difficult to acquire due to the following factors: (1) the expressions are primarily of religious origin and require an understanding of Islam, the Qur’an and the Sunnah; (2) “the Arabic sequences are much longer than the English; they contain more words and are more likely to continue beyond the initial compliment and corresponding response” since “the longer the interaction, the greater the sincerity” (Nelson 429-30); (3) “the sociolinguistic aspects of discourse are extremely difficult for non-native speakers to acquire on their own” (Schmidt 69) and (4) “few courses provide specifications of how, when, and where to use the formulas” (Davies 77).

4.3 Politics and Polemics: The Allah Lexicon in France

Language scholars and teachers throughout much of the world have come to comprehend that the understanding of foreign cultures and peoples is an essential part of language learning and that “language cannot meaningfully be studied in isolation from context and culture” (Emery 196). In France, however, the opposite is true, with French teachers of Arabic addressing what seems to be an unsolvable issue: how to teach secular Arabic, how to teach Arabic without directly dealing with Islam. According to Paul Balta, “[e]nseigner l’arabe, ce n’est pas aller contre la laïcité” (123) [teaching Arabic does not go against secularism]. He admits that “[l]’Islam est un élément incontournable dans l’apprentissage de cette langue, mais il est possible de l’aborder d’une manière laïque” (123) [Islam is an unavoidable element in learning this language, but it is possible to deal with it in a secular manner]. According to Balta, “Si l’école n’offre pas la possibilité d’apprendre l’arabe, les familles se retournent alors vers les associations, souvent d’inspiration religieuse, qui sont encore plus difficiles à contrôler” (123) [If public schools do not offer the possibility of learning Arabic, parents turn to associations, often of religious inspiration, which are even more difficult to control].

In his view, when Muslim youth feel that the system seeks to take away their culture, “ils se culpabilisent et se radicalisent” (122) [they become guilt ridden and radicalize themselves].40 As such, he greatly encourages the French government to provide Arabic language instruction at all levels, from elementary school to university. In doing so, of course, “L’arabe ne doit pas être consideré comme langue religieuse” (123) [Arabic must not be considered as a religious language]. He feels that if the teaching of Arabic was valued as part of the national educational system, “elle pourrait être un instrument puissant de laïcité et d’intégration” (123) [it could be a powerful instrument encouraging secularism and integration]. He presumes that if the state feigns support for the Islamic culture of the students, they would not feel the need to use religious symbols like the hijab to express their differences. Not only should Arabic be a means of Muslim control in France, Balta wishes to export it abroad. As he explains

Quant aux pays de l’Afrique noire, demandeurs de professeurs d’arabe, la France n’a-t-elle pas intérêt a leur fournir plutôt que les laisser recruter ailleurs des enseignants parfois médiocres et souvent influencés par une idéologie intégriste: la méthode de l’école française des arabisants est aussi un moyen de former les esprits. (119)

[Is it not in the interest of France to provide Arabic instructors to black African countries which are in need of them? Is it not better than letting them recruit instructors from abroad who are often mediocre and influenced by the fundamentalist ideology? The approach of the French School is also a means of building minds.]

Balta does not hide “the French Solution” to “the Muslim Problem.” When asked whether a secular Islam will be born in Western Europe, he explains that a new generation of secular Muslim intellectuals can serve as an example and “préparer l’ère post-islamiste” (330) [prepare the post-Islamist era]. This would permit Muslims to continue, if they wish, to practice their religion within the confines of secular republicanism while ensuring that nothing stops them from discontinuing to believe or to change their beliefs (330).

Linda Hamoud’s article, “Télévision et religion en cours d’arabe,” further exposes the French attempt to subvert Islam through Arabic language instruction. Hamoud readily admits that “il existe un véritable problème dès que l’on parle de religion en cours de langue arabe” [there is a real problem once one speaks of religion in an Arabic language class] (67). The problem with teaching Arabic, she notes, is that it arouses interest in Islam. As she explains,

Ce problème tient au fait que les interrogations des élèves, dès la classe de sixième, concernant la religion musulmane sont fréquentes et insistantes auprès du professeur d’arabe. Dans le cadre de l’école républicaine et laïque, qui est en concurrence directe avec l’enseignement de la langue arabe dispensée dans les mosquées, la parole de l’enseignant sur les sujets religieux entre en conflit direct avec la parole de l’Imam. En effet, celui-ci possède une légitimité naturelle pour ce type de sujets, et du coup, le professeur arabisant se trouve souvent désarmé face aux interrogations de ses élèves. (68)

[The problem revolves around the fact that from sixth grade and up the questions of students concerning the Muslim religion made to the Arabic teacher are frequent and persistent. In the context of a republican secular school system, which finds itself in direct competition with the Arabic language instruction provided by mosques, the opinions of the teacher regarding religious subjects comes into direct conflict with the teachings of the Imam. In fact, he has a natural authority on these types of subjects and, as a result, Arabic instructors find themselves unprepared to respond to students’ questions.]

The solution to this problem, according to Hamoud, is to use and diffuse: to deal with a religious sequence from Arabic television, addressing and analyzing images and elements so that students “évitent de recevoir le discours religieux ‘en pleine figure’” [avoid getting hit in the face with the religious message] (68). The goal, she explains, is “montrer aux élèves que l’intertextualité va au-delà de la parole prononcée par le Cheikh” [to show students that intertextuality goes beyond the words pronounced by the Shaykh] (69). Hamoud explains that religious discourse is based on “les émotions et rarement la raison humaine” [emotions and rarely on human reason] (69) which is why it should be avoided. The pedagogical objective of this approach is not really the analysis of words but contextualization of cultural references (69). In short, the French policy with regard to the Islamic presence in the Arabic language and culture is to deflect it in an attempt to create a psychological break between Arabic and Islam, an approach which may contribute to Arabic language attrition, a problem facing Arabic-speaking Muslims living outside of the Arabic-Islamic world.41

The opinions expressed by the likes of Paul Balta and Linda Hamoud, both of whom are secular Christian Arabs, are perfectly in line with France’s fundamentalist secular philosophy, in which there is no place for the Islamic religion in public schools, no place for Islam in the Arabic language, and no place for the hijab on the heads of Muslim girls.42 It is clear that the secular French have little tolerance for diversity, are afraid of Islam, and wish to undermine it by all means, by prohibiting the Islamic headdress and by attempting to purge the Arabic language of its integral religious expressions, the very Islamic heritage being passed on through Arabic instruction delivered in mosques which is seen as a threat to the teaching of secular Arabic. When faced with the “Muslim Problem,” the French strategy is one of mind control, double speak, cultural colonialism, and ideological imperialism.

The difficulty of learning the Allah Lexicon and the degree to which a foreign speaker wishes to use it have also been addressed by several scholars. To put it plainly, “[t]he question of to what extent learners of a language should also learn to adopt the socio-cultural conventions of its speakers is a delicate one” (Davies 82). According to Davies, “[c]ompromises are often possible; when two alternative formulas exist, learners can select the one which most corresponds to their own outlook, and certain non-obligatory formulas can be avoided” (82). While this may be the case in some rare instances, such compromises are few and far between. From an Islamic standpoint, a mere shukran is insufficient when responding to a compliment or thanking someone for a favor or service. From an Arabic standpoint, the same applies. As Nelson has shown, Arabic-speaking Americans living in Syria are much more likely than Syrians to use Appreciation Tokens [e.g. thanks] in responding to compliments (429). However, “[t]he infrequency of this response in the Arabic data suggest that the utterance shukran [‘thank you’] by itself is not usually a sufficient response to an Arabic compliment and needs to be supplemented by additional words” (Nelson 429). Ferguson’s study on “God-wishes in Syrian Arabic” also debunks the idea of compromise. According to his research:

the pattern of polite health inquiry in Syrian Arabic consists of (a) an initiating formula which is one of a set that has the lexical meaning of “how are you?,” “how is your health?,” to which there is (b) an obligatory response which is one of a set of God wishes and other God expressions that may optimally be accompanied by an expression of good health. (76)

In order to avoid any possible misunderstandings, Nelson advises students of the Arabic language to learn the more extended kinds of Arabic responses (429). In effect, “[t]o achieve pragmatic competence in Arabic, American students of Arabic need to learn the specific formulas used in responding to compliments on particular attributes” (429). For Desmond, the question is clear: “It is impossible for a Westerner to speak Arabic with any fluency without becoming arabized to a certain extent” (14). Considering that the Allah Lexicon is so inextricably associated with an Islamic identity, it seems unlikely that the ajanib or outsiders would be able or even willing to acquire it and much less likely that they could capture the subtleties encountered therein unless they embraced Islam, studied its sources, and immersed themselves in Arabic-Islamic culture for an extended period of time.

4.4 Inside the Allah Lexicon

While Arabs can make claims to their colloquial dialects, they cannot make claims to classical Arabic. As Berque explains, “[t]he lughah is nobody’s mother tongue. It is acquired through the study of great writings and the greatest of them all, the Qur’an” (190). Just as all Muslims are equal before Allah, they are all equal before the language of Allah and all can have access to the Allah Lexicon, in accord with their linguistic level and degree of initiation into Islam.

The Allah Lexicon is a religious code of communication with multiple layers of manifestation, increasing in complexity and sophistication in accord with the degree of Islamic erudition of its speakers, ranging from an illiterate Arab with vague notions of the Qur’anic source of his Allah sayings to the greatest leaders of Islam who use them to express a specific sense in its most subtle shades.43 When addressed, the Twelve Imams of the Household of the Prophet would often respond with Qur’anic quotes and allusions. Their perfect mastery of the Qur’an manifested itself in their daily discourse and was even absorbed by their servants and slaves. One remarkable case was that of Fiddah, the Abyssinian housemaid of the Prophet’s daughter, Fatimah al-Zahra’ (d. 631-32) and her children, who was so marked by the spirituality which surrounded her that she spoke nothing but verses from the Qur’an.44

Another similar case is related in Bihar al-Anwar regarding a slave girl of Imam ‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin (d. 710?) who accidently dropped a pot and struck him in the face, cutting him. He turned towards her and the slave girl said: “Allah says: ‘those who restrain their rage.’” He said: “I have restrained my rage.” She said: “And pardon the people.” He said: “Allah has pardoned you.” She said: “And Allah loves the good-doers” (3:134) to which he replied, “Go. You are a free woman” (Chittick 13). To the uninitiated, this exchange may not seem special; however, to those who are well-versed in the Muslim Scripture, it is most impressive as the slave girl was speaking straight from the Qur’an, showing that the Allah Lexicon serves both manifest and latent functions in the Arabic language. So moved was the Imam by her Qur’anic quotes that he set her free. On another occasion, a man cursed the Imam to his face, but he merely ignored him. Then the man shouted: “I mean you!” The Imam replied: “And from you I am turning away,” alluding to the Qur’anic verse “Hold to forgiveness; command what is right; but turn away from the ignorant” (7:199) (Chittick 16). Among devout Muslims, the love for the Qur’an is so great that they wish to memorize it so that it becomes part of them; they seek to become saturated with its spirituality and to emulate the Prophet who was described by ‘Aishah, one of his wives, as “The walking Qur’an,” that is, the very embodiment and personification of Islamic ethics.

4.5 The Allah Lexicon under Attack

The Arabs, as Hourani explains, are “more conscious of their language than any people in the world” (1). While the Arabs were proud of their language in pre-Islamic times, producing pearls of poetry, the reality of the Qur’anic revelation is the reason for the prestige it now possesses. As Desmond describes,

The Arabic language … is more than the unifying bond of the Arab world; it also shapes and molds that world. Like other languages, it carries within it a whole series of built-in judgments and attitudes. Since it is the language of the Qur’an and Muhammad, the Prophet of God, it has an even greater effect on its speakers than other languages have on their speakers. (14)

In the Arabic Muslim world, both the Arabic language and the Islamic religion are often viewed as inseparable parts of the same Arab Muslim identity, a fact which has been readily understood by those who seek to undermine it.45

With the fall of Granada in 1492, the “Muslim Question,” needed to be addressed. What was to be done with the millions of Muslims in Spain? The answer came quickly: forced conversion to Catholicism through the destruction of everything related to the Islamic identity. This left Muslims with two choices: leave Spain or practice pious dissimulation or taqiyyah (Watt 182). Among the prohibitions enacted were bans on Islamic dress, ritual baths, prayers and fasting, the pilgrimage to Makkah, and paying zakah. At the fore, however, was the prohibition to either speak or write Arabic, for which the penalties were severe: “thirty days in prison in chains for the first offense, double the sentence for the second offense, and for the third offense men were given a hundred lashes and four years in the galleys while women and youths under seventeen were given four years in prison” (Thomson 295).

The persecution of cryptic Muslims was so severe that “[t]he parents could not even afford to say Allah in the presence of young children,” who were kept ignorant of Islam at least until the age of reason, for fear that a childish indiscretion might betray the whole family (284). Severed from Arabic, the secret Muslims were cut off from the Qur’an. While they lost their language, the Moriscos retained the Arabic script for writing in Spanish, a mark of the religious significance of the script and their determination to affirm their cultural identity as Muslims (López-Morillas 17). With time, however, the knowledge of the Arabic script was also lost. The only thing that remained in their hearts was a silent affirmation of La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadun Rasulu Allah, without knowing experientially the meaning of what they secretly believed (Thomson 285). Due to this loss of experiential knowledge over the generations, the knowledge of Islam among these secret Muslims became severely limited, facilitating their gradual assimilation into Catholicism and the eventual elimination of Islam in Spain.46

This same desire to eliminate Islam through the elimination of Arabic was demonstrated by Western powers when they colonized the Arabic Islamic world. According to Darwish al-Jundi, “The imperialists…were aware of the influence of the Arabic language…They fought it and tried to replace it with their own languages. They also attempted to develop colloquial and regional dialects, hoping thereby to stamp out classical Arabic” (Laffin 67-68). In most Arabic-speaking countries, some secularized politicians or writers have advocated converting the regional dialect into the official language and relegating classical Arabic to ruin. In every case, this has failed, due in large part to a profound Arabic-Islamic identity.

In non-Arab countries, where the bond to the Qur’an was limited to similarities in script and language differences made access to its significance more difficult, efforts to further distance Muslims from their scripture have been more successful. In Turkey, for example, Kemal Atatürk eliminated the Arabic alphabet and replaced it with a Latin-based one, effectively ensuring that future generations of Turks would not be able to read the Qur’an in its original Arabic without the substantial effort required to learn the script.47 In Iran, the Shah commenced a campaign to “purge” the Persian language from Arabic loan-words and planned to replace the Persian alphabet, of Arabic origin, with the Latin one.48 His attempt to attack the Arabic script was viewed as an attempt to alienate the Iranians from the Qur’an and played a role in his overthrow in the Islamic Revolution of Iran. In some of the ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia, a struggle is underway between Turkey, advocating the use of the Latin-based alphabet and Iran, advocating the use of the Arabic-Persian alphabet, as replacements for Russian Cyrillic. Both Turkey and Iran are vying for influence and to draw these countries into their spheres of political and, in the case of Iran, religious influence. The importance of the Arabic script extends far beyond the mere representation of a given set of sounds by a particular set of letters (López-Morillas 18).49

Whether it’s Morisco Spanish, Persian, Ottoman Turkish or Urdu, the “use of the Arabic alphabet brings with it a considerable degree of Arabization and Islamicization of the original languages” (18). Muslims in the Indian subcontinent have been very conscious of this fact. Since Urdu, in its written form, used the Arabic-Persian alphabet, it is perceived with great symbolic importance. As a result, the educated Muslim elite have viewed any opposition to the use of the Urdu script as a threat not only to their professional positions but also to Islamic culture in general (Minault 456).

According to various sources, the Allah Lexicon appears to be under attack by both malevolent and benign forces. In the case of France, a deliberate campaign of cultural imperialism is being waged against the Allah Lexicon. In the Middle East, the Allah Lexicon is facing challenges posed by Western popular culture by means of television, movies, and music. As Ferguson has pointed out with regards to Syria, the younger generation’s reduced use of Arabic politeness formulas, both in terms of formulas and complexity of patterns, may be attributed to urbanization and secularization, as well as European and American influence (1983: 68).

The Arabic language is undergoing a radical reduction in the use of Islamic, Allah-centric, expressions, which are being supplanted by simplified forms based on English and French norms.50 The situation is accentuated in the Western world where a decline in the use of Allah expressions is observed among Arabic-speaking Muslims. While natural issues of language transfer and acquisition may account for the omission of Allah phrases, one must consider what that lack means in terms of religious bonds. In point of fact, the missing phrases and expletives from the Allah Lexicon mean that speakers are in limited contact with the Divine, a devastating blow when one considers that Allah and Islam are the basis of Arabic-Islamic identity. Whether at home or abroad, the “occidentosis” of Jalal Al-i Ahmad and the “Westoxication” of ‘Ali Shariati seem stronger than ever, especially taken in the context of events subsequent to 9/11.

5. Conclusions

In the previous pages we have examined a small but representative number of Allah expressions drawn from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. From the thousands of Allah expressions contained in the Qur’an, cited by the Prophet, expounded upon by the awliya’ [“saints”] and the ‘ulama’ [scholars], and enriched by the oral and literary tradition, the Allah Lexicon has grown exponentially, far surpassing what is contained in the Qur’anic and Prophetic corpus. Not just a convention, the Allah Lexicon is a conviction, a living, vibrant body of unique expressions indicative of the vitality of the Islamic faith and the centrality of al-tawhid, or divine unity, in Arabic-Islamic culture and civilization.

Whether Arabic-speaking Muslims are more “religious” than other Muslims is not at issue, merely the core level of accommodation the language made to the religion under the auspices of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers. It is difficult to image the campaign they must have put forth to win over an entire language and largely transform it. This study on the history of the lexicon has presented a hitherto unexplored view of the power and insight of the Prophet and his ability to see beyond the obvious features of religious belief to its possible impact on daily life and speech, placing him at a higher level of influence than has otherwise been recognized by the non-Muslims of the world particularly. Far from a final study, this chapter marks an initial exploration into the oceanic depths of the Allah Lexicon where countless treasures can be found.

• 1. Editor’s Note: We use diwan here in the sense of a collection of Arabic poems. Although the Qur’an is not traditionally considered as poetry, as this might imply human authorship, it can perhaps be perceived as divine poetry.
• 2. Editor’s Note: The fact that many Muslims, Arabs and non-Arabs, believe that Arabic is Allah’s language can easily be ascertained by googlying “language of Allah.”
• 3. Editor’s Note: According to research conducted by the Bible Resource Center, about one in five (18%) Christians report they never read the Bible. About as many (23%) read the Bible at least once a day. The median response is two or three times a month. Older adults were more likely to read the Bible and read it at least once a day. These numbers increase somewhat among Church-going Christians. According William Proctor, some surveys indicate that 20 to 25% of Americans have read through the entire Bible, a figure he believes to be high. When asked how many have read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, the response is less than 10% (http://www.missoulian.com/specials/faith/messil.php).
• 4. Editor’s Note: Along with the Holy Qur’an, the prophetic traditions and Islamic literature in general have played important roles in the diffusion of the Allah Lexicon. One particularly rich source of Allah expressions is to be found in Islamic books for children, where all the basic formulas are taught, as this forms a fundamental part of early childhood education in Muslim society. As El-Sayed explains,

  Children are…trained to use correct forms of thanking especially those used before beginning a meal and finishing it. As Muslims, Egyptian parents train their children on the correct forms of, for instance, bismillah (in the name of God) [a form uttered before beginning a meal] and alhamdulillah (praise be to God) [a form uttered after finishing a meal.] (19-20).

• 5. Editor’s Note: As this is a socio-linguistic study, the authenticity of the ahadith cited in this study is of little importance. Whether the traditions are sahih [authentic], hasan [good], da‘if [weak], mutawatir [constant], mashhur [well-known], gharib [strange] or even mawdu‘ [spurious], they have circulated for over 14 centuries, through the oral and literary traditions, and have contributed to the diffusion of the Allah Lexicon. Overall, the traditions cited here are sahih and we have followed the principle that what is in accord with the Qur’an is acceptable and what is contrary to the Qur’an is to be rejected. As the Father of Fiqh, Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765-66) said: “Whatsoever is reported about us, if it is possible for one of mankind and you do not understand or comprehend it, do not deny it, but you can attribute it to us. However, if it is impossible for anyone of mankind, then deny it, and do not attribute it to us” (qtd. al-Muzaffar 38).

  When citing ahadith, we have followed the common convention of identifying the collection (Bukhari, Muslim, etc.) and not the specific page. As the books of ahadith are systematically organized and well-indexed, it requires little effort to look up the traditions in question, particularly with online collections like al-Muhaddith, CD ROMs, and a concordance like Wensick’s. While Ghazali’s (d. 1111) Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din is not a book of traditions per se, its thematic arrangement allows easy location of relevant traditions. We have relied primarily on Sunni books of hadith for this study; however, the majority of ahadith cited are also found in Shi‘ite sources.

• 6. Editors’s Note: Ahadith are divided into two categories: 1) nabawi or prophetic, which record the words of Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah, and qudsi or sacred, in which the Prophet conveys revelations which did not form part of the Qur’an. The prophetic traditions commence with the words “The Messenger of Allah said”, while the divine traditions start with “The Messenger of Allah said that Allah said.”
• 7. Editor’s Note: This could equally apply to decrees determined to distinguish the Muslim minority from their adversaries, such as “Oppose the polytheists. Let the beards grow long and shave the moustaches” (Bukhari and Muslim); and “He who imitates a people [other than the Muslims] is of them” (Ahmad), among others.
• 8. Editor’s Note: The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka, a field recording made in Morocco by Brian Jones and Brion Gysin in 1968, captures what seems to be ancient Lupercalia rituals dedicated to the god Pan, known as Bou Jeloud, the Father of Skins, that are hours and sometimes days, long, in the village of Jajouka in the Rif mountains near Tangiers. Performed by the Ahl Serif tribe, the Rites of Pan were long kept secret under their ragged cloak of Islam. Nowadays, however, the Master Musicians of Jajouka travel the world performing their fusion of pagan trance music, theatre and dance (Fuson). The festival includes evocations to Bou Jaloud or Pan, the goat god, as well as the female jinn known as Aisha Qandisha. Although of Arabic origin, the name may have supplanted the early names of Aishim, the angels of fertility, Astarte, the goddess of sexuality, Esha, the feminine element of cosmic fire, or Asherat, goddess of life.

  The last name Qandisha or Qadisha may be derived from the Hebrew qadeshot, meaning holy, which applied to temple harlots, prostitutes and sodomites. The name may also be linked to the following heathen deities: Qodsha, Kadesh or Qadesh, the holy one, the mistress of the gods, the divine force of sexuality; Kether, the most ancient holy one, the Akkadian Qadishtu, the holy women, dedicated to the service of the goddess Ishtar, the great whore, through sexual service to men. For more on the ancient origin of the name Aisha Qadisha, refer to In a Chariot Drawn by Lions by Asphodel P. Long, The Cipher of Genesis by Carlo Suarés, The Book of Goddesses and Heroines by Patricia Monaghan, Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa, When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone, The Metaphysics of Sex by Julius Evola, and Barbara Walker’s The Woman’s Encylopedia of Myths and Secrets.

• 9. Editor’s Note: According to the Qur’an, “Anyone who after accepting faith in Allah utters unbelief - except under compulsion, his heart remaining in faith - but as such as open their breast to unbelief, -on them is the wrath from Allah, and theirs will be a dreadful penalty” (16:106). The hiding of one’s faith due to fear is also permitted in 40:28 and 28:20. Due to persecution, the very survival of Shi‘ism depended upon taqiyyah, reaching a point where Imam Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 765-66) said that: “He who has no taqiyyah has no faith” (Amali). Taqiyyah, of course, is an Islamic practice, and not solely a Shi‘ite one, and was widespread among the Spanish Muslims after the fall of Granada in 1492 who outwardly accepted the official religion while practicing their own faith in secret.
• 10. Editor’s Note: In psychological terms, this could be a case of over-compensating, a common characteristic of Jewish converts to Catholicism in Spain. To assert their sincerity, and to dissimulate their ethnicity, they adopted religiously-oriented family names like Cruz [Cross] and Germanic names like Guzmán. Many became priests, and some, like Juan de Torquemada, the notorious Grand Inquisitor, went to the extreme of persecuting their own people. It may be that some of the early Muslims with polytheistic pasts wanted to publicly profess their monotheistic faith.
• 11. Editor’s Note: The Allah Lexicon contains many cases where the name of Allah is implied. As Masliyah explains, “In many cases in Iraqi Arabic where the name of the supernatural is not mentioned in the curse, it is understood that Allah is the one referred to” (2001: 274).
• 12. Editor’s Note: According to all Shi‘ite sources, Imami, Isma‘ili, and Zaydi, the phrase “Come to the best of actions” was part of the original prophetic adhan but was suppressed by Caliph ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab (d. 644) who insisted that jihad, and not prayer, was the best of actions (Howard 219).

  As Tabataba’i explains, “even though during the life of the Holy Prophet it was the practice to recite in the call to prayers, ‘Hurry to the best act’ [hayya ‘ala khayr al-‘amal], ‘Umar ordered that it be omitted because he said it would prevent people from participating in holy war, jihad” (1977: 46). While most Orientalists support the “orthodox” Sunni argument on the issue, Guillaume believed that the word falah, which is generally rendered as “salvation” and “prosperity”, must be an Arabized form of pulhana, divine worship, which, among Aramaic-speaking Jews and Christians, was connected to service to God. For Guillaume, the Shi‘ite reference to ‘amal must surely be a memory of the original meaning of falah which may have been lost over time due to a semantic shift. I.K.A. Howard has also supported the Shi‘ite view on the subject in his article “The Development of the adhan and iqamah.”

  According to Howard, “although the matter does not appear to be much discussed by non-Shi‘is during the latter half of the second century and the first half of the third…there is some evidence for it belonging to the adhan at a much earlier period (219-20). In his recension of the Muwatta’, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani (d. 805) records a tradition on the authority of Malik ibn Anas (d. 795) that Ibn ‘Umar sometimes used to say hayya ‘ala khayr al-‘amal after hayya ‘ala al-falah (Howard 220). This tradition seems to have been suppressed in Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi’s recension of the Muwatta’ and later Sunni sources. It is only mentioned anew in Ibn Hazm’s (d. 1064) Kitab al-Muhalla (160-61), cited al-Bayhaqi (d. 1066) and another with the fourth Imam, ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn in the isnad. It comes as no surprise that Ibn Hazm, notorious for his anti-Shi‘itism, roundly condemns these traditions as fabrications. According to objective eyes of I.K.A. Howard, however:

  …the tradition quoted by al-Shaybani seems to be genuine. There appears to be no reason for its fabrication. Its isnad (Malik-Nafi‘-Ibn ‘Umar) is a standard Medinan isnad, but in this case used for a practice that was no longer standard. The tradition does seem to point to a formula that was included in the adhan at a much earlier period.

  Al-Fadl bin Shadhan’s (d. 873-74) argument that the formula hayya ‘ala khayr al-‘amal was in the original adhan, only to be suppressed by the second Caliph, may not be as polemical as it first appears. As Howard admits, “[i]t might well be the case that these words were removed from the adhan at some time very early in Islam, and it is not impossible that it was during ‘Umar’s caliphate” (220).

  The insertion of al-salatu khayrun min al-nawm [Prayer is better than sleep] into the adhan of the fajr prayer is also subject to great debate. According to Shi‘ite sources, the line was introduced by the Caliph ‘Umar. Sunni traditions and sources express four views on the subject: 1) the line was part of the original adhan, 2) the line was introduced by Bilal and retained by the Prophet, 3) the line was introduced by a mu’adhdhin and retained by the Caliph ‘Umar, or 4) the line was introduced by the Caliph ‘Umar. The Sunni scholars who accept the authenticity of the line in question cite traditions of the Prophet and his Companions from Bukhari (d. 870), Abu Dawud (d. 817), Nasa’i (d. 915), Tirmidhi (d. 892), Daraqutni (d. 995), Ibn Khuzaymah (d. 924), and al-Bayhaqi (d. 1066). The Sunni scholars who believe the line was added cite various prophetic traditions from Imam Malik (d. 795) and Bayhaqi, as well as historical sources like Tabari’s (d. 923) Tarikh and Abu Hilal al-Askari’s Kitab al-Awa’il, namely, The Book of Firsts. Although it is a non-academic, polemical website, answering-ansar.org contains a long list of references from Sunni sources on the subject. For a more academic overview of some of these sources, Howard’s article is essential (221).

  Another major innovation to the adhan was the practice of greeting the Caliph or amir in the call to prayer. According to al-Baladhuri, the formula al-salamu ‘alayka ya khalifata rasulillah was inserted before the formula hayya ‘ala al-salah (Howard 223). Under ‘Umar, this was changed to al-salamu ‘alayka ya amir al-mu’minin, a practice which continued through the reign of Uthman, Ummayad rule, and the early ‘Abbasid period. When Imam ‘Ali criticized Mu’awiyyah for using the title “Leader of the Believers”, he may have been responding to its innovative use in the call to prayer. While some Sunnis criticize Shi‘ites for inserting ‘Ali into the adhan, the Shi‘ites have some justification for it in the corpus of ahadith. In fact, there are plenty of Shi‘ite traditions indicating that the line “I bear witness that ‘Ali is the Friend of Allah” is permissible. Even some Sunni sources state that Salman and Abu Dharr used to recite ‘Aliyyan Wali Allah in the adhan and that this was approved by the Prophet. This view is shared by Sunni scholars like Shaykh Abd Allah Maraghi in his book al-Salafah fi amr al-khilafah and Wahid al-Zaman in his book Anwar al-lughat (5-6) which was recently re-published in Pakistan under the name Lughat al-hadith.

  Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of the authenticity of the Shi‘ite adhan resides in the explication of its origins. For Sunni Muslims, the adhan was not the product of the Prophet. It was the result of a dream by ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab and ‘Abd Allah ibn Zayd. Since it was not from God or the Prophet, it had no particular sanctity. What was created by a person can easily be changed by that person. For the Shi‘ites however, the introduction of the adhan presents an entirely supernatural picture. As Howard explains,

  The Prophet on his ascension into heaven took part in the heavenly salah. Gabriel gave the adhan, the Prophet led the salah, and the angels and the prophets participated in it. This is followed in the next tradition in al-Kafi by an account of how Gabriel came down and taught the Prophet the adhan while ‘Ali was present. The Prophet then gave ‘Ali instructions to teach Bilal the adhan. This account neatly connects the adhan to the Prophet’s ascension into heaven… ‘Ali is then made party of the Prophet’s instruction in the adhan and himself teaches Bilal. According to this version, the adhan was fixed in its complete form from the moment of its inception. ‘Ali was present at the prophetic inspiration, and is a witness to its validity; but not only is he that, he is also the instructor of the first mu’adhdhin. Thus, ‘Ali’s position counters the claims being made on behalf of ‘Umar. (226-27)

  For the Shi‘ites, the adhan was given by God to the Prophet via the Angel Gabriel. Since it was of divine origin, the Shi‘ites were in no position to change it. In fact, the Shi‘ites have been the strongest to resist any innovations in Islam, be it in wudhu, salah or the adhan. They have always adhered closely to the Qur’an, rejecting any traditions which contradicted it. In the case of the adhan

  They have preserved the twofold shahadah at a time when the wilayah of ‘Ali had become one of the fundamental pillars of their faith, and they include no mention of “I witness that ‘Ali is the Wali of Allah.” Some of their more enthusiastic brethren endeavored to introduce this into the adhan, but they were roundly denounced by Ibn Babawayh and al-Tusi. (Howard 227-28)

  Another argument favoring the Shi‘ite stance on the adhan can be found in the fact that Bilal ibn Rabah (d. 642), the Prophet’s mu’adhdhin, refused to make the call to prayer during the Caliphate of Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman. Although Bilal’s refusal to call the adhan has been traditionally interpreted as an act of political protest, indicating that Bilal supported Ali’s claim to the Caliphate, it may also have reflected his refusal to accept the corruptions made to the call to prayer. According to Imami sources, Bilal was a Shi‘ite. He was praised by the Sixth Imam in the following terms: “May God bless Bilal! He loved us, the family of the Prophet, and was one of the most pious servants of Allah.”

• 13. Editor’s Note: These lines are exclusively uttered by Sunni Muslims for the morning call to prayer.
• 14. Editor’s Note: Considered a “holy plant” which gives God-consciousness, hashish has a long history of use throughout the Arab-Islamic world. Another widely consumed drug in Yemen, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya is the narcotic and highly addictive qat which is known as “the leaf of Allah.”
• 15. Editor’s Note: It is typically followed by the attributes al-Rahman al-Rahim, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. It is even utilized as a header on all communiqués issued by the secular P.L.O. as an act of homage to the rediscovered force of Islam and a recovery of Islamic rhetoric (Balta 196). Muslim scholars like Ahmad Ghorab find it particularly offensive that academic publications like the Journal of Islamic Studies prohibit authors from starting any article with bismillah as well as saying “peace and blessings be upon him” after mentioning the name of the Prophet (18).

  Besides al-Rahman al-Rahim, Muslims have ninety-seven other divine names to draw from. Imam Khomeini, for example, started some of his letters with Bismillah al-Muntaqim, In the name of Allah, the Avenger. In Islamic Iran, the volunteers for martyrdom would swear: “In the name of Allah the Avenger, and in the name of the Imam Khomeini, I swear on the Holy Book to perform my sacred duty as a Child of the Imam and Soldier of Islam in this Holy War to restore to this world the Light of Divine Justice” (Taheri 113). The assassin of Anwar al-Sadat reportedly had Bismillah al-Muntaqim inscribed on his gun.

• 16. Editor’s Note: Nefzawi’s (d. 16th c.) curious combination of religious expressions and erotic descriptions has quite a comical effect. His work commences with the following words: “Praise be to God who has placed the source of man’s greatest pleasure in women’s natural parts” and concludes with the confession: “In writing this book I have sinned indeed! / Your pardon, oh Lord, I surely shall need; / But if on the last day you absolve me, why then, / All my readers will join me / in a loud AMEN!” (92), a likely editorial edition.
• 17. Editor’s Note: In fact, the general trend is to defer to the Divine at all times. For example, in Egypt, to express good wishes to someone before or during Ramadan, you say, Ramadan karim [Gracious Ramadan] to which the response is Allahu Akram [Allah is More Gracious] (Nydell 91).
• 18. Editor’s Note: In Iran, for example, the two main slogans during the Islamic Revolution were Allahu Akbar and la ilaha illa Allah. These two symbolically charged phrases expressed discontent with the monarchy, opposition to oppression, the sovereignty of the Supreme over all affairs, the readiness to die for Islam, and total commitment to the cause of establishing an Islamic Republic with the Qur’an as its constitution. In Palestine, the cry Allahu Akbar is even made by those who follow the directives of the secular P.L.O. (Balta 196).
• 19. Editor’s Note: There are other variables to this ritualized routine. When someone sneezes, the person says alhamdulillah, the other responds Rahimaka Allah, to which the person who sneezed responds Rahimana wa rahimakum.
• 20. Editor’s Note: Holmes would thus be correct that politeness formulas serve as “social lubricants”, acting to increase or consolidate the solidarity between the speaker and the addressee” (486). This greeting of peace, however, was not embraced by the Medinan Jews in the time of the Prophet. In fact, rather than saying al-salamu ‘alaykum to the Prophet, they used to greet him with al-samu ‘alaykum or “May death be upon you” (Muslim).
• 21. Editor’s Note: The Prophet’s attitude of respect towards the female gender is in sad contrast to the common Arab custom of making cat-calls to women as they pass by. As the Messenger of Allah warned, “Beware of sitting along roadsides.” His Companions asked him, “Oh, Messenger of Allah! We cannot stop these meetings on roadsides where we talk about different matters.” The Messenger of Allah said: “If you refuse to stop having such meetings, then you should give the road its rights.” They asked him, “What are the rights of the road?” He said, “To cast down your eyes; to forbear harms to others; to reply to salutation, to enjoin what is right and to forbid what is wrong” (Bukhari). On the occasion of the Farewell Pilgrimage, the Prophet commanded his followers to: “Observe your duty to Allah with respect to women, and treat them well”, echoing the Qur’anic commandment to treat women kindly (4:19).
• 22. As Imam Husayn (d. 680) acknowledged, The Messenger of Allah used to salute women and they used to reply his salutation. While the Commander of the Faithful, Imam ‘Ali, also used to salute women, he disliked to salute young women and said, ‘I feared that her voice would stir me, earning me more sin than reward.’ (Kulayni).
• 23. Editor’s Note: It is reported that the Prophet used to pray for forgiveness seventy or one hundred times a day by repeating the formula “I ask forgiveness from Allah.” The Messenger of Allah and the other Infallibles repented to Allah in their conditions as servants of the Almighty, their inadequacies as creatures and for their existence as separate beings (Chittick XXX-XXXIV). Regardless of the objections of the Wahhabis and Salafis, “[t]he doctrine of the sinlessness of prophets has…always been an admitted principle among Muslims” (‘Ali 232).
• 24. Editor’s Note: This is the paradox in which the Allah Lexicon continues to exist, that is, a phrase that is at once formula and genuinely sincere. It seems that this issue was recognized as far back as the Prophet.
• 25. Editor’s Note: As Devin J. Stewart explains, cognate curses, root-echo responses to a number of common verbs and expressions, “are an important type of Egyptian formulaic speech with parallels in classical Arabic and other modern Arabic dialects” (327-28). However, “God rarely appears as agent in the cognate curses” (350). In fact, “God is the direct agent in only five curses in the corpus”, a feature which stands in marked contrast to common blessings such as Allah yukhallik, “May Allah preserve you”, rabbina mayihrimnash minnak, “May Allah not deprive us of you”, where Allah is most often, though not invariably, the agent as in Allah yusallimak, “May Allah keep you safe” or Allah yin‘im ‘alayk, “May Allah bless you” (333). In contrast to English and Québécois French, there are only a few curses against religion in the Arabic language (Masliyah 2001: 288).
• 26. Editor’s Note: The best sources for prophetic curses and condemnations are books referring to the apocalypse and the hereafter, for example, The Spectacle of Death Including Glimpses of Life Beyond the Grave, by Khawaja Mohammad Islam.
• 27. . Editor’s Note: All of this despite the Prophet’s declarations that “Loving ‘Ali is belief and hating him is hypocrisy” (Bukhari, Muslim, Nasa’i, Tirmidhi, Sadduq, Mufid, and Kulayni), “He who curses ‘Ali, curses me” (Hakim, Ahmad, and Nasa’i), “He who insults ‘Ali, insults me. He who insults me, insults Allah. And he who insults Allah, Allah will cast him into Hell” (Hakim, Nasa’i, Ahmad, Tabari, and Suyuti), as well as hundreds of similar sayings too lengthy to cite.
• 28. Editor’s Note: These condemned curses may form part of pre-Islamic paganism which was perpetuated by the munafiqin or hypocrites, Muslims who professed Islam but who remained heathens in their hearts, eagerly anticipating any opportunity to undermine it. Despite Masliyah’s claims that these curses “have lost their original meaning and denote astonishment or an exclamation” (2001: 288), they continue to be perceived as offensive by religious people and educated speakers of the language. In truth, it seems difficult to believe that a sincere believer would ever curse Allah and the religion of Allah. While they may be used by ignorant Muslims, they may have been coined by infidels or pseudo-Muslims. Some of these forbidden curses may also trace back to the reciprocal cursing which was an inseparable accompaniment to war among the pagan Arabs.
• 29. Editor’s Note: Those who hold that the prayer beads are an innovation include the Wahhabis / Salafis and some Qadiani scholars like Muhammad ‘Ali who claims that “There is…no authority whatever for the practice of repeating these names on a rosary or otherwise” (162). The general view, however, among ahl al-bayt, ahl al-sunnah and ahl al-sufiyyah is that prayer beads were prophetically permitted.
• 30. Editor’s Note: The use of the divine name Rahman may have meant to appeal to Jews, the Arab monotheists, known as the Hanif, and the southern Arabian Sabeans. As Mansfield explains in The Arab World: A Comprehensive History, “By the fourth century AD the people of southern Arabia abandoned polytheism to adopt their own form of monotheism, a belief in a supreme god known as al-Rahman, ‘the Merciful’” (16). Interestingly enough, Rahmana is the Aramaic name for God used in the Babylonian Talmud. Compiled around 600, the work contains materials from the first couple of centuries CE (or perhaps even a tad before) in Hebrew. It also contains later material which is partially in Hebrew but largely in Aramaic. While it would not be worthwhile to count the Hebrew names of God in the Talmud since most of these would simply be in Biblical quotations, a search of the word Rahmana in Michael Carasik’s computerized concordance found 1,601 occurrences.
• 31. Editor’s Note: When some irreligious Moroccan women are asked why they flaunt their beauty, appearing in public in sexually provocative clothing, they often cite this saying sarcastically to justify their Islamically-inappropriate demeanor.
• 32. Editor’s Note: Other, non-scriptural, oaths expressing veneration for Allah include wa illi farraj asab‘ak, by the One who differentiated between your fingers, wa al-khallak timshi ‘ala al-ga’, by the One who made you walk on the ground, wa lladhi jarra hadha al-ma’, by the One who made this water flow, and wa rabb al-ka’inat, by the Lord of the creatures, among many more, all of which are used in Iraq (Masliyah 94). Piamenta also points to the following Divine Names which are not found ad litteram in the Scripture: al-Da’im, “The Everlasting”, related to al-Qayyum and al-Baqi; al-Sayyid, “The Master;” al-Sultan, “The Absolute Ruler”, and al-Jamil, “The Beautiful” (38-39). As al-Ghazali (d. 1111) explains in The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God, “when an expression which does not suggest [any imperfection] at all among those who share a common understanding it is taken to be true of God, and when revelation does not expressly forbid it, then we freely permit its being applied to God” (181).

  The followers of qiyyas use logic and chose divine names by “analogy” with other established ones (De la Torre 22). This does not mean that the names are synonymous, but rather each name, in itself, brings a new shade of meaning of the divine essence (22). As al-Ghazali explains, “it is unlikely that the names included in the ninety-nine be synonymous since names are not intended for their letters or external differences, but rather for their meanings” (1999: 26). Purificación de la Torre further elucidates that, “Estos teólogos no descartan en absoluto el importante peso que el Corán y los hadices tienen a la hora de la elección de los Nombres, pero ellos añaden la posibilidad de aplicar la lógica para poder explicar el por qué de un Nombre u otro” (22)

  [These theologians do not downplay the important role the Qur’an and the ahadith have when it comes to selecting names, but they add the possibility of applying logic in order to explain the reason for one name or another]. The use of analogy was opposed by the partisans of tawqif who held that the only names of Allah are those which He has attributed to Himself ; in other words, the only acceptable names are those found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah (De la Torre 22).

• 33. Editor’s Note: The significance of names in general, and Arabic names in particular, is addressed in our article “¿Qué hay en un nombre árabe?”
• 34. Editor’s Note: In 1948, there were 135 to 150,000 Jews in Iraq. Up to 120,000 of them left the country in the early 1950s and most of the rest during the 1960s and 1970s. By 2003, there were only one to two hundred Jews left in Iraq, and many of those were relocated to Israel by American troups.
• 35. Editor’s Note: A good source of Shi‘ite curses is “Some Imami Shi’i Views on the Sahabah” found in Etan Kohlberg’s Belief and Law in Imami Shi‘ism.
• 36. Editor’s Note: In Nelson’s study of Syrian and American speakers of Arabic living in Damascus, she found that “Syrian interlocutors frequently used religious expressions, whereas none of the Americans did so” (430 note 4). Regardless of their level of fluency in Arabic, the Americans will forever be identified as foreigners for failing to use phrases of faith.

  Failure to use the proper Allah expression can be particularly perilous for unbelievers feigning to be Muslims. In one case, a non-Muslim from Kenya was captured by a Somali militia as a spy. Having heard that the Somalis do not kill Muslim captives, he insisted that he was Muslim. His captors asked him to say the shahadah. He responded by saying al-salamu ‘alaykum, upon which he was killed. While the lack of salam can lead to slaughter, the salam can also save. In one case, a prisoner was being led to his execution. Upon passing the judge, he said al-salamu ‘alaykum, upon which the judge automatically replied, wa alaykum al-salam. The prisoner commented: “How can you punish me if you have given me the greeting of peace?” Recognizing the binding nature of the salam salutation, the judge pardoned the prisoner.

  The salam greeting, as simple as it may seem, is often inappropriately employed by some English-speaking Muslim converts. In fact, it is common for many of these new Muslims to send their salaams to any Muslim they come across. While this might work in North America, it does not come across well in big Arab cities where the greeting al-salamu ‘alaykum is typically reserved for people one knows, and not complete strangers one encounters on the street, unless you wish to ask them a question.

• 37. Editor’s Note: It is evident that religious oaths are far more prevalent in Arabic than they are in English. While Salih and ‘Abdul-Fattah’s study on “English and Arabic Oath Speech Acts” does a fair job of comparing speech acts in both languages, it leaves readers with the erroneous impression that their frequency and function are similar. They claim that:

  It has been shown unequivocally that American English and Jordanian Arabic have many oath features in common in terms of the function and theme or object of the oath. Individuals in both languages swear by the Deity or by one or two of His Supreme attributes. They may also swear by the holy prophets, saints, and angels as well as by their own supreme ideals and values which may differ from one culture to the other. There are, however, some differences which arise mainly from the somewhat different beliefs, cultural practices and social norms as well as family relations in each culture. (123).

  According to the authors, American English and Jordanian Arabic have “many” oath features in common and only “some” differences based on “somewhat” different beliefs, practices and norms. Clearly, this is not the case. Arabic and English do share some common expressions; however, in most cases, they are used with a radically different sense. When Muslims call upon Allah or call upon the Prophet, it is perceived as an act of piety. When Christians call upon God or Jesus Christ, namely, when they “swear”, it is perceived pejoratively. From a frequency point of view, the evidence is in: the Arabic language employs the name Allah far more than the English language employs the word God. So, from a qualitative and quantitative point of view, the differences between Arabic and English religious expression far outnumber the similarities. Furthermore, the vast majority of Allah expressions are pragmatically untranslatable as they do not have equivalents in the English language. As Barbara Kryk has noted, interjections are highly language specific and lack exact equivalents across languages (195). In their study of 20 M.A. translation students on a translation task of 15 politeness formulas, Mohammad Farghal and Ahmed Borini found that “many student translators could not render appropriately the Arabic euphemistic formulas” (13) and that “[m]any student translators could not grasp the distinction between what is formulaic and non-formulaic. Hence, they have either maintained the Arabic formulaic expression or just paraphrased it into English” (16), “student translators often adopt literal translation as a solution when they encounter difficulty in translating any formula”, trying to “maintain the semantic import of the Arabic formula at the expense of the intended illocutionary force, which makes their renditions opaque and unintelligible to English readers” (16). As the authors explain,

  Politeness formulas often tend to show some kind of divergence between the two languages in question. For instance, one very noticeable difference between English and Arabic formulas is the frequency of religious references in Arabic, while the corresponding polite formulas in English may not have such references. By way of illustration, a formula that may functionally correspond to English Good bye in Arabic is Allah ma‘ak [May God be with you] in a variety of contexts. (5)

  According to Farghal and Borini, a “deficiency in paralinguistic competence usually results in communication breakdown or, at least, distortion of the original message” (3). While a good translator could come up with an idiomatically acceptable replacement, the original sense of the expressions would almost always be lost.

  Rare, indeed, are authors of the quality of Hergé, the Belgian author of the Tintin comic books, who, due to familiarity with Arabic culture, are capable of conveying Allah expressions in European languages like French. Coke en stock and Le crabe aux pinces d’or, among others, include Arab characters uttering Par Allah [By Allah], Le salam sur toi [Peace be upon you] and the tongue-in-cheek Par la barbe du Prophète [By the beard of the Prophet]. Despite his cross-cultural dexterity, even Hergé succumbs to the anti-Arab sentiment of his time, depicting Arabs as terrorists.

• 38. Editor’s Note: An Arab, however, acquires Allah expressions over the course of a lifetime. A child learning the language “can be presumed to extend his repertory by analogy” (Ferguson 43). Having heard these expressions many times, “the speaker of Syrian Arabic has the competence to use the root-echo pattern in linguistic contexts where he has never heard it before” (43).
• 39. . Editor’s Note: Islam prohibits begging. As the Prophet said, “Nothing but Paradise must be begged for Allah’s sake” (Abu Dawud). At the same time, Muslims are not supposed to turn away beggars, especially when they invoke the name of Almighty Allah, as they are encouraged to provide alms to the poor (2:196; 9:60).
• 40. Editor’s Note: Peter Manderville echoes this view, explaining that “[t]here is a point beyond which discrimination and rejection by the majority society results not in Muslims’ denial of their religion, but rather in its affirmation. Rejected and unwanted, they turn to that which sets them apart as a form of cultural self-assertion and a basis of identity. Islam also becomes a form of self-defense and a source of solidarity against a hostile dominant culture” (22).
• 41. Editor’s Note: In their study on “Lebanese Immigrants in Australia”, a survey of the language maintenance, erosion, and attrition rate of 62 immigrant children from Melbourne, Ronald Taft and Desmond Cahill found that while most of the subjects could speak Lebanese Arabic well, few could read or write it (129). This problem was further accentuated by the fact that most of the parents were either illiterate or semi-literate in Arabic: “only 47% of the fathers and 31% of the mothers could read it ‘well,’ only a quarter of the parents could write it ‘well’” (134); and the alarming “absence of printed material in the language in most homes” (142) making it “virtually impossible for the children to develop literacy skills in other than English” (142).

  As a result, “English was clearly the dominant language of the children” (141) and “one third of the children have virtually no ‘loyalty’ to their mother tongue” (136). The most detrimental factor in the language development of the children was found to be illiterate mothers: “[t]he children of completely illiterate mothers--in any language--were inferior in all language skills, but especially in speaking” (139), which should serve as a warning that the inclination of some Arab men towards taking ignorant women as wives places the Islamic identity of their children in peril. Although Muslim children represented only 14% of the subjects, the rest being Orthodox (12%) and Catholic (69%), with 4% refusing to identify their religion, it can be safely said that, in terms of language loss, what applies to the Christian Lebanese also applies to the Muslim, but to a lesser extent.

  In his study of two Arab communities in New York, a Muslim Yemeni one and a Christian Lebanese one, Dweik found that second-generation Yemeni immigrants were successful in maintaining their native language. He attributes this retention to their high commitment to Islam as well as the Arabic language through a sense of sacredness resulting from the bond between language and religion. In contrast, Dweik found that second-generation Christian Lebanese had abandoned Arabic for English.

  While Lebanese Christian immigrants may, over the course of couple of generations, entirely lose their Arabic, they will not lose their religion as they are in a predominantly Christian environment. It may be interesting to note here that it is not uncommon to meet Christian Lebanese who do not think of themselves as Arab at all, but rather Franks or even Phoenicians, etc. This is in great part due to the deep-seated distinction Aramaen-Christians and Arab-Muslims made for themselves during Islam’s first thrust into the Levant, centuries ago. For the Muslims, the loss of the Arabic language sends them on a downwards spiral of decay away from their Islam. Since Muslims are the majority of the population in Lebanon and exert considerable influence, being illiterate in the homeland does not necessarily pose a threat to one’s religious identity, which is absorbed through osmosis in an Islamic cultural setting. In a non-Muslim country, however, illiteracy in Arabic leads to loss of language, culture and religion. In the United States, the rate of dissimilation from Arabic heritage and assimilation into American culture is even more severe. Case in point: Ghazi Shorrab’s study of 28 Arab immigrant families in Buffalo, New York, “clearly demonstrate the children’s inclination toward utilizing English and the rejection of Arabic” (83).

  In his study of 58 Arab-American students attending a full-time private Arabic-Islamic school in Dallas, Texas, ‘Abdel Fattah Bani Hani found that “[t]he reduction in the use of Arabic is illustrated by a mean average of 2.79 on a 5-point Likert scale for the use of Arabic at home, and a mean average of 2.82 on a 5-point Likert scale for the use of Arabic with friends” (168). In simple terms, if parents speak Arabic to their children 100% of the time, their children will speak it 50% of the time and their grandchildren 0% of the time. While many factors are at play, his data demonstrates that: children who have a stronger belief in the Islamic faith and who show more commitment to Islam through preserving the daily prayers and other religious practices tend to use English substitutes less often and are hence considered more fluent in their native language than children who report a weaker belief in Islam and in the connection between Islam and Arabic, and who report less commitment to preserving Islamic practices. (97)

  Moreover, “the results illustrate that more usage of Arabic at home is associated with a higher level of children’s commitment to their religion and less usage of Arabic at home is associated with a lower level of children’s commitment to Islam” (104).

  As ‘Abdo A. Elkholy has stated in The Arab Moslems in the United States, “The Arabic language is an inseparable part of Islam” (qtd. in Turner Medhi 109). The loss of Arabic leads to the loss of Islam. Arabic-speaking Muslims have quite a challenge in front of them if they wish to preserve their language, culture, and religion. As Beverlee Turner Mehdi has observed, Arabs are characterized by the fact that “they have so easily assimilated” into American and Western culture (VIII).

• 42. Editor’s Note: We have discussed the antagonist attitude of the French government towards Muslims in our article “The Future of the French Language in Light of French Anti-Islamism.”
• 43. Editor’s Note: This would include the Fourteen Infallibles, the Prophet Muhammad, his daughter Fatimah (d. 631-32) and the Twelve Imams who spoke a special language all to their own. As Imam Khomeini pointed out, “The ma‘sumin…also have their own language, and we must examine the language of each of the other four groups [the philosophers, the mystics, the jurisprudents and the poets] to see which is the closest to the language of the ma‘sumin and also to that of the Qur’an” (416). Whether it is philosophy, mysticism, jurisprudence or poetry, in Islam, each specialized language must trace back to the Qur’an. As Nwyia explains,

  Si cela est vrai en art ou en philosophie, ce l’est encore plus en Islam, ou, précisément, la conscience religieuse ne prend naissance que pour autant qu’elle assimile un langage déterminé, celui-la même que lui fournit le Coran. En Islam, on le sait, tout part du Coran et tout doit ramener au Coran, et ce qui n’est pas tel est une nouveauté suspecte, sinon une infidélité inadmissible. C’est donc dans le Coran que prend naissance l’expérience mystique musulmane, et aussi technique qu’il soit ou qu’il le devienne, ce langage devra d’une manière ou d’une autre faire preuve de son origine coranique, sinon quant a sa forme, du moins dans son contenu (22).

  [If it is true in art or in philosophy, it is even more so in Islam where, precisely, religious consciousness only develops by assimilating a determined language, the very one provided by the Qur’an. In Islam, as we know, everything comes from the Qur’an and everything must trace back to the Qur’an; that which does not is a suspicious innovation if not an inacceptable expression of infidelity. It is in the Qur’an, then, that the Muslim mystical experience comes to life. Regardless of how technical it is or it becomes, this language must, in one way or another, demonstrate its Qur’anic origin, if not in its form, then in its content.]

  The Allah Lexicon, as a specialized language, traces back to the Qur’an in both content and form. As Stewart has noted, some of the paired phrases of cognate curses exhibit near-rhyme, an artistic speech which is common in the Qur’an (336).

• 44. Editor’s Note: The following dialogue between Fiddah and ‘Abdullah bin al-Mubarak is found in the following sources: al-Qushayri’s Risalah, Majlisi’s Bihar al-Anwar, and Ibn Shahrashub’s Manaqib al Abi Talib:

  I saw a woman passing through the desert who had fallen behind the caravan. I asked her:

  “Who are you and where are you from?” She said: “Say salam!...‘Soon shall ye know it’” (6:67). I learned that she expected me to say al-salamu ‘alaykum prior to asking questions. I did as she reminded and inquired why she was in this desert. She answered: “And such as Allah doth guide there can be none to lead astray” (39:37). I gathered that she had been left behind and was restless, so I asked again: “Are you a human being or jinn?” She replied: “O Children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer” (7:31). I discovered that she was a human being, so I continued my enquiry, “Where are you coming from?” She said: “They are being called from a place far distant” (41:44). I found out that she was coming from a place far off and inquired her destination. She immediately responded: “Pilgrimage thereto is a duty men owe to Allah” (3:97). I realized that she was performing the Pilgrimage and asked her how many days she had been travelling? She told me: “We created the heavens and the earth and all between them in six days” (7:54; 50:38). I concluded that it had been six days. I offered her food and water if she was so inclined. She politely indicated: “Nor did We give them bodies that ate no food, nor were they exempt from death” (21:8). She accepted my refreshment. Then to catch the caravan, I suggested to her that she make haste. She reminded me again: “On no soul doth Allah place a burden greater than it can bear” (2:286). I told her that if she could not do so that she could ride on the back of my camel behind me. She recited another Qur’anic Verse: “If there were, in the heavens and the earth, other gods besides Allah, there would have been confusion in both” (21:22). It was a pious reminder that unmarried men and women were forbidden from riding together on the same animal. [Qashiri says that he got down and requested her to ride the camel.] She occupied the seat and recited: “Glory be to Him who has subjected these [animals] to our (use)” (43:13). She thanked Allah who brought the animal under her control. When we reached the caravan, I asked her: “Do you know any one among them?” She recounted: “O Dawud! We did indeed make thee a vicegerent on earth” (38:26); “And Muhammad is no more than a Messenger” (3:144); “O Yahya! Take hold of the Book with might!” (19:12); “O Musa! Verily I am Allah, Exalted in Might, the Wise!” (27:9). I understood that Dawud, Muhammad, Yahya and Musa were the names of her sons. When the boys appeared, I asked her who they were. She said in her habitual manner: “Wealth and sons are allurements of the life of this world” (18:46). I recognized them as her sons. The woman looked at her sons with the feeling of contentment and uttered “O my father! Engage him on wages: truly the best of men for thee to employ is the one who is strong and trustworthy” (28:26). With these words from the Qur’an, she informed her sons that “This man offered me a help, so verily, ‘Allah giveth manifold increase to whom He pleaseth’” (2:261). The sons grasped their mother’s indications, and so they paid me twice as much as I ought to have been paid. To satisfy my curiosity I asked the sons: “Who is this honorable Lady that speaks nothing but the Qur’an?” They responded that she was their mother, the housemaid of Hadrat Fatimah al-Zahra’, the daughter of the Holy Prophet and the Wife of Amir al-Mu’minin. She was raised under the shade of supreme knowledge and piety of the daughter of the Prophet. For the past twenty years, she has spoken nothing but the Qur’an in her daily conversations.

• 45. Editor’s Note: For more on language as it relates to foreign policy, see our following articles: “Amoo Sam beh madreseh miravad: Defense Language Institute Program as an Indicator of U.S Foreign Policy;” “El idioma árabe en camino de convertirse en un arma contra el Islam”, and “La enseñanza de idiomas y la política exterior.”
• 46. Editor’s Note: The last Moriscos disappeared from Spain in the 1800s. Unlike their cousins of the Jewish faith who have been persecuted since ancient times, Muslims have not developed the same resilience and skills required to survive in times of genocide.
• 47. Editor’s Note: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938), the Turkish soldier and statesman, was the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. He contributed to the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and abolished the Caliphate in 1924. As a result, Islam ceased to be a political force in the world. He closed theological schools and replaced the shari‘ah with a law code based on the Swiss legal code, the German penal code, and the Italian commerce code. He outlawed traditional Islamic headdress for men and insisted that all Turks wear European style hats, executing hundreds of pious Muslims to make the point. He banned the hijab and encouraged women to wear western dress and enter the work force.

  In 1928, in an effort to distance the people from the Qur’an, the government decreed that the Arabic script was to be replaced by a modified Latin alphabet. All citizens from six to 40 years of age were obliged to attend school to learn the new alphabet. The Turkish language was “purified” by the removal of Arabic and Persian words and replaced by new Turkish ones. He even obliged the muezzins to make the call to prayer in Turkish as opposed to Arabic. Mustafa Kemal opened art schools so that boys and girls could engage in the visual representation of human forms, which had been banned during Ottoman times. Atatürk, who was most fond of the national liquor, rakı, and consumed vast quantities of it, legalized alcohol which is strictly forbidden in Islam. In 1934, he required all Turks to adopt western style surnames. Ironically, after waging war against the Turkish culture and religion, he adopted the name Kemal Atatürk meaning “father of the Turks.” He died in 1938 of cirrhosis of the liver, the result of years of excessive drinking. He left Turkey with a divided identity, trapped between East and West, Europeanized but not quite European, alienated from the Islamic world but still a Muslim country.

• 48. Editor’s Note: The attempt to purify the Persian language of Arabic loan-words and replace the Arabic-based Persian alphabet with the Latin one was part of the Shah’s “white revolution.” The Shah may have been inspired by earlier efforts by Ahmad Kasravi, a Persian historian who lived between 1888 and 1945. In a series of polemical works, including Sufigari and Shiagari, he attacked both Sufism and Shi‘ism, accusing them of being sources of superstition and backwardness. He also attempted to promote a “Pure Persian”, replacing words of Arabic origin with others he invented (Mutahhari, Tabataba’i, and Khumayni 192). Despite being a good writer, Kasravi became arrogant and went to the extreme of calling himself a prophet (184) and attempting to spread a pseudo-religion called Pak-Din, the Pure Religion (192). He was assassinated by Navvab Safavi, founder of Fidayan Islam, an organization which sought to establish an Islamic political constitution in Iran (192). Like the Shah of Iran, Spanish royalty also attempted to replace Arabic loan words with Latin ones. Despite such efforts, thousands of Arabic words remain in the Spanish language, representing 8% of its lexicon.
• 49. Editor’s Note: Surprisingly, this seems to have escaped Ayatullah Mutahhari, who when confronted with the proposal to change the Persian script to the Latin one, claimed that Islam does not have one alphabet in particular and that “A los ojos del Islam, que es una religión universal, todos los alfabetos son iguales” (76) [In the eyes of Islam, a universal religion, all alphabets are equal]. He did, however, express some concern as to the effect the change in script might have on Muslim society and whether it would result in cultural alienation, considering that Persian scientific and Islamic literature has used an Arabic-based alphabet for 14 centuries (76-77). He also called for an investigation into who was behind the proposal and how it would be implemented, indicating that he may have harbored some suspicions regarding the matter.
• 50. Editor’s Note: As Ferguson has observed, “the profusion of thank yous, good wishes, and the like of Arabic society is being reduced to the models of French and English usage” (68). In many large Arabic cities, the greeting al-salamu ‘alaykum, the very symbol of Islam, is sometimes viewed with contempt and its speaker dismissed as an arubi, a backwards peasant, by “sophisticated” Westernized Arabs who employ “Allo”, “Bonjour”, “Hi”, and “Hello.”