Talk:List of Islamic terms in Arabic

Contents

1 Reasons we need this page 2 "Romanized" text 3 Format 4 Injil 5 Move to Wiktionary - what do people think? 6 Khalifa and Khilafa

Reasons we need this page

We need this glossary for several reasons:

• variant spellings of these terms are showing up in many articles - including some like "Moslem" which are actually considered 'colonialist' or 'too English' by some Muslims. We should do what we can to discourage use of these terms in new writing.
• all of those variant spellings can be redir'd here pending real articles, without forcing massive cleanup and addition of links to the originals later on when the articles exist - and without turning wikipedia into an Arabic to English dictionary as trivial terms (not those here which are non-trivial), or worse variant spellings, get their own entries.
• Some concepts might be properly explained by their one-liners here, and might not need their own article (in which case the word itself can be underlined or bolded not linked)
• the majority view in Islam is that the Qur'an itself cannot be translated out of Arabic, therefore the Arabic word is the proper referent to the concept even in English, if it originates in the Qur'an. The hadith are different, although they were spoken in Arabic, they are seen as legitimate translated - so words derived from these don't have this particular problem.
• article authors on Islam and Arab culture need a good list of things they should link to, and be relatively sure there are not OTHER things they have to link to, except proper names and events.
• no one article has the scope to define all these terms, but reading through them all with one-line definitions has definite utility especially for beginners
• it's one of the few things we can say about Islam without getting into NPOV issues and edit wars
• cultural misunderstanding of what 'political Islam' really is, abounds, and a list of terms with one-liner meanings helps show how Muslims have divided up the responsibility of different groups in society, e.g. ulema vs. ummah.
• there are classical, traditional, modern, and non-Muslim meanings for these concepts, e.g. 'sharia' means something different to Christians implementing an amputation sentence to pacify local clerics, than it does to an Islamic scholar - BUT one-line definitions can actually be non-controversial and thus NPOV, leaving the messy distinctions between multiple views of it to the articles.
• few people will actually read all the linked articles in depth, but having a sense of the entire scope of these concepts will help them acquire confidence that they understand at least generally what the concepts mean.
• in case no one has noticed, there's a little misunderstanding between the secular West and Islamic Mid-East right now. Aggravated by stupidity and ignorance.

Hm. You might want to check out http://wiktionary.org if you want to expand on this. I would not support the creation of articles on individual words here in the encyclopedia (encyclopedia articles are not about the words themselves but the person, place or thing that the words represent). --mav

Looking at articles like jihad, fatwa, caliph, I think that these are more than dictionary entries. -- JeLuF

Yes, clearly, and all the ones listed so far have some important meaning in Islamic civilization that cannot be understood by reading a dictionary type translation.

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Some terms have historically been used to mean more than their dictionary definitions in Arabic, e.g. haram which means 'forbidden' but has been used historically to mean watershed protection zones. Both the dictionary meaning and its application in Islamic civilization should be stated in the one-line definition. Also be as specific and as detailed as possible, sira and hadith are different (in combination they are the sunnah although we usually know the sira through the hadith), but isnad and isnah are not really comprehensible separately, and so they are redirects to the same page.

A few bursts of solid effort should finish this page in the near future and put at least stubs under every term. If it takes more than a paragraph to explain to a Kafir, then it should be an article of its own. Also the articles on Islam and Muslim should make more liberal use of the terms listed here, rather than making over-generalizations of what Islam is from the perspective of non-Muslims.

"Finish" this page? I dont' see this page being something that can ever be "finish"ed.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 19:04, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

"Romanized" text

The title of this page suggests to me that I can find a cross-reference from romanized 'arabic' to actual arabic script at this wiki. At present, I can't! Perhaps someone with better arabic than myself would like to type out the arabic forms of the various words on this wiki? If not, I suppose I can try to do it. - prat

A lot of the terms are written in Arabic script as well, if you follow each link. There is something to be said for having them all on one page, so I've started to insert them here. I'll probably finish that up tomorrow, along with the reformatting per iFaqeer's suggestion below. --Skoosh 05:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC).

I'd suggest formatting it as Definition list and have done so up to the letter "H". --S.K. 10:08, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Hey! Good work! The kind of grunt stuff that isn't spectacular, but makes Wikipedia more useful. Thanks ever so much. Zora 10:13, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Format

Shouldn't we format this page like this:

adab

• describes one's behaviour. For example, following the hadith rules is good adab.

—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 19:04, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Injil

Well, Zora, that is not totaly correct, we say that the injil given to Isa (pbuh) is lost, the four gospels are merly a "history of Isa" att best, not the gospel given to Isa (pbuh).

--Striver 22:10, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, that fits with other things I've seen. I should have done more research. Fixed, I hope. Zora 22:57, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for your efforts, blessings :)

--Striver 11:26, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Move to Wiktionary - what do people think?

A notice has been slapped on this article, suggesting that further items should not be added and that the whole thing hssould be moved to Wiktionary. I only came across this article by chance, and I'm not an expert on islamic matters, but this notice seemed inappropriate to me, given in particular earlier comments on this talk page. What do others think? rossb 06:21, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

After reading the "what wikipedia is not" I think I better understand. I saw List_of_glossaries and that leads me to believe this is just a glossary. You will find glossaries named like, "List of terms associated with diabetes", "Cricket terminology", "Poker jargon, or, "Glossary of the Third Reich". Therefore we have seen that we are allowed glossaries and that glossaries can be named in many different ways. If you want to change the page name that is fine... but the content it completely legitimate. I think the complaint is for each individual entry really and not this glossary in general... so I think you can safely remove it... gren 07:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

I should think that this list would be useful to some users. If the other lists mentioned by Grenavitar have been allowed, so should this be allowed. Let's removed the notice. Zora 07:20, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I hadn't seen this discussion, and as I put up the notice, I think I should comment (so I do't get reverted, again). First, please read the notice. There's some stigma attached to the phrase "move to Wiktionary" when there doesn't need to be. This article is in no danger right now, and there is no need to fear for it just because of the notice. The notice I put up is a request for you knowledgeable users to also add these definitions to Wiktionary, which needs them. And btw, most of those glossaries haven't been "allowed", it's just that no one has been willing to take the time to deal with them. But that's not what I care about now, just that the definitions here are put on Wiktionary too. --Dmcdevit 21:34, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wanting to get most stuff into Wiktionary is great. But this notice opens with "Please do not add any further dictionary definitions to this list. Wikipedia is not a dictionary." Not very helpful, and liable to discourage people from editing this. - Mustafaa 22:11, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I admit the standard template doesn't apply in all cases, but Be Bold and customize as necessary. --Dmcdevit 22:21, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Khalifa and Khilafa

So I believe (based on Wehr-Cowan and Mustafaa's testimony on the history page) that khilafa means "stewardship" in Arabic, and khalifa means "steward" or "caliph". However, the Khalifa article is about the abstract concept of stewardship. So is this just a longstanding misspelling? Or is this concept represented by the word khalifa in other, non-Arabic languages such as Farsi or Urdu (or maybe even a local Arabic vernacular)? Because if khalifa is the correct word for "Islamic stewardship" in some other language, then a) the article should not be moved, and b) that fact should be noted in that article, and perhaps here as well. Any thoughts? --Skoosh 02:40, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)