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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.
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.
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
1994 in arabic numerals
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.
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.
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
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