Inshallah
November 10th, 2007 by WesWhen worlds collide, the sparks are sometimes linguistic. Not long ago, in a Q and A on the Web site of The New York Times, an Iraqi translator was asked to explain the points of difference he saw between his own people and the Americans he encountered in Iraq. He brought up the Arabic phrase “inshallah.” The Americans, he said, “have respect for time”; Iraqis, in contrast, “use the word inshallah, which means `if God wishes,’ to postpone things.”
It may be that this point of difference won’t be a distinction much longer. An American colonel in Iraq, writing to The Washington Post’s Thomas E. Ricks, recently observed: “The phrase ‘inshallah,’ or ‘God willing,’ has permeated all ranks of the Army. When you talk to U.S. soldiers about the possible success of ‘the surge,’ you’d be surprised how many responded with ‘inshallah.’” The phrase seems to have permeated all ranks of the diplomatic corps, too: Zalmay Khalilzad, when he was the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, once stated at a press conference, “Inshallah, Iraq will succeed.
– Cullen Murphy
January 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
He goes on to say:
While that may indeed be true on the surface, many Americans — and Westerners in general — are passive. However, not all of them are truly accepting, as they expect, hope, or believe, that others will take action. It could possibly be argued that, aside from strong personal belief systems, a person’s acceptance is related to their (perception of their?) ability to effect change.
Quiet acceptance of fate is integral to most Eastern religions and philosophies and, as Emerson argued, in Calvinism and other religions that accept predetermination or imply a God of action. The believer’s “God willing” is on par with the nonbeliever’s “if luck allows” and “que sera sera” (minus the Doris ‘do, of course).
Ironically, according to a 2004 post at Language Log, the very American “under God” originally meant “contingent on God’s will” or “God willing.”