By way of rebuttal, some may point to the pervasiveness of the slacker term whatever. This interjection, which even Bob Dole and John McCain have used, is not the same thing at all— it drips with impatience, irony, dismissiveness, disdain. Inshallah is something else— resigned, accepting, neutral, passive. It is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is the opposite of can-do.

[…]

For better or worse, philosophical acceptance has rarely been America’s default frame of mind.

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.”