InfinityMan, I just read on my Facebook that if someone is an Arabic-speaking Christian, they worship Allah, because Allah means God in Arabic. Just as an American Christian worships “God,” a Spanish Christian worships “Dios” and a French Christian worships “Dieu.” Is this correct?
“I took BeeDAre as saying school officials thought residents’ overwrought fears of ISIS would lead the residents to violence.”
The emails contained direct threats to harm the teacher and administration over the assignment because she used the Shahada for the assignment. They were from haters of Islam.
OK. Everyone here agrees that the assignment was a bad one. It was lazy and ill-chosen.
But my goodness, the parents who sent these messages are blithering idiots. If learning about a religion in school was the same as converting someone to that religion, there would be no Jews or atheists left in the United States. We’d all have been turned to Christians.
Cardinal Fang, wouldn’t the Christian God amd the Muslim Allah be the same God anyway, by a different name? Muslims are “people of the book”. Just as Christians believe God is the same deity as the God of Israel / Old Testamemt, but with a greater revealed truth (just explaining, not making a comment about Judaism), so the Muslims believe their God is likewise the same deity but with the corrections amd further revealed truth of Mohammed. Is that not correct?
That’s disputed. It depends on what you mean by “same God.” Muslims don’t believe that Jesus is God, and Christians do, for example.
I’m interested in a simpler question: when someone goes to an Arabic Christian church, are they praying to “Allah”? The Facebook post says that the guy grew up in Aleppo (which is in Syria), was an Armenian Catholic, and worshipped “Allah.”
Yes, that would be correct CF. Christians who speak Arabic refer to the Christian God as Allah because that is literally “God” in Arabic.
Whether or not they are worshiping the “same” God depends on who you ask.
I’m hoping that InfinityMan will respond, because he speaks Arabic.
@“Cardinal Fang” Yes, it is. “Illah” means God. When you add the letters “Al” to a noun in Arabic, it translates to “The(noun)”. For instance, AlCardinal Fang, means The Cardinal fang. So Allah is “Illah” with “Al” added to it (you omit some letters because of a grammatical rule). Christians in the Arab world use the word Allah just as much as the Muslims, because it basically means “God” or “The God”. To be honest, nobody even thinks of it in the way I explained it, they just use it as they use every word.
So long story short, yes, Christians use the word Allah to reference God in Arabic.
@hayden You are basically correct.
When I worked at an ELL school (English Language Learners) in Lansing, we served almost exclusively refugees. The three main languages spoken in my school were Arabic (that’s how I learned there were many different dialects of Arabic!), Burmese, and Spanish. I remember one day there were two students (I worked in a first grade classroom) who were both from Egypt. One was a Christian and one was a Muslim. They both used the term “Allah” which is when I first figured out that “Allah” meant God.
It was a wonderful classroom to work in. No one freaked out because the others were from a different religion or place. As long as they all had a juicebox and a cookie, all was right with the world.
I wish kids ran the world.
Great info, romani. I had forgotten that you are from Michigan, where there are many Arabic speakers.
Yup. I grew up near and now live near Dearborn, which I believe still has the largest Arab population (per capita? I’m not sure…) in the US. Arabic is the third most commonly spoken language in Michigan (only state where that is the case) and may be the second most commonly spoken language in metro Detroit.
Unfortunately, that means I saw a lot of the violence directed at Muslims (and non-Muslim Arabs) post-9/11 (and after many of the other issues). But on the upside, I am spoiled by really, really good middle eastern food. Mmm…
@romanigypsyeyes That’s true. There are many dialects of Arabic. There is the Egyptian version, the Khaliji version (the gulf states, who are further split apart by accents), the Shami version (Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Again, all with slight differences in accent), the Sudanese version, the non-Egyptian North African (Morocco , Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. The Tunisian and Algerian - and to an extent Moroccan - are heavily influenced by French. Their accents are French too), and the Iraqi version. There is also, of course, the formal version of Arabic (Fus’ha), which is the language used in formal documents, newspapers, the news casts, books, and the one found in the Qu’ran.
There are a few unique words, but we all understand each other! But you could tell exactly where a person is from from the way they speak 
That’s really interesting, @infinityman, thanks!
My kids tried to teach me some Arabic words (seemed only right since I was teaching them English!) and I remember that a few of them from different places had a giggle-debate (I don’t know how else to describe it) over the pronunciation of a few basic words. If I’m remembering correctly, it was some combination of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Somalian students in a 2 vs 1 discussion. I believe the boy from Somalia was the odd one out, but it’s been almost 5 years now.
@romanigypsyeyes lol Yeah the Somalis are different because they actually have a native language other than Arabic. Most of the Somalis I’ve met adopt the accent of the Arabic country they reside in as well as speak their language, so the wording does sound different at times. And the meaning of the words can differ too! For example “Dolab” means wardrobe or closet in most Arabic dialects, but for the Syrians it means wheels!
Let me tell you a story: “Khashum” in some countries means mouth , but for the Emiratis (people from the UAE) it means nose (in formal Arabic, “Khiashim” - which is a version of the word - means gills, hence the ambiguity). Emirati men greet each other by rubbing noses (weird, I know lol), so when my friend in AbuDhabi told me they say hi by touching their Khashum’s together, my eyes bugged out. He then demonstrated to me, at which point I said : “But that’s not your mouth!”. Five minutes later, we’re all laughing real had on the differences within one language.
I don’t understand how copying out something in Caligraphy is part of a geography course. Was the idea to give the kids an idea of how Arabic is written? If so, they could have copied the Arabic alphabet, or if they wanted it to be text, it could have been a piece of writing in Arabic, a poem or something…but I don’t know what that has to do with geography, and it would be dubious in a world history course as well.
I think it is great that kids be exposed to other languages, showing them for example Chinese and Japanese and Korean characters, or persian characters, or Cyrillic, but I don’t understand the purpose of this exercise. While I think the parents were a bit over the top, and I don’t understand why the school was closed, it also was a bit stupid IMO to pick a statement of faith as something to be copied, especially given the kind of controversy we (sadly) are having with Islam. I would be upset personally if they have the kid copying a Hebrew declaration of faith, or a Christian one in Greek,not just Islam, given that if you want to teach those languages, or at least give them exposure, there are a ton of writings not in a religious writing that could be used. In some ways you can argue that writing in this context is simply writing, but I don’t know if I buy that. I have heard people make the argument that instrumental music that is religious is forcing religion, but the key thing there is music truly stands on its own, it is not religious in of itself, it is the words that are religious in nature. Handel’s messiah can be played at a pure instrumental piece, and it is no different then a piece that was written for secular reasons, it is the words that have the meaning. I had an argument like that, and someone told me that for example, the Halelujah chorus in the Messiah was ‘clearly religious’ (the music), and I asked them supposed someone heard the piece without ever experiencing the words before hearing, would it then be religious in their context or simply a piece of music?
…BUT, I do live in N. Va. We really should secede.
@VaBluebird You may want to think twice about secession. Virginia would be on the losing end of the Federal cash cow.