Misleading Arabic words

We Lebanese are often a bit lost as to who we are. We are part of the Arab world and we speak Arabic. Many Lebanese see themselves as “Arabs,” while others do not, preferring instead to call themselves “Levantine,” “Mediterranean,” or, more theatrically, “Phoenician.” Identity is a deeply personal issue, but whichever way we cut it, we are seen, culturally, socially and linguistically, as part of the Arab world, whether they like it or not

Part of the reason that the liberal and cosmopolitan Lebanese feel frustrated by the sloppy western stereotypes daubed by the west across the canvas of the Arab world that fail to spot the differences between the various ethnicities – those from the Gulf, the Levant, the Maghrib and the Horn of Africa – often lumping us together as a bad lot.

This laziness extends to words. Next Sunday is Easter or Eid el Kbeer. Literally ‘the big holiday’ in the Christian calendar. Celebrating Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem; his last supper, his crucifixion and his resurrection really is the main event for Christians in the Near East. To the purists, it’s bigger than Christmas.

I mentioned this to a British friend.

But I thought Eid was a Muslim holiday. You know; the one that comes after Ramadan.

Not quite. Arabic speakers will tell you, Eid means simply festival, feast, holiday and even birthday. Apart from Easter, Fitr (Islam’s Eid el Kbeer) and Adha, there is Eid il Milad  (Christmas), Eid il Mawlid il Nabawi (the Prophet’s birthday), Eid Milad (your birthday) and dozens of Saints’ Days in between. Lebanese in Dubai will frequently hop on a plane and come home ‘lal Eid’, any Eid.

But yet it seems that the western media has pigeonholed “Eid” as lazy shorthand for the major Muslim holidays. I have seen several media outlets call Fitr “the Muslim festival of Eid”. “Festival of Festival?” What does that even mean?

And then we have Allah. In 2017, Luigi Brugnaro, the right-wing mayor of Venice, warned that anyone who yelled Allahu Akbar (“God is the great”), in St Mark’s Square, or presumably anywhere else in his city, would risk being shot dead by a police sniper.  

Yes, Allahu Akbar is the phrase most people associate with extremists but in and of itself it’s perfectly harmless and used to demonstrate amazement, which if we are being honest might happen after witnessing the beauty of St Mark’s Square.  There is also bismillah, “in the name of God” and mashallah “God has willed it.

Moving on. Some years ago, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, an Iraqi student from University of California, Berkley was unceremoniously booted off a Southwest Airlines plane in Los Angeles after a fellow passenger got spooked after hearing him speaking Arabic; in particular hearing him say Inshallah (literally, if God wills it) at end a phone call to his uncle!

Inshallah is more nuanced than people think. It can be used to say “I hope I get that job?” or sarcastically as in “I won’t hold my breath”.

We Wahyet Allah when we want you to believe we are being serious or telling the truth. We might exclaim Allah! when we see someone trip or lose their balance. My wife does this a lot. She or I might say Ya Allah out of exasperation, when our children don’t use the dishwasher. It might sound quite alarming, but it simply means, “Oh God”.

What people forget amid all the mistrust and ignorance is that Allah is not, as many believe, a Muslim god. Allah is Arabic for the monotheist God and is used by all Arabs, Muslim, Christian and even Jews.

Indeed if Senor Brugnaro were Lebanese, he might offer his devotions to Allah, or the lesser used Rubb. And while Arabic is the language in which Islam was revealed, the fact remains that Arabs, all Arabs, regularly use Arabic as the language as prayer invoke “Allah” as anyone else in the world might invoke God.

We have a long way to go.