Tip of the Week: Editing Islam (Chapter 2)

As-salamu alaykum! Welcome to EDITING ISLAM Chapter 2.

THIS traditional Muslim greeting means “Peace be with you.” The appropriate response is Wa alaikum assalaam  (“and upon you be peace”). Interestingly, this is very similar to the Hebrew greeting Shalom aleikhem  (“peace be upon you”) and response Aleikhem shalom (“upon you be peace”).

BECAUSE these Islamic greetings are phonetic translations of Arabic into English, any phonetic spelling may be correct. No definitive English spelling has been agreed upon. These words are not in the AP Stylebook. Google them and you will see many spellings, as with other Arabic words. The best thing to do is find out the spelling used by the publication for which you are working. In your own writing, you can use any spelling, just be consistent.

In Editing Islam Chapter 1, I threw out a teaser question: Do Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Jesus? Answer: Yes they do.

Here I will quote from Reza Aslan’s wonderful book No god but God:

“From the beginning of his ministry, Muhammad revered Jesus as the greatest of God’s messengers. Much of the Gospel narrative is recounted in the Quran. … including Jesus’ virgin birth (3:47) … .”

This goes back to Chapter 1—Muslims believe in the same God as Jews and Christians. According to Islamic teaching, Muhammad considered Jews and Christians to be “People of the Book” (abl al-Kitab). Each group had its own holy book: Jews the Torah, Christians the Bible, and Muslims the Quran. Each holy book built upon the teachings of the book before it.

 

Interesting, but what does this all mean for editors?

Last week, we discussed the word Allah. Here is the AP Stylebook’s definition:  “Allah. The Arabic word for God. The word God should be used, unless the Arabic name is used in a quote written or spoken in English.”

Thus, anyone Editing Islam should use the term God, not Allah, unless it is in a quote. The discussion above supports this usage. Luckily, the people writing the AP Stylebook understood enough about Islam to prefer the term God.

Teaser for Chapter 3: Why do depictions of the Prophet Muhammad–even if they are nice ones–make some Muslims so mad?  

Editor’s Editorial: Does God Cry?

This cartoon is called “Muhammad overwhelmed by Fundamentalism.” Muslims include the phrase “peace be upon him” when they refer to the Prophet. I doubt peace is upon him today. Is he really feeling the peace and love when journalists are murdered, when ISIS cuts off heads, when women are stoned to death, when young people are turned into bombs? No, Muhammad weeps. There can be no peace upon him.

Do all of our prophets cry when they see us perverting their messages to justify violence? If they are still watching (and have not otherwise reincarnated or exited the scene in some other way), then I think that they do cry.

Does God cry? When Christian fundamentalists hold signs that say, “God hates Fags,” does God not cry? When the Inquisition burned hundreds of thousands of women as “witches,” did the Goddess Herself cry not out in pain? During the Holocaust, did YHVH, the Hebrew name for god, not twist and turn on his pillow at night, unable to stop the suffering?

The Creator gave us the gift of free will. Does the Creator cry when we use it to hurt and kill?

The Sufi poet Rumi calls God “the Beloved.” His poems say that Allah is the Innkeeper at a Tavern where the wine never runs dry. We worship God for many reasons: because our parents did, to make a point, out of fear of death, to justify our own actions.

But do we LOVE God? No, I don’t think so, not today.