Islamic Terms and Brief Notes on Writing and Publishing About Islam

A Dictionary of Islamic Terms and Brief Notes on Writing and Publishing about Islam Contents Introduction—2 Arabic Transliteration—2 Urdu/Persian Transliteration—6 Titles and Homage for Prominent Persons—6 References—7 English Style—8 Abbreviations—8 Numbers—9 Layout—9 Compound Words—12 Dictionary—English—13 Dictionary—Arabic/Urdu to English—26 References—38 A work in progress 2 August 2011 Revision Send your comments and suggestions to [email protected]. Syed Sajid Ahmad 1 Which standard should we follow? We can choose any one and stick with it. But, our basic book, which 0. Introduction every one of us reads, is the Holy Qur’ān. Why not follow the system already used for the Holy Qur’ān? I With the advent of home computer, and looked at all the English translations published by the consequentially that of “home publishing,” there has Ahmadiyyah Community and found that they all been a marked increase in publication of books on follow mainly the same transliteration system. This Islam by amateurs. The tasks which were should make us feel better. We should just follow the accomplished by trained and experienced typesetters, system used in our translations of the Holy Qur’ān. kātibs, and proof readers are now in the hands of you and I who are trying to figure out how to do this and If we want to establish a different system than that that. This has given rise to non-uniformities especially then we will have to go back and redo the translations in transliteration. Mostly we do things by intuition of the Holy Qur’ān. and lose sight of the principles of putting books Whatever system is used, it still needs to be together developed painstakingly by professional clarified to the reader. As an example, oo is publishers thus causing mostly confusion and pronounced differently in cook, in cool, in sometimes chaos in conveying our ideas meticulously: cooperation, and in poor. That makes four different the idea is conveyed but not very precisely and ways to pronounce for supposedly one syllable. professionally. Additionally, most of these writers are Therefore, it is beneficent to the reader and the writer full-time workers and publishing is either a hobby or to use a more commonly known and used system of necessity imposed by need and therefore they do not transliteration for a particular language. have enough time to research each aspect of writing. Revelation Rationality Knowledge and Truth, I have put together some of the aspects of written by our Khalifatul-Masih IV, rahimahullah, compiling an article, a publication or even a book. I also follows this system. I have found this system to am confident that this treatise will help clarify many be more widely used in literature than any other. basic aspects of such chores and will produce well written and well laid out publications about Islām. The Royal Society system is the most common system used in the Jamā‘at, by other Muslims, and by the rest of the world. The rest of the systems have 1. Arabic Transliteration their peculiar problems and thus have not been able to attain popularity in common literature. To make All Arabic letters and sounds do not have their things simple for the new members and for the young exact equivalents in English. Therefore, it becomes generation, it would be prudent to stick with the necessary to transliterate Arabic words and system used in our translations of the Qur’ān and expressions into English. most of our literature than to go back and to change One way to transliterate is to use special characters all of them. to denote special Arabic sounds to distinguish them There is one difficulty with the RAS system. It uses from equivalent English sounds and to denote sounds some dots and dashes on letters. My opinion is that that do not exist in English. we use the dots and dashes when available otherwise There do exist some standards which are followed we use the same letters without additional dots and by a large majority of writers. Many writers do not dashes. Or, alternately, we can underline the consult the standards—or do not comprehend them particular letters. properly—and try to establish their own rules. The one way we can simplify our problem is that we select Special Symbols: a standard and follow it. If we do not follow a Where to find them/How to type them standard then we always will be inventing a new set of rules for any new book we write. We should also note In most word processing applications, many of that mostly we do not even include the rules in our these letters with dots and dashes can be accessed by books making things even more complicated for our choosing symbol option from insert or edit menu, or readers. from the toolbar, wherever available. You may have to 2 scroll down the table or you may have to choose a font When Writing Arabic in English, Watch for which carries the symbols you are looking for—such as the font MS Reference, which comes both in serif Qamari and Shamsi Letters and non-serif, or Times Roman Special G2— We can write Arabic in English as it is written in depending on your application. You can also use the Arabic or as it is spoken in Arabic. If we want to write in it as how it will be read (ﺍﻝ) –application Character Map which comes with a formation with al Microsoft Windows, and usually can be found in the then we need to know that when al- precedes a will be (ﻝ) Accessories folder under Programs in the Start menu. Qamarī letter, it will stay as it is and the l An additional source of these characters is the pronounced but when al- precedes a Shamsī letter, will be dropped and will be replaced by the (ﻝ) Thames font, which comes with the application al- the l Kātib. Shamsī letter. When typing -i- the application under the Half of the Arabic alphabet consists of Qamarī influence of auto-correct makes it -I-. Selecting I and letters: retyping it as i will tell the auto-correct function of the ء ﺏ ﺝ ﺡ ﺥ ﻉ ﻍ ﻑ ﻕ ﻙ ﻡ ﻩ ﻭ ﻱ software that you really mean to type i and that you are not typing i in place of I by mistake, and it will hamza (alif), bā, jīm, ḥā, khā, ‘ain, ghain, fā, qāf, keep it as i. You can also go into Options and change kāf, mīm, hā, yā. auto-correct settings so that i does not change to I The other half are Shamsī letters. automatically. ﺕ ﺙ ﺩ ﺫ ﺭ ﺯ ﺱ ﺵ ﺹ ﺽ ﻁ ﻅ ﻝ ﻥ The computer typewriter has only one key to enter a beginning quote, an ending quote or an apostrophe. tā, thā, dāl, dhāl, rā, zā, sīn, shīn, ṣād, ḍād, ṭā, ẓā, When the curly quotes are turned off, an apostrophe lām, nūn. wāu. always appears as a neutral quote as ' which can be ﺍﻟﺤﻤﺪ ḥā being a Qamarī Ḥarf (letter), al-Ḥamd ﺡ ,used as a single beginning quote, a single ending So ẓā being a Shamsī Ḥarf, al-Ẓuhr ﻅ quote or as an apostrophe; but when the curly quotes will stay as it is but will be read as aẓ-Ẓuhr. Also note that, to signify ﺍ ﻟ ﻈ ﻬ ﺮ are tuned on and they are operative in a document, an apostrophe at the beginning of a word automatically that aẓ-Ẓuhr contains two words al and Ẓuhr, we use a changes to a beginning single quote. At the end of a dash to separate them and we do not write it without word, it changes into a closing single quote. When an a dash as aẓẓuhr. (ﺍﻝ) -apostrophe' is typed within a word, it changes into an Some examples of Qamarī letters with al ending single quote. This scheme works fines if we before them are given in Table 1. want to enter curly beginning or ending single quotes (ﺍﻝ) -or if we want to type an apostrophe. Some examples of Shamsī letters with al before them are given in Table 2. Now consider our symbols for hamza and ‘ain. The symbol for hamza is an ending single quote and the Note that Baitul- is written rather than Bait-ul. symbol for an ‘ain is a beginning single quote, The reason is that some may read Bait-ul wrongly as therefore, the symbol for hamza works fine when it is Bait ul rather than correctly as Bai tul. Same goes for in a word it is at the end of a word, and it does not ‘Abdul-. If written ‘Abd-ul-, some may read it as ‘Abd when it is at the beginning of a word, and vice versa ul rather than ‘Ab dul. Writing this way should not be for the symbol for an ‘ain. This situation can be strange as we always write Anṣārullāh rather than remedied by either using Insert Symbols sequence or Anṣār-ullāh. Some yet write AnṣārUllāh or Anṣār- using character map to display symbols in the font we Ullāh or Anṣār Ullāh, which does not make sense. If are using and then choosing the right symbol for our they want to make sure that Allah is capitalized, then use or by tricking the software to our advantage in the they can always write Anṣār Allāh. Then again some following way: write Anṣāru Allāh, where u, in this form and style, is unnecessary.

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