Is it offensive to say inshallah?

[Loulou599]

I think it's a really beautiful sound and is more wistful than saying touch wood or god willing, but would it be offensive (if you're not muslim)?

Yeah we’re saying the same thing, that’s cool we just misunderstood each other

What is it with all the angst and tying yourself up in knots. Muslims would not mind non Muslims using this. Find me a Muslim who would mind.

Different arabic and pronunciation in different areas

Also different area slightly different islam basically

Ok, I’ll try to be precise…
(watch for capital letters here)
’lah’ means god or deity - any god or deity, not any implication of monotheism.
’Al-lah’ means literally The god. The closest English translation for that is God (capital G), is wholly associated with the one-ness of God, and is an expression of monotheism. Arabic speaking Christians, Jews and Muslims all refer to the one God using the term ‘Allah’.

The Arabic language is wonderfully complex, with layers of meaning and linked concepts because of the way it is constructed, and Islamic theology is expressed in Arabic in ways that just don’t translate easily into English. Al-lah doesn’t just mean ‘God’ or ‘The God’, it also means something like ‘the source of God-ness’ and also ‘the One (True) God’.

It's Arabic and means 'God/Allah willing" so just be aware of what you're saying.

I live in a town with loads of Moslems who seem to think it amusing that a non- moslem says that. They're also a bit surprised but in a good way.

Go for it!

Not at all offensive. I’ve worked in countries around the world including MENA and it’s a well worn and popular phrase used by people of many different nationalities, religions, and even non religious without causing any offense. Inshallah is a good word, like schadenfreude, and unique and useful and nice to say.

I’m Muslim and I don’t have an issue with non-Muslims using the word inshAllah or Allah, if the intention is right i.e not taking the piss.

I don’t think you necessarily need to be a Muslim to feel the power of the word.

As pp said, Arab Christians say Allah too as it means God.

Whilst I love the word schadenfreude, it’s a very different word to inshAllah ☺️

Indeed! I mean both are good words, unique too. But yes, in very different ways 😊

There's a lot of different dialects and sounds to Arabic - people in the UAE speak a different kind of Arabic to those in Kuwait , or Syrian or Lebanon. Lebanese Arabic is very soft and sing songy, whereas Khaleeji is very guttural. Egyptian and Jordanian are also very different as well. I worked with ladies from all different parts of the the Arab world (and different religions), and they all sounded very very different.

Absolutely not!!

Yes, I'd find it a bit bizarre if a non-muslim said it to me.

We have our own British words and sayings, we don't need to be speaking Arabic.

What the fuck. Are you Nigel Farage? I speak 5 languages, by your logic I shouldn’t have learned them 🙄

Do you also feel the same about French, Spanish etc?

No, I don't want it to be said in the same way people say, Jesus Christ! Without any care to what they are actually saying.

I particularly dislike the habit that some people have of saying "Jesus wept" - so they can smugly 'inform' you that they are not actually blaspheming, but are just 'quoting the Bible' - when it's clearly not in any context of John 11 in the slightest.

Hasn’t the pope said it’s the same God? And surely the same name, which literally means the God denotes they are the same?

The pope speaks for Catholicism, but he isn't the accepted authority on all matters to do with Christianity by a very, very great number of Christians.

The bible was comprised hundreds of years after jesus’s death through much oral history,

Have you told the Jewish people that their Torah is significantly under 2,000 years old? You may just find that they very strongly disagree.

So they think it's a different god? A different Moses? A different Abraham? A different Noah? A lot of coincidences there.

Yet the starkest difference - the most basic Christian belief that the Christian God sent Jesus His Son and the Muslim belief that Allah has begotten none - can be brushed away as irrelevant, just because they reference some of the same historical characters?

Would you say that, if Mary Beard wrote a book about the Romans, that must necessarily mean she was publishing a work of solid fundamentalist Christian literature, on the grounds that the Bible also speaks of the Romans in a historical context?

It makes it clears in the Bible that 'God' isn't the actual name of God. It's used more as a title, which isn't as clear when translated into other languages. Just because Christians usually refer to Him as 'God' doesn't mean that people of other faiths who refer to 'God' - in any language - are necessarily referencing the same deity.

If a MNer uses the phrase 'my husband', nobody reading it automatically assumes that she must be referring to their husband, just because they also happen to refer to their own spouse as 'my husband'.

@ForfarBridie I’d love to know where in the Middle East you are. I’ve also lived here for decades and find insha’Allah to be very widely used, and significantly more casually than you reference (quite often with humour) by locals. I’m amazed you can go days without hearing it (but also recognize MENA is huge and diverse, and cultural and religious touchpoints differ enormously).

I've a muslim friend who says it to me sometimes. I don't think I'd dream of saying it back, because it seems a bit disingenuous as an atheist, to be honest. I don't think she'd be offended at all, but she may wonder why I'm saying it. I do use a very small amount of Urdu words that she has taught me so I can interact with her children better mind you.

You do you. But personally, I'd find it a bit odd yeah. Mind you, my OH said 'God help me' once, when he never uses 'god' in a sentence usually (not even 'oh my god, for gods sake' etc) so was highly unusual for him, and I asked him why he was saying that as a complete (albeit silent, nonbothersome) antitheist, and it's not part of his usual lingo - he didn't have a clue either. It was weird. Just as I suppose inshallah would be in the context you describe. Maybe it's myself and OH that are odd in that respect.

If a non-muslim, non arabic speaker said this to me, I'd genuinely be thinking 'er, what in the actual fuck are they on?'.

My mum and dad use inshallah a lot. They lived in Arab countries in their young adulthood. They are white westerners. Non religious.

Language isn't rigid. It adapts, absorbs, develops, takes on words from other languages.

English is peppered with words from other languages.

For example, shufty as in "Let's have a shufty." is of Arabic origin.

@jenpil
"Yes, I'd find it a bit bizarre if a non-muslim said it to me.

We have our own British words and sayings, we don't need to be speaking Arabic."

You clearly have no understanding of how language develops and changes.

The word 'bizarre' for example, is from Italian.

I’ve lived in an Arab country and I agree that the actual use of the phrase (outside of literature or poetry) is not wistful. My dad, on hearing it from an Arab colleague, would roll his eyes and know that the deadline was not going to be met, or the thing he asked for would be a long time coming. In the expat community we would use Arabic words and phrases sometimes, since we lived amongst native speakers, but we didn’t carry that on when we came home and out of that environment.

If you don’t live in - or have any family connections to - an Arabic-speaking country, it’s just going to be an affectation. Have you heard of the concept of Orientalism? There’s a whole history of the west appropriating things from the East because they’re ‘exotic’ and it’s never been a good look.

The bible was comprised hundreds of years after jesus’s death through much oral history,

Have you told the Jewish people that their Torah is significantly under 2,000 years old? You may just find that they very strongly disagree
i should’ve been more specific, I was referring to the gospels and what is refered to at the New Testament, although the books of the bible as we know it today were selected and put together into its canonical from much after Jesus’s death.

We have our own British words and sayings, we don't need to be speaking Arabic.

How's your... you know, what you do with generalising relationships between numbers by using symbols to represent them? Aargh! If only there were a "British" word for it. In Arabic, it's called algebra.

Who are the authorities to decide what is offensive or not? but it seem that if you use that word out of context is stupid more than anything else.

Nope!

Plenty of people get what OP is saying though.