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)?

Ok, well I'm not convinced. If anything I'd argue that globalisation means quite a lot of contact between different language groups and languages influencing each other.

Well good for English mainly. Rammstein got it in Amerika

Me too! They are both far more expressive than their English equivalents. I also like "habibti". A loose translation is "dear" but you sound like a knob when you call someone "dear" in English, unless you're writing a letter. Yet in Arabic it sounds so nice, and is also commonly used across many faiths and communities in the Middle East.

We use it, but then we lived for many years in Muslim countries where it was heard all the time.

If course there’s always the odd person gleefully pouncing on anything to be oh so virtuously offended by. But in this case I really doubt that any such person would be a Muslim.

Habibi is gloriously universal.
My dear
Darling
Love
Friend
Bro
Mate
You (if you don't know the person😂)

Yes!! @Normalsizedsalad

(Also loving your user name 😀)

Some of us Muslims who use it because we are religious actually learned quite a lesson when travelling/ working in the ME because we don't use it that way!
Will the sink be fixed by tomorrow.
InshaAllaah 🙈! Actually found it really annoying sort of making a mockery. If you have no intention to do something just be honest. As a Muslim you are supposed to be honest. That is life though, good and bad every where.

I was highly amused the first time I flew to Syria from the UAE and the pilot cheerfully announced ‘We will land in Damascus at 9.00, Inshallah’.

It felt deeply familiar, as it’s completely normal for my parents’ generation of Irish people to say ‘See you next week, please God’ in exactly the same fatalistic way.

Do you realise you already posted this comment in the thread back in 2023 @MorrisWallpaper but the first time the pilot’s Inshallah “gave you the rage”. Glad you’re more amused by it now that some more time has passed!

But it doesn’t mean anything like ‘touch wood’. You are literally saying something will take place if it is god’s will. Unless you are the type of fatalistic religious type who naturally lards her conversations with ‘God willing’, it would be deeply weird.
It’s also incredibly annoying and passive. My mother, like lots of elderly Irish women of her background, says ‘Please God’ every two minutes. ‘See you on Friday, please God’, ‘I’m meeting Chris later, please God’, ‘He’s starting a new job in New York, please God’. It drives me mad. Yes, I get it’s the defence mechanism of someone who has never seized control of her own life, but it is just so passive!
To the point where, once when I was flying somewhere in the ME and the pilot came on the PA and said ‘We’ll be landing in X in two hours, Inshallah’, it gave me the rage.

It was a word often used by hippy types in my youth-I've never heard of it being offensive, but I'm not a Muslim so I would be guided by those that are.

Incidentally, I am atheist and use "DV" and "your mouth to God's ear". But I am of Christian heritage.

This is how words get adopted and filter across cultures. Language is like a living organism that spreads.

We say goodbye (god be with you) even if we don't believe in God, Muslims Christians and all religions

I thought you were trying to say "insular" and couldn't pronounce the sibilant sound.😁

However, to your point, if you are very confident that your audience will understand the word and its context, I would not be too bothered.

I wouldn't use it myself, and some might say it's a bit of cultural appropriation, but we use "schlep", "Kosher".. etc....I would just be mindful of your audience.

It's Arabic, not Muslim.

I have always used it because it was used frequently in Kipling, which I loved growing up.

We lived in Muslim countries for many years, so having heard it so frequently I often say it. I doubt that any of the many Muslim students I taught would have found it offensive.

Too many people in the U.K. are endlessly looking for anything to be offended by, though. If anyone does find it offensive, I’d put money on it being a non-Muslim who imagines that it’s going to offend Muslims. Similar to those non-Muslim council officials some years ago who liked to think that the word ‘Christmas’ was offensive to other religions.

I would say “Lord willing” or “God willing”and when my mum talks about what she will do in the future she says “if the Lord spares me”.

When writing I would usually write “DV”.

It comes from James 4:13-15

”Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”

Yes - it would be weird. HTH.

I wouldn’t be find it offensive as long as you understand it means God willing. 🧕🏽here.

I’ve heard secular people including Arabs use Inshallah along similar lines to the Spanish phase ‘Manana’ - perhaps sometime in the indefinite future but it’s out of my hands.
Often with humour but a seed of truth about not wanting to take personal responsibility for whether or not the thing actually happens.
Interesting how such terms evolve and are used so differently by different people around the world. Globalisation I guess!

I really like the word. Bookra inshallah.

I was about to post similar. My father (Irish) says “please god” at the end of sentences. He is far from passive but it’s a saying that for him has been engrained. I imagine it’s similar to inshallah.

If any pilot said “we’re landing, please god” I’d be thinking totally inappropriate. There’s aero dynamics and physics and all that good stuff - there’s no God in landing “for Christ’s sake” 😂

In fairness, I think he meant more ‘If there are no delays that mean we miss our landing slot and have to fly around in a holding pattern for 20 minutes, we’ll land at X time’