The words Umma, Ummi, Ummiyyun, Om, Umm

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Dec 31, 2010 at 14:31

Hi Sara

Thank you for a very interesting post and I will just explain a few facts to the readers that are reading this exchange

1. The Muslim masora (and the word masora is a Hebrew word) or the examination of grammar, syntax and the meaning of words in the Qranic text is an activity of the 3rd century of islam and not any earlier

2. The ulama were dealing with a text that had no short vowels and no double consonants and no hamza and many missing long vowels so the end result is that we really do not know what the Qur'an really says so MLK in surat al-fatiha becomes Maaliki (the owner of) in the Cairo Qur'an and Maliki (or the king of) in the Tunisian Qur'an and this very simple example means that we really do not know what the Qur'an really says as Muhammad if he existed must have heard it as either Maaliki or Maliki so do not except that we really know what the Qur'an really says and all translations are a matter of guessing as the translator assumes that the ulama read the basic rasm (the text with no vowles) correctely which we know now from the above example that it is far from the truth

3. The Qur'an is full of foreign non Arabic words and most of them are Syriac. Yes there are Hebrew words but there is no doubt that Syriac is number one source of non Arabic words in the Qur'an and even what appears at times as Hebrew words is more than likely from Syriac as in surat al-ikhlas or Q112 where it says

Qul allahu ahad

The Ulama tells us that it means: Say Allah is one (sic)

But the strange thing is that the word ahad in Arabic really means ONE OF and the word one means WAHID but if we turn to Hebrew and Syriac we get the meaning as one and not one of and I'm sure many of you must know about surat al-kawthar (Q108) which does not make any sense when you read it in Arabic but if you read it as Arabized Syriac (see Luxenberg and this is what is called Garshouni or Arabic written using Syriac alphabet) it would make much sense and indeed if you also examine proper names in the Qur'an they resemble the Syriac form of the name and not the Hebrew form so Syriac Slyman becomes Arabic Soliman and not Hebrew Shlomo

4. The word umm or om means mother

5. The word ummi (Q7:157) as we are told means uneducated

6. The word ummiyyun (plural of ummi in Q2:78) where it is a reference to the ummiyyun among the Jews was read as the uneducated (plural) but it is not that simple because if we turn to al-Tabari's exegesis of the word we realize that he is not sure what it means and he even tells that it must mean those uneducated that cannot write letters to their mothers which is ridiculous. But the word here must mean GENTILES or non Jewish and if you turn back to Q7:157 where we have

al-nabi (another loan word from Hebrew) al-rasul al-ummi

Which is read by al-Tabari as the prophet, the messenger the uneducated and it is far from the truth as it must mean the prophet (that belongs to the biblical line of prophets) the messenger (who belongs to the Arab line of prophets) the GENTILE (or non Jewish) and indeed if you read Wansbrough he tells us

"Reference to ummiyyun among Jews as in Q2;78 may of course be a reflex of 'am ha-ares but probably in the sense of exclusion or separation as in Ezra 10:11 and sectarian (Pharaisaic, Qumranic, Karaite) applications invariably abusive. Whether on the other hand the locution al-RSUL al-NBY al-UMMI (Arabic woth no vowels) belongs properly to this instance of linguistic and conceptual assimilation is a separate problem its common interpretation suggests parallel to if not a calque of 'am ha-ares"

7. Now if we turn to Lisan al-3Arab dictionary which was written 600 years after the death of Muhammad we find the following: Umma means nation and al-umma al-islamiyya means the islamic community and um or umm or om means mother and ummi means uneducated and ummiyyun is the plural now go figure

>Actually DNM, Ummah in hebrew is an old word meaning nation

Sure and in Arabic it also means nation

>and there are many derivative words. Ummot is the plural,

In Arabic it is ummam

>meaning nations; (for example, the U.N. in hebrew is Ummot Meuhadot = Nations United).

And in Arabic it means al-ummam al-mutahida

>It does come from the word Am, as you noted since in hebrew the Aleph can have a vowel of Oh or Ooh, eh, eeh or Ah. The phrase 'Am Ha-Aretz (only old ashkenazis would pronounce the T as S) usually refers to the people of Israel or the common man, like saying someone is a mensch.

Right I think we are saying the same thing and for this see above

>As always, the concept of Umma was taken by you-know-who from the Torah and Tanach to express it as an Islamic concept.

It very well could be as there is no doubt that and in the words of Wansbrough the "Quranic imagery underlining the ethnocentric position of prophets is both uniform and consistent" and an example here is Q14:4 where it says

wa ma arsalna men rasulan ila bilisani qawmihi

Or Allah sends a prophet to a nation and he only sends a prophet that must speak the language of such nation so Muhammad is seen in the Qur'an as the Moses of the Arabs

>P.S. My pet peeve is the persistent quotations from Muslims that existed way before in Jewish texts.

I call it islamic ignorance

I hope I helped

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