The basmala revisited

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jun 10, 2014 at 07:25

Myth you wrote

dhimmi no more, the line you quote is a divine copyright statement in arabic language.

Far from the truth the term Bishm Alaha in Syriac or in the name of God pre-dates Islam by a very long time and as a matter of fact if you read the Quranic Bism Allah al-Rhaman al-Raheem as an Arabic language sentence and if you know your Arabic you will realize that this is either very poor Arabic or it is another language after all how can Allah make such mistakes

And indeed the proper Arabic would be Bi'Ism Allah al-Rahmaan al-Rahem and if you wish that I provide you with more explanation then just let me know

Now if we read it as a Syriac formula then it makes sense and it would be Bishm Alaha Rahmana wa Raheema

The real disaster here is the very early Quranic tafseer was written by Persians and their mother tongue was not Arabic and their command of Syriac was mediocre at best

Just imagine if a Spanish speaker living in let us say South America writing a book about his exegesis of let us say the first ever written German classic that was written some 200 years ago in distant Germany with no access to German dictionaries or to other literary sources

I'm sure you will agree with me this exegesis would not be very pretty or accurate and this is indeed what we have here in the case of the Qur'an

Now if we translate the Basmala from its Syriac form to English it would be: In the name of God the loving and beloved and compare this with what the Persian Ulama tell us that it means: In the name of THE God the compassionate the merciful which is indeed a very poor translation and indeed the Qur'an tells us in Q5:54 that Allah is loving and beloved and this is indeed the meaning in the Basmala

And more evidence that the Qur'an is an opaque revelation

it opens every chapter of the koran to indicate these are actually god's words.

Not true you will not find it in Surat al-Tauba or Q9 and it is very clear that the Basmala was a late addition to the text which means that it was added by those that composed and edited the Qur'an and it did not drop from the sky and the reason is very obvious how could this formula be the words of Allah? If it would have had the introductory Qul or say then I can agree that this is a formula coming from Allah

I expect every muslim to literally know the phrase. I compare the usage to the opening formula in a court verdict indicating the underlying authority with "in the name of the people".

No it is not the same

Muslims would also use it to open a private letter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmala explains the meaning.

So? And if you read letters by Christian Arabs many start their letters with بسم الاب والابن والروح القدس اله واحد امين or Bism al-Abb wa al-Ibn wa al-Ruh al-Qudus Ilah wahid ameen or in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy spirit one God Ameen

The only thing that Muhammad did was to plagiarize very old formulas he was for sure not original or even a smart theologian

Speaking the formula undermines the authority of the American president in Mr Bergdahl's speech for the formular points at a divine authority.

If you say so

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