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Our dear Shakeel and his Arabic lesson for today

Reader comment on item: Bolstering Moderate Muslims
in response to reader comment: RE:Oh I forgot silly me!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), May 19, 2007 at 09:25

You wrote

>Al-though Nafs sometimes is also used to refer to soul

Stop here for a minute, it is al-nafs and why do you tablighees have such great difficulty with the Arabic language definite article "al"?. It took us several posts to get through you to realize that the word al-nafs indeed means the soul and why is that?

>it actually means something that breahtes

One word; Bogus. Yes the word nafas means breath. But like a typical tablighee who knows no Arabic you are now confusing the stem NFS and the roots from the stem and we have yatanafas or he is breathing and nafsuhu or his soul or if you wish self. Very different words with very different meanings. I do not think you get it and I do not think that you have a clue about what you are talking about

>NAFS=Body+SPiRIT

May be in Hinduism or a more smart religion than islam but the word nafs means soul (see Hans Wehr dictionary page 985A) and as an example a psychiatrist is tabeeb nafsani.

Body means jasad . The word spirit is really roh as in al-roh al-qudus or the holy spirit but the roh can also be read as nafs you can say ruhuhu or nafsuhu and you will be saying his soul and you can also say as in the Quranic lataqtulu anfasakum which I would read as your souls/selves. Stop thinking in Urdu as Arabic is a very different language and do not put words in little blocks and that is indeed your problem

So when you have the roh/nafs+ jasad= human being

Now do you get it?

>When Quran says

>Every Nafs will have a taste of death

Let us see what it says:

kulu nafsin dhaa'qatu al-mawat

Or: and every soul (notice that your pal Pickthall translates the word nafs here as soul! So much for your ignorance) will taste death.

And do not assume anything and do not read anything into it more than what the aya is saying do you get it?

So what is your point?

>It means every thing will die

Bogus translation and your pal Pickthall agrees with me. However if the aya would have said

Kulu haja satamut

Or everthing will die I will have to agree with you but this is not what it says.

>Nafs means self as in this verse

Yes nafs could mean self but it does not mean jasad or body as in the Quranic lataqtulu anfasakum, but in this verse as per Pickthall it means soul and it does not mean self (notice that if the word dhat means self. Confused? now you see what happens when you pontificate about a lanaguage that you do not know)! The Arabic langauge is a great language but it is not as precise as let us say English and one have to understand the sentence to be able to understand what the word in a context would mean along the lines of the old axiom: "al-tafseer lel sahaba wa al-ta'weel lel fuqaha/3ulama/jamii3"

>You know what is in my self but I do not know what is in your self

Poor translation again. the word nafs here would mean soul/psyche/mind. You do not get it do you? This is very different from the Quranic lataqtulu anfasakum or do not kill yourselves/souls

See what happens when you try to potificate about a langauge that you do not know?

Then the gem of the day

>al Ammara ....al lawwama

ROTFL Pakistani Arabic and big time falasfa and what on earth is ammara or lawwma...

Submitting....

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