Usage of Foreign Words in Islamic Studies

This article aims to give some advice to writers in the field of Islamic studies. Authors should aim to write in a style which is familiar to native English readers. This means foreign words should be avoided as much as possible unless there is good reason to use them. This does not include recognisably foreign words which have been adopted by the English language. Examples of recognisably foreign words and phrases which have been adopted by the English language (and therefore do not require italicisation) are as follows:

Generally speaking, when foreign words are used they should be italicised (except for proper nouns). In some cases use of a foreign word is necessary to convey a particular meaning. In this case it is preferable to use the foreign word only on the first mention of the corresponding English word (and in brackets). The following examples may help clarify this point.

Both Sufism (tasawwuf) and ‘irfan refer to ‘mysticism’, but this disguises a large difference between the two.

A Shi‘a jurisprudent (mujtahid) often chooses to produce a simplified manual of laws (risalah or tawdih al-masa’il) for his followers. The style adopted by a jurisprudent to write his manual is very structured.

In a narration (hadith) the Prophet said that the Qur’an and his household (ahl al-bayt) will not separate from each other.

Note that in the first example above ‘tasawwuf’ was used to explain ‘Sufism’ despite the use of ‘Sufism’ being well established in the English language. This helps an author to be precise about his terms and it helps non-English readers. In the second example above the foreign words were not repeated for each use of ‘jurisprudent’ and ‘manual’. In the third example above ‘hadith’ is considered to be a foreign word. This is because it is used in a different sense to ‘Hadith’ which is naturalised and which refers to the corpus of collected traditions relating to the Prophet Muhammad and his household (peace be upon them).

It is common in articles relating to Islamic Studies written in English to see wide use of foreign words for which there are perfectly acceptable English equivalents. This should be avoided. Examples of commonly used foreign words and naturalised foreign words for which equivalents are available follow.

The above list indicates that preference is given to terms that a native English reader will be familiar with. This also applies to the plural form of words. Preference should be given to forming plurals according to English grammar, as apparent in the following table.

There will of course be exceptions to preferring English terms. For example, ‘ibn’ is often preferable to ‘son of’ as is ‘Allah’ to ‘God’. Authors should use their judgement in this regard. This applies for names also. Generally names should not be translated but this is acceptable – and perhaps sometimes preferable – when translated names are more familiar to native English readers. So, for example, ‘Abraham’ should be used to refer to the great prophet because it is more familiar than ‘Ibrahim’. However, ‘Eber’ is not a familiar replacement for ‘Hud’ and so only the latter should be used when referring to the prophet Hud who is mentioned in the Qur’an. The following is a list of some names for which established English versions should be used.

Finally, some examples of words commonly used in Islamic studies follow. Please note their spelling, whether they are capitalised, and whether they are italicised or not.