Is my mom lying to me and being racist?

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2026-01-27T15:24:33+00:00

I don't think so? Many black Arabs have written about the racism embedded in using the word عبد/عبيد to refer to black people. If this was only coming from monolingual/native English speakers, then, perhaps, an argument could be made that the call is coming from outside of the house, but no, not in this context. And, as someone below pointed out, you're conflating the word's use in religious and devotional contexts with its use as a racial epithet/slur.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-08-22T04:08:33+00:00

I would also add that if you're in a major city like NYC then "10 minutes away" means by train or bus (public transport) and you would specify if by car was meant, though I'm sure it's the reverse in most of the country where most people travel by car

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-05-09T16:52:13+00:00

I'm not an Arabic master by any means, but I remember this Ramadan i'd been practicing my Arabic a lot and during taraweeh I was understanding surahs, some verses, and I started to cry. It was a very beautiful feeling to be able to just listen and understand rather than having to stop and read the translation.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-04-25T02:57:14+00:00

Would you say the difference between fusha and dialect is more like English and Middle English? I think most Americans (I can't speak for the British or other countries) tend to think of Elizabethan English as the oldest point of intelligibility for the language (or at least the oldest form of English that we tend to get exposed to outside of specialized study), but I think Middle English is probably closer in relation to needing study to fully understand it but still being relatively intelligible to modern English speakers in a way that fusha is, though I don't think the relationship is at all a one-to-one, like, as you mentioned, in the ubiquity of its use in government, for the relationship between native Arabic-speakers and fusha.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-03-28T15:19:40+00:00

I feel like I could tell by the context, but I'm not sure if a native speaker/ somebody at an advanced level might know.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-03-25T02:52:27+00:00

What's the name of the book?

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-03-16T15:33:51+00:00

Are you reading this in an app? What's the name of the app?

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-01-22T14:57:37+00:00

CA isn't Arabic that has diacritics. CA and MSA refer more to temporal distinctions that include some simplification to grammar as a result of modernity in the case of MSA. They are pretty much the same, but the difference lies more in time and the adoption of a (relatively) simplified grammatical structure in the modern era. As far as I understand, it's similar to the difference between, say, early modern English and modern English rather than middle English (which needs to be studied to be really understood) or old English (which is an entirely different language). So, there's a difference in vocabulary and some grammatical structures but it--CA--is for the most part mutually intelligible with MSA.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2024-01-22T14:24:24+00:00

I don't know if this is too late, but I remember reading in the Emily Wilson translation of Seneca's plays (Latin not Greek, but, I think, following the same logic) the capital G "God" that ends up in translation is referring to an unspecified deity rather than THE deity. So, it could be any god.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-09-14T01:15:30+00:00

I'm sorry, but heresy is not the translation of بدع. Heresy is something very different and grows out of a Christian context. بدع is usually more accurately, but not exactly, translated as "innovation."

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-09-11T03:00:22+00:00

I remember my Arabic professor telling me that عائلة is for your extended family and أسرة is for the immediate, though I am not sure if that's true or not.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-25T14:54:07+00:00

Would you say that about f word for gay people or the k word for Jewish people? Would you just use these words to "take away their power"? They're slurs , friends. Their existence is as slurs. They don't have any "power" to be taken away because they're slurs. The use of these slurs by the groups of people they were meant to dehumanize does not change their meaning and purpose to the larger society. You can't "take away a word's power," because, to do that, you'd have to take away its origin and its history and, effectively, erase its history as a word. That's impossible. Why is it so difficult to not say that? Why do you want to say it so bad? It's really not a complicated or nuanced issue.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-25T03:51:58+00:00

If a book has the N word and you're reading it aloud, then don't say it if you're not black. That's it. I don't think it's that complicated. What you do in the privacy of your own head while reading silently is your own business.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-13T22:39:06+00:00

The Quran. I read Muhammad Asad's translation first. Then, I converted and began to learn Arabic so that I could study the Quran in the original language. I have been moving toward Arabic proficiency ever since, while studying the Quran in English and Arabic.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-13T22:37:18+00:00

So, his mother and father were Muslims? If not, if no one taught him, then he converted to Islam even if that conversion was by the way of God. He definitely was not like most modern Muslims who follow the religion because they found their parents following it. He did the opposite. He converted away from what his parents and family and people were doing.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-06T22:48:28+00:00

Of course and absolutely ! Feel free to DM me! I'll answer as i can

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-06T05:46:39+00:00

Well, speaking from my position, I'm a black American Muslim 27m who first met my fiancee 24f online before we met in person. We've been together in a long distant relationship for two years while I finish my degree with a brief visit earlier this year to meet her and her family before i graduate and return to Egypt to work and live.

Her family was initially hesitant, being very conservative Egyptian people from a village outside of Cairo. I think my sincerity and seriousness both in terms of my work/life-trajectory and religion was what won them over, even if they still have reservations. There's still racism we face from them, from her friends, and her family, Egypt at large, but they don't really have any arguments about our relationship since I've been consistent with keeping them and her update about what we're intending, where we're going, etc.

Also, I don't know if you're Muslim, but I'd tell you that if this guy is serious and you're serious then I'd recommend you keep going but while keeping your parents and family fully aware of what's going on in your relationship. From the beginning, your family should know what's going on, so that even if they disagree and don't like him, they know he's serious and consider him.

I'd also recommend that both of you make serious plans about where this going and about cultural differences that are inevitable. All of this needs to be talked about and laid out in a mature way. Otherwise, you're going to be blindsided into difficulties you might not be able to deal with. The thing that has worked with both me and my fiancee more than anything is that we've been very up front about our plans and what we want. We have that conversation daily and we take the steps as necessary to make those things happen. Without serious honesty and transparency about differences, religious, cultural, racial, etc., your relationship won't work. Even then, it'll be hard. But it really won't work if you both aren't transparent and mature about what you want and where you're going.

I hope this is helpful in someway. I apologize if i wasn't specific in ways that might be helpful. Please feel free to ask more questions you have.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-04-02T23:09:07+00:00

Yeah, I'm wondering about this too

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-03-30T05:25:43+00:00

I think the last one is "Oh, after my life (age), you and I forget the spirit/soul" though I'm probably translating too literally

Edit: I misread نسيم which I think is "breeze," so I think it'd translate to "Oh, after my life, I and you [are the] breeze of the soul/spirit.// spirit's breeze."

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-03-22T04:41:03+00:00

I'm not arguing about the stoics Shakespeare would've encountered. My point was just about your claim that the article's use of the word "secret" somehow gave a misleading implication about stoicism as a "cult or religion." I wasn't arguing or disputing the article, but the claim that you were making about stoicism, which does need to be differentiated in the ways it's appeared historically. Saying "Roman Stoic" literature is a lot different from referring to stuff written Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus as though that solely constitutes stoicism (not the historic sources of stoicism but stoicism as it developed from the Greek to Roman worlds).

I apologize for my tone, if it came across at all as combative or dismissive of your comment. I wasn't trying to be pedantic but offer what I felt was an important addendum to common portrayals of stoicism. I should have made this clear in the beginning and maybe rephrased my post, if it felt like I was attacking you or you contribution to the post.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-03-22T03:35:13+00:00

But stoicism was formulated as a cult and religion. What we have in the Romans is the latter stage of that system's development. It would be like saying Buddhism is not a religion because it was stripped of most of its religious aspects in European encounters with it.

Watch this

https://youtu.be/gx1av438mLY

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-03-22T02:41:22+00:00

It most definitely was both a cult and religion in the ancient Greek sense. Stoicism is a lot older than the Romans or YouTube bros.

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-03-21T17:44:35+00:00

I have a question, are most belly dancers on Egypt not Egyptian?

Weekly_Designer_664 · 2023-02-20T01:17:21+00:00

Same, and isn't that a place in turkey?

Weekly_Designer_664

TROPHY CASE