The Dutch media keep translating allahu akbar as God is great. Thats a delusion, since God is great in Arabic is allahu kabeer. The accurate translation of allahu akbar is Allah is greater sc. than any other god. Its _not_ ecumenical. The semantic evolution of the form ʾafʿalu is discussed by Wehr (1952:3), who explains that ʾafʿalu originally indicated a positive with a strongly emotional connotation, and by Bravmann (1968:22), who “persists in the opinion that the primary function of ʾafʿalu is to indicate a high degree of a quality in comparison with other objects (ʾafʿal at-tafḍīl)” and that “the original use of ʾafʿalu as a comparative-superlative may secondarily occur in the sense of a positive. Thus, one cannot attribute to al-akbaru the primary meaning of ‘the great’ (or with affective connotation ‘the very great’) and the secondary meaning of ‘the greater’ or ‘the greatest’; on the contrary, it is the meaning ‘the great’ (which implies no comparison), which should be considered as secondary”. Parallel to this debate is the controversial allāhu ʾakbar (cf. Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān III, 211). (Alain Girod. Elative. Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics. Managing Editors Online Edition: Lutz Edzard, Rudolf de Jong. Brill Online, 2014.)
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 10:36:13 +0000
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