As I hung up I was left with the word inshallah ringing in my ear. How much stock should I put into this uncommitted response to my see you soon? As so often before in response to various versions of ‘god willing’, my confidence in a future meeting was diminished by about half. Had the possibility of there not being a god been factored into this? Perhaps being an Arabic word it was made even less likely given that neither of us spoke the language and any nuance in meaning was lost.
InshallahAn Arabic term, it means literally “Should Allah(God) want to” but when used it means “No” in the least harmful manner.
It’s most commonly used as a response to a request of “going out” or “planning a visit”.It’s widely used among Arab moms as a reply to her child’s request.
Invoking the powers of the divine to countenance a simple meeting does little to inspire confidence that it will take place at all. My doubts grew as I remembered the bodies of retired and dead gods lay three deep at the roadside of human progress and fill museums the world over. My future plans would remain in pencil for the time being.
Meeting somebody appears contingent on only a small number of factors. Largely it depends on not contravening any physical laws combined with some level of desire to make it happen. Yes and no with the possible Venn diagram overlap of maybe do a far more honest job of relaying the desire for, or possibility of a future encounter than the lazy whatevery of inshallah from a non Arabic speaker.
Perhaps she was insinuating a reluctance to meet again but too diplomatic to say so. Passing the buck to a nebulous concept was probably no more than non Italian speakers using ciao as goodbye but it lingered and, as things turned out, the god in question wasn’t interested in facilitating another meet up. Nonetheless this way of signing off bothered me for its bovine laced linguistic even if it was simply an exotically dressed I doubt it.
The belief in a deity’s willingness to intercede in the minutiae of everyday life is wishful and probably an aged and rudimentary attempt to counter the objective pointlessness of life. Pointless in the sense that there is no outcome, deliverance or redemption beyond that which we assert for ourselves and find in the beauty of life, art, relationships and myriad other ways fulfilling to us. Nature offers neither solace nor comfort and the Universe is indifferent to our existence whatever your creed.
Belief in a higher power doubtlessly brings some comfort and solace to many but the long list of excruciating horrors done at its behest offsets the warm glow quite starkly.
A friend of the philosopher Wittgenstein remarked in conversation that he understood why in the past man had thought the Earth to be at the centre of everything with all other celestial bodies moving around it. When prompted as to why, he clarified by saying that was how it appears. In reply to this observation Wittgenstein asked him how they might have thought it would appear were it not the case.
The leap from lay person to scientific expert is as common as it is flawed when attempting to back up extraordinary claims. If there were no god, just how would things appear?
We are all non-believers to everyone else’s gods and in the spirit of seeking meaning; the same scepticism applied to our own often inherited beliefs could prove quite illuminating and even liberating.
In Simon Schama’s BBC documentary on Jewish history, writer, critic and editor Leon Wieseltier hinted at the reverse engineering of religions to suit their own world view:
“Think of it this way; the problem for Jews is that we wait and wait and wait and wait and he doesn’t come. The problem for the Christians is that he came and the world did not change. The Jews will always so arrange matters that they will never wake up on the morning after the Messiah arrives because the risk is much too great. Because the world will still be the world and if you’ve been aspiring to a transformation and it comes and things are not transformed then you are bereft.” (Commenting on the Disputation of Barcelona 1263)
Not all ideas are of equal merit and sifting the wheat from the chaff is a daily challenge. New age ‘philosophies’, pseudo science, conspiracies and a great deal of news reporting are further proof, were more needed, of mankind’s ability to shoehorn almost anything into a legible sentence and pass it off as truthful.
True knowledge however doesn’t need approval or ceremony and Karl Popper’s view of what actually constitutes true knowledge is as simple as it is inspiring; it doesn’t require a knowing subject.
Inshallah I never hear inshallah again in connection with anything that actually matters to me
