In the name of Allah, Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem

I refused to use the most common translations of the words…

“In the name of God, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful”

Or…

“In the name of God, The Beneficent, The Merciful”

Why, you ask? Simply put, they do not convey the full meaning of the words. Ask any bilingual person, and you will get the answer: “English is a far inferior language”. It lacks vocabulary and linguistic style. It is a lacking language that conveys simply gestures; a simple language. Arabic, being one of the Semitic languages, is perhaps the most advanced of languages. With a multivarying vocabulary, and a powerful metrical style that is far more poetic, far more eloquent than English. Ask any translator that attempted to translate between the languages… he or she will tell you: “From English to Arabic is a breeze; Arabic is a language that has a variety of words that would easily replace an English word. The opposite? Tedious. English is simply lacking, and many times the eloquence and power of the speech is dropped in order to convey a meaning that is only similar, yet never exact.”

So what do the words in the tile mean? Humbled by the language, I will simply try to convey their meaning…

The phrase is the very first verse of the first chapter in the Quran - the religious scripture of Muslims, the words of Allah, in Arabic, the first and foremost authority in Islam…

The first untranslatable word: Allah.

Al is closest to The. It is common in words around us; Alcohol, Algebra, Albania, etc. Lah comes from Ilah, meaning the object of worship, God. So what does Allah mean? It means The God, at best. The word has no feminine; there is no such thing as goddess in Arabic. It is genderless. It indicates that there is one, and only one, God. There are no other gods. The God; The one and only God.

The second untranslatable word: Al-Rahman.

The very same Al. What does Rahman mean? The word comes from the root Rahma meaning Mercy. A comparison to another Arabic word that uses the same form: Ghadban meaning Extremely Angry. The adjective Ghadban often is used for a person that has great Ghadab; Anger. The postfix an, in other words, refers to an exaggeration of the feeling. With that said, Rahman means With Great Mercy. Al-Rahman, then means, The One With Great Mercy.

The third untranslatable word: Al-Raheem.

The very same Al. Raheem comes from the same root, Rahma, meaning Mercy. However, it is comparable to the word Kareem, meaning Generous, which comes from the root Karam; Generousity. The postfix eem represents a continuous adjective; as in, always generous for Kareem. With that Raheem means Continuously Mercy. Al-Raheem means: The One With Continuous Mercy.

So what does the whole phrase mean? Remember that this is just an attempt to translate the phrase while allowing it to carry its meaning…

“In the name of The God, The One With Great Mercy, The One With Continuous Mercy.”

References:

1. Safwat Al-Tafaseer, The Elite of Interpretations, by Muhammad Ali Al-Saboni.