Dennis Prager wants you to believe he understands what
President Obama said at the mosque, and you don't. When you find out what he
says he understands, you scratch your head and blurt out: Humm.
This will happen when you read what he says in the article
he wrote under the title: “You Don't know What Obama Said at the Mosque,”
published on February 9, 2016 in National Review Online.
Prager begins his series of rebuttals to what President
Obama has said at a mosque in Baltimore with an attack on the definition of the
word Islam given by Obama like this: “So let's start with this fact: For more
than a thousand years, people have been drawn to Islam's message of peace. And
the very word itself, 'Islam,' comes from 'salam' – peace.” So, Prager asks the
question: “Why did Mr. Obama say this?”
He answers the question not by submitting that he knows
Arabic or that he consulted with someone that knows Arabic. Instead, he says
this: “Even Muslim websites acknowledge that 'Islam' means 'submission' [to
Allah], that it comes from the Arabic root 'aslama' meaning submission, and
that 'Islam' is the command form of that verb. That's why 'Muslim' means 'One
who submits,' not 'One who is peaceful'”.
Well, even if you did not know Arabic, you should recoil at
the fact that he says “aslama” means submission (which is a noun) then says
that “Islam” is the command form of that verb. Someone should tell this guy
that a noun is not a verb.
The fact is that there are a dozen or more words in that
group, all of which have one and the same root: “selm,” written as “salm” in
some dictionaries. It does not have a one-word English translation because it
carries connotations that are peculiar to the Arabic culture. It can only be
translated accurately as: The state of being safe in a peaceful surrounding.
Like Obama said “salam” means peace. Unlike what Prager is
saying, “aslama” is not the root of those words, nor does it mean submission.
It means he converted to Islam (in the past.) As to the word “Islam,” it means
in Arabic exactly what it means in English. But if you say “Eslam,” well then,
that would be the command form of the verb “aslama”.
Three other words in that group are worth mentioning. They
are “salamah”, “musalamah” and “isteslam.” To understand what they mean helps
you get a sense of the culture that spawned them. Salamah means perfect
collective security. Musalamah, means conciliation or pacification, depending
on how you use the word in a sentence. As to isteslam, it means submission.
What all of this says is that in the Arabic culture, there is a close
relationship between security, conciliation and submission.
That being a distinct cultural trait, how does it tie
together and make any sense at all? You get your answer to that question when
you realize that for thousands of years, the Arabs have lived by trade alone.
The relationships they forged and the language they devised to carry the
meanings engendered by those relationships, have their roots in the culture of
trade. That is, the language of business exchange.
It is a given that the best kind of business you can do is
that which is done when both sides benefit from the exchange. This makes both
sides feel secure. But if a dispute arises, which can always happen, you try to
reconcile ... and this is done by working out a compromise. What this entails
is the mutual submission to the will of each other. That is, each side makes
demands that the other submits to … but only after compromising a little here
and a little there.
This might not look like the full blown social contract of a
modern industrial state, but it was the kind of mini social contract that used
to bind the nomadic tribes to each other. It also bound them to the cultures
with which they traded in the East, the West, the North and the South.