Abu Daoud & Co. will be out of town for the next week or so (thanks be to God!) This is a good thing, after a fantastically stressful half-week so far--and it is only Wednesday! All this to say, the blogging will be spare.
Hope you all are well. I will be enjoying Crete, in sha' allah.
Ah yes, in sha' allah. Just what does that means? the word 'in' makes the sentence conditional: IF. Sha' is the past 3rd person masculine for "to will" more or less. And Allah, well, I'm guessing you know who Allah is. Thus it means "if God willed it" but in Arabic the past tense in conditional sentences also applies to the continuous, making it both "if God wills it" and "if God will will it."
In practical parlance it can mean anything from "I hope so" to "maybe" to "I don't want to, but I'm trying to be nice about this" to "I have no idea" to "that's fine with me." Thus I have told a taxi driver "Turn right at the light," to which he answered "in sha' allah."
Salam!
Abu Daoud
