Friday, April 13, 2007

In šaʾ Allāh

I work with a very diverse group of individuals. During the daily grind and in a push to get projects done it sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. However, there is the occasional event that happens that makes me appreciate that diversity. This time, it was just a parenthetical remark in an email from someone on my team. We were having a quick chat about trying to get something finished before their upcoming wedding. In response to my encouragement to make sure we had some knowledge transfer occur before their departure, the individual said:

"I will make sure to finish if not all, at least 90% of it (Inshallah)"

I had to look up what Inshallah means and found this on Wikipedia:

"In šaʾ Allāh (إن شاء الله) is an Arabic term evoked by Arabic speakers to indicate hope for an aforementioned event to occur in the future. The phrase translates into English as "God willing" or "If it is God's will"."

Pretty neat to find that buried in a standard email exchange.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice....my co-workers are lame!!!