Quran is in Arabic but Arabic is not Islam.

A lot of Muslims have picked up a habit worth looking at honestly. They sprinkle Arabic words into English sentences for things that already have perfectly good English meanings, then wonder why non-Muslim coworkers, neighbours, and family feel like they're being spoken to in code.

Here's what those words actually mean.

The everyday ones

• Alhamdulillah is thank God.
• InshaAllah is God willing.
• MashaAllah is wow, what a blessing.
• SubhanAllah is glory be to God.
• Bismillah is in the name of God.
• Astaghfirullah is I seek God's forgiveness.
• Jazak Allah khair is thank you, with a blessing on top.
• Wallahi is I swear to God.
• Akhi is my brother. Ukhti is my sister.
• Deen is religion. Ummah is community.
• Sabr is patience. Iman is faith.
• Rizq is your daily provision.
• Tawakkul is trust in God.
• Niyyah is your intention.
• Dua is personal prayer.

The ones people insist can't be translated

They can.

• Salah is the prayer. The formal one, five times a day, with standing, bowing, and prostration.
• Zakat is the obligatory giving, about two and a half percent of savings, given to the poor.
• Sadaqah is voluntary charity.
• Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca.
• Ramadan is the month of fasting.
• Quran is the recitation, the holy book.
• Shahada is the testimony of faith.
• Eid is the religious holiday.
• Allah literally means The God. Same God. Arab Christians and Jews have used the word for centuries.

And Sharia, the word thrown around in headlines like a threat, just means the path, or the path to the watering place. It's a moral and legal framework. Jews have Halakha. Christians have canon law. Sharia is the Muslim version.

Why this matters

Words include people or shut them out. A coworker hears Alhamdulillah and has no idea you just thanked God for getting through a hard day. A neighbour hears MashaAllah and wonders what spell you cast on her kid. A whole country hears Sharia and pictures swords and chains, when the word just means the path.

The gratitude, the kindness, the moral framework, all of it gets buried under what sounds to outsiders like wizard words. People reject what they can't pronounce. And a lot of the time what they're rejecting is something simple, beautiful, and not far from what they already believe.

If something is good, let people see that it's good. Take the curtain down.

Just my opinion.

Where's your line between holding the language of the faith and actually reaching people?