UKC

I have just watched the full video that al-Qaeda released of London tube bomber Shehzad Tanweer. Its really fascinating and a bit spooky - if you are interested you can see it here:
http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1186
and I've blogged my thoughts on it at:
http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/

But can someone help me by explaining what "dunya" means? Googling quickly didn't help. Presumably its Koranic Arabic. Tanweer says it in this context:

"Oh Muslims of Britain, you, day in and day out on your TV sets, watch and hear about the oppression of the Muslims, from the east to the west. But yet you turn a blind eye, and carry on with your lives as if you never heard anything, or as if it does not concern you. What is the matter with you that you turn back not to the religion that Allah has chosen for you? You have preferred the dunya to Allah, His messenger, and the Hereafter."

In reply to TobyA:

"Dunya" means world. In this context, he means the secular world, as opposed to the spiritual one.

In reply to TobyA:

Are you sure he doesn't say Dubya

In reply to TobyA:


I would but I could do without a police raid on my house in the middle of the night. 's allright for you up there in Finland!

Very spooky.....looks like my house will now have its door kicked in a 5.30am tomorrow after watching that!!!

In reply to DougG: It's on MEMRI Doug - whose detractors would have you believe are a mouthpiece of Israeli intelligence. They aren't, but they do have a certain agenda. But you'll be more likely to get an honoury membership to the US rightwing blogosphere than you are a visit from the plod.

On MEMRI read Brian Whitaker http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html and MEMRI's Yigal Carmon's response: http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,778373,00.html

In reply to Masood:


Thank you very much Masood. I had guessed from the context that it must mean something along those lines but wanted to be sure. Is it Arabic - i.e. from the Quran? Or is it possibly Urdu which I presume would have been Tanweer's other language besides English?

In reply to TobyA:

Both! It's an Arabic word, but is also in the Urdu lexicon.

In reply to Masood: Cool to know. I'm afraid I know absolutely nothing about Urdu - does it have many loan words from Arabic (or vice versa?). For example Finnish is full of borrowed words, traditionally from Swedish and some from Russian and now more and more from English. Is Urdu similar in that it has flexibly incorporated words from other languages?

In reply to TobyA:

I was taught that Urdu was "manufactured" to have a distinct language for Pakistan - this may be untrue, but I actually find it quite believable.

In spoken form it is almost identical to Hindi. It is written in the Arabic script, with the addition of a few consonants. It contains many words from Arabic and Farsi, and quite a few contributions from Gujerati and Punjabi.

In reply to Masood:

Well, my Urdu teacher was wrong, according to Wikipaedia!!

http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Urdu

You'll need to remove the space for the link to work...

In reply to Masood: Cheers Masood - I think the link between the language and nationalism is one of those thing I once knew and have since forgotten (probably read it in "Freedom at Midnight" which I read on long train journeys through India many moons ago! Oddly, again thats very much like Finnish - a language which was really only written down and formalised from various different dialects only with the rise of Finnish nationalism under Russian imperial rule. Until then the educated classes spoke Swedish, Russian, German and French - seemingly anything but the 'peasents language'! I looked up on Wikipedia what languages Jinnah spoke: "At home, the family's mother tongue was Gujarati, but members of the household also became conversant in Kutchi, Sindhi and English" which really makes your point about Urdu's "manufactured" nature.

In reply to Masood: Our post crossed - we must have both been on Wiki at the same time! Will read. Thanks.

In reply to Masood: Masood - you've been blogged in my updated post: http://lightfromthenorth.blogspot.com/2006/07/shehzad-tanweer-video.html Many thanks again!

In reply to TobyA:

Thanks Toby! It was interesting for me too - I was made to learn Urdu as a child along with the Qur'an, and in both cases it was learning by rote - believe it or not today is the first time I even thought of looking into the origins of the language...... So thank you!