When people say Saint Paul, they are not necessarily indicating they respect the guy. Rather it is a way of indicating who they are talking to. Thus, if there was a chance of ambiguity, then pbuh, though tedious, would serve a useful function in language, in the same way as saying Muhammed the prophet to distinguish him from Muhammed Ali. However, beyond that it is a useless, repetitive phrase that is no different to adding 'I am a Muslim' to the end of every sentence. Islam does not require it. It is part of the cultural baggage that Tariq Ramadan would identify as separate from the religion and of no value.

freediver wrote on Nov 15^th, 2008 at 12:47pm:

Don't you think its a bit on the arrogant side for a non Muslim to presume to instruct a Muslim on how he should address prophets when mentioning them in text or conversation?

freediver,

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Since we're not talking about saying anything, only writing, I'll just ignore this ridiculous comment.

Please stick with the program freediver, I know it's hard when your attention span is a little short, but please do try.

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Yes, but a symbolic form, which indicates some kind of abbreviation has occured. Otherwise we'd have about 2000 characters to represent each sound, if we were to encode them as they actually are.

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Speech to text reduces complexity freediver. A sound is made up of thousands of bits of information, a single character is represented in just 1 (or in computers 8 bits, but for our purposes each character is just a single piece of information, that represents a complex sound).

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Right, and if you read back I mentioned the concepts->sounds->text relationship earlier on.

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That's fine, and on a basic level I don't either.

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Yeh well as you've come to know freediver, Islam is all about funny and bizarre rules which the rest of humanity just can't relate to. So no surprises there.

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That's irrelevant, because we say it as an act of worship, not to convey a meaning to you. So it doesn't really matter if you recognise what it is or not, but I do remember explaining it when I first began here.

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That's different as it's actually part of their message to you, and they expect you to comprehend it. I don't expect you to comprehend "pbuh".

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Irrelevant to what I said. I stated "peace be upon him" gets decoded by humans back into the seventeen sounds.

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Relevance to this conversation?

abu_rashid wrote on Nov 15^th, 2008 at 4:11pm:



Don't subject your non-muslim interlocutors like me to it if it is a prayer to god.  God knows what is in your heart and I find the pseudo-pious burping ostentatious and false.
In the mosque, among your co-religionists - whatever gets you through the meeting. But spare those who obviously do not share your private convictions. It is intrusive and so rude. It is very un-convivial.
I'll call you muslim if you stop it on this forum.

abu_rashid wrote on Nov 15^th, 2008 at 4:36pm:


This is right.


But pbuh expresses that there is only a shorthand in your heart. Instead of bowing, you just doff your cap.




The rest of your post is infected with resentment. Still, I hope you are getting the desired hot flushes of rightousness.

Another pointless thread bumbles on to futility.

Soren wrote on Nov 15^th, 2008 at 5:07pm:

Not all, but some more than others... Sore N!!