There are dozens of ordinary ‘English’ words that originally came from languages historically associated with Islam, such as Arabic, Persian and Urdu.
Muslims have never been strangers to the West; we are as inseparable from its culture, history and heritage as our words are from its languages. And our contribution to its development can be found in any dictionary.
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What would the world look like without gauze? The light open-weave fabric that’s made from cotton when it’s used as a medical dressing for cuts, wounds, burns, abrasions, lacerations and other terrible things? I don’t think the world would look particularly good without it.
Plenty of fabrics could be used as medical dressings. But everyone in the medical establishment uses gauze. It’s the best by far. Easy to use, cost-effective and versatile, gauze has been the best material for cleaning wounds for centuries. Countless lives have been saved thanks to medical gauze.
So who do we have to thank for this wonderful and miraculous invention? Well, the fabric’s name itself can tell you; the English word ‘gauze’ originally comes from the name of a city famous for its skilled silk-weavers. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the word ‘gauze’ comes from the Arabic word ‘Ghazza’ (‘غَزَّةَ’) which in English we pronounce as ‘Gaza’.
Centuries ago, the people of Gaza invented gauze and in doing so saved countless lives all across the world. There’s a nice poem titled ‘Because of Us’ which beautifully captures the feeling of finding this out:
Alas, the people of Gaza are only good at weaving and spinning life-saving fabrics. If only they had more useful talents, like weaving false media narratives or spinning sensationalist stories. Then they might’ve stood a chance against powerful people comparing them to animals and denying them food, water and electricity. Not even their hospitals have been spared, despite the fact that they are the ones that made hospitals safer for the rest of the world; after all, how many people would die each year in our hospitals without gauze?
Ask yourselves, for every one of the 1200 innocent Israeli civilians that were killed by Hamas on 7th October, how many more Israeli lives have been saved over the years by something invented by the ancestors of Gaza’s people? The very same inventors whose innocent descendants are now being murdered by the Israeli state because of the crimes of a handful of extremists (whom Israel has now outdone many times over)?
I hope that the powerful nations of the world immediately demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. I pray that Allah the Almighty alleviates their plight of Gaza’s people. Ameen.
About the Author: Mansoor Dahri is an online editor for The Review of Religions. He graduated from UCL in BA Ancient Languages.
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