“Islâm”: What the Word Really Says

Islâm is translated as “submission”, and muslim as “one who submits”. The translation is so old that people take it to be self-evident. Yet when one goes through the hundred and forty occurrences of this root in the Qur’an, nowhere does one find the image of the vanquished bending the knee. One finds something else: the whole, the intact, peace — and a man who belongs to one alone. Let us read.

1. A word that means “whole”

The primary sense of the root S-L-M is what is intact, sound, without remainder. The Qur’an uses it in this way, concretely, with no religious overtone. Salvation belongs to “the one who comes to God with an intact heart” (qalb salîm, 26:89). The damned are those who were called to prostrate themselves “when they were unharmed” (sâlimûn, 68:43). The cow that Moses asks of the Israelites must be “without blemish” (musallama, 2:71). Blood money is “given over” in full to the family (diya musallama, 4:92). And the verb sallama means to give over — “when you give over what you owe” (2:233); to preserve — “but God kept you safe” (8:43); to greet — “greet its inhabitants” (24:27).

To give over whole, to keep intact, to wish someone wholeness: it is one and the same idea. A muslim, in the primary sense, is someone — or something — that is given over without remainder.

2. Peace — and the peace that stops war

From this comes salâm, “peace”, which appears forty-two times. It is the greeting people exchange, the name of Paradise — “the abode of peace” (6:127) — and a name of God (59:23). It is also the response the Qur’an prescribes to hostility: “when the ignorant address them, they reply: peace” (25:63); “peace be upon you, we do not seek the ignorant” (28:55); “turn away from them and say: peace” (43:89). And in the very midst of war: “do not say to the one who offers you peace: you are not a believer” (4:94).

But there is something more precise. The word silm or salam — the peace one offers — appears eight times, and six of these occurrences are in the verses that regulate fighting:

“If they keep away from you, do not fight you, and offer you peace, God gives you no way against them.” (4:90)

“If they incline to peace, incline toward it.” (8:61)

“Do not weaken by calling for peace when you have the upper hand.” (47:35)

“O you who have believed, enter into peace wholly.” (2:208)

Remember this last verse: it is addressed to believers, and what it asks of them is to enter al-silm — the very word for the peace offered by the enemy. In the language of the Qur’an, “to enter islâm” and “to enter into peace” are written with the same letters. This is why, when the text says of a people in arms: “you will fight them, or they will give themselves over” (yuslimûn, 48:16), the word does not designate a conversion, but what 4:90 and 8:61 have just described — the peace offered, which brings arms to a halt.

3. A single master: the parable

One verse holds the key to everything else, and it is a parable:

“God sets forth as an example a man disputed among quarreling associates, and a man whole to one alone. Are they alike?” (39:29)

The first man is the slave of several masters who fight over him: shurakâʾ, “associates” — the very word of shirk, association. The second is salam li-rajul: in one piece, to one alone. Here are the two words facing each other, in a single image. Shirk is being divided; islâm is being whole. It is not submission that stands opposed to idolatry: it is undividedness.

4. Giving oneself over: to whom, and what

The verb aslama, “to give oneself over”, always says to whom, and often what. What one gives over is one’s face: “whoever gives his face over to God, doing good” (2:112, 3:20, 4:125, 31:22) — that is, one’s direction, what one turns toward. To whom: “to the Lord of the worlds” (2:131, 6:71, 40:66), “to Him” (22:34, 39:54). At the moment of the sacrifice, Abraham and his son “both gave themselves over” (aslamâ, 37:103). And the word reaches beyond humanity: “to Him has given itself over whatever is in the heavens and on the earth, willingly or unwillingly” (3:83). The stars, the sea, the seasons are muslims: they belong wholly to what makes them be.

Islâm is therefore not a capitulation before a force: it is the gesture of giving oneself over whole, holding nothing in reserve, to the One to whom everything is already given over.

5. Whom the Qur’an calls “muslim”

If the word designated a community, it would apply only to that community. Yet the Qur’an gives it to Abraham (2:131), to Jacob and his sons (2:132-133), to the “prophets who had given themselves over” and who judged by the Torah (5:44), to Noah (10:72), to Moses (10:84), to Pharaoh’s magicians (7:126), to Joseph (12:101), to the apostles of Jesus (3:52, 5:111), to the Queen of Sheba (27:44), to the household of Lot (51:36), to some jinn (72:14), and to People of the Book who say: “we were muslims before it” (28:53). It even says: “it is He who named you muslims, before” (22:78). The name precedes the community that bears it.

And it says so in so many words about the father of all: “Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian, but ḥanîf, muslim” (3:67). The word is placed, by the text itself, outside the labels.

6. Islâm is not faith

The Qur’an carefully distinguishes islâm from îmân — embracing and trusting. To the Bedouins who say “we have believed”, it replies: “you have not believed; say rather: we have embraced peace (aslamnâ), for faith has not yet entered your hearts” (49:14). When it lists the qualities of those whom God rewards, it names “the muslims and the muslimât, the believing men and the believing women” (33:35) — two qualities, two words. One can put forward one’s islâm as a favor rendered (49:17); one cannot put forward one’s faith. The one is the act of entering; the other is the trust of the heart, discussed in the article “Believer” and “Unbeliever”: What the Words of the Qur’an Really Say.

7. “The upright order”

Another word accompanies islâm: dîn, which is translated as “religion”. Here again, the Qur’an is broader. Dîn is what one owes: a debt (2:282); an account to be rendered — “the Day of Reckoning” (1:4), “are we accountable?” (37:53); a law — “the king’s law” (dîn al-malik, 12:76), “the law of God” applied to a penalty (24:2); an order (9:36); an allegiance (16:52). Religion is what one owes to God — and it cannot be compelled (2:256), and it is shared out (109:6).

Six times, the Qur’an speaks of “the upright order“, al-dîn al-qayyim — literally “what stands upright, what keeps things standing”, and also what does not change, the immutable. Verse 30:30 holds the two meanings together: “the nature according to which God created human beings — no change to the creation of God — that is the upright order”. And each time the text says what it is:

• worshipping none but Him — “that is the upright order” (12:40);
• original nature, “the nature according to which God created human beings — that is the upright order” (30:30);
• the way of Abraham, ḥanîf (6:161);
• sincerely devoting to Him what one owes Him, praying, giving — “that is the order of uprightness” (98:5);
• and even the just reckoning of time, the twelve months, “without wronging yourselves” (9:36).

None of these six definitions is an affiliation. The upright order is exclusivity, nature, uprightness, justness — and what does not pass away. Here we find islâm again in the broad sense of 3:83: the order to which the heavens and the earth are already given over does not date from a revelation, nor does it change from one revelation to the next; the revelations recall it, they do not institute it.

8. The ḥanîf: a posture, not an affiliation

There remains the word the Qur’an reserves for Abraham: ḥanîf. Twelve occurrences, and the text never defines it by a content — always by a posture. Nine times out of twelve, the word is followed by “and he was not of the associators”. Four times, it accompanies the image of the face one turns: “I have turned my face toward Him who created the heavens and the earth, ḥanîf” (6:79); “set your face toward the upright order, ḥanîf” (10:105, 30:30). And twice, it sets the labels aside: “they say: be Jews or Christians, and you will be guided. Say: no — the way of Abraham, ḥanîf” (2:135); “neither Jew nor Christian, but ḥanîf, muslim” (3:67).

The root of the word means to incline, to turn away. The ḥanîf is the one who has turned away from the associates in order to turn, in one piece, toward the One — exactly the man of the parable, “whole to one alone”. The Qur’an goes so far as to make Abraham “a community in himself” (16:120): the posture is enough, without the group.

9. Four words for what a single one has replaced

Where we say “religion”, the Qur’an has four words, and they do not say the same thing. Milla: the tradition one belongs to — “the way of my fathers” (12:38), “their milla“, into which others would make you return (18:20). Dîn: what one owes, the reckoning, the law, allegiance. Islâm: the act of giving oneself over whole, of embracing peace. Ḥanîf: orientation, the face turned toward the One. One verse links them together: “an upright order, the way of Abraham, ḥanîf” (6:161). And faith, îmân, is the trust that dwells in all of this.

What the translations “submission” and “religion” make disappear is precisely this articulation: a gesture (giving oneself over), an orientation (toward the One), a debt (what one owes), an affiliation (the way of the fathers) — of which the text says that the first and the second hold good without the fourth. And this is what makes it possible to read the most often quoted verses without misreading them: “religion with God is islâm” (3:19) and “whoever seeks a dîn other than islâm, it will not be accepted from him” (3:85) come after “to Him has given itself over all that is in the heavens and on the earth” (3:83). What is accepted is what the stars already do.

Further reading

• “Believer” and “Unbeliever”: What the Words of the Qur’an Really Say
• Does the Qur’an Command Fighting the “Unbelievers”?
• Was the Prophet Illiterate? What Ummî Really Means
• The Higher Purposes of the Qur’an (Maqâsid al-Qur’ân)
• Sufi Tafsîr: Reading the Qur’an from Within
• The Seven Aḥruf of the Qur’an (al-aḥruf al-sabʿa)
• The First Revealed Sura
• Table of the major tafsirs