Alkaeda asks, what is 786?

Society Religion & Philosophy
1

Dear alkaeda,

I am glad you did not ask the question in mirpuri=the language of people from mirpur city in kashmir otherwise things would have been difficult. Just joking.

You see alkaeda, before numeral symbols were invented like romans people used to write numbers with shapes for letters. I hope you are familar with roman numbers ie i ii iii iv v vi etc etc etc. Likewise Arabs used to write alif, baa, jeem, daal, ha instead of 1 2 3 4 etc etc. Alif=1 baa=2 jeem=3 etc etc etc to do their maths. Letters denote values from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000. That is alif=1, baa=2, jeem=3, daal=4, ha=5, wow=6, zaa=7, hah=8, tua=9. Then ya=10, kaaf=20, laam=30, meem=40, noon=50, seen=60, ain=70, faa=80 and suad=90. Then we have qaaf=100, ra=200, sheen=300, ta=400, tha=500, kha=600, dha=700, dhuad=800, zua=900 and ghain=1000.

Likewise, it was common to write a checksum of a word, sentence or the paragraph or even whole story or subject to prevent mistaken readings when it came to important documents. So muslims used to do the same for quranic text. This helped them read words correctly because in those days some letter shapes were not distinguishable ie there were no NUQAAT=dots in, above or below Arabic letters eg baa, taa, thaa, nun, yaa were all using a common symbol and so were, JEEM, HAA, KHA or FAA and QAAF etc etc etc. So while writing BISMILLA HIRRAH MAA NIRRA HEEM, they would also write the checksum for the sentence as well so that it could not be misread as something else ie the sum of alphanumeric value that is, they added value of each letter in the bismillah and wrote the sum of it which adds up to be 786. Later people started using 786 on its own which is incorrect use of it because it does not serve its purpose. Just checksum on its own does not serve its purpose because other words or sentences could also have the very same checksum eg ADAM=adam and MADA=female would have the very same aphanumerical value eg 1+4+40=40+4+1. However, if you had alif+daal+meem=adam=1+4+40=45=meem daal with its checksum, you would not read it as something other than adam.

The alphanumeric concept predates islam. The idea was around even in the time of torah. I hope you understand the explanation and good luck with it.

regards and all the best.

2

i’m confused over this number? @ first we were taught as kids kai it’s some numerical lingo’ and it’s equivalent to :bism: and 92 is equivalent to allah’s name etc

then a few months back on religion forum i read this belief is untrue but i’m not sure 100%

3

As far as I'm concerned, it wasn't around at the time of the Prophet (SAWS), thus it is bida.

4

Assalaamu Alaikum

As far as I know, people in Pakistan usually write 786 at the beginning of any letter (correspondence) instead of Arabic Bismillah mostly out of respect. For example if a letter ends up in the bin afterwards then they know it does not have Allah’s name written on it in Arabic but just some numbers.

Allah knows best.

See the following:

5

its a stupid belief, if you dont want to disrespect the name of allah, and write bunch of numbers, then why just 786? why not 007? or 911? i mean they are numbers too. and if they can be thrown in dustbin with out fear of disrespect, then how can they also give blessing of bismillah?

6

Dear friends,

Words written by means of letters are also symbols for representing the intended meanings or ideas, so regardless one throw in the bin bismillah written in arabic by means of arabic characters or in numbers representing it, what would be the difference, for ultimately you are throwing Allah's name in the bin?

Regardless word Allah is written using roman characters or arabic or for that matter hebrew or mere numbers, Allah is Allah as I see it.

Regards and all the best.

7

there has been a lot of discussion abt this on GS before…and as i said earlier, there is no just thing as 786…why distort the words of Allah and come up with our own replacements???

now, one misconception among muslims is that since we write bismillah on papers and there is a high chance of these papers floating here and there on ground, it is better to write 786 instead of bismillah…so this way, there is no “be-hurmati” of the bismillah phrase…well, again this concept is wrong…the people who use 786 need to understand that it is the meaning that counts, not the actual words…so if they use 786 (which is wrong to use), they still need to take care of its hurmat just as they would do for bismillah…

One good existing thread can be found
here

another good one is here

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** A QUESTION FOR U ALL >>> **

When our Prophet (saw) sent letters to the non-believers, inviting them to accept Islam - How do u think the letters started off??

Most likely with Bismillah right ??
Pretty obviously our Prophet (saw) would hav thought abt what the recipient of the letter wud end up doing with it, cos out of all people dont u think he (saw) wud hav had more respect for the name of Allah (swt)??

I'm not sayin its right to do so, but i'm just a bit curious as to why our Prophet (saw) did it, even though he knew the recipient of the letter may be a direspectful person.

May Allah (swt) forgive me if i'm wrong.