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A Linguistic Challenge (Google Failed)

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Hypognosis | 05:42 Wed 18th Nov 2015 | Society & Culture
6 Answers
Can anyone find, or work out, a definition of an Arabic word:
فاقتاوا
faqtawa or vaqtawa

The word appears in an image of a document and my representation of it is imperfect as I dont know how to get the fourth letter to render as a shallow wiggle in the base line, with two dots stacked vertically above it.


I've no idea where to post this, so I've put it in Soc and Culture.

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There is mention of vaqtawa on this site - a thief or adultress apparently
http://www.newsinfoen.xyz/2013/02/blog-post_4212.html
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Thanks gangesboy

I looked at your link but couldn't make sense of the garbled English.

Could Sharjah Faqtawah be a person or a placename?

Google Translate gives these results for "thief".

السارق
alssariq

thief, robber, pilferer
لص
Is
thief, burglar, robber, bandit, picklock, yegg

سارق
sariq
thief, burglar, pirate

and, for adulteress it has


زانية
zania
adulteress, prostitute, adulterer, corespondent, strumpet, hooker
فاجرة
facra (?)
***, prostitute, harlot, adulteress

Thanks for trying though.
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Who are our resident language enthusiasts?



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Slow morning? This should get LP rack moving again.

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Okay, what this thread is about is that I was curious to know whether the word "kill" appears in the Koran at all and, if so, how many times.

This (sura 9:5) snippet
--
ثم قتل المشركين حيث ثقفتموهم و القبض عليهم و محاصرة لهم والجلوس في الانتظار بالنسبة لهم في كل مكان الكمين .
--

I have transliterated (as best as I can) as

thumm qutil almushrikin hayth thaqiftumuhum w alqabd ealayhim w muhasarat lahum waljulus fi alaintizar balnsbt lahum fi kl makan alkamin .

but the original source was the *English* translation, on quran.com, of a text which, in jpg form shows a different word ahead of almushrikin
فاقتاوا
"faqatawa". Google translate is unable to convert this to an English equivalent.

I would like to know how crucial this mistranslated word might be.

almushrikin is what quran.com translated as "polytheists" but could also be token for "pagans", or "unbelievers". Interesting to see that كفر kfr kuffar does not appear in the original Arabic.

Sidebar: the other day, I discovered that there is kaffir and kuffar, the latter referring to those who were Muslim at least once but recanted. I have yet to discover if they are written differently in Arabic; removing vowels doesn't make things easy.
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*
kuffar (us) and kaffir, the latter referring to...

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