Dīn

Dīn or Deen is a Muslim word that means "religion" or "way of life." In Islam, it is believed that only one God has ever existed and that God is Allah. It is said that Allah has revealed many religions in the past such as Christianity and Judaism, but the current religion of Islam is the last and final religion to be accepted by Allah on the Day of Judgment.

In Islamic terminology, the word refers to the way of life Muslims must adopt to comply with divine law, encompassing beliefs, character and deeds. The term appears in the Quran 98 times with different connotations, including in the phrase yawm al-din (Arabic: يوم الدين), generally translated to "Day of Judgment" or the famous verse "La ikraha fid din" which translates to "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation).

According to Arthur Jeffery dīn "related to religion" and dīn "judgement, debt etc..." are two separate words of different origin, he derives the dīn related to religion from the Middle Persian den, itself derived from the Zoroastrian Avestan notion daena. Some scholars, such as Nöldeke, Vollers, Mushegh Asatrian and Johnny Cheung are in agreement with this etymology. Others like Gaudefroy-Demombynes and Gardet, have found this derivation unconvincing. Nonetheless, Al Khafaji and Tha'ahbi have included the dīn that is related to religion in their list of foreign words, due to its lack of verbal root.

But the ultimate origin of the word comes from the Akkadian Semitic language d-y-n root Semitic 1.

The Arabic dīn "judgement, debt, etc.." has Semitic cognates, including the Hebrew dīn (דין‎), Aramaic dīnā (דִּינָא), Amharic dañä (ዳኘ) and Ugaritic dyn (𐎄𐎊𐎐).

The Arabic sense of judgment is likely analogous to the Hebraeo-Aramaic cognate root. The Hebrew term "דין", transliterated as "dīn", means either "law" or "judgement". In the Kabbalah of Judaism, the term can, alongside "Gevurah" (cognate to the feminine form of Arabic adjective "Jabārah جَبَّارَة"), refer to "power" and "judgement". In ancient Israel, the term featured heavily in administrative and legal proceedings i.e. Beth Din, literally "the house of judgement," the ancient building block of the Jewish legal system. The Arabic sense "custom, usage" has been derived by classical and modern lexicologists from the Arabic verbal forms dāna (دانى, "be indebted") and dāna li- (-دانى لِ, "submit to"). Louis Gardet sees the Hebraic and Arabic senses as related through the notions of retribution, debt, obligation, custom, and direction, prompting him to translate yawm al-din as "the day when God gives a direction to each human being". This view is not supported by the majority of scholars, who translate yawm al-din as "the day of judgement".

Quranic studies scholar Mohsen Goudarzi has argued that in the Quran dīn means "worship", islām means "monotheism" and muslim means "monotheist". Until the 8th century, the term muslim was more inclusive, including anyone who was considered to be submitting to God (e.g. Christians and Jews), and the term mu'min was instead used to refer to believers in Islam as a distinct religion.

It has been said that the word Dīn appears in as many as 79 verses in the Qur'an, but because there is no exact English translation of the term, its precise definition has been the subject of some misunderstanding and disagreement. For instance, the term is often translated in parts of the Qur'an as "religion".