Picking a Bone Where It Shouldn't Exist

While living in Tampa, a Salafi brother was doing his routine of criticizing traditional Islamic scholarship, talking about the silly mistakes that (in his mind) these so-called-scholars have made in the past. One of the examples he mentioned was that, when listing who is worthiest to lead the group prayer, scholars mention, "the one with the best penis" (ahsanuhum dhakaran). He then proceeded to make an obscene gesture mimicking this. I found this statement disturbing. I knew he wouldn't go so far as lying and wondered how such a statement could be present in books of traditional scholarship. Is it possible that some traditional scholars were just a bit off?

About a year later, I was reading through a fiqh text on the issue of who should lead the group prayer. When preferring one candidate over another, the text mentioned that ahsanuhum dhikran (Tr. "the one with the best mention"; i.e. the best reputation) should be chosen. It immediately became clear what had happened: in Arabic, vowels are not normally written, so this armchair critic of traditional scholars had misread the word dhikr (mention) as dhakar (penis). As Imam Ghazali said, "Every vessel pours forth that which it contains." Had this person been less concerned with his personal lust for proving himself right, then perhaps his understanding would have been directed to that which makes more sense in the given context.

As a digression, Letter Sort Order in Arabic Dictionaries notes that Arabic words with similar letters often have related meanings. A fortiori, words that have the exact same letters (like dhakar and dhikr) usually have meanings that return to a common meaning. Most abstract words in Arabic have their origins in a very concrete word related to the nomadic lifestyle of the ancient Arabs. Concrete words were then re-purposed to have abstract meanings by extension and analogy. The word dhikr (meaning, "mention" or, "remembrance") has its roots in the word dhakar (penis) because the latter is the means by which a man is remembered after his death; i.e. through his offspring.