Halal, Haram, Makruh: 15 Religious Words in Farsi

Short answer: Makruh means discouraged in Islamic law. It is one of four words you will meet together: halâl, permitted, harâm, forbidden, makruh, discouraged, and vâjeb, obligatory. Other religious words that come up in everyday Farsi include masjed, mosque, namâz, daily prayer, do'â, prayer or supplication, ziyârat, pilgrimage, and gonâh, sin.

Several of these words turn up in ordinary Persian, outside religious settings too: in talk about food, or in a sigh over something wasted. In Iran some of them also became the vocabulary of the state, and that is where this page stops being neutral.

Persian With El is secular, and so is this page. We teach these words because you cannot follow Iranian conversation, news or law without them. Learning them commits you to nothing. Where religion is somebody's private faith, we describe it with respect. Where the Islamic Republic uses it to run people's lives, we say so plainly.

Words for What Is Allowed and Not

These four are easier to learn as a set, because the English column already shows how they differ.

Religious Life and Places

The table has two words connected to fasting and prayer that come from different places. Sawm is marked in our glossary as an Arabic religious term, while namâz is a Persian word.

Two Words With a Political Charge

Makruh meaning

Makruh means discouraged, in the sense Islamic law uses it. It is not the same as harâm. Harâm is forbidden, makruh is discouraged, and the gap between those two English words is the whole point of having a separate term.

Makruh is one grade on a scale that classical Islamic law applies to every human act, from obligatory down to forbidden. In the classical theory a makruh act is blameworthy but carries no legal punishment. The scale covers daily life as well as worship, and in our view that is the useful thing for a learner to notice: a lot of ordinary Persian vocabulary arrived with a moral verdict already attached.

Halâl and harâm in everyday Persian

Both words came into Persian from Arabic. Halâl means permitted or lawful, and harâm is its opposite. For meat to be halâl, it has to come from a permitted animal slaughtered with a specific blessing, which is why the example in the table is halâl meat. The pork example is the same kind of sentence: a religious rule, stated as plain fact. For more food words, see Persian food words.

The words also reach beyond religion. A compound built on halâl describes an honest, decent person, someone raised right, while the matching compound built on harâm is a serious insult. Harâm comes from an Arabic word that means both forbidden and sacred, the idea of something set apart, and the same root gives Persian its words for sanctuary, respect and close family member. In daily speech, harâm also shows up in a common phrase of regret, roughly what a sad waste.

When harâm and vâjeb become law

For a believer, these can be words between them and their own conscience. Iran made them law. Article 4 of the Islamic Republic's constitution says all civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military and political laws must be based on Islamic criteria, and Article 12 makes Twelver Shia Islam the official religion, a principle it calls eternally immutable.

In our view, once a state writes that down, harâm stops being a private choice and becomes a police matter. The note to Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code says women who appear in public without proper hijab can be jailed for 10 days to two months or fined, and that note is still in force. In September 2022, Mahsa Amini, 22, died days after the morality police arrested her for allegedly breaking the head covering rules. That is why we cannot treat hejâb as a neutral clothing word. Hejâb-e ejbâri, compulsory hijab, is how Persian names the law itself.

Vâjeb has a plain secular life too. The first definition in Dehkhoda's dictionary is simply necessary, and in everyday speech it often means a must, with no religion in it. Gonâh did something similar. It is a native Persian word, inherited from Middle Persian, and in daily talk it softens from sin into pity: the phrase built on it is what you say about a stray cat in the rain. We like that. Speakers keep taking moral words back and using them for ordinary human feeling.

Masjed and namâz

Masjed comes from Arabic and literally means the place of prostration. Some of Iran's best-known buildings are mosques: the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque and the Shah Mosque on Isfahan's royal square, and the Goharshad Mosque in Mashhad. Tile mosaic, calligraphy and geometric vaults define that architecture. We admire those buildings as Persian craft. You can love the tilework without signing up to what is preached under it.

Namâz is a different story. It comes from Middle Persian, where it meant reverence, and it shares a root with a Sanskrit word meaning to bow. The word is older than Islam in Iran, and Persian kept its own word for the Islamic ritual prayer while Arabic uses another. Friday prayer shows what the state did with that ritual. The Supreme Leader appoints Friday prayer leaders, and a policy council sends them weekly outlines: the first sermon is on religion, the second on politics.

Mollâ and âkhund: what a cleric is called

Both words name a cleric, and both have travelled. Mollâ can be neutral or respectful for a learned religious figure, and in satire it can mean someone rigidly orthodox. Âkhund once meant a religious scholar, but as the word spread it lost status, coming to mean a cleric whose learning stopped at leading prayers and teaching children. Dehkhoda's dictionary, quoted in the same Encyclopaedia Iranica article, even records a word built on it for using the letter of religious law to defeat its obvious intent.

After 1979 the clergy took the state, and the word's contemptuous edge got much sharper in secular speech. Hokumat-e âkhundhâ, the rule of the clergy, is how many secular Iranians describe the system they live under. Our view is simple. A cleric serving people who choose his services is one thing; a clergy holding power over people who never chose it is another. With a religious host, follow their lead. With secular Iranians, know that âkhund bites, and that is usually the point.

For more on which words Persian borrowed and which it kept, read Farsi vs. Arabic. For the religious holidays in the calendar, see the Persian holidays guide.

Get it wrong and the worst that happens is a warm laugh and a story they’ll tell for years. Get it right — refuse the tea twice, accept on the third — and you’ll watch a face open up. You didn’t just speak Persian. You played the game.