Our sections have names like Athenaeum, Lyceum and Odeum. Some of our tools have names like IlmFlow. This page explains what they mean and why we chose them, because a name that has to be guessed at is not doing its job.
Note
Nothing here is something you need to know to use the site. If a word is unfamiliar, that is our problem to fix, not a test you have to pass.
Why English
We publish Islamic learning in proper English, for people who live their lives in English. That is the whole point of what we do, and the names follow from it.
Islam is often made to feel foreign in the West — something that arrives with its own vocabulary and asks you to learn the vocabulary before you are allowed in. We decline to help with that. A person who has never met a Muslim should be able to read the name of a page on this site and know roughly what is behind it.
So the rule we actually follow is this:
Name a thing for the people it is for, so it does not read as foreign to them.
Most of the time that produces an English name. Sometimes it does not — see the tools with Arabic names below. It is the same rule either way.
The names, and what they mean
Reflections
Plain English. A short daily piece paired with a passage worth sitting with. It is called what it is.
Vignettes
From the French vignette — a small illustrative sketch. Short illustrated stories that make a point through a moment rather than an argument.
Events
Plain English again. Commemoration programmes, sessions and gatherings.
Athenaeum
From the Greek Athenaion, the temple of Athena in ancient Athens, where poets and scholars read their work aloud. The word later came to mean a library or a literary institution — in Britain and America, an athenaeum is a reading room open to the public.
That is what ours is: a place to read long-form material properly, without it being chopped into posts.
Lyceum
From the Greek Lykeion, the grove outside Athens where Aristotle taught, walking as he went. In later centuries a lyceum meant a public hall for lectures — a place ordinary people went to hear someone who knew something explain it.
Ours is for long-form video: documentaries, lectures and talks.
Odeum
From the Greek odeion, a building made for song and recitation — smaller than a theatre, roofed, built for the voice rather than for spectacle.
Ours is for audio, in three strands:
| Strand | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Recitations | Quran, Ziyarah (Visitations / Salutations) and Dua (Supplications) |
| Music | Nohe (Lamentations), Nasheeds (Anthems), Songs and Music |
| Talks | Sermons, Podcasts and Lectures |
They are separated because you rarely want them mixed. Someone looking for a recitation is not usually in the mood for a lecture, and the reverse.
Important
Not all of these exist yet. Reflections, Vignettes and Events are live now. The Athenaeum, the Lyceum and the Odeum are being built, and this page describes them so the names make sense when they arrive rather than after. We would rather explain a name early than launch one unexplained.
Our tools
Behind the site there are tools we built to make the work possible, and they share a family name — Flow:
- ScribeFlow — turning recordings into transcripts, translations and written articles
- MediaFlow — gathering and preparing media
- ClipFlow — cutting long recordings into shareable pieces
- NewsFlow — following what is being said and written
You will not usually meet these. They are named for the people who work with them, which is the same rule as everything above.
The tools with Arabic names
Two of them are IlmFlow and FiqhFlow. They are not exceptions to the rule — they are the same rule with a different audience.
IlmFlow is for researchers, students and scholars. FiqhFlow is for Shia Muslims asking a question of their marja. For those people, ilm and fiqh are not foreign words that need translating — they are the ordinary, native words for exactly the thing being described. Replacing them with Greek would be the alienating choice, not the welcoming one.
Same rule. Different audience. Opposite answer.
What ilm means
Ilm (عِلْم) is usually translated "knowledge", and the translation is thin. Its three root letters — ayn, lam, mim — carry the sense of a mark or a sign, something by which a thing is known. From that same root come the words for a signpost, a landmark, a banner, and for the world itself as the thing that points beyond itself.
So ilm is not a heap of facts. It is knowing something in a way that marks it out and lets you recognise it again. That is closer to what we are trying to build than "knowledge" manages on its own.
It is also short — three letters — which is part of why it works as a name. Short enough,
in fact, to be a web address in its own right: i1m.me points at it, much as tp313.me
stands in for this site when a link needs to fit somewhere small.
Two things sit behind IlmFlow being open to everyone, and they are the reason rather than a courtesy added afterwards:
"Seek knowledge, even if it be in China."
Knowledge is spread across the whole world and every civilisation. Where it is found does not determine whether it is worth having.
"We have made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another." — Quran 49:13
Difference is the premise of learning, not an obstacle to it.
Names we considered and rejected
We did not arrive at these easily, and what we turned down shows the principle being applied rather than bent. Every rejection below is about reach, not taste.
gnosisflow — nearly chosen, and dropped. Gnosis names only a part of what we mean by knowledge, and it carries associations that are viewed with suspicion in parts of Islam, including within Shia Islam. A name that repels people before they have read a word of the thing itself has already failed.
hawzaflow — rejected almost immediately. We are rooted in the hawza, and we say so plainly elsewhere. But as a name it would have looked like a closed door to everyone who is not already inside, which is the opposite of the intention.
nomikos, nomologia — considered for FiqhFlow. Accurate, and far too obscure for an ordinary reader to parse. A name nobody can decode is not a name, it is a password.
A door, not a gate
You do not need Greek, or Arabic, or any of this, to use the site. Every one of these names is a label on a door that is already open — and if a door on this site ever feels like it needs a password, we have made a mistake and would like to hear about it.