Monday 31 July 2017

Non-Arab Muslims With Surnames Like Qureshi, Related to Quraish Tribe?

So a convert to Hinduism was having a go at an panelist, on what I assume to be an Indian news show, who was claiming to be a descendent of Prophet Muhammad. He claimed to be the 35th descended of Prophet Muhammad p. He has an Indian accent so I assume ethnically he is Indian.

The Hindu in his video response writes on a slide: "He has been lied to, he is not the descendent of Muhammad"

To say he's lying or has been lied to is a hefty claim.

Rather than accusing folks of being liars or having been lied to (by their own ancestors) how about we start thinking about how this *could* be the case? Is it possible the Indian sounding man on the news show has some sort of ancestral link to the Quraish tribe? Yes.

There would be two avenues for this man to have such a link to the Quraish tribe:

1. Bloodline. Somebody in his family tree has got to be Quraishi.
2. Marriage. Somebody from his tribe has married a Quraishi Arab man and subsequently the whole tribe/village changed their name to Quraishi.

I know the gentleman claimed to be a descendent so perhaps he did not have 2 in mind. Or perhaps he's not being accurate with his language and the link is actually similar to the type outlined in 2. Or perhaps he does have some link to somebody from the Quraish tribe as per 1.

I'd say it is plausible to think some people from this region (and others) who carry names/titles such as Qureshi or Sayyid do so out of a marriage ancestral bond  (i.e 2 above)

Some folks may have even innocently taken on such names without making any claims of ancestry:

It's possible a tribe/village were preached to by an Arab Quraishi Muslim leading to the tribe/village converting to Islam and taking on such a name. Or somebody took on such a name after he converted to Islam because he wanted a Muslim name so he could be identified with his new religious identity (subsequently this name was passed on to his progeny).

Who knows? But to say he's been lied to seems unfair.

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