I was in a cab the other day, and the driver was chanting prayers while fingering a piece of cloth. When he finished with a group of prayers, he moved some beads on a rosary looking device that was hanging on the mirror. He was Muslim, and I know it's Ramadan right now. Does anyone know what those beads are called? It seemed a strange mix, to me, between Catholicism (the rosary) and Judaism (the chanting of prayers).

I tend to call them worry beads generically, but I think the Muslim ones are called tabih. Another term is komboloi.

"prayer beads" is another. I'd Google the term to find the word in other languages but I don't know how

Thanks for those words, zmj. The beads didn't look like that, but I assume, like rosaries, they are very different.

He is going to drive me to the airport tomorrow, so I hope to ask him. When I asked him what his religion was (after he had finished his chanting), he confirmed for me that most of us in the U.S. mispronounce "Muslim." A speaker from the State Department once told us that the pronunciation is "moose-lim," though almost everyone says "muzz-lim." When I pronounce it "moose-lim," sometimes people will say, "Do you mean "muzz-lim?"

Japanese Buddhists have prayer beads, called nenju or juzu.

I wouldn't say that "muzzlim" is a mispronunciation. My dictionary gives [mǝzlǝm] or [mʊzlǝm]. In Arabic the sound might be [s], but in English it's [z].

Prayer beads, prayer wheels, mandalas - hmmmm... Jung had a point in "Man And His Symbols!"

What was Jung's point about man and his symbols?

the un-enlightened,
CW

Jung wrote a book by that title depicting how certain symbols are universally used across cultures that have not had direct contact. It supported his thesis of a "collective unconscious"
that is typical of all humans.

quote:

Originally posted by Asa Lovejoy:
Jung wrote a book by that title depicting how certain symbols are universally used across cultures that have not had direct contact. It supported his thesis of a "collective unconscious"
that is typical of all humans.

Or, much less speculatively evolution .