Basmalah
The Basmala or Bismillah (Arabic: بَسْمَلَة, romanized: bismilah; also known by its opening words Bi-smi llāh; بِسْمِ ٱللهِ, “In the name of God”) it is an Islamic phrase meaning “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” (Arabic: بِسْمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيْمِ, bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi). It is one of the most important phrases in Islam and it is frequently recited by Muslims before performing daily activities and religious practices, including prayer and any task where you wish to have succes and protection from harm in what you do. The Bismilah used as the Tasmiyah (Arabic: تَسْمِيَّة), which refers specifically to saying Bi-smi llāh (بِسْمِ ٱللهِ) doing a task. Some pronounce the phrase incorrectly as Basmalah but in the Hausa language it actually is pronounced Bis-mil-llah (Hausa English Translations). The phrase Bismillah is usually used at the start of the recitation of verses or surahs from the Qur’an, and also used commonly used at the beginning of daily activities, such as eating, traveling, or slaughtering animals to make the meat halal.
The Bismillah is used in over half of the constitutions of countries where Islam is the state religion or more than half of the population follows Islam, usually the first phrase in the preamble, including those of Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.
In the Quran, it is recited before each chapter (surah), except for the ninth chapter At-Tawbah. Scholarly debates regarding its inclusion in the Qur’anic text reached consensus with the 1924 Cairo Edition, where it was included as the first verse (āyah) of Al-Fatiha and remained an unnumbered line preceding each of the 112 other chapters.
Historically, the Islamic Bismillah appears to be related to earlier variants of the phrase appearing in Arabian inscriptions dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries.
