In Arabic, piety and fear of God share one word, taqwa.

Evidence

The connection between the emotion of fear and practices of piety ( such as prayer) is further borne out by the way they are semantically intertwined in the Arabic term taq which is used in the Quran for both “piety” and “fear of God.” In the Quran, the eschatological fear of God and the Day of Judg.. ment is held to be almost synonymous with true belief, and piety is at times al.. most indistinguishable from the capacity to fear (Izutsu 1966, 164-72 ) . — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1005

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Shows taqwa semantically fuses piety with fear of God, grounding the argument in language itself.