A Comment on 'What is a Syed?' Very nice website. I particularly like organizing it in the questions approach because it implicitly gives me permission to ask someone mine -- questions are OK. Please reconsider your comment on "Syed" since it has a fairly significant meaning to the Shiite community. The ones I knew never traced their lineage to the Prophet (*). Reply I really do not have any objection if somebody likes to be called a Syed or has any special degree of respect for Syeds. The point that I wanted to stress is that being or not being a Syed does not have a religious significance. I do appreciate that being a Syed has a great degree of significance for the Shiite community. And I would never like to hurt the feelings of anybody. But the problem really is that when somebody asks me a question regarding whether or not a particular concept has an Islamic significance, I am bound to present the true and unbiased picture of Islam, as I understand it. Islam, and what it stands for, is far more importnat than our feelings for a particular concept. But I assure you that if I am presented a convincing reason to the contrary, I shall, inshallah without any problem, change my stance and opinion on any given issue. Please do let me know if I should do otherwise than what I am doing. Regards The Learner