In religious law...

In religious law, taqwā means keeping one’s self from whatever leads him to commit sins so that he refrains from prohibited acts. Rāghib explicitly says that taqwā simply means to protect oneself. He also says that this word can be translated as fear and does not denote that in the example of ittaqu’llah the metaphoric meaning is intended. And as we said, there is no reason to affirm that in such sentences any metaphor is used.

The strange thing is that this word is translated as restraint ( parhizkari ) in Farsi. It has never been seen that any linguist ever claims that this word is used in this meaning. As it was mentioned before, Rāghib translated this word as fear but did not use it as restraint. It is not certain where, when, and why this word became translated as piety in Farsi. I suppose that only Farsi-speaking people get the meaning of restraint from the word taqwā.

No Arabic-speaking person understands this word in this way. There is no doubt that in practice, the prerequisite of having taqwā and self-protection for something is to avoid it, but it does not mean that the word “taqwā” has this meaning.…