Arabic and Islam
By Haseeb Shehadeh
March 2004
The rise of the Arabic language to
the status of a major world language is a result of the rise of
Islam as a major world religion. In the pre-Islamic period, al-jāhiliyyah
(ignorance of God), Arabic was a minor member of the southern branch
of the Semitic family, whose native speakers belonged to some
nomadic tribes in the Arabian Peninsula. Within a century after the
death of the Arab prophet, Muḥammad, (632 A. D.) Arabic became the
official language of a vast empire. Since the seventh century,
Arabic and Islam, meaning both peace and submission to God’s will,
became inseparable and Arabic spread like wildfire. Thanks to the
Qur’ān the destiny of the Arabic language was different from
numerous other Semitic sister languages such as Accadian, Ugaritic
and Aramaic (lawlā al-qur’ān al-karīm la-kānat al-lughah al-`arabiyyah
fī khabari kāna).
The boundaries of this empire
stretched from Central Asia, the Oxus River, to the Atlantic Ocean,
and they reached northward to the Iberian Peninsula. So Arabic has
replaced its sister, Aramaic, which was the international language,
the lingua franca, of the Persian Empire. Towards the end of the
seventh century A.D. (690 A. D.), Arabic became the language of
administration of the Umayyad Caliphate, and in the year 707 it
became the language of instruction and public relations. All this
took place during the rule of the Caliph, `Abd al-Malik Ibn Marwān,
646-715 A. D. Joel Carmichael in his book, The Shaping of the Arabs,
writes about the nature of this language:
The possibilities in Arabic for the
use of figurative language are endless; its allusiveness, types and
figures of speech place it far beyond the reach of any other
language... Arabic loses on translation (emphasis mine) but all
other languages gain on being translated into Arabic.
Needless to say, generally, all
living languages lose more or less when translated and the whole
issue requires separate study.
We read in the Qur’ān: Verily we
have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’ān in order that you may
understand. (Sūrat Yūsuf: 2). The Qur’ān was sent down by God
through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad to the people during 23 years.
God did not write it but inspired with it and this Muslim holy text
is the key for understanding the Muslim World. However, language is
not just a collection of sounds, words, and sentences which can
readily be rendered from one language into another, but is a whole
intrinsic system of thinking, culture and reflection of reality. The
noblest of languages (ashraf al-lughūt), the language of the
Qur’ān, is considered sacred by Muslims and functions as the main
tool for understanding Islam; al-kitāb, and al-sunnah.
In this context Ibn Taymiyyah said: The Arabic language is from the
religion, and the knowledge of it is an obligation. For surely the
understanding of the Qur’ān and the Sunnah is an obligation, and
these two are not understood except with the understanding of the
Arabic language, and whatever obligation is not fulfilled except by
certain steps then those steps themselves become obligatory (to
fulfill the initial obligation) (The Necessity of the Straight Path
by Ibn Taymiyyah (1/470).
Contemporary Muslim scholars agree
that the Qur’ān and the Sunnah should be taught in the Arabic
language. In this they follow the tradition of the early Muslim
scholars from the time when Islam conquered different countries. The
function of translations was to present the main principles and
facts of Islam to those who had not yet embraced it. Those people
after converting to Islam must adopt the Arabic language as the only
language in which to understand Islam. The common Muslim view says
that the Qur’ān cannot be translated to any other language (i`jāz
al-Qur’ān) whereas its contents alone could be rendered.
After the Muslim Arab conquests,
the Arabic script began to be adopted by the speakers of many
languages such as, Kurdish, Persian, Turkish, Pashto, Berber,
Judaeo-Karaite-Samaritan Arabic, Malayo, Polynesian dialects, Hausa,
Somali, Swahili, Tadjik, Tartar, Uzbek and a few Slavonic languages
in Europe. Moriscos, former Muslims in Spain, continued to use
Aljamiado, Spanish written in Arabic characters, until the beginning
of the seventeenth century. All people who embraced Islam kept their
own national languages, whereas Christian Arabs, as well as
Arabicized Christians such as Copts and Maronites, kept their belief
in Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact Christian Arabs whose mother
tongue was Arabic in the pre-Islamic era such as al-Ghasesina
maintained their religion and their mother tongue. Accordingly the
saying Arabic cannot be Christianized (inna al-lughatah al-`arabiyya
lā tatanṣṣaru) lacks foundation.
Today, there is a common opinion
that Arabic is difficult, ambiguous and long-winded. However, we
believe it is exceptionally rich and the system of its morphology
and syntax are clear and, as a rule, logical and have not changed
for centuries. Thus, only several months of intensive courses are
required in order to acquire a good command of Modern Standard
Arabic (MSA) if there is a firm willingness and motivation on the
part of teachers and students alike. Interest in the Arabic language
has increased greatly throughout the world particularly since the
events of the 11th of September 2001. In some parts of the world
such as Israel, Islamic studies and Arabic language teaching have
been harmed by the Intifadah and world violence and terror.
Mention should be made of the fact that for years Arabic was taught
in Israel only because it was deemed necessary to "know your enemy
in order to overcome him.
There are around one billion
Muslims worldwide and the majority are concentrated around the holy
city of Makkah, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the Arab States of the
Middle East and North Africa, right across to Morocco and
Mauritania; and the East African States from Somalia down to
Tanzania. Moreover, Islam is found in West Africa, India, Indonesia,
Europe, Russian Central Asia, China, the Philippines and the
Americas.
The Arab World, 22 countries with
some 300 million people, is but a small part of the Muslim World,
approximately 800 million. Arabic script remains the second most
widely used alphabet in the world following the Latin script. In
addition to Arabic, over ten languages still retain the Arabic
script - the most important being Kurdish, Persian, Pashto, and
Sindhi in Pakistan Urdu.
Arabic is one of the six languages
used in the United Nations and it is a working language in the
Organization of African Unity. Moreover, it is the second official
language in Israel and it has recently been reinstated as a second
tongue in some Muslim countries such as Iran, Pakistan and the
southern part of the Philippines.
It is an established fact that the
Western scholarship knows much about the Arab World and Islam
because of political, economic, religious and cultural
considerations. This does not mean that an ordinary person in the
West knows and understands what scholars have investigated and
published. An ordinary Western citizen knows that every Arab is
Muslim as is the case in the North African Arab states. Needless to
say, knowledge for the sake of knowledge should be the final goal.
What would be the best way to learn about and understand the vast
and rich Arabic culture which occupies a place of honor among other
great cultures in the world? Having a profound knowledge of one
vernacular of Arabic would be essential and very helpful to learn
about a vast variety of items in culture such as manners, folklore,
beliefs, customs, traditions, and greetings. This is the case of
native speakers of spoken Arabic, each one has his own dialect
besides his idiolect and he understands several other dialects
without being naturally able to speak in them. For example,
Palestinians have no difficulties in understanding Arabic used in
Greater Syria, Iraq and Egypt. We believe that one has to keep ones
own dialect as his mother tongue and to have a passive knowledge of
some other dialects as necessary. Modern technology in the realm of
communication contributes much to this mutual understanding. As a
result of the recent American war on Iraq, the Iraqi vernaculars
have been heard in everywhere.
On the other hand, it is not rare
to come across Western researchers of Arabic dialectology who have
some active knowledge of several dialects but, in fact, have serious
difficulty in expressing themselves in a satisfactory manner in any
dialect. The truth of the matter is that they sometimes speak a
manifestation of Arabic which does not exist in reality. Yet if a
person moulds his views of Arabic culture and Arab Islam based on
such a way he will get a distorted picture. Unfortunately, many
foreigners possess such an attitude, and among many Arabists or
dialectologists active knowledge in one of the vernaculars of Arabic
is, as a rule, poor. Unfortunately, the same state of affairs holds
true with regard to many orientalists and professors of Arabic
language in the West. It seems to us that the overwhelming majority
of such teachers of Arabic in higher institutions in the West lack a
satisfactory competence in speaking and writing in MSA. This
manifestation of Arabic in its simplified form, lughatu bayna
bayn, is the connecting bond of all educated Arabs in the world.
The burning questions which should be raised are: Does this
situation of theory without sufficient practice suit our modern era
of globalization? How can University students of living languages
such as Arabic develop a good command of Arabic when their teachers,
and especially their professors, do not set an example with their
own proficiency? Is an active knowledge, speaking and writing, of
living languages one of the main goals of academic instruction in
the West? If the answer to this question is positive, then the whole
program and system of instruction ought to be restructured. Is it
required and possible for a Western professor to obtain a profound
active command of a living language? Is there a need from the point
of view of tasks to differentiate between a researcher, translator,
professor of a living language and an analyst in the public media?
Can such a demanding combination of these tasks and missions be
successfully accomplished by one person? How would ordinary people
or even experts react if they suddenly found out that their
professor of a living language and world religion, whom they often
used to watch on television or listen to on radio, can hardly
communicate with educated native speakers of that specific language
let alone speak in any specific dialect or give a lecture in it?
Usually, the active knowledge of such people is a top secret. The
French orientalist, Volney, at the beginning of the nineteenth
century criticized scholars who knew a great deal about medieval
Arab grammarians, but could not make themselves understood by a
living Arab. After almost two centuries, we are not sure that the
situation is much different today with regard to teachers of living
Asian and African languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, and
Japanese and their literature, history, culture and religion.
It is impossible to understand
properly the present without also understanding the past. The same
thing can be said with regard to language. One has to learn all the
manifestations of Arabic in order to possess a comprehensive
understanding of this language, its culture and literature. It is a
complete entity. Language is the mirror of the soul of society which
is the reservoir of the precipitates of its past. Or as Samuel
Johnson has put it “the family tree of the nation.” Mastering a
language facilitates understanding contents and nuances which cannot
be obtained through translation as mentioned earlier. It opens a
unique window towards the values, desires, hopes, thoughts and
opinions of its native speakers. One of the results of modern
specialization is that we have experts who know, as a matter of
fact, almost everything about nothing. On the other hand, we observe
that the field of teaching and research of some scholars or
professors is vast, such as Chinese studies, Japanese studies,
African studies, Semitic languages and cultures, Indian studies,
Arabic and Islam. The inevitable question that rises is to what
extent such designation reflects reality and specialization? Is it
possible for ordinary scholars to excel in a such vast realm of
study? No wander that the active knowledge on the part of these
professors in the living languages that they teach is so poor. This
vast attempt of specialization is being achieved at the expense of
the language of that field.
Do Western scholars hit the target
when they apply their criteria employed in Western research in
investigating and judging matters of other societies and cultures?
Is this method sufficient? Do they not lose something in this
process? Though the West today supplies the universally accepted
scientific model of research, one has to bear in mind that the West
has obtained its sources of research from the Arab Muslim Orient. In
the Middle Ages the West was living in complete darkness. It seems
to us that looking at the Arab society only through a Western lens
creates a distorted picture. The students of the Western school of
research are not sufficiently aware of the central role of Islam
today especially among the so-called modern classes, almost
seculars.
It would be interesting to compare
Egyptian newspapers, such as al-Ahram and al-Akhbar,
with Western ones. Such newspapers are respected ones by all
measures and opinions. Al-Dīn (the word “religion”, does not reflect
completely the Arabic term) occupies an important place in these
daily or other weekly newspapers. Almost every subject raised for
discussion is dealt with from the religious point of view and not
from the political-religious one. In addition there are various
religious questions raised and answered: Is there any contradiction
in hiring an advocate by a Muslim and the perception of tawakkul,
that is to say, trust in God? What about a person who works and has
no time to pray five times a day. Is this behavior reckoned against
him on the Day of Judgment (yawm al- ḥisāb)? Will a Muslim
who commits a sin remain forever in hell? Such inquiries and others
known to us from the Middle Ages appear in modern and Westernized
Arabic newspapers. Almost all the West including of course
orientalists, Arabists, theologians and others have the notion that
progress on the path of modernization and westernization on the part
of the Arab World means that it will become more liberal,
pluralistic and democratic. Yet, what in fact, has happened and is
still taking place in various Arab counties as well as in other
Muslim ones? We are witnessing the emergence of new Islamist
movements. There are grounds for the argument which says that more
democracy and liberalization in Arab societies leads to the victory
of political Islam and this is one of the major reasons why the
guardians of democracy in America are not so eager to push in this
direction.
It is to be noted that leaders of
extreme Islamic factions in Iran and Egypt, for instance, have
obtained their education and training in the West as engineers or
experts in natural sciences or agriculture. Only a small number have
been educated in the humanities in the West. Arabs already possess
spirituality and moral values and what they need is technology based
on a scientific way of thinking and analysis. Criticism and
objection to the West has come from people who were educated in the
West and not from the uneducated. Licentiousness and family disunion
in the Western society play a central role in such a position.
Therefore, Western research has to seek additional tools and
approaches which may help to explain and understand such phenomena.
A clear example of this phenomenon can be furnished by the
well-known Sudanese Islamist, Dr. Hasan al-Turabi, who studied in
London and Paris.
What are the sources which are
available for researchers? There are both oral and written sources.
However, there is inflation in words; people speak and write too
much so that in many cases one cannot believe everything. One
example in this connection suffices. It is an open secret that every
newspaper errs in this aspect or that, and even leads the reader to
obvious misunderstanding and faults. Not every logical story is true
and not every illogical one is false. What one reads today will not
be true tomorrow and what one newspaper publishes is not approved by
another one. Such phenomena are well known to all educated people in
our era. Yet, what happens after half a century or so? Almost in a
magical way such newspapers become “holy” or “semi-holy” texts used
as sources for the so-called authentic and serious research. The age
of such documents makes them reliable and they are regarded as if
they were fine wine. The same thing undoubtedly holds true with
regard to the spoken word though such sources ought to be considered
with caution. Moreover, we have to bear in mind that there are
languages which are not written but oral. These languages were
called “mute languages” by the anthropologist, E. Hall. Hall has
shown in an interesting manner how American delegations to the
Middle East as well as to Japan have failed in their mission because
everything which was beyond what was described in books and research
summaries was misunderstood. In real situations much meaning can be
expressed by intonation or body movements or by specific signs or
gestures. These sources of knowledge and understanding, which are
natural among native speakers of the same language, are important,
difficult to understand from outside and perhaps harder to
investigate. In other words there are meanings beyond the lexical
contents of written texts, but are not generally explored by Western
methods of research. In order to avoid misunderstandings one has to
learn the locational and cultural context of a language and the
emotional component plays an important role in Arabic vernaculars.
Non-verbal communication such as intuition, body language, and
nuances are very essential in Arabic. Usually in Arab culture
emotions penetrate specific areas which are barred in Western
cultures. In writing poetry language is far from being just a tool;
it is rather an energy and a substantial part in the dynamics of
creativity and originality. The usage of language, any living
language, as a tool of communication is, as a matter of fact, the
lowest level of mastering it. On the other hand, in its highest
level it is an organic part of national identity, being and
philosophy of life. Briefly, the lexical meaning of a specific word
or expression is but a small part compared to the melody of the
word, its spirit, shades and inspiration. A passive knowledge of
living languages is crippled and void of creativity.
People worldwide want to understand
what is happening in the cradle of civilization, which was the
source of the alphabet, monotheistic religions, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, and which is also one of the main sources of
oil. Yet, not less than that, people would like to know what Usama
bin Laden wants and why. In order to understand his ideology one has
to understand Islam and the past glory of Arabs for centuries,
especially during the Middle Ages in which astrology, literature,
medicine, philosophy, and science flourished in the Muslim Arab
world (Dār al-Islām/al-Salām) in the East and the West alike. If a
person, let alone an expert in Arabic and Islam, does not delve to
the depths of Arabic culture both in theory and practice, he or she
cannot understand the deep humiliation bin Laden talks about. The
West in general and the United States of America in particular are
depicted and considered as controlling and lording over the Arab
World while the central Arab issue, the Palestinian problem, is
still unsolved.
Finally, common seminars and the
natural, direct contact of Western people in general and researchers
of Arabic and Islam in particular with Arab and Muslim scholars and
thinkers in the Arab mashriq and maghrib in MSA or in
any dialect is, in our view, a significant step toward mutual
respect, trust and understanding.
Haseeb Shehadeh is an Associate Professor of
Semitic Languages at University of Helsinki
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