Islam and Arabic

A while ago I wrote an iLog about language and religion, arguing that language defines a religion. Culture is the bigger umbrella. Language is an essential part of the culture and religions that are ‘born’ in a culture (for no religions is ‘born’ in a cultural vacuum) reflect their cultural origin, if not by conforming to it, then by opposing it. For example Islam protested against infanticide, in a culture where infants were NOT murdered, this opposition would have been pointless…
My second iLog was a question whether Islam is for all people and all times. Whether it can rationalized or not, majority of Muslims believe the above statement to be true in literal sense. I will combine the two arguments in this iLog.

Arabic is a rich language. Arabs are very proud of their language and they should be. Quran is the first ever book compiled in Arabic b/c Arabs had an oral tradition before Islam. LI depends on Arabic because it defines the religion. When Persian Empire fell to the Arabs in 7th century and Persians were introduced to Islam, they probably found very little difference b/w Islam and Zoroastrianism. For indeed the concept of one God, Satan, Angels, heaven & hell, prayers, fasting and prophet is in Zoroastrianism, verbatim. They just had to tweak a few details and call it Islam and get out of jizya tax! The fact that they kept their religious terms of namaz, roza, farishteh and pul-e-siraat etc. was the sign that Persian Islam was going to evolve differently than the Arab Islam…because language, in the end, will define the religion.

The current Wahabi efforts are to bring the ‘purity’ back to Islam. They are trying to replace all non-Arabic religious terms used outside of Arabia with Arabic ones. If Islam is for all people all time, why can’t a Persian call his God as Khuda (lord) when an Arab can call his God as Rab (caretaker)? Is it maybe because Arabic defines the LI? The interesting part is that there are pre-Islamic Arabic terms in Islamic prayers such as “allahumma’. After much research and conversations with Arabic scholars (as I am not one of them), I have come to know that there are no linguistic roots of the word ‘allahumma’ in Arabic. They tried to somehow connect it to ‘humm’ which is a suffix for ‘their, them’ in Arabic but it doesn’t really fit in the grammar. This is possible only if it is a borrowed word. In the book of Genesis, the God is “Elohim”, which has linguistic roots in Hebrew as Eloah and plural suffix ‘im’. It used to refer to the pantheon of gods before Hebrew God became “one”…it was much later when He became the ‘only one’. Most prayers in Islam invoke “allahumma” and at best it refers to the pluralistic nature of a Hebrew Diety which over time became one and then the ‘only one’. Since it is an established Arabic word, no one has yet challenged the word allahumma but they have plenty issues with Khuda.

By insisting that Quran should be read in Arabic, that Arabic is essential to learn in order to be a good Muslim etc, one only confirms both arguments: Islam is for Arabs and Arabic defines Islam. The fact is that even if people spend years in studying Arabic, they will still need interpretations to understand Quranic language (note I am not saying understand Quran itself, but only Quranic language.) Personally I love to learn languages but I also know those who can’t, won’t or simply don’t want to. If they cannot be good Muslims w/o learning Arabic, then is Islam a good fit for them?

We have to either agree that Islam has to offer a worldview that can be conformed with any culture/language and create different flavors, or we can agree that Islam is well suited for Arabic society and should be confined to that society. What can’t happen is that we claim that Islam is for all people all time and still insist that in order to be Muslim EVERYONE in the world should study Arabic (the mightiest language in the entire universe) and Arabic culture and live according to the Arabic social/judicial laws as prescribed in Fiqh/Sharia (written by Arabs of 8th century.)