QUESTION NO. 3
Continuing the above point, why reveal the Book in only one language, leaving the rest of humanity to understand its message through human translations and interpretations, resulting in the same misunderstandings and misgivings alluded to above?
- Why grant preference to speakers of one language (Arabic) over the billions of people who don’t speak Arabic?
- And even among those who speak Arabic as a native language, there is no universal agreement on the Qur’an’s meanings and interpretations. Within the Arabs, there exist a vast plethora of differing schools of thought that derive different meanings from verses.
- If one presents the perhaps plausible reasoning that it was a necessity for God to reveal the message only in one language, shouldn’t the case be made – retrospectively at least – that that one language should have been English, the lingua franca of this century and the one gone by - as well as the increasingly universalized global language of the foreseeable future?
- One also cannot help but consider the fact that when compared to the spread of the English language under British colonialism, the Arabic language had a very limited amount of success under Arab and Islamic expansion. Arabic is today only spoken in the Middle East, North Africa, and some small pockets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, vast swathes of populations that Islam gathered in its fold, e.g. that of South Asia and Southeast Asia, can hardly string together a sentence of working Arabic (apart from the purely perfunctory Arabic that they learn while reading the Qur’an in its original form).
- One is thus further confounded as to why it was Arabic and Arabic alone that was chosen as God’s medium of transmission: it’s been proven that it has not turned out to be a successful language either in terms of global reach (as mentioned above) or in terms of the number of speakers (totaling a mere 255 million out of a global population of 7.5 billion). Do these meager numbers warrant its choice as the language of God’s final message?
ANSWER NO. 3 BY AURANGZAIB:
This question looks quite illogical; based on immature assumptions.
The message always has to come to the Messenger in his own native language to enable him to understand it fully for its subsequent implementation.
A message can’t as well be sent in multiple languages to a place where only one single language is spoken; where a movement has to start from scratch and develop gradually over decades in the same region with the same local language.
And when there’s only one single Messenger at a time who is to be addressed in his own language, and that of his community where he has to preach, what point is there to consider another language whatsoever higher status it might have enjoyed at the given time.
There should have been no misapprehensions in the Scripture’s translations into other languages had there been no malicious agenda under operation by powerful men of that society who took over the reins of power soon after the Messenger’s sad demise. The Translation process into other languages would have been smooth sailing if the powerful capitalists of the time had not unleashed a counter-revolution against the Divine Kingdom and the Book of Divine Commandments.
- Your sub-points are also answered:-
Why grant preference to speakers of one language (Arabic) over the billions of people who don’t speak Arabic?
ANSWER: Quran does not give any kind of preferences to Arabic natives or Arabic speaking peoples over other part of humanity. Quran is the Guidance not for Arabs but for the entire humanity.
- And even among those who speak Arabic as a native language, there is no universal agreement on the Qur’an’s meanings and interpretations. Within the Arabs, there exist a vast plethora of differing schools of thought that derive different meanings from verses.
ANSWER: To clear the question of “existing plethora of differences”, we need to digest only one very solid historical fact for most of our answers.
Quran’s meanings were, in the very first instance, maliciously distorted by the despotic governments that took over the Khilafat in 35 AH, and the distorted interpretations were immediately prepared and forcefully promulgated over the land and the masses. 1400 years this distorted image remained imprinted in the minds of majority of Muslims. Now after these long centuries there are only some individual efforts observed in the Islamic world to reform and purify the Quranic doctrine once again. So long as the efforts would remain in private hands, the differences would linger on because every individual has its own competence level and his own direction of thought and concepts.
A concerted effort would be needed on official level to undertake this big task and to prepare collectively an authoritative reformed version which should be acceptable to all. Muslim governments are not interested to undertake this crucial assignment. They still are despotic governments and this venture goes directly against their interests.
- If one presents the perhaps plausible reasoning that it was a necessity for God to reveal the message only in one language, shouldn’t the case be made – retrospectively at least – that that one language should have been English, the lingua franca of this century and the one gone by - as well as the increasingly universalized global language of the foreseeable future?
ANSWER: The English language had no recognition at the time of the Quran’s revelation of being a language of any consequence whatsoever in the next mellenium to come.
- One also cannot help but consider the fact that when compared to the spread of the English language under British colonialism, the Arabic language had a very limited amount of success under Arab and Islamic expansion. Arabic is today only spoken in the Middle East, North Africa, and some small pockets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Meanwhile, vast swathes of populations that Islam gathered in its fold, e.g. that of South Asia and Southeast Asia, can hardly string together a sentence of working Arabic (apart from the purely perfunctory Arabic that they learn while reading the Qur’an in its original form).
ANSWER: The spread of the English language is a phenomenon of the modern age and had nothing to do with the Arab language and its limited or unlimited spread in the medieval times. We can’t compare the spread of English language, due to its recent colonial background, to those values of Arabic that had their perspective in 600 AD and the next 1000 years. Moreover, the Arabic of Quran was, soon after the emergence of Islam, gradually translated into the languages of those territories that continuously fell under the Islamic jurisdiction.
- One is thus further confounded as to why it was Arabic and Arabic alone that was chosen as God’s medium of transmission: it’s been proven that it has not turned out to be a successful language either in terms of global reach (as mentioned above) or in terms of the number of speakers (totaling a mere 255 million out of a global population of 7.5 billion). Do these meager numbers warrant its choice as the language of God’s final message?
ANSWER: Again, the issue here is not the total number of speakers of a language that counts; it is the language the Divine Messenger speaks which a Scripture chooses to be revealed in. This has been the tradition or the principle that is followed by all Scriptures since times immemorial.
And here I leave alone the necessary discussion on the attributes of the Arabic language, which is attested to be the world’s most vivid and expressive and self-explicit language, with no parallels found among the assortment of world’s other most reputable languages.