by Shakir Ebrahim

Why do Muslims across the world use Arabic in their communication with God, whether Hindi speaking Indians, Malay speaking Malaysians and Indonesians, or Swahili speaking East Africans?

Over time, Arabic became the “default” language of Muslims, assuming such a close link with Islam itself that it became regarded as divine. But how did this process happen?

Picture this. The Arabs, forever the laggards in the region, suddenly grouped together under the inspiration of a new religion and became a strong nation. They conquered the whole of Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Iran in a space of 10-15 years. Since the language of the court and administration of the conquered lands became Arabic, slowly the people started adopting the language, and within the next 300-400 years, all but Iran exclusively used Arabic. Even in Iran, the script was borrowed from Arabic and all religious literature was in Arabic, while the arts and other books were written in Persian, a language derived from Pahlavi.

When the empire extended into Africa, India and Spain the ascendancy of Islam in the 11th century was complete. Jewish traders in Europe spoke Arabic, though for religious ceremonies they used Hebrew. Under these circumstances the language of the future looked Arabic, just as English looks like the language of the future today.

Why do we want our children to study in English medium schools today. If we can afford it, we will not put them in Gujarati or Urdu medium schools. That was the thinking with regard to Arabic right up to the 14th and 15th centuries, when it received a challenge from Turkish. Such was the dominance of Arabic and Islam that the Mongol invaders who sacked Baghdad in 1258 and ended the Abbasid Dynasty, themselves embraced Islam within 50 years. Historians say that never before has an invader accepted the religion and language of the invaded. The British ruled India, but they did not become Hindus, instead we learned English. You can imagine the power Islam held in those days.

Since Islam was revealed in Arabic, the two were closely interlinked. And since every land the Arabs occupied replaced their own language with Arabic, nobody thought of making a distinction between the religion and the language. It was taken as given that sooner or later Islam would conquer the world.

Since a majority of Muslims worldwide come from non-Arab speaking backgrounds, the question arises; how relevant is Arabic as a language to us. This is what God says about Arabic in the Qur’an:

“And if we had made it a Qur’an in a foreign tongue, they would certainly have said: If only its communication had been made clear? What! A foreign tongue and an Arab?” (Qur’an 41:44)

This verse clearly states that the reason for sending the Holy Qur’an in Arabic was: (a) to prevent miscommunication in the message since the listeners knew only Arabic and
(b) revelation in another language would put doubts on the Prophet’s credibility. Already there were people who tried undermining him with charges of sorcery, equating the verses with poetry and his credibility to those of a rawi (a wandering poet).

In another verse, God states: “Surely we have revealed it -- an Arabic Qur’an -- that you may understand.” (Qur’an 12:2)

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