The Muslim Game:

The Qur’an can only be fully understood in Arabic. One cannot criticize Islam without knowing Arabic.

The Truth:

Although Muslims often tell critics of Islam to "read the Qur'an," they are usually unprepared for what happens when their advice is heeded. An honest translation of Islam's holiest book generally reinforces negative opinion. The fallback is to then claim that the Qur'an can only be understood in Arabic.

Of all the efforts to artificially insulate Islam from intellectual critique, this is probably the most transparent. Unfortunately, for those Muslims craving reassurance from the more embarrassing passages of the Qur’an and Sunnah, this cheap tactic of arbitrarily dismissing anything they disagree with still comes at a heavy price, since Islam cannot be protected in this way without sacrificing its claim to being a universal religion.

In the first place, it is fundamentally impossible for anyone to learn a language that cannot be translated into the only one they do know, which means the apologists who insist that “one must learn Arabic” in order to understand the Qur’an are committing a logical fallacy. Either the Arabic of the Qur’an is translatable (in which case there is no need to learn Arabic) or it is not (in which case it can never be learned by the non-native speaker).

Enter the skeptic. While every language has its nuances, how is that Arabic is the only one with words and phrases that are literally untranslatable? More importantly, why in the world would Allah choose to communicate his one true religion for all people in the only language that cannot be understood by all people? Even the vast majority of Muslims and their imams do not speak Arabic.

Even more suspicious is that this amazing linguistic “discovery” was only recently made – and that it corresponds quite remarkably with the contemporary rejection of Islamic practices that were considered acceptable up until the religion’s recent collision with Western liberalism. In fact, the argument that hidden and alternate meanings exist to unflattering Qur’anic passages (justifying slavery, the inferior status of women, sexual gluttony, holy warfare, wife-beating, and religious discrimination) corresponds quite precisely with the level of embarrassment that modern scholars have about the presence of such verses in the Qur’an!

No other world religion claims that knowledge of a particular language is imperative to understanding itself and its holy texts. Neither is the same level of effort required to massage a primary message into palatability. While the Bible is distributed pretty much as is by various Christian groups, for example, it is rare to find a Qur’an that does not include voluminous and highly subjective footnoted commentary deemed necessary to explain away the straightforward interpretation of politically-incorrect passages.

An additional problem for the apologists is that they want to have it both ways. On the one hand they declare that (for some strange reason) the "perfect book" can't be translated and that Allah's perfect religion thus cannot be understood by most of humanity without a battery of intercessors and interpreters. Then they turn around and blame the reality of Islamic terrorism on this same "necessary" chain of intermediaries by claiming that the Osama bin Ladens of the world have simply gotten bad clerical advice, causing them to “misunderstand” the true meaning of the Religion of Peace (in the most catastrophic and tragic way imaginable).

Of course, another irony here is that, as a Saudi, the Qur’an-toting Osama bin Laden was a native Arabic speaker – as are most of the leaders and foot soldiers in his al-Qaeda brotherhood of devout Muslims. In fact, many critics of Islam are Arabic speakers as well - a fact that is often ignored by the apologists, who only find Arabic linguistic skills relevant when they are lacking (not that the same pundits have ever been known to care about whether a critic of the Bible speaks Hebrew or Greek).

At this point there is only one avenue of escape for the beleaguered apologist - the weak claim that the Qur’an can only be understood in Classical Arabic, an obscure Quraish dialect which has not been commonly used in over a thousand years and is only known by a few hundred people alive today (generally Wahabbi scholars, who are - ironically enough - accused of taking the Qur'an 'too literally').

It is hardly plausible that the differences between classical and modern Arabic are of such significance that peace and tolerance can be confused with terrorism, but even if this were true, it merely begs the question all the more. Why would such a “perfect book” be virtually impossible for the rest of us to learn - and susceptible to such horrible "misinterpretation" on an on-going basis?

Really, it isn't hard to see through this childish game, particularly since the rules are applied only to detractors and not to advocates. Apologists never claim that Arabic is a barrier to understanding Islam when it comes to lauding the religion, no matter how less knowledgeable those offering praise are than the critics. Neither do they qualify the claim that "Islam is the fastest growing religion" with the caveat that new converts (or the vast majority of existing Muslims) don't understand Islam since they can't read the Quran in Arabic.

Obviously, the real reason for this illogical myth is that, for the first time, the information age is making the full history and texts of the Islamic religion available to a broader audience, and it is highly embarrassing to both Muslim scholars and their faithful flock. Pretending that different meanings exist in Arabic is means of self-assurance and saving face with others.

TinyTim,

wont you post the link (source) of where you copied the article? or do you by to deceive people that you're such an intellectual who knows his onions very well passing the above article as your own?

as for the topic itself,the Quran is best understood in arabic especially when the missionaries want to use their bible tricks and gymnastics to apply to the Quran.

for example,they translate the word "makr" to mean "deceive" instead of "plan".they interprete a verse "exchange wives" instead of "replace wives".you can see more examples here and how i exposed the trick:

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-844091.96.html

LagosShia:

TinyTim,

wont you post the link (source) of where you copied the article? or do you by to deceive people that you're such an intellectual who knows his onions very well passing the above article as your own?

as for the topic itself,the Quran is best understood in arabic especially when the missionaries want to use their bible tricks and gymnastics to apply to the Quran.

for example,they translate the word "makr" to mean "deceive" instead of "plan".they interprete a verse "exchange wives" instead of "replace wives".you can see more examples here and how i exposed the trick:

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-844091.96.html

But if ALLAH is all knowing and wants the entire mankind to convert to ISLAM, why must we learn about him only in ARABIC Is ALLAH a racist

Common , don't play games with me, you for one , do not understand Arabic , so how on earth do you understand your religion

Only your so called Imams can help you with a combination of books and hadiths that are 4 times larger than the Quran in size.

Why is that .

"Why Muslims Pray In Arabic"?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-574141.0.html

tidytim:

But if ALLAH is all knowing and wants the entire mankind to convert to ISLAM, why must we learn about him only in ARABIC Is ALLAH a racist

Common , don't play games with me, you for one , do not understand Arabic , so how on earth do you understand your religion

Only your so called Imams can help you with a combination of books and hadiths that are 4 times larger than the Quran in size.

Why is that .

dont play that game TinyTim.

i for one is fortunate to understand arabic (i read and i write it) thanks to the education my parents gave me.i am grateful for that.

understanding arabic is essential when we have evil spirits on the loose trying to confuse muslims and deceive.otherwise,we are not required that we must understand and speak arabic in totality.even when we pray,we are still told to learn the meanings of the arabic words in our languages.

LagosShia:

"Why Muslims Pray In Arabic"?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-574141.0.html


dont play that game TinyTim.

i for one is fortunate to understand arabic (i read and i write it) thanks to the education my parents gave me.i am grateful for that.

understanding arabic is essential when we have evil spirits on the loose trying to confuse muslims and deceive.otherwise,we are not required that we must understand and speak arabic in totality.even when we pray,we are still told to learn the meanings of the arabic words in our languages.

So you understand Arabic and yet go all over the www looking for articles that will verify your stance on issues.

And you are only 2% of all non-ARAB Muslims who can understand Arabic ( assuming that you are telling the truth ), what about the other 98%

And what Arabic did you learn, because If you have not learnt the classical Arabic , you are wasting your time, the Quran was written in ancient classical language.

^^^^^^^

i know Quranic arabic and i can speak standard arabic.

as for you,you dont know hebrew and you dont know greek.

they keep re-writing the bibles and adjusting and editing as they please thereby misleading you.