The Importance of the Arabic Language
﴿ إِنَّا أَنزَلْنَاهُ قُرْآنًا عَرَبِيًّا لَّعَلَّكُمْ تَعْقِلُونَ
Indeed, We have sent it, an Arabic Qur’ān so that you all may understand. (12:3)
﴾ َنقُرآنًا عَرَبِيًّا غَيْرَ ذِي عِوَجٍ لَّعَلَّهُمْ يَتَّقُونَ
It is a Qur’ān in Arabic, without any crookedness, in order that they may have Taqwah. (39:28)
Imam Shāfi
1
“Every Muslim is obligated to learn the Arabic tongue to the utmost of his power in order to profess through it that “There is no God but Allah and Muḥammad is His Messenger” and to utter what is mandated upon him….”.
Sheikh Ibn Taymīyah
“The Arabic language is part of the religion, and knowing it is obligatory. This is because the ability to understand the Qur’ān and Sunnah is obligatory on every Muslim, and yet they cannot be understood without knowing Arabic, and (the general Islamic principle is that) every act that is an
2
essential prerequisite to perform an obligatory act is also obligatory”.
-
It is through the medium of Arabic that Islam has been preserved; primarily through the Qur’ān and the Sunnah, and secondarily through the numerous classical books on Islam written by the scholars over the past 1400 years or so.
-
Translations are important but we need to know Arabic in “real” time. We cannot take out our translations during Ṣalāh, Jumu‛ah Khutbah, or Tarawīḥ in Ramaḍān. It is through this language that Allah speaks to us, and to His Messenger . Translations are often inaccurate and cannot equal
the beauty of the actual Arabic language.
-