Friday, January 09, 2009
Myth - Speak Arabic to understand Islam, by Francis Chartrand
Muslims tend to disarm any criticism of Islam and the Koran in particular by asking the person who expresses his opinion if she had read the original Arabic text of the Koran, as if the issues of the sacred text suddenly disappeared when the player controls the holy language and experience sensory direct words of Allah himself, that no translation can not do justice.
Muslim non-Arab
This should not forget that the majority of Muslims are neither Arab nor Arabic, about 1.3 billion Muslims, only about 300 million live in countries where Arabic is the language used, alone, populations of large Muslim countries non-Arabic such as Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey will exceed 600 million. While it is true that among the Muslims whose mother tongue is other than the most educated learn to read the Koran, the vast majority of believers is not the language, and many people learn passages of the Koran by heart, without typing a word.
In other words, most Muslims are required to read a translation of the Koran to understand. And contrary to popular belief, such as Farsi translations exist for the X ° or eleventh century, and that Turkish and Urdu for a very long time ... Today, the Koran is available in more than 100 languages. Many of these translations can be found on the Web, for example, see Quran.org.uk, often translated as Muslims elsewhere - despite disapproval more or less religious authorities.
The Arabic language, its evolution and its different forms
Even for our contemporary Arabic, reading the Koran is not a picnic. The Koran is supposedly written in what we call "Classical Arabic", but most of the modern Arab populations do not read or does not write in classical Arabic. We are facing what linguists call a phenomenon of "diglossia" situation of a group of people who practice both languages by giving them different hierarchical status, even if these languages or language varieties are related and partly inter-comprehensible. Here, the varieties are the "high" Arabic, called "Modern Literary Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, derived directly from the Classical Arabic, and" Bottom "Arabic, Arabic Current" which includes the fact dialects commonly spoken.
The Modern Standard Arabic is taught in school, like Sanskrit or Latin in other latitudes. It is (in principle) used in writing and communication in very formal situations (sermons, lectures, news, part of the press ...).
Fluent Arabic is used in everyday life (with family, friends, radio and television for entertainment, ...). However, as noted by Alan Kaye, the differences between the many dialects of Arabic and Arabic Current Standard are such that fallah (farmer) who has not been to school can barely understand some words and expressions without experiencing great difficulties. We could assemble a dozen fallahin who have never been exposed to Standard Arabic, would be very hard to understand each other. "
Finally, scholars who assert that "anyone can read a newspaper in Modern Standard Arabic will have no difficulty reading the classical Arabic of the Koran and other ancient texts" paint a misleading picture of the linguistic situation of modern Arab societies they are insensitive to changes in meaning and use of terms that have occurred since the time of Classical Arabic, in a word to the evolution of language on a very long period and in an area geographically vast . In addition, anyone who lived in the Middle East in recent years knows that the language of the press, the best, semi-literary, and in any case as simplified structures and vocabulary used, and can even detect in the newspapers and television news which in terms of classical Arabic would grammaticales.Le errors linguist Pierre Larcher spoke of the "considerable gap between Medieval Classical Arabic and Classical Arabic (or literary) modern, some of texts in the former now the subject of narratives in the second ... "
Alan Kaye explains it in reality very few contemporary speakers of Arabic language sufficiently mastered the subtleties grammar Classic to give unannounced formal speech in English. And Pierre Larcher said that when you have a situation where two varieties of the same language exist, you can probably get all kinds of mixtures, which led some linguists to talk about triglossia, see quadriglossie or polyglossie about l 'Arabic, the various forms of the language creating a sort of continuum ...
In short, the style of the Koran is difficult, very different from the prose of today, the book is largely taken only incomprehensible and requires a glossary or even a commentary. Even the best-educated Arabic speakers will therefore often require some sort of "translation" if they want to find a direction. The Koran is without doubt one of the Sacred Scriptures more elusive, the gnomonic and more allusive.
Do you know Aramaic?
We're questioning, sometimes aggressively, "Yes, but do you Arabic? Then you assener often triumphantly:" To fully understand the Koran, it should be read in its original version in Arabic!". The free-thinkers are generally reduced by this maneuver to a sullen silence. They now keep criticizing Islam: After all, who are they to judge, who do not know Arabic?
However, no one denies criticize Christianity, yet how many freethinkers or atheists Western include Hebrews? How many of us know what was the language of Ezra? Or simply what language the New Testament was written? And of course, Muslims also feel free to criticize the Bible and Christianity, without knowing a word of Greek, in Hebrew or Aramaic!
Summary ...
There is no need to understand Arabic to discuss Islam or the Koran. It is need for skepticism and criticism. There are translations of the Koran by Muslim scholars, whose believers can not claim that there was corruption or deliberate alteration of the text by an infidel. The majority of Muslims is not Arabic, and they too must rely on translations. The original text of the Koran is the classical Arabic language in any case very different from what is spoken today, and even Muslims have Arabic notes to help understand their holy texts.
Arabic is a Semitic language, like Hebrew and Aramaic, and is not easier or more difficult to translate these other languages. There are of course all sorts of difficulties inherent in the text of the Qur'an, the Islamic scholars have also identified and discussed for a long time. The Koran is an opaque, but opaque to all; Muslim theologians themselves debating the meaning of verses broadly representative about a fifth of the Book!
Labels: Arab World, Francis Chartrand, Islam, Religion and fanaticism
# posted by Francis Chartrand @ 6:35 PM 
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