Why pray in Arabic and not in a language we understand?

[SQ8]

I am saying dont dump Arabic but UNDERSTAND IT if not arabic just your paryer.......

You are still not being clear..
Do you wish the prayer to be recited in your language??

 

[Ghareeb_Da_Baal]

I love PDF, but lately it has been more fun to lurk instead of participating actively.

no ****! .................... I think it needs to be renamed! suggestions pls?
BTW hope u r not on the east coast!

 

[SQ8]

Dont bring Pushto in it again it may be the language of the Pathans but you have no right to mock it, mock it again and see what happens.......

You misunderstood me..
I wish to elaborate on the nuances of Pushto..
What zikar can mean in Pushto and is only unique to Pushto may not be true for other languages.
Be a little less on the edge..

 

[Khan_patriot]

You are still not being clear..
Do you wish the prayer to be recited in your language??

I am saying when we recite Quran we should understand it in our own language as well so we may appreciate it to the fullest.......

 

[SQ8]

I am saying when we recite Quran we should understand it in our own language as well so we may appreciate it to the fullest.......

I couldnt agree with you more.. nu bia whats the problem then.
But that must not come at the cost of ignoring the original text.. precisely for the reason that when asked about what he understood he can bring up the original text and recite it.. and then repeat it in his/her own language that YES .. this is what I read and understood.
It is the same as my friend from Germany read it.. and understood it.

The problem is seems has more to do with the apathy of the clergy..
and some apathy on part of the people who have not taken the time to explore.
The Khutba at the masjid still has people explaining the Quran in the local language...but people prefer to just come and offer the prayers and leave. Sure .. people have obligations.. so they can use their spare time to read a translation of the Quran in their own language..and be able to understand more and more of what is being recited.

 

[VCheng]

thats because there is no raymond davis to defend.

i am sure you will be back to bend over for american in time.

Nah, it is MUCH more fun to read these endless round table "islamic" discussions!

What I said about RD was all proven to be correct, so I still stand by my positions taken, then, now and the future.

 

[r3alist]

Nah, it is MUCH more fun to read these endless round table "islamic" discussions!

What I said about RD was all proven to be correct, so I still stand by my positions taken, then, now and the future.

why is this fun?

odd thing to say, its somewhat serious.

and your position on RD is well known, it was known as bending over.

 

[Ghareeb_Da_Baal]

why is this fun?

odd thing to say, its somewhat serious.

and your position on RD is well known, it was known as bending over.

leave it bro................... I vehemently disagreed with his stance but he is entitle to his opinion and we should not call that to question.
Some supposed "mod" here can learn from it too!

 

[Luftwaffe]

Priceless thread some people want to drag it and argue not to learn the language to understand The Book just because they don't want to but its is okay to learn English to read books, hollywood movies, facebook or chat, amazing logic and nuance.

So you may as well try to learn Arabic what would be the excuse to not learn Arabic just to understand Quran?

 

[Bratva]

People who are advocating to read quran in their local languages. A little straight forward fact for them. Why they are talking in English here, Since this is a Pakistani Forum, And English is not our Mother Tongue? Why Original Poster started thread in English rather in his native language? After all, most Pakistanis are not comfortable with english.

 

[Twain Shakespeare]

Firstly i want all the Muslim to know I am not here to bad mouth anyone and don't want to offend anyone by what I am going to say, and to the non-Muslims i don't need the this is why you are a target of religious fundamentalists routine and mocking of the way most of us pray, I just want a sincere and clear answer.

The question
Since it was Ramadan so in the taraweeh the the Imam recited the complete Quran and like all devoted Muslims I stood behind him for almost 1 1/2 hours daily and offered them but a question came into my mind that how beautiful it would have been if i would have been able to understand what the Imam was saying and apply them into my daily life ( don't get me wrong i have read the Quran with translation in urdu once), then i thought wouldn't it be better if we just prayed in our own language so that we may have a stronger bond with Allah SWT and have a more spiritual rather then physical Nimaz???Allah is aware of what is in our hearts and minds and he can understand all languages so why only pray in Arabic, ''unity'' may be one answer but then we can make public prayer like ''Azan'' in Arabic so that all may know of it but offer ''nimaz'' in our own language so that we may know of it...


There would have been many advantages to this other then religious we as a nation would finally understand our Islamic moral ideals and how practical and relaxed they are, i admit some people do study the Quran with translation but I am talking about the masses of uneducated people who fall pray to proxy mullahs due to the very fact that they don't understand what is in the Quran.

Please comment and i say again non-Muslim brothers please don't mock anything or anyone in this post or there will be retaliation ........

I stand to be corrected so as to remove this confusion so brothers with knowledge share your wisdom with me......

I am not Muslim, or a monotheist. I am a falsafah. It will be in no way my attention to mock or offend in the following.

1st, I have read that the best justification for not translating Q'ran, is a statement of M's (PBUH) that something was “as plain as God's word in Arabic!” as the Arabs' translate it.
But Kemal Attaturk (My man! Far better than Ghaddafy or even Saddam. Only Muslim statesman I know of who comes close was Nasser!) had the Q'ran translated into Turkish, and had that particular passage translated “as plain as God's word in one's native language!”
Please correct if you know any part of this account is wrong.

HISTORY

Pre-Q'ranic Books

Torah was created when King Josiah of Judah realized no one knew where the Ark of the Covenant had been hidden. At this point, it was as if the Kaaba had vanished from Mecca. It was to replace it that the Jews collected and codified the Torah. In the Babylonian captivity, Torah became a cultic object itself. At this point, in my opinion, the Jews began slipping into “bibliolatry” making an “idol” of Torah.

Torah was first translated into Greek a couple of centuries before Isa lived. The Jews quickly realized 1. No translation can be faithful, 2. Translation can change meanings, and 3. IT WAS A REALLY BAD IDEA TO LET THE GOYIM READ THIS.
Jew's have not translated Torah since, and consider all official “Christian” versions, Greek, Copt, Syriac, etc. to be wrong, although Jewish scholars are willing to help to make translations as accurate as possible. That was dangerous, tho. Some Jews were killed in the Dark Ages for pointing out the Torah says “a young woman shall give birth,” and not, as Christian theology required, that “a virgin shall give birth.”

The Christian Bible was codified by the “Niceans” who also invented the Trinity. By the time the Prophet preached, The Copts and Syriacs had left the Roman (orthodox) Church, retranslating the Bible in the process, and the Latins had their own text.

The Arabic only Q'ran

Please, do not take offense. If Allah doesn't like what I am about to write, let Allah handle it.
I will skip Islamic history before the codification of the Q'ran and the burning of divergent texts. At that point, Islam was arguably also falling into “bibliolatry” the worship of sacred texts.
I have heard it said that one of the fundamental misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims is that Christians assume Mohammad is a “Savior” like “Christ,” and was what Mohammad would call “an intermediary” when actually, the Q'ran is as much the equivalent of a “savior” or intermediary as anything in Islam.
That is why I am not a Jew of the book, or a Christian, or a Muslim. I read books. I don't worship them.

In any case, seeing how the older faiths had handled their texts, Muslims imitated Jews from the first and made Q'ran explicitly holy. The Roman Catholic Church later followed the Judeo-Muslim examples. So I think the Christians caught bibliolatry from Muslims. Thanx guys!

The desire to read the Bible, and vernacular translations, undermined the authority of the Latin language church and caused the “Protestant Reformation”.

CONCLUSION

At the time the “no translations of Q'ran” ruling was imposed, Islam was a minority religion still, outside of Arabia, and was consolidating itself into the Caliphal Empire. Imagine, if Q'ran had been translated THEN into Farsi, what the Shia of Persia might have done with it.

At this point in time, however, Islam has consolidated its hold on the “hearts and minds” of Muslims whose first language might have been Farsi, Turkish, Urdu, Malay, etc, for hundreds of years, and Sunnis have no priestly class or pope whose authority can be undermined, so, as far as those considerations go, don't worry.

I have responded to the problems of translation stated or implied in the justifications of non-translationin in the second post on this thread, and to Khan's own responses, in my next post on this thread, #119.

 

[laiqs@mi]

@ thread starter
if that was the case why arabs are corrupt???
they are arabs in Quran is in arabic!! ok
its not in languages its Taqwa.
we failed to understand our responsibilities ...... why we are created ..
we have lost the purpose... we can learn english so that we can get a good job...... toefel ......to get visa but.
no arabic because we may not get job or visa ..... but could understand Quran ...... the purpose of the life.....

and first you started with " why dont we Pray i our own language??? then after few post you are now changed " i dont mean that we should pray in our language but we should understand what we are listening"" create some doubts
and after all the great liberals found another one to change Islam
one of them in some other thread said " we need to be muslims we dont need Islam? ?? wow what a great logic(the great think tank of PDF Sir Muse)
we need jinnah and Iqbal's islam (sir muse)
i can go on but leave it.
there only point of discussion start from Change or reform Islam,,,,Islam need reformation....... if you cant reform your self then its your problem, Islam was like `1400 years ago Islam will be same till the day of judgment
Insha-ALLAH

 

[Twain Shakespeare]

Thanks for the reply deeply appreciate it brother and don't mind my furthur clearance but to ur points i say,

In response to point 1; Allah has made it easy to understand and without doubt it has been translated into almost all known language but what is the point of a translation if no one reads it???


In response to point 2: It is versatile and indeed a beautiful language but a common man doesn't gain anything from a language we dont understand


In response to point 3: He was an Arab but this doesn't mean that all his followers know Arabic and do you know of any hadees or Ayah regarding the language of prayer, altough he is our beloved Prophet and he is clearly superior but as far as langauge s concerned can it be derived that Arabic is not superior to non Arabic from ''An Arab is not superior to a non Arab''


In response to point 4:
To be in the afterlife Jannah we must get there first by UNDERSTANDING the Quran


In response to point 5: The summary is good in essence but is short and vague for complete understanding....


In response to point 6; The education is the problem the illiterates will educate themselves only WHEN THEY READ IT IS AN OBLIGATION WHEN THEY RECITE QURAN IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE SO THEY MAY UNDERSTAND

In response to point 7:
We can have a word by word translation so that we may understand and keep the orignal text as well


In response to point 8:
How can a non Arab find unity based just on language we find unity on religion and not on language....

Please note I am not debating but discussing so that we may become better Muslims

As I have said, I am not Muslim, or a monotheist. I am a falsafah, and while I have no desire to mock or offend in the following, the more I read the original list in the second post on this thread, which Khan is quoting from, the more I want to laugh, especially over #4 “Arabic is the language of Heaven.” The more I contemplate that, the harder it is to take anything on that list seriously.

However, I thought when I first read this thread, that Khan Patriot's responses were excellent, in so far as I am qualified to judge the merits of a debate that does not personally concern me, esp to #4.
The only major disagreement I have with Khan is over 6)”The uneducated people should educate themselves.”

It is very hard to educate oneself, and Khan failed to address that point. In English, there are words for the self-taught. The one academics have learned to use for the self-taught is “ignorant.” While I am very much in favor of people wanting to learn, the Jesuits and Nazis know such people must be controlled. Everyone else just gets training. I do not believe Muslims will free themselves until the Q'ran is made plain in every speakers' native tongue.

Which brings us to the problem of translation.
#2 “the other reason is that the Arabic language is the most versatile language of all one word in arabic has so much meaning and usage” This also makes me laugh.
Yes, Arabic is a very allusive language. When a root functions in so many different sense that its meaning is unclear, beautiful translations may be possible, but literal ones read like exercises in ESL
I am willing to concede Arabic may be one of the most poetic languages, which gives the Arabic Q'ran an edge in beauty over “The Book of Mormon” for example, but as Khan said, it helps not if you don't understand it.
I will even concede the Q'ran in Arabic is probably a much better read than the Bible in even the King James translation, and may be comparable (as literature) to Shakespeare and Joyce, but neither of those translate well either.

Which brings us to #7 “if every one is going to offer prayer in his own language then there must conflict which arose among the people as the difference of understanding and difference of translation”
If you do translate, put clarity before beauty. Leave beauty to the Arabic, if you have too. This applies to #1 as well. The cultural context should be explained. This is a huge problem with the average Christians understanding of the religion.

That is all I think I know enough to write about. I do urge Muslims to do as the Orthodox and Protestants have done, and allow “every tongue to rejoice” by translating Q'ran.

I have discussed some of the problems with translations, and have even dared to make some suggestions as an friendly outside observer. I will now to dare mention the biggest problem to translation, THE WAHHABI CLERICS OF THE SAUDI 'CALIPH'!
But hey, what can they do about it? Turn away your haj dinars? Stop funding Wahhabi madrases? Yeah, right.

Sincerely, Walekum salaam.

 

[Awesome]

Essentially - Who is Allah? Is Allah an arab?? Can Allah only understand Arabic?? Can Allah be Allah and be limited to a single language?

And Essentially - what is a Muslim? Does being a Muslim mean being an Arab? if it does then more than a Billion who call themselves Muslims are ineligible.

Friends, reality is that we are today faced with having to answer these two questions for ourselves, plus one even more important one, but lets deal with that later -- islam must be universal or it will not survive and Quran if it is the word of God, must be in the language of those who are it's adherents, not in the language of one particular cultural subset - we are not in the "chosen" business - we are in the redemption through faith business and our shop is open to all.

Understanding Arabic becomes important since the slight nuances in sounds make up really different interpretations. For example Ahmedi's treat the words Khatmun Nabiyyun as "Stamp/Seal of the Prophets" which would in fact be the word Khaatimun Nabiyyun and the rest of the Muslims read it as "End of the Prophets". There are major phaday in translation.

So if you're really willing to understand Islam in its entirety, especially with all its controversies, then you need the original text. However yes, for most of it, all the happy go lucky stuff, its fine and probably should be at least read and memorized in a language you understand but we must all be ever-ready and willing to fall back on the original text and thus its importance in terms of accuracy should be maintained.

 

[TARIQ BN ZIYAAD]

Assalam alaikum

gr8 inputs by all brothers

Thread starter

Prayer is an act of worship and we do it to come close to ALLAH, PROPHET PBUH did it in arabic what ever he did and how he did it is an act of worship that will bring us toward or close to ALLAH eg to get close to ALLAH if u tried to pray fajar 6 raka't u will not get any ajar for that.

U stress that u could not understand the meaning, brother if we were so careful about our religion we could easily understand quran by age of of 12 or 14 after all we goto learn to schools at the age of six and learn urdu and english. why not quran?

if u had learned quran by age of 14 i m sure u would not be wondering what the imam sahib is reciting. then who cares about giving any importance to learn our deen

TARIQ