Ali Ataie – God Specially Chose Arabic As Means of Revealing Himself to Humanity
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
I wanted to say a few things about
the importance of,
learning language especially in the wider
context of scripture.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala he says,
Indeed we revealed it as an Arabic Quran
in order for you to understand.
So Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, he revealed the
Quran, and he revealed it in Arabic
as an effective means by which we might
understand his religion,
or more specifically according to Imam al Razi,
his Tawhid.
Of course the master science or the master
discipline is theology.
Knowing Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, there is no
greater knowledge, and the most important principle
of Islamic theology is Tawhid, monotheism.
So ultimately Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala specially chose
Arabic
as a means of revealing himself to humanity.
Such is the status of Arabic in our
tradition.
Sayidna Umar
he said,
learn the Arabic language,
for indeed learning Arabic is from your religion.
In another tradition related by Imam Al Beihaki,
Sayna Umar said,
learn Arabic for it fortifies the
and increases 1 in muruah.
It fortifies or strengthens the intellect.
It increases 1 in nobility and valor and
virtue.
Imam Shafi'i Rahimohullah, he said, whoever learns Arabic
his disposition becomes gentle.
He becomes a gentleman,
or she becomes a lady,
more civil, more studious,
more intelligent,
more contemplative.
In other words, they begin to resemble the
Arabian prophet, the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was the
most balir and most fasih of the Arabs.
He was the most eloquent and most rhetorically
gifted of all the Arabs,
and his beautiful and majestic words continue to
echo throughout history,
generation after generation.
From a secular perspective, he's the most quoted
human being in human history.
He has to be because they attribute the
Quran to him.
So the Quran and the Hadith, he's easily
the most quoted man in history.
In addition to being the most praised human
being who ever lived, you might say that
Jesus peace be upon him is more praised.
The problem is the vast majority of historians
do believe that Jesus, peace be upon him,
ever claimed to be God.
So praising Jesus as God
is actually something that he himself would have
repudiated, and according to the Quran he will
repudiate.
But back to Arabic, as our president Sheikh
Hamza, may Allah protect him, has said, the
Arabic language is the sine qua non of
the Islamic tradition. In other words, it is
the essential condition,
the essential Allah or tool through which we
access our tradition
at a deeper level.
If someone doesn't know a word of Arabic,
he could still adequately understand
the basics of this religion in translation.
That's the beauty of this religion.
It's a universal religion,
but scholarship
and a more sophisticated
engagement with our tradition
requires knowledge of the Arabic language. Arabic is
the key.
Reading the Quran in Arabic with understanding is
a totally different experience
than reading in translation. It's like looking at
something in 1 or 2 dimension as opposed
to 3 dimension.
It's like watching a film on a 19
seventies 12 inch black and white television
compared to watching the same film
remastered
on a movie screen
in color, in 3 d.
Same film, but a totally different experience.
It's an experience of the divine,
Reading the Quran in the very words
chosen by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala with or
without understanding is a type of theophany.
It's an experience of the divine,
and we know that it is the sunnah
of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
to choose particular things from his general creation.
So from the universe made up of 10
to the 80 atoms,
chose and exalted the human being.
About a 120,000,000,000
human beings he has chosen so far.
From the Bani Adam, the human race, he
chose Al Andiya,
the prophets, a 124,000. Some say only men,
others say men and women.
And from the prophets, he chose the Rusul,
the messengers,
313.
For the messengers, he chose the 5, the
messengers of firm resolve.
These are the arch apostles, if you will,
like they're archangels, the chief apostles.
Who are they? Nuh alayhi salaam, Ibrahim alayhi
salaam, Musa alayhi salaam, and
our master Muhammad salalaihis salam. And from these
5 he chose as has as his beloved,
his Habib, our master Muhammad salalaihis salam. The
best of creation.
And the prophet salallahu alaihi wa sallam was
an Arab.
He spoke Arabic.
We did not send a messenger
except that,
except that, in the language of his own
people.
So Allah
chooses,
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala chose Adam and Noah,
He chose the house of Abraham and the
house of Imran.
And then from the house of Ibrahim alaihi
salam, he chose Ismaeel alaihi salam. The prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam said, in Allah hastafa kinana.
Kinana means waladi Ismail.
That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala chose kinana
from the descendants of Ismael alaihi salam. And
he chose Quraysh from Kinana.
And he chose Hashem from Quraysh.
And he chose me from the Hashimites.
The chosen of the chosen of the chosen
of the chosen of the chosen of the
chosen, Al Mustafa,
Al Muhtabah,
Al Muhtar.
And so the Quran, the final
revelation of God was revealed in Arabic.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala chose the Arabic language.
So Arabic is a sacred language. It's not
an accident that if you rearrange the trilateral
root letters of the word elm, you get
amal, action.
Because a true Adam, a true knower, puts
his elm into amal.
A true knower puts his knowledge into practice.
These terms are related.
There are Jewish professors of Islamic studies all
around the country,
some of them with double PhDs,
but these are not ulama. Why? They don't
put their knowledge into practice.
Rearrange the hroof once again, you get lama,
light, luster,
radiance,
resplendence,
brilliance.
Knowledge plus action equals light. Plus amal equals
lama. This is a sacred language. There are
many examples like this. We have Arabic professor
here, knows much more than I do. He
can show you many of these things,
and usually languages have a they have a
peak or a pinnacle
or height of eloquence.
So for English it was the Elizabethan
and Jacobean eras,
the time of Shakespeare who died in 16
16, or the King James Bible of 16
11, also called the authorized version. Both of
these significantly influenced the English language more than
any other texts.
For Hebrew, it was probably the 10th century
before the Common Era, the beginning of the
Davidic dynasty.
According to most most critical scholars of the
Bible, several passages of the Tanakh, or Hebrew
Bible, were written during this period, like the
creation story of Genesis chapter 2, and probably
many of the Psalms.
For Greek, it was the time period known
as Archaic Greece,
the Odyssey, the Iliad,
the Theogony. So the ancient pre pre Socratic
poets Homer and Hesiod, but also later writers
of the classical Greek period, like Herodotus
and Plato.
The standard Greek curriculum at the time of
the composition of the New Testament
in the 1st century CE included the works
of Homer and Herodotus.
So the educated Koine Greek writers of the
4 gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as
well as educated Hellenized Jews of the period,
such as Philo of Alexandria
and Paul of Tarsus,
would have read and studied Homer and Herodotus,
and very likely Plato and Aristotle.
For Arabic,
it was the Hejaz and the late antique,
especially the 6 7th centuries of the common
era.
That was the peak of their language,
the flourishing of the shu'arrah.
This was a time in the Quran,
and as I said in the last footba,
the Quran remains to this day, the gold
standard
of Arabic literature. It remains an unclassifiable,
sui generis Arabic text, a one of a
kind and totally unique and inimitable masterpiece.
Nothing comes close to its eloquence, style, and
exceptional impact
upon humanity.
It is a
It is an everlastingly
incapacitating
phenomenon
for anyone who attempts to imitate or surpass
it.
Professor Mohammed Abdul Haneem, he said one overriding
objective of the Quran is to speak with
penetrating words.
So I wanna give you a few basic,
but specific examples of how the Quran makes
this amazing impression
upon the listener. The Quran is an ocean
of rhetoric.
In a final research paper,
for one of your classes,
you might use 1 or 2 rhetorical devices
and feel pretty good about yourself.
The Quran is an ocean of rhetoric.
One such rhetorical device is called Iltifat or
sudden change.
For example,
Allah says,
We see you turning your face to the
sky.
So, we will turn we will turn you
towards a qiblah that pleases you.
SubhanAllah. The prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam looked at
the sky with a request in his heart.
The sama is the qiblah of dua. Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala changed the prayer qiblah
to please his habib salallahu alaihi wa sallam.
So turn singular.
Singular.
Turn your face toward the inviolable mosque.
Then without skipping a beat, Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala says,
So wherever you all are,
turn your faces
toward it. You see what happened? Sudden change.
Allah went from addressing the singular to the
plural, from the to the nation.
Why? According to the ulama, to highlight the
close intimate relationship between the prophet salallahu alaihi
wasallam and his ummah. So not only does
this ayah demonstrate the closeness of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala to his messenger salallahu alaihi wasallam,
Allah changed the prayer qibla to please his
habib, but it demonstrates the closest of the
Messenger to us,
that we are mentioned in the same divine
breath as it were
with the prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
We also find Iltifaat in the Fatiha, along
with another powerful rhetorical
literary characteristic
of the Quran.
Known as syntactical variance. In the same Ayah,
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
So far the Abdu is praising Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala in the 3rd person. He's speaking
about Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
But then suddenly,
Now the Abd is speaking directly to Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. And not simply,
but So not only do we have Iltifaat,
we have the direct object or object pronoun
fronted for emphasis
and restriction,
the consequence of which is a theological
reformation.
So that from this ayah, we move from
a pre Islamic Jahali, Hinotheism,
to a restorative
Abrahamic monotheism.
Because if it said,
the pre Islamic Arabs would have said yes,
we also worship Allah
and ask him for help. But only
you You Allah do we offer Ibadah.
And with only you, you Allah, do we
practice Istiana.
True monotheism
restored by such a powerful
and impactful use of language,
a statement that we recite in every unit
of prayer at least 17 times a day.
Think about that.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala commands us to make
tadabbur of the Quran.
The Quran also employs ellipsis
as a method of making an impact.
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says,
The famud denied or belied out of arrogance.
Denied
what? Belied what?
The verb is transitive, but the object is
not mentioned. It is elided.
Why? Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wants the audience
to think about its meanings,
to ponder upon its discourse.
When the Quraysh in Mecca heard this verse
about the Thamud, their minds would have filled
in the blank.
What is the conceptual direct object?
What or who did the famud deny
their messenger?
Oh, that's what we're doing. They would have
said.
They should have said.
The Quran forces us to think about its
discourse.
Another type of syntactical variance
is the fronted predicate
in a declarative sentence.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says,
So after Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala repudiates the
divinity of Isa alaihi salam,
He gives us a declarative sentence in which
the predicate is fronted to communicate
absolute exclusivity.
To Allah alone belongs the dominion, the kingdom,
the sovereignty
of the universe, the cosmos. The phrase, the
heavens and the earth and all between is
a Semitic
expression that denotes the cosmos. It's also found
in the Hebrew Bible.
The sovereignty, the supreme power, and authority of
all creation
only belongs to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Nobody
else, not Isa alaihis salaam. Nobody else. This
is the import of the sentence. The syntax
itself teaches us something about Christian theology,
about what Christians believe
before repudiating it. The syntax of the Quran
teaches us something about Christian theology.
This amazing.
So obviously, knowledge of the Arabic language
enriches our understandings of the Quran. I would
also argue
that knowledge of the languages of also
enrich our understandings of the Quran.
That knowledge of biblical linguistics
give us the ability to nuance
some of the ayat of the Quran, and
even defend the Quran
against the attacks of polemicis.
So this is related to something called apologetics,
which does not mean you apologize for being
a Muslim.
This is a branch of theology that seeks
to defend the religion
from attacks. It comes from
which
literally means to speak away,
to speak away objections,
to speak away the,
and it seems to me that it's important,
especially for us as Muslims in the West,
to have a broader understanding of Judeo Christian
tradition and history, because the Quran has something
to say about that tradition and history. I'll
give you an example with respect to our
Christology.
What is Christology?
Christology means the study of Christ, the Messiah.
The word Christ comes from the Greek, Christos,
which is a little translation of the Hebrew
Mashiach,
meaning the Anointed One.
In the Quran, one of the titles of
Isa is Al Masih, the Christ, the Messiah.
I remember once after a lecture
several years ago, a couple of sisters approached
me and said they were very concerned
and they advised me never again to say
the word Christ, when referring to Isa, alaihis
salami. So I said, why not? And they
said, oh you don't know, you should know
this, the word Christ comes from crucified.
So I pointed out to them that the
word Christ is from Greek, crucified is from
Latin, anyway, they're not actually related.
Now a question we get all the time
from non Muslims, at least I get all
the time,
is the following.
What do you mean as a Muslim when
you say Jesus is the Messiah?
You see, many people think the word Messiah
is synonymous with God or a divine savior.
Other people think the word Messiah must denote
some sort of political office, military leader, or
king.
So this is where a broader religious
and linguistic
literacy
will help us compellingly articulate
and defend our beliefs.
How so? Well, in the Tanakh, in the
Hebrew Bible, in the scriptures of Bani Israel,
there are 3 types of messiahs.
Three types of people are are called messiah,
kings, priests, and prophets.
So the title Messiah is an honorific title,
which denotes being chosen or highlighted by God.
When you anoint something, you highlight or illuminate
it. When I make Masha over my head
during wudu, I'm anointing my head with water.
The Prophet
said that he saw Isa Alaihi Salam in
a vision circumambulating
the Kaaba. Wa yakturu rasahu ma'an, and his
head was dripping with water.
So there are King Messiahs, Priest Messiahs, and
Prophet Messiahs.
Among the Israelites, the King Messiahs were descendants
of David.
The Priest Messiahs were descendants of Aaron,
but Isa Alaihi Salam was neither.
Tribe is taken from the father,
and Isa Alaihi Salam did not have a
father. He's neither Davidic nor Aaronite.
So what is
he?
So he was a prophet messiah.
What's the textual evidence for prophet Messiah?
In the King James version of the Bible,
the most popular Bible translation
in the world,
Psalm 10515,
sounds like
this, touch not mine anointed,
and do my prophets no harm.
So on the surface, the verse seems to
say that there's 1 anointed, 1 Messiah,
and then there are the prophets
who are mentioned as a separate and distinct
category.
One Messiah and many prophets, touch not mine
anointed
and do my prophets no harm. 2 distinct
categories. So it seems,
But English is not the language
of the Tehillim, of the Psalms. It's Hebrew.
Meanings can be manipulated with translations.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says in the Quran.
Wa'inna minhum lafariqan
yalawona alsinaatuhum bilkitah.
It's a very ajeeb ayah.
And there's a section from the people of
the book who twist their tongues who twist
their tongues about the scripture.
Now, Lisan means language in the Quranic Arabic,
also in Biblical Hebrew.
The phrase
the the Jews refer to the Arabic language
as Lishan Qaidar, Lisanu Qaidar, the tongue of
Kedar, one of the sons of Ishmael alaihis
salam. They twist their translations with respect to
their scripture, I e Bible.
So that you might think it's part of
the Bible or the scripture.
But it's not part of the scripture.
And they say this is from Allah.
But it is not from Allah.
They utter a lie against Allah and they
know it. It's amazing, the Quran is so
perfect, so succinct Allahu Akbar. And we know
every tarjama is in reality a tafsir.
So what does the original Hebrew Psalm 10515
say?
It says
Do not touch my anointed ones,
plural,
my messiahs,
plural.
Do not harm my prophets. So this is
called a by member segment
in synonymic parallelism.
If you don't know if you've heard that
before, we we touched this.
There's a section in Ulum al Quran where
we get into this. It's very common in
Semitic rhetoric,
especially Hebrew lyrical poetry,
especially in Psalms and Proverbs.
In other words, the second line
is just a restatement of the first line,
like Proverbs 16:8,
pride goes before destruction,
A haughty spirit before a fall.
You see? It's it's it's saying the same
thing. It's, it's like if I say to
my wife, I love you so much.
I adore you intensely.
The second member or line, I adore you
intensely,
is just another way of saying I love
you so much. It's synonymic parallelism.
So do not touch my anointed ones, plural.
In other words, do not harm my prophets.
So you see in this verse, the prophets
are the anointed ones. The
are the and
is
a prophet messiah,
and he is the prophet messiah, par excellence.
Why?
Because he announced the coming of our master,
Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam. This is the essence
of the good news,
The gospel.
Gospel means good news. This is the essence
of the Injil,
the Iwangelion
that he brought. How do you say gospel
in Hebrew?
Bisar,
the cognate is Bushra,
Wambu Bashiran, and to give you good news,
and to give you the gospel. Birasulin
of a messenger, You Adi Min Baadi of
a messenger who's coming after me Ismuhu Ahmed
sallallahu alaihi wa sallam.
Let me give you another example.
I found Muslim literacy of the broader, quote,
Abrahamic tradition
can nuance the Quran and clarify our beliefs
in the face of detractors.
So there are some modern critics, be they
Ahlikhitab or atheists, who attack the Christology of
the Quran.
Right. These critics and polemicists claim that the
Quran is sort of a mishmash of various
Christian opinions about Jesus, peace be upon him,
without any real consistency.
And obviously again for them, the author of
the Quran is the Prophet sallallahu alaihi wa
sallam. Now in the Quran, Isa alaihi wasallam
is called the Word of God.
So these critics point out that while the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam denied the divinity of
Jesus in the Quran, he also called Jesus
the logos.
And in John's gospel, the Logos is God,
in the beginning was the word, the Logos,
and the Logos was with God, and the
Logos was God,
John 1:1.
Now again, the vast majority of historians
maintain that it is highly implausible
that the historical Jesus of Nazareth, peace be
upon him, believed himself to be divine in
any way. And while the Quran does correctly
deny the divinity of Jesus, it seemingly, accidentally
referred to Jesus
as the logos, the word of God. And
so the Quran is also saying something,
implausible here about Jesus. In other words, the
Quran is
inconsistent in its Christology.
This is the argument.
So how do we respond to this? Is
the Quran affirming that Jesus, peace be upon
him, is the logos of John's gospel?
So here again, a little knowledge of biblical
languages
and broader religious history
will help us defend the Quran.
And by the way, issues like this are
causing
some Muslims to leave the millah.
They can't solve them.
Education is key.
So when the Quran says, Jesus is a
word from God,
right?
It is the angel who announces this to
Mariam Alaihi Salam.
So Jesus's title, word from God or word
of God is related to his miraculous birth.
So that's number 1. It has nothing to
do with His supposed
hypostatic or personal pre eternality,
And this is significant
because I would argue that the Quran here
is not borrowing a middle platonic term or
concept,
like the gospel of John apparently does, but
rather the Quran is continuing
the established
Jewish
miracle birth
literary tradition,
The established Jewish
miracle birth literary tradition.
How so? Well, in the book of Genesis
18/14,
Sarah
laughs and says, how shall I have a
child when I am old or in the
Quran?
But what did the angels say to Sarah
in Genesis?
In the Torah,
is anything too hard for the Lord?
Is anything too hard for the Lord? But
that's English.
That's a translation.
In Hebrew, it says,
Literally, is any word
too hard for the Lord?
Dvar means word, kalima.
In Greek this is translated as krima,
not logos.
But what does davar mean in the context
of Genesis?
It means an edict,
a matter or a decree.
So what are the angels actually saying to
Sarah?
Is anything that God decrees? Is any affair
that God wills too hard for him to
do?
This is this is the meaning. In fact,
Wilhelm Jacenius in his famous, lexicon says that
one of the words in Arabic that is
equivalent
in meaning to davar is amr.
As the Angel say to Sarah in the
Quran, do you wander at the decree of
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala?
Okay. So in the Quran, when the Angel
says to Mary,
God gives you glad tidings of a word,
a davar from him. In the Jewish context,
the 1st century Jerusalem,
how would Mary have understood this?
In the Jewish context, the 1st century Jerusalem,
how would Mariam alaihis salam would have understood
this?
Context is king.
Mary would have understood this as God decreeing
some weighty affair,
some important matter for her, because Mary knew
the Torah. When Maryam Alaihi Salam says to
the Angel that no man has touched her.
The Angel says
whenever God decrees a matter, an amar, an
affair, a davar, a khayma,
He says to it be and it is.
So Jesus peace be upon him is that
davar, that khayma, that amr, that kalima. So
amr and kalima are basically in the Quranic
discourse
regarding Jesus, peace be upon him, synonymous. They
parallel each each other.
Or in Surat Maryam, the angel says to
Mary,
It was a matter decreed.
In other words, it was a word decreed.
So the Quran tells us how it's using
the word Kalima
with respect to Jesus, peace be upon him.
Not in the Greek henotheistic,
Johanan sense,
but in the contextually
proper monotheistic
Jewish sense. So a word of God means
something that God decreed. So the Quran's epithet
for Isa Alai Salam, a word of God,
is not at all equivalent
to the Johann and Lagos,
but rather the Tanakhidavar
translated
in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation
of the Hebrew Bible.
Here's another Christological example. So
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Quran
that Isa alaihi wasalam was aided with the
Holy Spirit.
So here the critics, claim again
that the Quran is affirming a Trinitarian idea,
while also denying the divinity of Jesus. The
Quran is confused again they say, but the
truth is the Quran is not confused.
The critics are confused.
If Isa Alaihi Salam
said in the 1st century that he was
being aided by
by what did he mean?
Context is king. Did he mean the 3rd
person of a triune deity? Did the Jews
in the 1st century, Palestine,
believe in the divinity of the Holy Spirit,
and thus the Trinity?
I would say no, that's an anachronism.
The phrase Ruach Khadosh is used several times
in the Tanakh,
Once in the Psalms and a couple of
times in Isaiah.
So Psalm 5111,
it says, do not cast me away from
your presence
nor take away from me,
your Holy Spirit.
And this again is a bimember segment in
in parallelism.
The second line is just a restatement of
the first line.
Do not cast away from me your presence.
Do not take away from me your Holy
Spirit.
So then the phrase Ruach HaDosh
is an expression
that denotes the presence of God's power.
It denotes the presence of God's power
by which he accomplishes his divine will.
Now the presence of God's power can certainly
become manifest in the form of an angel.
In fact, in Psalm 89, the angels are
called Chodoshim,
the holy ones or the Holy Spirits.
So again, just as we saw with Jesus,
peace be upon him, being a word from
God, a
the Quran also restores
and reinstates
the true meaning of the Hebrew phrase,
purifying it of its shirk. It uses it
properly, according to its context,
as both a way of clarifying our Christology
and correcting the errors made by Ahlul Kitab.
The key to all of this
is language.
The key to all of this is language.
Study language, learn Arabic, it is from your
deen.