Our Obsession With the language and Meaning of the quran
A personal story
Many years ago, I was invited to give a talk in another city. My host was invited to a local brother’s house the night I arrived. I was hesitant to go but he reassured me and after much convincing, I tagged along. Invitations are Sunna and they appease the grumbling stomach, but I didn’t know anyone and felt quite out of place.
Anyhow, one of the guests, an older gentleman who seemed to have some clout in the community, was the spotlight of this daw‘at.
Sitting in the center of a plush sofa, he was relating his travel experiences as he had just returned from umra a few days ago. At some point, he started telling the story of a villager from the backwoods of the Indian Subcontinent sitting next to him in the Haram after salat and joked about how the villager was bawling his eyes out while the imam in the Haram made one of those very emotional Ramadan du‘a.
Our guest couldn’t get over why the villager was crying when he didn’t know a word of Arabic and didn’t understand what the imam was saying.
I couldn’t help but interject because I found his disparaging remarks quite repulsive. Who are we to make judgments about people. But something else ticked me often even more: the misconception that worship is ineffective without understanding the language of our faith, a thought I have heard echoed in other circles.
I felt like an uninvited guest, but still was obliged to speak my mind. I asked, “Do you think Allah will only accept his du‘a on the condition that he knows what he is saying?”
Everyone was kind of startled.
I explained that most of the Muslim world doesn’t know Arabic. We don’t know what we are reciting in salat and can barely translate Sura Fatiha.
Even if we can, we are not conscious of it during recitation. Then, will the salat of the 15 % who know Arabic be accepted while the salat of 85 % of the non-Arab speaking world be rejected for no fault of ours?
The discussion quickly switched after my brief interjection to a more lighthearted topic.
No one wants controversy at a party.
Main objective of Islam
Of course, it is good to learn and understand Arabic so we can better understand the Quran and Sunna.
No one will argue that.
What is objectionable is the perception that there is no point in any ibada without understanding the meaning. In reality, we forget that the main objective of revelation is submission to Allah, and submission comes from the heart, and not from knowing the meaning of the Quran.
As you may already know, there are many masters of the Arabic language who are also diehard Islamophobes. This includes orientalist scholars who devoted their academic lives to subverting Islam and archaelogists like T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), the guy who provoked the Arabs to revolt against their Turkish Muslim brothers of the Uthmani empire.
Yeah, his Arabic was great, but to serve what end? The British policy to divide the Arabs and their Turkish brothers by instilling the hamiyyat al-jahiliyya, or Arab nationalism, in the Arabs.
Of course, if learning the meaning of the Book of Allah aids in achieving submission, then all good.
But what if it doesn’t?
Well, Allah did not reveal the Quran so we understand its meaning; He revealed it so that we understanding its meaning so that we submit to Him. As He says, “And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me” (51:56).
We cannot afford to get stuck on the first step of this process and forget all about the objective highlighted in this aya.
What is Allah really looking for in our ibada
We see so many people convert to Islam. They submit their lives to the will of Allah and His Rasul (peace be upon him). They abandon their old ways and previous life, but their knowledge of Arabic is near to nothing and they constantly struggle to pronounce whatever little they do learn to recite in salat.
Will their salat be slapped back in their faces?
Will their worship come to nothing?
If so, then what about Abu Jahl?
He was a pure-blooded Arab who understood the Quran and Sunna through and through. He must be accepted.
What Allah wants
What Allah is looking for is humility in the hearts and humbleness in the character, also known in the Quran as khushu. Allah says, “Success is really attained by the believers, they who are during their prayer, humbly submissive” (23:1).
The convert imbues this exquisite spiritual quality while Abu Jahl had not, and that is the difference between the salvation of the convert and damnation of Abu Jahl.
What good did meaning do for Abu Jahl and what loss did lack of meaning do for the convert?
Manifestation of khushu
This khushu manifests both outwardly and inwardly. ‘Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) described the outward khushu as stillness of the limbs in salat or as Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) put it, “If the musalli doesn’t know who is on his right or left, he has khushu,”[1] while khushu of the heart is that one is immersed in Allah[2] or ‘softness of the heart and wetness in the eyes.’[3]
If learning the meaning of the Quran and Sunna intensifies that khushu as it did for the Prophet (peace be upon him) who would cry profusely until the sound of something like a boiling pot could be heard from his chest[4] and for the righteous ones from the People of the Book who heard the Quran, “And they fall upon their faces weeping and the Quran increases them in humble submission” (17:109), then learning the meaning of Quran is paramount.
Learning Arabic: a means to an end
But many times, this very knowledge, believe it or not, becomes a hurdle; and that is when we forget its utilitarian purpose.
A road is of immense value, but only when it leads us to a destination. If it itself becomes the destination, then it becomes an obstacle to the real destination. If someone understands that the pursuit of learning Arabic is a means and the spiritual purpose of attaining khushu is an end, then such a knowledge is advantageous to gaining closeness to Allah. Otherwise, we enhance our understanding of the Quran while diminishing our khushu.
Wariness of the scholars
Some scholars were wary of the Arabic sciences for this reason. They feared people would be so preoccupied with the complexity of the language, they would forget the higher purpose of attaining khushu. Qasim bin Mukhaymira called acquisition of Arabic syntax, “The first of it is arrogance and the last of it deviation,” while other Salaf said that learning the sciences of Arabic language will wear away khushu of the heart.[5]
Imam Shatibi explains that these predecessors did not mean to criticize the acquisition of this aspect of sacred knowledge itself, but how it can lead to erosion of khushu through forgetfulness of the higher objective.
Learning the language will then be devoid of any higher purpose other than learning the language itself and the superiority complex which Qasim bin al-Mukhaymira spoke of; ‘the first of it is arrogance and the last of it deviation.’
I personally believe this intuition of our predecessors to be so true, especially in our times.
Knowledge can be an instrument to achieve the pleasure of Allah, but also a mishandled weapon that can cast one away from the mercy of Allah.
Shaytan was the most wicked of all scholars.
And I believe that their fears are coming true now.
Extinction of khushu
The Prophet (peace be upon him) spoke of the extinction of khushu due to the fear cited above by the predecessors. “The first knowledge to disappear in this umma will be khushu. You walk into the masjid and do not find a single worshipper with khushu” (Tirmidhi: chapter of disappearance of knowledge). Nowadays, many of us are learning the meaning of Quran and the Arabic sciences, but are completely unmindful of its utilitarian purpose to enhance the value of ibadat or to enrich our connection with Allah, and thus the khushu is perpetually decreasing while our knowledge of Quran increases.
Another Prophesy
Mu‘adh bin Jabal narrates, “After you the fitan will come; wealth will increase and the Quran will be opened until the believer and the hypocrite, the man and the woman, the young one and the senior, the slave and the free one will all take it; then one will say that what is it that people don’t follow me though I have read the Quran. They will not follow until I interpolate something else. Beware of the innovation because every innovation is deviation.” [6]
Here, ‘opening of Quran’ refers to the prevalence of Quran study sessions, which indicates the obsession with understanding meanings of the Quran.
The man who is looking to find followers through his interpolations in the Quran shows how Quran will be used for self-promotion, fame, and to gain a following, all signs of a corrupt heart, and not for the intended purpose of submission to Allah.
True knowledge
The Prophet (peace be upon him) in the abovementioned prophesy called khushu an ilm, a knowledge, that will disappear. This knowledge is not learned through books and the intellect.
It is experienced with the heart.
It is like the mango you tasted and saw and smelled, but you know nothing about its scientific properties and its nutritional value, while the expert of Arabic who is deprived of khushu is like the scientist who knows everything about the nutritional value and scientific properties of the mango though he has never seen, smelled or tasted a mango in his life.
One is true knowledge, the other superficial.
Whether one possesses this superficial knowledge or not, the reward and virtue of ibadat will still be attained.
Reward without meaning
The Prophet (peace be upon him) in a very famous hadith said that each letter you recite of Quran will increase your reward. Then he said, “I am not saying alim lam meem is ten rewards. But alif is 10 rewards, lam is ten rewards, meem is ten rewards.”[7] Alif lam meem are known as the muqatta‘at or the Broken letters.
Though many have speculated to the exact meaning of the Broken letters, it is agreed upon that no one knows their true meaning. Imam Suyuti states in his Tafseer Jalalayn after each Broken letter, “And Allah knows best its meaning.”
The reward for recitation is all the same regardless of whether one knows the meaning or not because the purpose is not the meaning, but the khushu that is the means of acceptance of ibadat.
Our reward for recitation of Quran hinges on the khushu of the heart. The more the khushu, the more one ascends toward Allah for each word recited of Quran.
The same rule applies for the Hereafter. The hadith states, “The expert reciter will be told when he enters Paradise, ‘recite and ascend.”[8]
But when means become ends and the ends are forgotten and disparaged, then khushu itself will go extinct.
Then, there is no ascension, and without ascension, we cannot get closer to Allah.
