For those serious-minded people among us, here are some tips on how to go about learning Qur'anic Arabic – and some things you might like to consider before you begin.
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Reading the Qur'an in Arabic
with understanding.
this is an important subject
quite a lot of people they think that
unless they're reading the Qur'an in Arabic
that they're somehow missing something.
And they might be, they are.
However, there are some other things that
I think are worth bearing in mind.
I taught myself to read the Qur'an in Arabic
and it certainly benefited me to an extent.
However I think if you're thinking of going
into it
if you're thinking of dedicating some time
to doing this
It's worth being clear on some things going
in.
If you're a native English speaker, especially
if you've been educated in the west
Chances are you don't understand your own
language.
It's worth spending some time understanding
the basics of language
of any language
I would suggest, if you're serious about conquering
Qur'anic Arabic
that you spend some time, if you haven't done
so already, conquering English.
It's worth understanding what a subject is,
an object is
What a verb is
transitive verb, intransitive verb
Direct object, indirect object
the mechanics of language are the same no
matter what language you're studying
If you think that Arabic is a holy or special
language
It isn't
It's just a language
There's nothing holy or special about it,
not according to the Qur'an
According to the Qur'an
the Qur'an was sent down in Arabic so that
people could understand it
And that seems to be a sensible reason to
reveal God’s will in a language so that
people can understand it.
The idea is very popular among certain types
of Muslims
That the Qur'an is in a holy language
Well, this is not true.
I would suggest going to Wikipedia or some
other place and just getting an overview
of how Arabic works
This will help you understand how Arabic dictionaries
work
Because an Arabic dictionary is not like an
English dictionary.
The learning curve is quite steep
even to be able to use an Arabic dictionary
I'm not saying it's impossible but it will
really help you
if you understand going in what the territory
looks like
the next stage would be, I would say
if what you want to do is to be able to recite
what replicate
what you probably think of as Tajweed or the
kind of
That thing
is to learn the sounds
I'd already learnt actually Russian
and spoke it fluently before I went into Arabic
and I'd learned from my mistakes learning
Russian
So you can acquire large amounts of Qur'anic
vocabulary very quickly
by learning relatively few words
However that drops off at a certain point
and the last % is quite hard to attain because
some of those words occur only once
and if you're not reading that particular
verse many times
it's very easy to lose that.
What I did was
I used a parallel text and – in fact I wrote
my own parallel text – which you can download
for free from Quranite.com
It's really the document which proceeded from
my own process of due diligence upon
the revelation given to Muhammad.
But I find that it helps
it certainly helps to know the Arabic
to know where you are with it
because you can see how translations are twisted
you can see how are they driven by doctrine
rather than by etymology
so it frees you in that sense
you become free
and no longer can people who know a bit of
Arabic or maybe even speak Arabic fluently
hold that over you
Once you can go to the Arabic and pick it
apart
that's it
you have a way in to understanding the book
that God gave Muhammad
in a way that someone who simply is dependent
upon translations will never be able to do
However it's a different question to saying
"I can read" or "one should be able to read
the Qur'an from cover to cover with perfect
understanding"
Arabs can't do it
We are given to think – non-Arabic speakers
are given to understand – that
all Arabs understand this book perfectly
No, of course not
According to the Qur'an it's God who opens
the understanding
I've been told by native Arabs that they don't
understand the Qur'an
I've been told this directly to my face.
So being an Arab or speaking Arabic, whilst
it would give you a certain access in the
beginning stages
it doesn't mean that you necessarily understand
what you read
God opens the understanding; God doesn't open
the understanding
