The Preservation of the Arabic Language

Languages usually evolve. Just look at the difference between Shakespearean English and modern day English. In many ways they seem like two totally different languages and a man from England in Shakespearean times and a man from modern day England would find it extremely difficult to communicate! But the Arabic language is not just ‘a language’. This is why the Sahaba and the early generations of Muslims strove to preserve the classical Arabic language. It was Ali (radi allaahu ‘anhu) who noticed on the tongues of some of the Arabs a slight change in dialect and ordered for the grammar rules of Arabic to be recorded in a universal form. He knew that the preservation of the Arabic language was part of the preservation of Islam itself.

Arabic unified the Muslim countries as it spread to every land that embraced Islam. This is why it is seen that those Muslim societies that are ignorant of Arabic are in general less knowledgeable about Islam. This ignorance has in turn made them more prone to stray from the straight path.

The enemies of Islam know this and have worked hard to tear the Muslims from the Arabic language and the Qur’an. During the French occupation of Algeria, the French government was advised:

“We will never be able to overpower the Algerians as long as they read the Qur’an and speak Arabic. Therefore we must remove the Arabic Qur’an from their midst and abolish the Arabic language from their tongues.”

And unfortunately this is exactly what the secular leader of Turkey, Kamal Ataturk, who abolished the Islamic caliphate, did. He ordered that the Qur’an be recited in Turkish, even in prayers and changed the Turkish language which used to be written in Arabic into the Latin alphabet.

Today you will find that although Arabs throughout the world unfortunately have different colloquial dialects, they are still taught the Classical Arabic in their schools and Classical Arabic is the standard written Arabic in every Arabic newspaper and book. So it has been preserved by Allah as He promised in the Qur’an:

“Indeed we have sent down the Reminder and surely we will preserve it.” (al-Hijr: 9)