By Manal Abdel Fattah
Dr. Ali Omar Al-Farouq, Head of the Sharia Sector at the Egyptian Fatwa House, stressed the importance and status of the Arabic language and understanding its meanings and purposes, which enables Muslims to understand the Holy Qur’an and its purposes and meanings.
The head of the Sharia Sector at the Egyptian Fatwa House said, in the speech he delivered at the celebration organized by the Embassy of the Sultanate of Oman in Cairo on the occasion of International Arabic Language Day, that the Arabic language is considered among the most widely spoken languages in the world, as the number of its speakers is estimated at more than 550 million people. The eighteenth of December is International Arabic Language Day, and it is celebrated every year. This date is the same date on which the Arabic language was adopted as a global official language by the United Nations General Assembly, among the six languages approved therein, in 1973 AD. .
Al-Farouq explained that by understanding this language, we can read the Book of God Almighty correctly, as it is the key to the treasure, and it is the tool by which we reach understanding of what is meant. It is a clear Arabic Qur’an, and a slander in its tool – the Arabic language – is a slander that does not deviate from being a slander in its meaning. The Qur’an, in which it was revealed and in which it is read, citing the words of God Almighty: “These are the verses of the clear Book. Indeed, We have sent it down as an Arabic Qur’an that you may understand. * We narrate to you the best stories of what We have revealed to This is the Qur’an, even though before it you were among the heedless.”
He said that some people might wonder why God chose Arabic?! Stressing that these people do not know the extent of the greatness of the Arabic language, and that it is a language that contains features that are not found in any other language. No language can maintain this flexibility and breadth until the Day of Judgment, with the connotations of its words and the positions of the words in the useful sentence, other than Arabic, indicating that we discover this when We want to transfer the meanings of the Holy Qur’an to another human language. These meanings have been translated into more than one hundred and thirty languages. All of these translations throughout the ages by believers and unbelievers did not do justice to the Qur’an, and only conveyed the point of view of the writer and translator. The sting of Arabic, the precision of its meaning, the beauty of its timbre, and the impact the Arabic word has on the mind of the listener who knows the language, which is a different impact than all the languages of the world.
He continued: The committees have joined forces to translate its meanings in such a way that the Arabic text can be transferred into any language, regardless of whether it uses the words of that language to which it was transferred, whether ancient or modern. The Qur’an can never be transmitted as it is in Arabic, stressing that this is nothing but evidence of God’s wisdom. To send it down as an Arabic Qur’an? Isn’t this enough for people who believe?
