Arabic: The Gates to the Soul

Dr. David Rabeeya

Arabic is considered by many Muslims to be the divine Holy language of the Qur’an. Often, some Arabs praise the language as the best of the best of all languages due to its eloquence, rich vocabulary, rhythms and poetic expressions. There also is no doubt that most Arabs either love or are in love with the Arabic language. This strong emotional attachment to the language seems true and sincere in its intensity. Since Arabic has represented power in the eyes of many Christians and Jews born in Arab lands, they took it upon themselves to excel in this language. Despite their small number in the dominantly Muslim environment, some of them were able to obtain high achievements in the academic, literary and the journalistic aspects of this intriguing tongue.

Several Christian and Jewish Arabists have often expressed their pride and satisfaction with the beauty and the charm of Arabic, as well as their desire to involve themselves in the rise of various Arab national movements that have utilized Arabic as the linguistic and the political tools on the road to independence. Indeed, many Arabs have considered the Qur’anic language as the classical language that needed to be imitated and copied in all areas of an Arab’s life.

Learning the language of the Qur’an as a religious language has instilled in the mind of many Muslim children feelings of awe, respect and admiration toward this heavenly language. Children and adults have taken it upon themselves to memorize many sections of the Qur’an as an indicator of their religious devotion and cultural commitment to Arab and Muslim causes. Some Muslims have even memorized the entire one hundred fourteen suras of the Qur’an.

Many Arabs are impressed with the mathematical structures of the Arabic language and its logical patterns and forms, enabling a person to create thousands upon thousands of new words based on its morphological structures. Despite the existence of many Arabic dialects in many Arab states, it seems that the longing for a standardized, unified, common Arabic language for all Arabs has not faded away even through the development of a variety of dialects based on national and tribal considerations. In a way, this unfulfilled vision is the agent of an Arab dream about unifying all Arabs under the glory of one Arab leadership.

As a result, mythological and legendary themes about the Arabic language have included the attraction to the symbols of the Arabic alphabet and their utilization in calligraphy and geometric shapes. Arabic proverbs have also become famous for their capacity to convey complicated human messages in a precise, sharp and eloquent fashion. Adding to the human and the artistic aspects of this history and legends, the master of Arabic is frequently praised to be an educated person par excellence, admired, loved and envied by members of the Arab community.

This magic of Arabic in the mind of many Arabs cannot be entirely explained to many westerners who find the repetition, exaggeration and overstatements in Arabic to be both strange and ridiculous. On the other hand, it is incumbent on outsiders to learn not only the language itself, but also about flesh and blood Arabs and their rich and proud culture before reaching informative and conceptional conclusions about the nature of the Arabic language. It is also important to remember in this context that Arabic, like biblical Hebrew, does not possess tenses but aspects (perfect and imperfect). The perfect indicate things that occurred in the past, regardless of their specific chronological order, while the imperfect indicate things in process that can be translated into present and future in many western languages. This unique grammatical dimension of Arabic may have philosophical and psychological implications in time and space in the process of communication with westerners who are familiar only with grammatical tenses. It is unfortunate that, often, some westerners find it difficult to understand the concepts of “saving face” and “honor” in the culture of the Arabs.

Learning the Arabic language with care and love may open the gates to the improvement of serious cultural dialogues for future peaceful coexistence. The profound knowledge of the Arabic language may become like the eyes that can serve as the gates to the human soul. Inshallah!

Originally published in The Sephardic Heritage Update, an email newsletter.  If you wish to have an e-mail address added to their list please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)