Nor does He call Muslims to copy the behavior and manner of Arabs. Islam is for all people and for all time. The Quran, though, is in Arabic.
In order to pray the five daily prayers, a Muslim needs to know just seven verses of the Quran in Arabic. This is not such a massive burden, is it? In order to better understand our religion, though, it is most definitely best to be able to understand the Quran in its Arabic form.
Translations are fine, but they can only ever give an approximation of what the original author intended. I heard a very lovely idea the other day: that any writer likes to hear his work being read. He gave us this Quran as a mercy to the whole of mankind. How pleased He must be with His creatures when He hears them reading and reciting out loud.
This is why we try to read the Quran in Arabic. If, however, the Arabic language is quite beyond us, we are not to blame nor should we feel badly. We can recite verses in Arabic by learning the sounds, and then find out what they mean by resorting to translations. We must never be led to think, though, that these translations are an exact version of the Arabic in another language.
Any translation of the Quran is only an approximation of the meaning of revelation. As for the first point, there can be many reasons that distract us from Islam. It could be that we are missing prayers on a regular basis, or that we are not saying them at the right time in the day, or rushed without concentration.
Maybe we are mixing with people whose lifestyles are not in accord with the lofty ideals of Islamic behavior. Muslims often point to the mesmerizing poetry of the Quran as proof of its divine authorship.
It has long been said that no man could ever produce a book as poetic as the Quran, especially not an illiterate caravan merchant in 7th-century Arabia. Of course, critics who have read the Quran in English have been thoroughly unimpressed with it as a work of literature.
They have described it as sloppy, disjointed, and inconsistent. We're not going to argue with that. We have seen plenty of English interpretations of the Quran and all have always failed to recreate the lyrical beauty of the Classical Arabic original.
This is why it's so important that anybody hoping to fully experience the Quran - be it as a piece of doctrine or as a work of art - must read the book in the language in which it was revealed to Muhammad. When read in their original Classical Arabic, there are some verses in the Quran which have multiple meanings. This, of course, adds to their significance. In fact, in at least one case, the multiple meanings of a Quranic passage have been cited as proof it came from God and not a man.
You may remember our article concerning scientific facts mentioned in the Quran. In that piece, we took a look at a number of passages in the Quran which seem to support contemporary scientific research.
Among them was Quran, In those verses, the Quran discusses human embryonic development. An extract reads as follows:. Then We made the drop into an alaqah In English, the above verse isn't all that interesting. In Arabic, however, it may well prove that the Quran is indeed a gift from God.
The word "alaqah" is an Arabic word and has three different meanings in its classical form. These meanings are "leech", "blood clot", and "suspended thing". If we begin with the first meaning - "leech" - and apply it to the context of human embryonic development, we can assume the author is comparing the embryo to a leech due to its appearance and the fact it relies on the blood of its mother to survive.
Now let's move on to the second meaning, "blood clot". Thanks to modern research into embryonic development, we know that an embryo's blood does not begin to circulate until the end of the third week. Up to that point, large amounts of blood remain stationary, meaning the embryo is not unlike a blood clot. Finally, the word "alaqah" could also be used to describe something that has been suspended. This is noteworthy as an embryo is suspended from the uterine wall during the earliest stages of its development.
Of course, the fetus remains attached to the wall via its umbilical cord throughout its development, but until it is large enough to fill the womb it is literally suspended and hanging from the ceiling of the uterus. In Arabic, a mudghah is essentially something that has been chewed. This may seem like a bizarre way to describe an embryo at first, but when accompanied by an image of one in gestation, it begins to make sense.
You see, around the 28 day mark, an embryo develops somites along its back. When caught on camera, these somites closely resemble the teeth marks one would expect to find on a substance which has been chewed.
Of course, there's no way that Muhammad could have known this. Nor could he have truly understood the significance of the use of the word "alaqah" in the previous passage.
In fact, there's no way anybody in 7th-century Arabia could have known that an embryo relies on its mother's blood, stores its own in one place, or hangs from the uterine wall. It was not until the invention of the telescope some years later that scientists and doctors were finally able to begin piecing together our current knowledge of embryonic development.
With this in mind, when one reads the Quran in Arabic , then, the presence of the words "alaqah" and "mudghah" give some serious weight to the claims that the book was revealed to Muhammad by the power of God. A Muslim can also help out any non Muslim and they can also receive help from a non Muslim such as getting dental treatment from a non Muslim dentist.
This is mainly because, as pointed out in an earlier reply, a platonic relationship between the opposite sexes is usually not possible. According to the Quran, the only foods explicitly forbidden are meat from animals that die of themselves, blood, the animals that eat meat or feed on meat or skin like pig pork ,snakes etc. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.
Press ESC to cancel. Ben Davis January 6, Is reading Quran in English Haram? Should Quran be read in Arabic?
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