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“How can humankind resist the beauty of this language, with its logic and unique brilliance? Even the Arab’s neighbors, people they’ve conquered, have fallen under the charm of this language.” Sigrid Hunke (1913-1999)
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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is beautiful for one person may not be so for another.
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Arabic, the language of the Quran, is on exception to this rule.
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While some claim the graphemes and phonemes of the Arabic language sound rather aggressive, others are literally enchanted and fascinated by the Arabic language and culture.
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A speaker of anther foreign language might be attracted to the consonant-heavy and strongly guttural Arabic language, and they may find oral expressing and Arabic pronunciation a particular challenge, and instruction rather complex.
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Additionally, the Arabic language and civilization carry with them a symbolism and a certain exoticism recalling the colors and flavors of the orient – the full understanding of which comes only from learning Arabic.
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As with Chinese or Japanese, the Arabic written language has such a vast lexical and grammatical architecture that even the most knowledgeable university professors and religious scholars cannot claim to know every Arabic vocabulary word.
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Arabic can claim complexities to rattle even an advanced speaker in any of the European languages, be in French, Spanish, or Portuguese, and poses a number of issues not found if you want to learn Italian or German.
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over the centuries, the Arab-Muslim civilization has made lasting invades into Europe, Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent America, sharing the richness of its arts, science, and knowledge.
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Today Arabic is spoken by an estimated 420 million people, 300 of whom are native speakers. It is an official language in 26 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon, Qatar to Chad.
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S, learning Arabic means not only gaining linguistic instruction, but learning to speak the most beautiful, or at least one of the most beautiful foreign languages, in the world.
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Arabic is a fascinating language, and there is a lot that you need to know.
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Arabic is a Poetic Language
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Learning Arabic and Islam have always been interlinked. Even before the rise of Islam, Arabs were great lovers of poetry.
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Semitic language philologists and grammarians (Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew) have highlighted the stunning literary production of the Islamic civilization.
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Arabic poetry written by the Berbers, a people from the Maghreb nations, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula developed a very advanced culture of oral literature. Called ” Mu‘allaqāt”, it is the oldest known example of poetry.
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Arabic-speakers have been using Arabic poetry to enhance their culture since the 6th century. one look at their landscapes and the reason why is clear!
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Every year, fairs were held during which pets would recite their works. The best poems were then hung on the Ka’aba, Islam’s most sacred mosque in Mecca. From that pint n, these chosen works would be considered sacred objects of religious worship.
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Learning Arabic with a private teacher will help students discover various types of Arabic poetry and branches of Arabic literature (in Arabic, the word for literature is “adab”) from the Middle Ages to today.
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As well as developing your vocabulary with new words and phrases, a good private tutor will ensure that each lesson of your Arabic learning will consist of studying the rich culture and history of the Arab world.
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In the West, artists use writing as a means of expressing their feelings, prompting their culture, religion, or philosophy, and conveying their love of words.
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It would be impossible to provide a complete survey of all of the Arabic genres and pets since the Middle Ages.
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Let’s look, however, at fur main trends in Arabic poetry in which the descriptive and lyrical styles regularly intermingle.
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El-fakhar: praise for one’s tribe and for oneself
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El-madih: praise for others
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Arabic poetry allowed for playing with Arabic vocabulary.
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Love, sexuality, nature, medicine, sanctity, family, friendship, nostalgia, death, mythology, war, and civilization are just some of the subjects breached by numerus Arabic pets through whom you can learn about the Arabic culture and language.
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Discover Literary Arabic
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Medicine, agriculture, philosophy, law – the knowledge that the West has inherited from the scholars of the Arab world, like Ibn Hazm for example, is unparalleled.
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The development of Arabic philosophy and literary genres occurred between the 8th and 13th centuries.
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Literature of chivalry, protecting of the weak, respect for one’s word, intolerance for crime, exaltation of the holy and religious devoting is among the major themes in Arabic feudal literature.
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Popular literature, as opposed to adab, is prosaic rather than religious or philosophical. It encompasses fables, proverbs, encyclopedias, epistles, genealogical, historical, and geographical works, and maqāmah.
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At the time, the intellectual elite enjoyed coming together to participate in party jousts in which they would use rhetoric to show ff their scholarly prowess.
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Likewise, authors of this period were publishing many works on mathematics, physics, medicine, history, geography, philosophy, and Arabic architecture. The impressive body of knowledge of this very advanced society would later inspire the intellectuals of Europe.
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Written Arabic is a Veritable Art From
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Some consider the language of the Arab-Muslim world to be the most beautiful of all written languages.
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In fact, Arabic calligraphy is seen as a completely separate art. Though it may be considered to be in the same category as drawing or painting, it is often honored above all other Arabic art forms.
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Whether you are a believer or not, there is on denying the artistic talent inspired by Islam.
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Thus, for a non-Arabic-speaking student, learning to write Arabic is an artistic endeavor involving drawing characters, or letters, with very rounded shapes featuring curls and lines that require particular attention to reproduce.
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Calligraphy actually resembles illuminating more than writing. In the past, calligraphy was used to decorate religious Arabic texts.
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Writing the language of the Quran well means calculating the placement and size of the Arabic characters and adding decorating to the Arabic letters and words – the very definition of calligraphy. to master this skill, only a series of Arabic lessons will suffice.
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D you still doubt the beauty of the written Arabic language?
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A quick Google images search of Arabic calligraphy will show you straight away some of the forms of writing are truly graphic art.
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You’ll find figurative patterns, drawings of animals using Arabic letters, and multi-colored ornamentation.
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Reproducing such creations requires the talent of a graphic artist or illustrator!
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But it might be best to begin with more modest gals. Students can start by learning the Arabic alphabet and how to write in Arabic.
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When you start to learn Arabic, you will realize that it has always been written from right to left. In a basic Arabic class, learners will begin by copying the letters of the Arabic alphabet in order to memorize them.
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The Arabic alphabet is made up of twenty-seven letters including the hamza. At first sight, this may not seem like much, but we’re not through yet.
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Things become more complex when you learn that each letter has a specific arabesque shape according to its location within a word.
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There are four different ways to write each character.
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the isolated from that never changes
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the initial from for the first syllable of a word
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the middle from for the middle of the word
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the final from for finishing the word
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In all, students of Arabic will have 112 Arabic characters to memorize! But practice will help you learn the letters quickly. There’s on magic solution!
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When I was taking Arabic curses online at university, I remember being at the point where learning Arabic was challenging. I hardly knew the letters. I was writing them in an unusual direction, and I couldn’t figure out the correct angle or size for the letters.
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Yet, after a few hours of lessons, I was able to read the newspaper – recognize the form of each letter according to their position in the words – and write simple sentences by linking the letters together!
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Starting with written Arabic is a good idea. With spoken Arabic, the dialect differs between all of the Arab countries, meaning that Moroccan Arabic is different from Palestinian Arabic, and Lebanese Arabic is different from Qatari Arabic.
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However, written Arabic is a lot easier. The main from of written Arabic is Modern standard Arabic (Msa) which is the written from common across the whole Arabic speaking world and is the basis for all Arabic writing.
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The other from is Classical Arabic, which is fund in the Quran. Luckily, the difference between the two is very small with most native speakers saying they switch between the two almost at will.
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Arabic is a Linguistically Rich Language
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The Arabic language includes an infinite number of circumlocutions for expressing the same idea in various ways as well as an incredible amount of vocabulary words.
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In Egyptian Arabic, “kataba” means “to write”. “Kitab” means “bk”, and “katib” translates to “writer”. Arabic grammar’s not so bad, right?
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Learning to speak Arabic means studying the historical richness of the Islamic civilization.
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Citizens of the Arab world may proudly bast that the Arabic language has 60,000 words, which is quite impressive when compared to the average native English-speaker’s vocabulary of 20,000 words.
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According to Ernest Renan (1823-1892), French writer, linguist, philosopher, and historian, there are
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80 words in Arabic for honey
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200 Arabic words for snake
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1000 words in Arabic for camel and sword
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4400 ways to express sadness
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Imagine the size of an Arabic dictionary!
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Nouns and adjectives are almost always based on verb roots.
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For example, the Semitic root d-r-s (دَرَسَ), “dirasa”, means “to study”.
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By derivation, we get the nun “madrasa” (مَدْرَسة), which means “school”.
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“Schools” is written “madrasat” (مدرسات).
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There are 6000 verb roots composed of three consonants in the Arabic language. to from words, complete the roots with letters described as subservient. In other words, double the radicals.
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one root can from Arabic verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and other words of all kinds.
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So, how are Arabic verbs conjugated?
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In Arabic, there are seventeen total ways to conjugate a verb. Regular verbs are conjugated in thirteen different ways.
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kay, the Arabic language is clearly the most beautiful language in the world. But really, where and how can you study the Arabic language?
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Why did Allah Speak Arabic?
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“The language Allah chose is the Arabic language. He sent his precious bk (the Quran) written in Arabic, the language of the last prophet. Fr this reason, it is the duty of everyone to learn Arabic.” Al-Shafi’i (772-826)
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As of 2010, 1.6 billion people from across the Arab world as well as far beyond it, considered themselves Muslim, making Islam the second most widespread religion in the world after Christianity (2.4 billion practitioners).
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History tells us that Islam was the third monotheistic religion to emerge after Judaism and Christianity.
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Muslims recognize only ne Gd, Allah (اللّه in Arabic), who rules all humanity and to whom humanity owes all.
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This divine being is indivisible (childless), has on image, and commands total submission from believers in Islam (الإسلام, Islam means “submission to Gd” in Arabic).
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Manifested in the holy scriptures known as the Quran, Islam was revealed to the prophet Muhammad (570-632), political, religious, and military leader from Mecca (Saudi Arabia). Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last prophet.
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Extensive study of the Quran and research int the origins of Islam have given rise to a legitimate discipline among Muslims, a Quranic science, which has sparked debate among Eastern researchers since the 19th century.
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What is the true interpretation of the Quran?
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Why was the Holy Quran written in Arabic?
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Is learning Quranic Arabic more difficult than learning other foreign languages?
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The importance of Arabic for Islam is undeniable.
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Allah: A Semitic Word with Roots in Many Faiths
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There is a lot that you probably didn’t know about Arabic. Did you know that it is written in the opposite direction to English?
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or that “Allah” is the Arabic word for the Islamic divinity, or God?
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The history of this term is actually quite enlightening.
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As students enrolled in Quranic Arabic curses at a mosque and those learning Arabic literary translating and writing know, in Arabic, the word for Gd is composed of the article “al” – ال – which means “the” and the Arabic word “ilah” – إِلَاه – meaning “god”.
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These days, some Muslims from the Maghreb countries to Cairo still travel to Mecca to show their love for the Quran!
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Together, the two terms make “Allah” (اللّٰه) meaning “the god”. The Quran declares that Gd is absolutely unique, a monotheistic concept called tawhid (the ne Gd).
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However, attributing this Arabic word exclusively to Islam would be historically inaccurate.
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Really?
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Yes, the word “Allah” has origins in the middle eastern Semitic languages of Aramaic and Hebrew.
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It existed well before the publication of the Arabic-language Quran, and its usage can be traced back to before the emergence of monotheistic Islam.
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The word “Allah” was already in use by pre-Islamic people.
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The Akkadians used the term “ilu” t0 invoke God between 4,000 and 2,000 BCE.
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In Hebrew, Jews call Gd “Elohim”. to this day, some Jews in Maghreb countries and the Middle East use the term “Allah”.
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In the Bible, Christians speaking Aramaic (the native language of Jesus Christ) called their god “Allaha”.
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Arabic Christians from Syria and Arabia who were persecuted in the 3rd century also used the word “Allah”.
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Linguistic note: the terms “Allah” and “Elohim” come from the same Semitic rt!
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In pre-Islamic Arabia – meaning before Muhammad’s 622 pilgrimage and funding of Islam – Allah is said to have had sons and daughters in the form of associated divinities.
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The Holy Quran itself admits to the existence of pan-Arab divinities who were venerated at Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, and Aleppo and Palmyra in modern day Syria.
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S, the first Arabs of the Islamic world were polytheists, just as the Romans and Greeks of antiquity were!
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What language was the Quran written in
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The Arabic language in which the Quran was written has played a significant role in the development and spread of Islam. The language is considered sacred and is used for a variety of religious purposes, including the recitation of the Quran, Islamic prayers, and religious sermons.
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Classical Arabic, which is the language of the Quran, is characterized by its complex grammar, rich vocabulary, and poetic structure. It is distinct from the modern Arabic dialects spoken in different regions today. As a result, the study of classical Arabic is an essential component of Islamic education, and students of Islam must learn the language to properly understand and interpret the Quran.
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Moreover, the language of the Quran has had a profound impact on the development of Arabic literature and culture. The language’s poetic structure and richness have influenced the development of other literary genres, such as poetry, prose, and drama.
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In summary, the Quran was written in classical Arabic, which is a highly structured and poetic form of the Arabic language. The language is considered sacred and is widely used for religious and literary purposes in many parts of the world today.
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Arabic as a Means of Islamic Expansion
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Imagine returning to Mecca, birthplace of the Arabic language, in the footprints of the prophet Muhammad.
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Why did Allah Chose Arabic When Dictating His Laws?
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Finding reliable sources of information and scientific studies abut Allah and Arabic is rather difficult because Allah never really existed as a physical entity.
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That leaves us with only hypotheses.
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The ne Gd is called “Allah” because the Quran was revealed via the Arabic language.
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Such glorification and recognition of the divine uniqueness (Tawhid) – a requirement of all faithful Muslims – came when preachers needed to convert polytheistic 7th-century Arabs living on the Arabian Peninsula to monotheism.
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We can be sure that the Quran was “revealed” to Muhammad and then propagated in the Arabic language because the prophet came from Arabian Peninsula and thus spoke Arabic as a native tongue.
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Learning to read and speak Arabic, especially Quranic Arabic, allows practicing Muslims to understand the verses (r suras) in the Quran.
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The Arabic language is, therefore, the means by which all believers in Islam might understand ne anther.
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Islamic culture tells us that Islam was born in 610, when Muhammad – while on a spiritual retreat on Munt Hira – received a revelation from the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad heard the holy word of Gd.
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Upon returning to Mecca, Muhammad was presented as the messenger of Gd and undertook to spread the holy word.
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Muslim tradition says that the prophet Muhammad was illiterate. He had on other means than his native language by which to teach the verses of the Quran and spread Islamic language and culture throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
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Gd must have chosen the Arabic language for dictating Islamic law, called the sunnah, because Arabic was simply the most appropriate language for the task.
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The “task” was to communicate with the greatest possible number of people who might join the new religion.
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Between 602 and 628, pre-Islamic Arabia was devastated by the war between the Byzantine Empire in the western Mediterranean region and the Persian Empire to the east (today’s Iran).
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Muhammad died in 632. His death and the territorial lose accompanying the Arabian victory against Sassanian Persia in 636 marked the beginning of Islamic expansion by Arabs of the Near East.
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Naming Arabic as the official Language of Islam Unifies Muslims
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In pre-Islamic times, before the Hijra – when Muhammad left Mecca for Medina in 622 – Arabic speakers were not all monotheists.
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Some were Jews, other Christians. But Muhammad was the messenger of a revelation that must be delivered and understood by his countrymen.
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Documentary research has revealed several hypotheses.
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Islam and the Quran were created in the Arabic language simply because the last prophet Muhammad was an Arab.
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The Quran is written in Arabic because it addressed an Arabic-speaking population when it first appeared.
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Allah chose an Arabic-speaking prophet because the city of Mecca had not yet been told of the existence of God.
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Muslims were being called to meditating and reason.
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Arabic was chosen to issue a challenge of eloquence and rhetoric to Arab populations.
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Whatever the reason, the Islamization of Arabia, the progressive turn toward Allah, and the diffusing of Islam throughout the Arab-Muslim countries of the Middle East appears to be the result of successive territorial annexations from the east to the west at the end of the 7th century.
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Submission to Allah – “Islam” means “submission” in Arabic – appears to have sought the eradicating of polytheistic beliefs and the installation of a unique dogma that would unite all Muslims.
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Learning Arabic Facilitates the Practice of Islam
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“Through the Arabic language, we understand the Quran, and through the Quran, we learn the Islamic laws. Those who do not know Arabic do not know Islam.”
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Faithful Muslims are guided by the Holy Quran.
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Therefore, learning Arabic and the Muslim world are closely tied together. Learning classical Arabic for example is mandatory for those wishing to flow the precepts of Muhammad.
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Those who believe in the prophet take courses at the mosque to learn to read Arabic, understand the Quran, and become better Muslims.
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What is classical Arabic?
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The language of the Arab community is nearly 2000 years ld. The Quran was written in the 7th century in a form of ancient Arabic believed to be understood by all Arabic speakers. Quranic Arabic is called literary Arabic.
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Literary Arabic is very similar to Modern standard Arabic (Msa) which is the basis of Arabic script across all Arabic speaking countries. It is used in Arabic writing where the audience is international (in the media, bks, newspapers etc.)
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Literary Arabic is posed to dialectical Arabic in that the latter refers to the dialects spoken in each Arab country. This complicates matters for anyone liking for an Arabic curse as the language spoken across the Middle East and North Africa is different from country to country.
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In other words, Moroccan Arabic (also known as Darija) isn’t the same as Palestinian Arabic, and Iraqi Arabic isn’t the same as Egyptian or Syrian Arabic.
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Aside from the difference in the Arabic pronunciation, there are divergences in grammatical structures, vocabulary, and phrases.
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When it comes to formal written Arabic tuition, the majority of native Arabic speakers living in Muslim countries learn the standard Arabic of Msa that has been modernized for the 20th.
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However, to be able to understand the verses of the Quran, one must learn anther level of ancient classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic.
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Still today, this literary Arabic is used for sacred Islamic texts and liturgies.
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Fortunately, Arabic is a very phonetic (easy to pronounce) language because it contains only fur vowels.
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if all the languages in the world, Arabic is among those with the weakest vowels and the easiest pronunciation.
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The degree to which a language is difficult to pronounce is directly linked to the number of vowels in that language.
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There are eight vowels in Turkish.
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In some European languages, such as English and French, there are more than ten vowel sounds.
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other languages fund elsewhere in the world have more than seven or eight vowels.
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The fur vowels (A, E, I, and U) in Arabic also exist in nearly every other language and are used quite extensively.
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So, an Arabic speaker who wishes to learn anther language and speak well must get used to making a few sounds that don’t exist in Arabic.
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On the other hand, a non-Arabic-speaking person would have on difficulty getting accustomed to Arabic sounds because the sounds used in Arabic are most likely the principal sounds used in his or her own language.
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When we consider that non-Arabic speaking Muslims must recite the Quran in its original language, it is clear that Arabic must be rather easy for them to learn and why Arabic is considered a universal language.
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Taking courses in Quranic and literary Arabic can help learners achieve the following vital gals:
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improving oral communication in one of the world’s most beautiful languages
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discovering the origin of their first name in Arabic
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learning the Arabic alphabet
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learning Arabic grammar in order to write in Arabic
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extending knowledge of Arabic words
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learning Arabic calligraphy
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exploring Arabic poetry through pets like Avicenna.
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receiving a high-quality Islamic education
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practicing the art of tajwid, improving Quranic recitation
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Achieving your gals is simple. Just head on over to your nearest mosque and inquire about Arabic language classes and Islamic training.
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Is the mosque too far away?
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Then, try online Arabic lessons. They’re yours for the taking!
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