New Salat Article
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Hello Everybody,
I think what gets lost in the debates, arguments, posts, and questions is this one fact Religion is an intensely personal matter.
Al Qur'aan Al Kareem, is a book written by man, it's source of revelation should not be in question due to the fact that no one can prove unquestionably that Allah Ta'ala revealed it. Miracles and divine signs are referred to as such, because they are outside the scientific processes and the norm. So from this base, people should deal with the plain text and its injunctions.
The reality is that, no matter who is posting, in their own minds they are right. They've come to certain conclusions based on their particular understanding of certain ayaat that they feel justify their position. In none of the 114 suwraahs of the Qur'aan is a step by step process for performing Salaat. It does not exist. What does exist is verses which refer to certain parts or aspects, but in none does the following happen"Say This is how my servants should perform Salaat for my reverence"
Religion is again an intensely personal matter. Arguing that one is absolutely wrong and one is absolutely right is asanine. The reason why is because no one can do the following
- PROVE that Abraham, or Ishmael even existed
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited Arabia
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited the Hijaz or Mekkah
- PROVE the Kaabah is any older than the 2nd Century B.C.E.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever raised the foundations of the Kaabah
- PROVE that Abraham thereafter prayed to Allah Ta'Ala to bless his progeny to observe Salaat
- PROVE that Ishmael had children
8.) PROVE that the Arabs of Quraysh were descended from Ishmael - PROVE that the Arabs knew the Salaat
- PROVE that Muhammad was in the cave of Hira
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel exists
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel descended to Arabia
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel spoke to the Prophet Muhammad
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel taught Salat to the Prophet Muhammad
- PROVE that the Prophet Muhammad performed the same Salat as their concepts dicate
Therefore to argue as to absolute right or wrong, is simply impossible. All one can do is juxtapose that certain positions they've taken are closest to the literal text of the Qur'aan as they perceive it.
The Qur'aan is relegated to the same world of the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammipada, the Bahai texts, the Tanakh, the Gospels, the Vedas, the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Books of Mormon, etc. They are the products of an individual or communal undertaking of understanding how to experience the supernatural according to a preconceived conception. None of them can be proved to come from an invisible heavenly source, as none can prove this invisible heavenly source even exists. Its all hypothesis and guesswork. The shame is people fight and divide over someone whom they've never even laid eyes on or met's mental framework for comprehending non-material realities. In simpler terms, someone else's idea, which remains unproveable and unverifiable.
If your practice brings you a higher state of tranquility or spiritual experience, that should be it. Dictating to someone else that you're right and their wrong is analogous to being in a dark tunnel you didn't build with a group of people you've never met and assuming you're the only one who knows how to get to the end.
Peace to All!
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Paz Boricuasun,
I must say that I really disagree with the intention of your post. You say some things that are true but you also say some things that are not true. Proving is also a subjective matter and when we are not dealing with physical evidence but rather deductive ones it comes down to the honesty of the deducer or the capability to deduce. Either way this is their choice. Even the more material sciences can come up with proofs that only serve to be disproved later on. So proof is not something fixed in stone but something dependent on our ability to percieve and understand all the factors involved.
Also I would take each religious book separately and not try to group them together. We do not KNOW that man invented the Quran. We know that it was copied down by men but every person we could possibly attribute the book to does not claim to have invented it. The one man who the book goes back to is the last prophet Muhammad (of course him being the last prophet is a Quranic idea that I espouse), and he also did not claim to have invented it. So there is a lack of proof on your side that the book was invented by any man because no man claims to have invented it. So this is a giant leap on your part. At the very least you could say that we don't know who wrote it without considering what the Quran says itself, which you are skeptical of.Now the Quran does associate raka&a (which is to bow or kneel) with Salat in particualr Mary's salat. But in the end Salat means prayer, any prayer and prayer in any way. We find that Mary bowed in her prayer and we will find the Quran saying pray, do what is right and kneel/bow. So at the very least we know we are to bow or kneel when we pray. But there is no formula for physical movement during prayer in the Quran nor for our words besides how those mentioned in the Quran prayed. And there need not be such forumulae. As far as the following issues
- PROVE that Abraham, or Ishmael even existed
If we have deduced that the Quran is from God and that is a personal endeavor then we can prove that these two existed based on the trustworthinessw of our source. But if you are looking for physical evidence then as of now there is none.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited Arabia
THis is a story from the Hadeeth. It is not Quranic.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited the Hijaz or Mekkah
Again this is Hadeethic, not Quranic.
- PROVE the Kaabah is any older than the 2nd Century B.C.E.
This is also a Hadeethic issue. The Kabah is nothing but a Masjid (place of worship/reverence). If it is older than 2 BC it is of no great deal to me. It is a masjid like any other.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever raised the foundations of the Kaabah
Again who knows if the temple that Abraham and Ishmael built (God bless them both) was the Kaabah. The only evidence for this is in Arabic lore. And the biblical Judaic lore has him raising many temples, including ones named Beth'el. So again who knows. The kabah could have been one of many.
- PROVE that Abraham thereafter prayed to Allah Ta'Ala to bless his progeny to observe Salaat
Again on this if we have deduced that the Quran is true and had this proven to our minds then we will accept this. dhurriyatun can also mean following and not jsut progeny. And again Salat in Arabic is any prayer. Even trinitiarian Arabs who pray to Jesus (God bless him) are making Salat.
- PROVE that Ishmael had children
I can't recall what the Quran says about this. Aparently Jacob had children and this would be equally dificult to prove, even if the Children of Israel claimed descendency form him. The Bible says he had children. I think the Quran is silent on this matter. In the end it doesn't matter. Arab lore just corroborates Jewish lore and claims that Ishmael's descendents were brought into the original Arab tribes form Qahtan and Adnaan. We have no proof against it, so innocent until proven guilty, right?
8.) PROVE that the Arabs of Quraysh were descended from Ishmael
I already explained that above. According to the lore the children of Israel were Arabicized. This is a Hadeethic affair anyway. I'm glad the Quran didn't waste its time on such subjects.
- PROVE that the Arabs knew the Salaat
Again Salat is prayer, no matter who is praying. Muslims are deluded by thinking that their ritualistic form of prayer is only Salat. It is Muslim Salat and Christian prayer is Christian Salat and Jewish prayer Jewish Salat, etc. etc.
- PROVE that Muhammad was in the cave of Hira
The Quran is not detailed on this and the Hadeeth talks about this more. The Quran as far as I recall doesn't actually say that the one recieving this book was in that cave. It also does not say who this was. I think we would do well to try to connect this story with another more detailed story in the Quran. In the end what does it matter anyway?
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel exists
Again this depends on our having proof that the Quran is trustworthy.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel descended to Arabia
ditto.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel spoke to the Prophet Muhammad
ditto.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel taught Salat to the Prophet Muhammad
ditto. The answer is in the Quran.
- PROVE that the Prophet Muhammad performed the same Salat as their concepts dicate
Who's concepts?
Godbless,
Anwar -
peace,
Now the Quran does associate raka&a (which is to bow or kneel) with Salat in particualr Mary's salat.
Which verse(s) are you referencing for the example with Mary?
But in the end Salat means prayer, any prayer and prayer in any way. We find that Mary bowed in her prayer and we will find the Quran saying pray, do what is right and kneel/bow.
Are you working along the lines of since 'B' is mentioned in the same verse/context as 'A' then that means 'B' is done during 'A'? Or is it simply one of the possibilities?
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Peace Anwar,
Thank you for your comments.
Isn't Taha Hussein the same man who composed a verse like the Quran, and who couldn't realize that the Quran's challenge had nothing to do with literary style?
Isn?t it amazing that I have seen no one who makes such accusation about Taha Hussein produce this ?verse? that Taha Hussein composed? Come on Anwar, if you are going to have a serious scholarly discussion then you shouldn?t be appealing to the emotions of the reader by using academically inconsequential polemics like this.
And you trust the rest of his assessments?
There is no such thing as trust and mistrust in scholarly research. The scientific method is not about trust or mistrust of people?s inner consciousness. The scientific method is also certainly not about diverting the focus to smears on a person?s character while not even reading his thesis. This is not you but I have had this experience with many highly educated people and it speaks to the sad state of affairs of Muslim intellectuals. Despite the increased education and literacy, they are still following in the footsteps of unscientific traditionalists who when challenged resort to appeals to emotions and hearsay about people?s character.
Taha Hussein was excellent at analyzing literature and he understood that culture and literature are inseparable. His assessment in this area is very good and matches well with what other researchers have concluded about the development of the Arab empire culture.
I haven't read those books admittedly but I must say that these authors make big steps with little evidence.
Your words speak for themselves. I hope that you can see the irony. I rest my case.
Also, let us be more specific about the Quran. Tajweed or the art of Quranic recitation was also a work in progress. So comparing the general style of Quranic recitation with pre-islamic poetries (that are no longer recited) is not an intelligent way of making accurate deductions.
How can poetry be no longer recited? What is the point of poetry if it is not recited? This doesn?t really make any sense or you are not carefully choosing your words so that they make sense.
The truth as I have it is that those pre-islamic poetries, and other poetries modeled after them, were generally pronounced with the same rules applied to the Quran for rhyme and meter.
Just listen to yourself saying ?the truth as I have it?. Does this sound very scientific or even professional? It is not surprising that you then go on in the very next sentence and contradict this very ?truth as you have it? since you acknowledge that there is a big exception.
Futhermore the Quran is always pronounced with every vowel except at the end of a prhrase, where not only the short (usually) non-written vowels are not pronounced but also the nun of a fatha tanween and even the long vowels. Remember ahaanan for ahaanani and akraman for akramani. (this is because of the post-Quranic poeticization of the recital of the book)
End of a phrase is a very big difference. All speech consists of phrases so this would indicate that every single sentence uttered by those who spoke the language of the great reading differed from the Classical Arabic grammar of alleged Pre-Islamic Poetry.
Moreover, even your contradiction is wrong. It is based on the hasty assumption that what you refer to as ?a verse in the Quran? is always a sentence. This is false and we can easily find many examples where sometimes a ?verse? encompasses several sentences, half a sentence or even a single word. Since a word is the lowest common denominator then we are not talking about the end of each phrase, we are in reality talking about the end of each word falling under what you admitted is an exception to Classical Arabic grammar rules.
I also have pointed out to you in the script of the Quran where short vowels were represented by the written long ones. This is inconsistent in the Quranic scripts however and point to the inconsistencies of the development of Arabic script throughout the ages. The proof is in the pudding and that can be found in most of the still archaic scripts of our Qurans.
You are talking about two different unrelated issues. Case ending vocalization marks have nothing to do with long vowels. Medial long vowels that are sometimes noted in the script have nothing to do with grammar.
The milieu of the early Arab-Islamic empires and the literature produced at the time is good to know and that is fine and dandy. But where as there was a demand for poetry modeled after the Old Arabic poetry (which has nothing to do with vowels but with meter and phases of rhyme. Like the difference between haikus and other molds of poetry which have nothing to do with grammar) it is a big step to say that these Old Arabic poetries were invented with no proof of that other than the late point at which they were written down.
So you acknowledge that there was a demand for such poetry and therefore there is no need for a conspiracy (which was your prior main objection). This is good progress but I would like to make one simple but crucial correction to your statement
?there was a demand for poetry modeled after what storytellers mistakenly thought was the Old Arabic style of poetry?
Since at their time Arabic has been turned into the official and formal political and religious language of the empire, this is what they thought was Old Arabic, not the real common people street language of the great reading.
All poetry is invented. Poetry doesn?t fall from the sky. The poets are people who have a creative gift for invention. We can clearly see that supposed pre-Islamic poetry was a tool for storytelling. All pre-Islamic poems are told in the course of a story where the main character or the hero is the poet. This is why even an elementary school student who can recognize the difference between fiction and non-fiction can recognize that all supposed Pre-Islamic poems have the typical traits of fiction. For example, the story of Qays and Layla has all the traits of other fictions such as Romeo and Juliet. The same goes for Imru?Al-Qays (the Hamlet of Arabia) and ?Antar Ibn-Shaddad who could defeat hundreds of men single handedly. Those stories and the poetry that is intertwined in them and advances the plot bear the indisputable hallmarks of fiction. How can any sane person think that those enchanted characters really existed and that they paused at every opportune moment in their story to spontaneously utter poetry even when no one was listening is beyond me.
That you and other intellectuals needed Taha Hussein or anyone else to discover this readily obvious fact again speaks to the dark veil of Arab nationalistic fantasies that has enveloped the Muslim minds and detached them from reality.
We could argue the same with non-dotted versions of the Quran and claim that the late written scripts that we have are the proof that the Quran was invented at the later dates of the scripts we have when it was written down. But that is absurd as well, given the evidence of Quranic schools of recitations as well as the schools of riwah for pre-Islamic poetry.
This is a false analogy. Many of the earliest versions of the Quran such as the Sanaa manuscript are dotted. Moreover, there are several examples of pre-Quranic inscriptions that are dotted. Also, there are mundane early post-Quranic manuscripts which are dotted. Also, dotting has no bearing on grammar. Dotting was needed for the sole reason that what we refer to as the Arabic script is in fact a foreign Nabataean Aramaic script. Using it to write Arabic is much like using the English script to write Arabic. Because all the Arabic consonants are not represented, this would be the equivalent of adding say an apostrophe over the A to make it into ?A for an Arabic . On the other hand, the real Arabian script where all the consonants are represented is the Musnad script.
As for my emotional response, it is hard to deal with someone who skips the important parts of my posts and the pertinent questions ( I give examples of tajweed and Quranic spellings) only to have that person respond with particulars that literally have nothing to do with anything (admittedly your most recent post was better). And thanks for the advice.
I look forward to continued improvements with less emotions and more specific focus on pertinent issues on both sides.
Also why are you reading and following behind all of these extreme writers like Taha Hussien? He was considered a heretic for having claimed to compose a verse like the Quran. The fact that Muslims don't really understand the challenge (it is not about I'jaaz) is what led him to be considered a heretic, but it is obvious that he didn't understand the challenge himself.
Your statement is the same exact statement I often get from other Muslim intellectuals when I challenge one of the Hadiths. They also say ?why are you reading and following behind all of these extreme writers like Rashad Khalifa? He was considered a heretic for having claimed to be a messenger and taking 2 verses out of the Quran.? Again, this endemic approach amongst Muslim intellectuals speaks to their sad state of affairs and explains why despite the increased education there is no corresponding increase in enlightment.
Taha Hussein doesn?t actually regard all supposed pre-Islamic poetry as later day literature. He claims that there are rare nuggets of truly pre-Islamic poetry amongst them. He rationalizes this by saying that on the rare occasions when a whole set of poems exhibits a clear and strong personality of the author then this means that the author really existed. However, what he fails to see is that whether the poems have a strong personality and the author really existed or not has no bearing on the dating of the poem. It simply speaks about the level of skill of the author of the poem.
Furthermore I am not a traditional Islamic scholar in the halls of Al-Azhar in awe and reverence of my ancestors and scholars of old. But whereas I am accepting the overwhelming evidence that Classical Arabic with its vowels and grammar was the natural, native language of the Arabs at that time (changing rapidly on the street level over the period of hundreds of years and incorporations of new non-Arab peoples into the Arab fold.
But the overwhelming empirically verifiable evidence points to Classical Arabic not being the language of the great reading and hence not the native language of Mohamed?s people at the time. This is why you admitted that ?end of phrase? case endings are not part of the language of the great reading. This by itself is a huge exception to Classical Arabic grammar. Moreover, since what you call ?end of phrase? is in fact end of ?verse? and a ?verse? could be one word or half a phrase then we are really talking about the case endings of words being an exception to Classical Arabic grammar since this is the lowest common denominator.
Not even the Bedouins were isolated from this internationalization of their ethnicity, language and religion which brought new forms of speech and new blood into the original Arabic tribal ethnicities), you are going against mountains of evidence and proposing something that you have no proof for, not even in the Quran.
The people from the rural areas were never isolated from internationalization even before the great reading. This is why the language of the great reading contains many foreign words.
Also, you keep referring to this ?Arabic ethnicity? despite the terms ?araby and a?rab having nothing to do with ethnicity but are used as a contrast between civilized city people and their language and rural people from the wilderness and their language.
So I do not fear true analysis of any form of literature. What I fear is that you are trying to re-invent the wheel needlessly and over-criticizing the literature of old to make it conform with your sense of what the langauge of Arabic is today. It would be the same if a Modern Greek criticized Classical Greek and said that its grammarians concocted it from their own imaginations and really spoke like they do. Which is just completely not true. So I will get somewhat emotional when in front of ideas that are just completely illogical, extreme and unintelligent in the guise of reform and a voice of (albeit philo-occidental) reason.
I never said that the people of Mohammed spoke like I do. This is a straw man. All I said is that they didn?t speak like Classical Arabic and this you admitted at least for end of phrases.
As for whether the Quran is poetry or not, let us just consider that if someone was reciting an excellent form of literature from memory and preaching it to others, for others to claim that he is an eccentric poet is not out of hand. They said the Quran was si7r as well. But I'm sure none of these authors tried to figure out why that really was either, and not using all of the definitions to be found in Classical Arabic and not just the popular meanings used today.
The fact is that supposed pre-Islamic poetry is so homogeneous and readily recognized that no one can mistake the great reading for it. So whatever it is people were comparing the great reading to, it couldn?t have been what we now believe is pre-Islamic poetry.
I would be wary of these Islam bashers or modern-day reformists who are only rebelling against and within the frame of their traditionally indoctrinated ways of thought. I'm sure they say some things of merit but their intentions are wrong and that will affect their works.
Our intentions should be focused on the truth of reality. I think that we all get emotional when we face a new reality. In your case, this new reality, as you admitted, is that at least end of ?verses? (implying end of words) in the language of the great reading is different to Classical Arabic. You see this as a big difference that shakes the comfort zone that you have been immersed in and devoted to for a long time. I have seen this reaction with many people who have devoted a large portion of their lives to studying any discipline. When they face a new reality in this discipline that shakes their prior beliefs, they react emotionally for some time and maybe a very long time. This is why I have great respect for sister Samia, who despite probably spending a lot more of her life than you studying Classical Arabic and being immersed in it, she had very little emotional reaction and was able to quickly adjust to this new reality.
Ironically, you make a big deal out of it, while I don?t see this as a big difference between Classical Arabic and the language of the great reading because case endings have extremely low functional load and are therefore inconsequential. So to me Classical Arabic is still a very good approximation of the language of the great reading while from your reaction one would think that this is the end of Classical Arabic.
Peace,
Ayman
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Re New Salat Article
? Reply #144 on Today at 012132 PM ? Quote
Paz Boricuasun,
I must say that I really disagree with the intention of your post. You say some things that are true but you also say some things that are not true. Proving is also a subjective matter and when we are not dealing with physical evidence but rather deductive ones it comes down to the honesty of the deducer or the capability to deduce. Either way this is their choice. Even the more material sciences can come up with proofs that only serve to be disproved later on. So proof is not something fixed in stone but something dependent on our ability to percieve and understand all the factors involved.
Also I would take each religious book separately and not try to group them together. We do not KNOW that man invented the Quran. We know that it was copied down by men but every person we could possibly attribute the book to does not claim to have invented it. The one man who the book goes back to is the last prophet Muhammad (of course him being the last prophet is a Quranic idea that I espouse), and he also did not claim to have invented it.ProGod... Proof is only subjective to evidence. Meaning that there is undenaible archaelogical or physical matter which negates doubt that any other conclusion can be drawn but the obvious conclusion from the matter at hand.
When I point out what can be "proved" I reference it in that context.So there is a lack of proof on your side that the book was invented by any man because no man claims to have invented it. So this is a giant leap on your part. At the very least you could say that we don't know who wrote it without considering what the Quran says itself, which you are skeptical of.
ProGod.. to claim that there is a lack of proof on my side that the book was invented beauce no man claims to have invented it, is faulty reason at best. No where in the historical record is someone's claim to have invented the wheel, but it exists cut from solid matter and shaped to an usuable vehicle. There is also no historical record as to who invented taking or creating a shelter, but we have undeniable evidence that homo sapiens did so from atleast 225,000 years ago. We also have no historical record as to a person claiming to invent any of the following
The compass
The map
The art of writing
The spear
The arrow head
The concept of mating
The cup
The fork
The penciland many more such famous inventions, but they do exist and were fashioned by man.
Now the Quran does associate raka&a (which is to bow or kneel) with Salat in particualr Mary's salat. But in the end Salat means prayer, any prayer and prayer in any way.
ProGod As has been pointed out by postings from other Free-Minds members and of course contextual root occurences of the word Salat, it does not merely mean pray. I choose to avoid the context postings of Ayman or Layth, but suffice it to say that the word salat does not mean pray, that again is your deduction based upon your conception.
We find that Mary bowed in her prayer and we will find the Quran saying pray, do what is right and kneel/bow. So at the very least we know we are to bow or kneel when we pray. But there is no formula for physical movement during prayer in the Quran nor for our words besides how those mentioned in the Quran prayed. And there need not be such forumulae.
ProGod Salat throughout the Qur'aan is referred to with the positive article al, or in modern arabic as meaning the. The is used to refer to a definite physical article, such as the book, or the pen, or the car, or the camel. It juxtaposes a physical or material existence to a subject referred to as Salaat, not an ambiguous concept.
As far as the following issues
- PROVE that Abraham, or Ishmael even existed
If we have deduced that the Quran is from God and that is a personal endeavor then we can prove that these two existed based on the trustworthinessw of our source. But if you are looking for physical evidence then as of now there is none.
ProGod That is where we disagree. I don't deduce the Qur'aan is from Allah Ta'Ala because ooutside of the realm of belief, there is nothing upon which to place the basis of a deduction. For example, Baha'ullah claimed that the Kitab-i-Iqan was revealed to him from God. Blind faith would delineate that I must accept his claim. However, as even al Qur'aan Al Kareem supposes I'm responsible for my judgment, hearing, and eyesight upon "yawm al akhiraah", accepting any mortal's claim without verifying it's worthiness would violate al hukm minallah.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited Arabia
THis is a story from the Hadeeth. It is not Quranic.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever visited the Hijaz or Mekkah
Again this is Hadeethic, not Quranic.
- PROVE the Kaabah is any older than the 2nd Century B.C.E.
This is also a Hadeethic issue. The Kabah is nothing but a Masjid (place of worship/reverence). If it is older than 2 BC it is of no great deal to me. It is a masjid like any other.
- PROVE that Abraham and Ishmael ever raised the foundations of the Kaabah
Again who knows if the temple that Abraham and Ishmael built (God bless them both) was the Kaabah. The only evidence for this is in Arabic lore. And the biblical Judaic lore has him raising many temples, including ones named Beth'el. So again who knows. The kabah could have been one of many.
- PROVE that Abraham thereafter prayed to Allah Ta'Ala to bless his progeny to observe Salaat
Again on this if we have deduced that the Quran is true and had this proven to our minds then we will accept this. dhurriyatun can also mean following and not jsut progeny. And again Salat in Arabic is any prayer. Even trinitiarian Arabs who pray to Jesus (God bless him) are making Salat.
- PROVE that Ishmael had children
I can't recall what the Quran says about this. Aparently Jacob had children and this would be equally dificult to prove, even if the Children of Israel claimed descendency form him. The Bible says he had children. I think the Quran is silent on this matter. In the end it doesn't matter. Arab lore just corroborates Jewish lore and claims that Ishmael's descendents were brought into the original Arab tribes form Qahtan and Adnaan. We have no proof against it, so innocent until proven guilty, right?
8.) PROVE that the Arabs of Quraysh were descended from Ishmael
I already explained that above. According to the lore the children of Israel were Arabicized. This is a Hadeethic affair anyway. I'm glad the Quran didn't waste its time on such subjects.
- PROVE that the Arabs knew the Salaat
Again Salat is prayer, no matter who is praying. Muslims are deluded by thinking that their ritualistic form of prayer is only Salat. It is Muslim Salat and Christian prayer is Christian Salat and Jewish prayer Jewish Salat, etc. etc.
ProGod again your claim is that salat is prayer. You are articulating your belief.
10) PROVE that Muhammad was in the cave of HiraThe Quran is not detailed on this and the Hadeeth talks about this more. The Quran as far as I recall doesn't actually say that the one recieving this book was in that cave. It also does not say who this was. I think we would do well to try to connect this story with another more detailed story in the Quran. In the end what does it matter anyway?
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel exists
Again this depends on our having proof that the Quran is trustworthy.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel descended to Arabia
ditto.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel spoke to the Prophet Muhammad
ditto.
- PROVE that the Angel Gabriel taught Salat to the Prophet Muhammad
ditto. The answer is in the Quran.
ProGod This would again assume that a rational person accepts the ideology of Islaam. To merely state that a claim in the Qur'aan places it back in the realm of the main claims made by the various holy books. This is the realm of relgion and belief, not concrete material reality.
- PROVE that the Prophet Muhammad performed the same Salat as their concepts dicate
Who's concepts?
ProGod the various concepts as promoted by the people who post here.
ProGod you also said "Also I would take each religious book separately and not try to group them together." I was joining them together in the category of assumed divine inspiration. That is a category for which placing the various books along side each other is appropriate.
The issue here is that Muslims, as well as all adherents to a theological or spiritual doctrine claim that thier conception and comprehension is true.
True is subjective to perception. Fact is not. It is a fact that the earth revolves around the sun due to the verifiable data we can measure. It is a fact that vision is merely the response to light refracted by physical items due to verifiable data. It is belief or theory that Muhammad was the last prophet of Allah Ta'Ala and that al Qur'aan Ash Sharief was revealed by this same Allah Ta'Ala to this same Muhammad. Muslims (submitters) must accept that they are upon no better footing than Mormons, Jainists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Nuwaubians, Moonies, Confucians, or any other follower of a dogma in that they believe or accept they follow a supernatural source of guidance in their lives. Therefore they are subject to the same crucible of scientific testing and verification as anyone else who makes a claim..Peace.
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Dear Brother Ayman,
If CA is not truly the language of the Quran, then what is? Where can I learn this language? Are there any textbooks? Dictionaries? Grammar books? etc?
Or must I first learn CA, and then apply the corrections in the books that you have been kind to suggest?
Nadeem
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Peace,
Ayman, you totally misunderstood everything I had to say. It seems almost like you twisted what I had to say to make it fit into your perceptions of me and of everything else. It obviously seems that you are stuck in your ways. I will write a response soon. I'm pressed for time and I can already tell that it will be lengthy. Give me some time.
As for the rest I will also answer your concerns as soon as I can. Thank you.
Godbless,
Anwar -
Isn?t it amazing that I have seen no one who makes such accusation about Taha Hussein produce this ?verse? that Taha Hussein composed? Come on Anwar, if you are going to have a serious scholarly discussion then you shouldn?t be appealing to the emotions of the reader by using academically inconsequential polemics like this.
They don't? Well that is a problem. Also I am not appealing to the emotions of the reader, but this is a serious question that I don't think you have asked yourself or answered.
There is no such thing as trust and mistrust in scholarly research. The scientific method is not about trust or mistrust of people?s inner consciousness. The scientific method is also certainly not about diverting the focus to smears on a person?s character while not even reading his thesis. This is not you but I have had this experience with many highly educated people and it speaks to the sad state of affairs of Muslim intellectuals. Despite the increased education and literacy, they are still following in the footsteps of unscientific traditionalists who when challenged resort to appeals to emotions and hearsay about people?s character.
Taha Hussein was excellent at analyzing literature and he understood that culture and literature are inseparable. His assessment in this area is very good and matches well with what other researchers have concluded about the development of the Arab empire culture.
Well, the scientific method is often occluded by subjective reasonings and biases. I also wouldn't say that it is as clear cut as that when it comes to analyzing literatre and history. Actually I find most Arab educated individuals that I've come accross to be very unscientific and rather rely on their titles to compensate for that. However, I have read alot of western intellectuals works during college that gave the appearence of being more rational but covered up their unscientific methods with their rational rhetoric, like politicians. As far as the Arab empirical culture, there is alot of revisionist history going on. I think some of this anti-classical Arabic thought is coming from the fact that Arabic has changed from what it was a thousand years ago as a langauge (although it was accurately recorded) but the Arabs still identify with being Arab are still connected in ideology to the Arab empires and speak langauges still recognizable as being derived from Classical Arabic. So there is a big disconnect. But reading too much into literature becomes a purely subjective endeavor. Have you ever listened to literature scholars analyzing English poems from authors during different eras. Most of what they say is guesswork and without evidence, and it seems like Taha Hussein is up to this same old type of horseplay. Admittedly I'm going off of your description of his ideas. My impression of him is not positive at all cosidering his having invented a verse like the Quran and totally misunderstood the Quran's challenge. That says alot about his powers of insight and honesty to me.
How can poetry be no longer recited? What is the point of poetry if it is not recited? This doesn?t really make any sense or you are not carefully choosing your words so that they make sense.
I hope that is not a serioius commnet. How can you expect poetry from over a thousand years ago to still be regularly recited? Poetry can be read on paper and easily not recited. Have you ever read a book of poetry? Did you recite all of that poetry aloud? So what are you talking about? Maybe you misunderstood me.
Just listen to yourself saying ?the truth as I have it?. Does this sound very scientific or even professional? It is not surprising that you then go on in the very next sentence and contradict this very ?truth as you have it? since you acknowledge that there is a big exception.
I'll have to ask again, is this a serious comment? You are displaying something common in the general Arab mindset. That is that when one thinks he knows the truth he portends as if he knows the absolute truth and there is not doubt about it. If scientists or professionals want to act like they know the complete truth and defend that in a absolute way they are free to do that. But that is neither truly scientific or professional. Furthermore I did not contradict my self at all following this. Let's see. You are not understanding something called tajweed and its development and I will deal with that answering your next comment.
End of a phrase is a very big difference. All speech consists of phrases so this would indicate that every single sentence uttered by those who spoke the language of the great reading differed from the Classical Arabic grammar of alleged Pre-Islamic Poetry.
Moreover, even your contradiction is wrong. It is based on the hasty assumption that what you refer to as ?a verse in the Quran? is always a sentence. This is false and we can easily find many examples where sometimes a ?verse? encompasses several sentences, half a sentence or even a single word. Since a word is the lowest common denominator then we are not talking about the end of each phrase, we are in reality talking about the end of each word falling under what you admitted is an exception to Classical Arabic grammar rules.
Here again you are wrong. Firstly as I said earlier it would seem that the Classical Arabic poetries were recited with similar rhyme and metere as the Quran. With that I am not referring to the Quranic language, but rather tajweed, the art of reciting the Quran. That art involves taking letters out of the Quran in its pronunication to make it conform to rhyme. Since pre-Islamic poems are no longer recited (they used to be) but only read with all of their vowels and using no poetic license (as the Quran can be as well), the closest thing I can relate to this is the prophetic dua's found in the Hadeeth. When they are recited they are recited with the same tajweed rules as the Quran is recited. So both the Quran and the dua's of the hadeeth are living remnants of the poetic license that was often (but not always) employed in poetry reciting and songs. So when you talk of Quranic language please do not assume that the way the Quran is recited is really Quranic langauge. It is an ancient artistic form of reciting poetry. The Quranic language is how you find it written with every single vowel. How it is recited is an artistic form of recitation that i am convinced was transferred from the way of reciting ancient Arabic poems onto the Quran to make it more attractive to the Arabs. I however have some doubts on things like qalqalah.
Furthermore when did I say that a verse in the Quran is a sentence? And how did I ever assume that? I wish I could find a post of mine where I have openly said that in the Quran ideas in the form of sentences flow from one verse into another. I don't even believe that the Quran was revealed in verses like we have them. So where did you get this from? Again whenever a complete stop is made usually indicating a stop in an idea the last vowel is dropped. In addition to that the ta marbootah is pronounced as a haa or an open fathah and long vowels are also not pronounced. I'm saying that this is not Quranic language, but rather the art of pronunciation for ancient poems and songs which still exists in the recitation of the Quran and of hadethic dua's. There are some aspects of this that I believe were developed as the art of singing the Quran and others which I believe were native pronunciations. But we haven't even gotten to that point yet. Furthermore I am specifically talking about the word that ends a phrase not each and every word. In my opinion there are many poetic licenses that eventually became apart of the modern version of the Arabic langauge but this also has do with lingusitic substrates as it pertains to the Arab tribes that assimilated so many non-Arab ethnicities who also spoke similar Afro-Asiatic langauges.
You are talking about two different unrelated issues. Case ending vocalization marks have nothing to do with long vowels. Medial long vowels that are sometimes noted in the script have nothing to do with grammar.
Firstly I was clarifying to you that not only are case ending vocalizations dropped on words at the ends of phrases, but also the long vowels waw and ya. I pointed that out with ahaanani. So we cannot apply things that happen in Quranic recitation only at the ends of phrases as a matter of modes of poetic license to all words to the whole langauge. That is easy with case endings and ta marbootas for you because that is the common modern way of pronouncing Arabic words. But when we see that final long vowels are also cut making ahaananee ahaanan or al3afu al3af this does not vibe with modern Arabic pronunciation and turns your theory upside down. Again these are poetic licenses, some of which have entered the modern derivatives of Classical Arabic and some of which have not. I also just wanted to point out to you that those medial long vowels as you call them (they are not just medial, suqyahaa is found as suqyaahaa with an alif before the ha and ahlihaa as ahleehaa with a ya befoer the ha) only have to do with grammar as it concerns what the short vowels convey grammatically. When it comes to the Quran some things are more than meets the eye, and you need to understand the background of what you are reading or hearing for it to make good sense.
So you acknowledge that there was a demand for such poetry and therefore there is no need for a conspiracy (which was your prior main objection). This is good progress but I would like to make one simple but crucial correction to your statement
?there was a demand for poetry modeled after what storytellers mistakenly thought was the Old Arabic style of poetry?
I don't know what you think I'm admitting but it is not what you are saying. There is no 'therefore' in my conclusion. I am saying that there was a demand for poetry was modeled after the Old Arabic poetry to continue such Old Arabic poetic traditions. Not that there was a demand for people to invent poetry and call it Old Arabic poetry.
Since at their time Arabic has been turned into the official and formal political and religious language of the empire, this is what they thought was Old Arabic, not the real common people street language of the great reading.
More assumptions on your part. Since when is it the case that when a langauge becomes official, formal and religious because of the fame of its speakers that it automatically stops being the language on the street and is therefore not the great reading? Just a few years a go those same people who became famous (and who brought fame to their langauge) weren't so famous. So how is it that when speakers of a langauge become famous and therefore their religious book and their politics famous somehow their language changes? How does status change a langauge? To clarify an example that I gave to you before when Afro-American verncular English or Jamaican English can be used and is perfectly accepted as eloquent expression at let's say the Hip Hop awards or a Jamaican Dancehall or reggae awards, that langauge has reached a position of status among its speakers. That is exactly the same as when Arabs showed up in Arab courts (of the proxy empires of the Lakhmids and Ghassanids) to recite their poetry. The parents and grandparents of the Ummayyads before they became rulers of an empire spoke the same language they spoke. And the Quran was written in their langauge. And their fellow Arab tribes spoke their langage. Do you know what changed the langauge on the street (and not in the Halls and literature of the official dynasties)? The fact that the Arab soldiers, businessmen and religious leaders who came to live in the new non-Arab territories of what is now Iraq, Joradan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and north Africa married non-Arab women who did not speak Arabic or who learned to speak it badly. This is the beginning of the street Arabic that is so different from the Quran, the Hadeeth and traditional Arabic literature (Hijazans and Bedouins also went to and fro from their lands to participlate in these Arab empires and were also subjected to the langauge change) . There is no other explanation that has as much evidence as this. It is corroborated by historical circumstance, logic and what the actual early Arabs were saying about the changing of their langauge. Any other conclusion is based off of imagination. So Old Arabic during the time of Ummayyads and before was the language of the street and the country side of the original Arab tribes. And when the Arabs came to power and their language got some status it still stayed the same. Where is your evidence that the Quranic language is different from these Old Arabic poems and the Quran? As I've pointed out to you the hadeethic dua's that are still recited are done with the same artistic modes of poetic license that are employed when the Quran is sung. Yet if you read them without singing them they are read with all case endings.
All poetry is invented. Poetry doesn?t fall from the sky. The poets are people who have a creative gift for invention. We can clearly see that supposed pre-Islamic poetry was a tool for storytelling. All pre-Islamic poems are told in the course of a story where the main character or the hero is the poet. This is why even an elementary school student who can recognize the difference between fiction and non-fiction can recognize that all supposed Pre-Islamic poems have the typical traits of fiction. For example, the story of Qays and Layla has all the traits of other fictions such as Romeo and Juliet. The same goes for Imru?Al-Qays (the Hamlet of Arabia) and ?Antar Ibn-Shaddad who could defeat hundreds of men single handedly. Those stories and the poetry that is intertwined in them and advances the plot bear the indisputable hallmarks of fiction. How can any sane person think that those enchanted characters really existed and that they paused at every opportune moment in their story to spontaneously utter poetry even when no one was listening is beyond me.
Wow this is modern cynicism at its best. Firstly histories can be true and told in story form. That does not take away from their reality. Have you ever heard of dramas based on real life events? Have you ever heard of Odes to kings and ancestors? The fact that they are told in stories does not make them untrue. However, it is expected that Odes and the like are embellished versions of real events. Do you think that the odes of kings mentioned the negative things of that king if it didn't somehow make his character seem grander? Does that mean that those events or that that person didn't exist? No. It just means that the inventor of that poem was an exaggerator (for his own reasons). Does that mean that such poems were invented after the Quran? No. It is true that they can be fictional but it is posible that the fictional aspect of the poem came from before Islamic times as well. Who said that because they are pre-Islamic poems that they have to tell the truth? So you are conflating two issues here the first is whether the poems are historically accurate or fiction and the second is whether they were created in pre-Islamic or post-Quranic times. I am dealing with the latter and believe that they are pre-Islamic. The former doesn't concern me at all. And I have no opinion on it.
This is a false analogy. Many of the earliest versions of the Quran such as the Sanaa manuscript are dotted. Moreover, there are several examples of pre-Quranic inscriptions that are dotted. Also, there are mundane early post-Quranic manuscripts which are dotted. Also, dotting has no bearing on grammar. Dotting was needed for the sole reason that what we refer to as the Arabic script is in fact a foreign Nabataean Aramaic script. Using it to write Arabic is much like using the English script to write Arabic. Because all the Arabic consonants are not represented, this would be the equivalent of adding say an apostrophe over the A to make it into ?A for an Arabic . On the other hand, the real Arabian script where all the consonants are represented is the Musnad script.
Here you are conflating issues again. I also mentioned that there were dotted manuscripts, and am specifically considering the non-dotted versions, so why are you pointing this out? Secondly the early dotting of scripts were for vowels only. Dots were used instead of fatha, kasrah and dammah. I am not referreing to the dots of jeem, khaa, dhal, dhawd, dhaw, zaa, faa or qaf. These were not dotted. Furthermore where did you get this "real" Arabic script stuff from? The Musnad script is an Ethiopic script. The foreigness of a script has no bearning on it capacity to express a given langauge. Aramaic from what I know has every single letter that Arabic has, as well as Hebrew. It looks more like the Arabs has an imperfect knowledge of the Aramaic script and added to it as they saw fit to make up for their inadequate knowledge of the script. Arabic can be and has been written accurately in Aramaic scripts. The dawd may be the only exception to the letters common to these langauges. The Arabs never had a script that they invented themselves. They borrowed both the Aramaic and the Ethiopian scripts to write their langauges. There is no such thing as a real Arabian script.
Your statement is the same exact statement I often get from other Muslim intellectuals when I challenge one of the Hadiths. They also say ?why are you reading and following behind all of these extreme writers like Rashad Khalifa? He was considered a heretic for having claimed to be a messenger and taking 2 verses out of the Quran.? Again, this endemic approach amongst Muslim intellectuals speaks to their sad state of affairs and explains why despite the increased education there is no corresponding increase in enlightment.
Taha Hussein doesn?t actually regard all supposed pre-Islamic poetry as later day literature. He claims that there are rare nuggets of truly pre-Islamic poetry amongst them. He rationalizes this by saying that on the rare occasions when a whole set of poems exhibits a clear and strong personality of the author then this means that the author really existed. However, what he fails to see is that whether the poems have a strong personality and the author really existed or not has no bearing on the dating of the poem. It simply speaks about the level of skill of the author of the poem.
I am glad you are criticizing Muslim intellectuals. I can assure you that I am not apart of this class of people. I am just hoping you understand the motives of the author you are reading especially considering his conclusons about composing a verse like that found in the Quran. Intentions of an author are very importand and affect the works of that author. Rashad Khalifa's loyalties were clear. He rejected all hadeeth but a few. I also am suspicous of his intentions given that this is clearly hypocritical on his part. So I expect to see alot of hypocrysies in his work.
Also I have always had issues with the art of scrutinizing literature and pulling out conclusions about history and motives from such scrutinizing. I have seen alot of liberties taken when it comes to English literature and the Bible for instance (that Jehovist, Yahwist stuff is crap). I believe in honest assessemts" What does it say? Who does it say says it? Are there any evidences to the contrary? Using ones imagination to come up with possiblities by thinking things apart to oblivion is not good scholarship when it comes to scrutinizing the authenticity of a piece of literature. Your last sentence i agree with complety I commented in the same way earlier.
But the overwhelming empirically verifiable evidence points to Classical Arabic not being the language of the great reading and hence not the native language of Mohamed?s people at the time. This is why you admitted that ?end of phrase? case endings are not part of the language of the great reading. This by itself is a huge exception to Classical Arabic grammar. Moreover, since what you call ?end of phrase? is in fact end of ?verse? and a ?verse? could be one word or half a phrase then we are really talking about the case endings of words being an exception to Classical Arabic grammar since this is the lowest common denominator.
No when I say end of phrase I mean end of phrase, not end of verse. Go listen to a Quranic recitation again and you'll see what I mean. I am not talking end of verse I am talking end of phrase, end of idea. And as I explained tajweed is form of poetic recitation that employs poetic license. You cannot take that as completely respresentative of Classcial Arabic talk. What is completely representative are all the vowelling that you find on that paper. Why? Because if the people didn't speak like this where would they get the idea to put things in the langauge that don't exist? Poetic license is for rhyme and style. We see how taking case endings off can improve rhyme in certain cases but where would the Arabs get the idea to add things to the language that never existed in that langauge in the first place? And make it a matter of integral grammatical function. There is a difference betwee sukootun and sukootan that has nothing to do with aesthetics, but meaning.
The people from the rural areas were never isolated from internationalization even before the great reading. This is why the language of the great reading contains many foreign words.
Also, you keep referring to this ?Arabic ethnicity? despite the terms ?araby and a?rab having nothing to do with ethnicity but are used as a contrast between civilized city people and their language and rural people from the wilderness and their language.
The bedouins were relatively isolated because they were not in stable or valued towns along trade routes or any of the like. So their wandering in the deserts would have naturally made them more isolated than their city dwelling counterparts to foreign influences. Again this isolation is relative and depends on the eras that we are dealing with. Of course they were not completely isolated. That is not what I am saying. And that relative isolation is also what allowed foreign words to enter into the language, as they were in contact with their city dwelling counterparts. Also there are trends of bedouinization and citification that people were subject to over the ages everywhere, even in Arabia.
Also araby and a'rab do have everything to do with ethnicity and tribes. I can prove that by the fact that arab and a'raab follow no adjective pattern from araba. There is only aruba which means to be a true Arab are to be a good speaker of Arabic. fa3al often relates to maf3ul, or even 3araab. But this does not exist in the case of arab. The root meanings of to be clear or to express oneself (form 4 and 2) have to do with the linguistic basis of the ethnicity, and how naturally they though that those who spoke their own langauge spoke clearly and those who did not speak their language did not speak clearly.
The fact is that supposed pre-Islamic poetry is so homogeneous and readily recognized that no one can mistake the great reading for it. So whatever it is people were comparing the great reading to, it couldn?t have been what we now believe is pre-Islamic poetry.
You are confusing language and linguistic quality with theme and format.
Our intentions should be focused on the truth of reality. I think that we all get emotional when we face a new reality. In your case, this new reality, as you admitted, is that at least end of ?verses? (implying end of words) in the language of the great reading is different to Classical Arabic.
This is not what I admitted or implied in any way. I hope you understand what I was saying now.
You see this as a big difference that shakes the comfort zone that you have been immersed in and devoted to for a long time. I have seen this reaction with many people who have devoted a large portion of their lives to studying any discipline. When they face a new reality in this discipline that shakes their prior beliefs, they react emotionally for some time and maybe a very long time.
Whatever. I have a problem with this because it is a total distortion of the truth. And that is why it irks me so much. It is so wrong and so wrong reasoned out that I can't believe you can say such things out of your mouth. I am all for alternative understandings, but I draw the line a badly reasoned conjectures.
This is why I have great respect for sister Samia, who despite probably spending a lot more of her life than you studying Classical Arabic and being immersed in it, she had very little emotional reaction and was able to quickly adjust to this new reality.
What? It is obvious that Samia has no clue what Classical Arabic really is. If she was quick to adjust it was only fill the void of knowledge she had with some false concept that would justify that void. You also fall into this category, unfortunately.
Ironically, you make a big deal out of it, while I don?t see this as a big difference between Classical Arabic and the language of the great reading because case endings have extremely low functional load and are therefore inconsequential. So to me Classical Arabic is still a very good approximation of the language of the great reading while from your reaction one would think that this is the end of Classical Arabic
Yes your idea of low functional load I know very well. But your reasons for why they didn't exist in the past is (to steal your expression) the straw man. It takes alot of bad guess work to contradict every known form of Old Arabic literature to try to make Old Arabic somehow closer to modern Arabic by saying that case endings did not exist and were invented by the Abbasids. All your reasons are based on exceptions (that have their reasons) and trying to apply them to the whole language. This is wrong, and completly bad science. Whether Classical Arabic is a close approximation ot the great reading or not is really not the issue. This is not a matter of different opinion, and how I should just take it easy. This is a matter of you're using horribly bad logic and science, and extreme reasoning to base your conclusions on. And because of this I am convinced that you have an alterior motive that allows you to employ such horrible logic and science, and such extreme reasoning to come to your conclusions (and I'm convinced it is based on Modern Nationalistic Pan-Arab, revisionist ideas). There is nothing logical, and absolutely nothing historical that can lead anyone to believe that the same Arabic we find in the pre-islamic poems, the hadeeth and the Quran (in their written forms) is not the same Arabic, i.e. Classical Arabic. Any variation can be logically explained through the poetic licenses of tajweed that are applied to hadeethic dua's and the Quran when recited aloud as poetry or song. And the only reason we do not hear the pre-islamic poems with these licenses is because they are no longer recited by the people, although some do contain these licenses. It is also counter logical to assume that the Abbasids during their period of rule added to the grammar of the langauge as everything in Abbasid literature is identical to the 2 above mentioned sources. In song and poetry poetic licenses are used and in other literature, it is not. The only evidence that you have provided is conjecture; grammatical conjecture and the conjecturing of conspiracy theories. And in my mind this is unacceptable. I have very little tolerance for conjecture.
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Correcton to 2nd paragraph in the 13th point of response.
Also araby and a'rab do have everything to do with ethnicity and tribes. I can prove that by the fact that 3arab and 3a'raab follow no adjective pattern from 3araba. There is only aruba which means to be a true Arab or to be a good speaker of Arabic. fa3al often relates to maf3ul, or even fa3aal. But this does not exist in the case of 3arab. The meanings of to be clear or to express oneself (form 4 and 2 and not form 1) have to do with the linguistic (and not racial) basis of the Arab ethnicity, and how naturally they thought that those who spoke their own langauge spoke clearly and those who did not speak their language did not speak clearly.
Godbless,
Anwar -
Paz Boricuasun
ProGod... Proof is only subjective to evidence. Meaning that there is undenaible archaelogical or physical matter which negates doubt that any other conclusion can be drawn but the obvious conclusion from the matter at hand.
When I point out what can be "proved" I reference it in that context.Your definition of proof is only one aspect of it. For instance the mathematic definition of proof is whatever convinces one's conteporaries. Why is that? Because despite how much "proof" we have at the moment things can come along and change what we once considered truth or fact. Futhermore, physical or acheological evidence comes with the assumptions made about them. So I might find a clay pot somewhere with drawings on it. That doesn't say anything necessarily. But once I find that I will start to assume by observing this clay pot who the people who made it were, what was important to them, or the fact that people made it. These are all assumptions that we make based on what we can imagine to be the most real. So don't be so materialist. In addtion to that there are many things in this world which are not physical matter but can still be "proved". In the end what we believe to be real is what we assume to be real. And some people make very logical assumptions based on their observances and others make outlandish ones with a complete lack of real observation. We have to consider this when we start talking about proof. In the end we can't prove anything. We can't even really prove 100% that what we see and touch is real and actuall that. But we can make logical conclusions that serve as proof and that answer our doubts. Hopefully these conclusions take everything into account because it is this consideration of the most things (evidences) possible that allows us to approximate the truth.
ProGod.. to claim that there is a lack of proof on my side that the book was invented beauce no man claims to have invented it, is faulty reason at best. No where in the historical record is someone's claim to have invented the wheel, but it exists cut from solid matter and shaped to an usuable vehicle. There is also no historical record as to who invented taking or creating a shelter, but we have undeniable evidence that homo sapiens did so from atleast 225,000 years ago. We also have no historical record as to a person claiming to invent any of the following
The compass
The map
The art of writing
The spear
The arrow head
The concept of mating
The cup
The fork
The pencilThat's fine and dandy but none of thse inventions explicitly proclaim that they were invented by God. So yes it is the most logical conclusion to deduce that these things were created by men, especially since we still make them. But if any of these things proclaimed to be not from man, but from God, well we would have to believe that unless we have evidences to indicate otherwise. Additionally a piece of literature only has one author, so whereas anyone can make a pencil we can't make another Quran without copying the book. It is an original work and it claims to be from God. I can't say that the things you mentioned above claim to be from God.
P
roGod As has been pointed out by postings from other Free-Minds members and of course contextual root occurences of the word Salat, it does not merely mean pray. I choose to avoid the context postings of Ayman or Layth, but suffice it to say that the word salat does not mean pray, that again is your deduction based upon your conception.You are explicitly wrong here. Now I am not sure why you take Ayman and Layth's postings as authoritative, but how about you go to a Classical Arabic dictionary and look up the word. The word does not ONLY mean to pray but it definitely does mean that and can mean it in certain contexts. The word means to pray, to ask, to supplicate, to eulogize, to praise, to bless, and to follow behind. I don't know what a contextual root occurence is but context does NOT define words. It never has and it never will. All it does is allow you to GUESS at a meaning. You can guess right or wrong but you are guessing. And it is when we are told explicitly what the word means that we can best understand it in any context. That takes a dictionary or some other knowledgeable human resource on the given language.
ProGod Salat throughout the Qur'aan is referred to with the positive article al, or in modern arabic as meaning the. The is used to refer to a definite physical article, such as the book, or the pen, or the car, or the camel. It juxtaposes a physical or material existence to a subject referred to as Salaat, not an ambiguous concept.
Yes and here is where you do not fully understand Arabic or English. For instance there are some rare cases in modern English (a residual from Old English) where you can use the definite article with singular and it refers to the collective. Example The dog is a noble animal. There is no other creature like the horse. Here the dog and the horse refer to all dogs and all horses. This usage is more of the rule in Arabic. The definite article can be added to singular or plural to indicate the collective sense. Hence al-baitu/al-buyutu can mean the house/the houses as well as 'houses.' And so on. So As-salatu can refer to a particular salat already mentioned or soon to be mentioned in the context of a written or spoken word as well as salat in general. Again the word can mean more than prayer but prayer is definitely one of its meanings.
ProGod That is where we disagree. I don't deduce the Qur'aan is from Allah Ta'Ala because ooutside of the realm of belief, there is nothing upon which to place the basis of a deduction. For example, Baha'ullah claimed that the Kitab-i-Iqan was revealed to him from God. Blind faith would delineate that I must accept his claim. However, as even al Qur'aan Al Kareem supposes I'm responsible for my judgment, hearing, and eyesight upon "yawm al akhiraah", accepting any mortal's claim without verifying it's worthiness would violate al hukm minallah.
Belief is based on evidences which induce us to trust a certain idea or person. This is always the case. We always have reasons to believe anything. Whether they are logical or well-thought out reasons is another issue. No one is calling anyone to blind faith. As I have always said, the proof is in the pudding. Read the book and if it is consistent and logical and actually claims it is from God then believe that. You have no reason not too. And as far as books you haven't read don't opine, because how can you have an opinion on something that you haven't investigated or aren't familiar with?
ProGod again your claim is that salat is prayer. You are articulating your belief.
My claim is that one of Salat's meaning is prayer. And it is a fact that even to this day that is how the word continues to be used, amongst Muslims and Christian Arabs. And if you watch a documentary in Arabic about hindus or anyone else prayer the word sallaa or salaat will be used. Now I recognize that some modern Arabic meanings do not fit with the Classical meanings. However the classical meanings are to be found in classical dictionaries and grammar books, not through context guessing. Prayer is ONE of the valid meanings of the word. Anybody who tells you otherwise is false.
ProGod This would again assume that a rational person accepts the ideology of Islaam. To merely state that a claim in the Qur'aan places it back in the realm of the main claims made by the various holy books. This is the realm of relgion and belief, not concrete material reality.
Again, when it comes to the truths dealt with in the Quran this is a personal endeavor of science and logic as the world of science often times stays away from it, Modernism promotes its own version of many of these truths (many times with no more proof than what they claim for religious books). Again don't form opinions about what you have not investigated or are not familar with. We can't talk about all books considerd holy and consider them as all the same. With this we will also have to deal with the meaning of holy (which really means something considered to be of supreme importance). The consitituion of the US is a holy script to many. WHy is that because in the end any ideology is a world view, and that includes religions. And the things they consider to be of supreme importance are their gods. Remember how the Quran says that our desire can be our god, and Jesus God bless him said that money can be our god. And both of their messages was that God is supposed to be our only god. So do away with that materialist mindset that what cannot be materially witnesses is not real and in the realm of (imaginative) belief. To thos who practice any religion the concepts espoused are real parts of the world and unverse we live in. And all religions even the idolatrous ones have their origins in what their cultures revered and viewed as supreme. Now these world views can change and even clash with others. But the truth is that these views are as integral apart of the human experience to know the truth of reality as modern materialist science is.
- PROVE that the Prophet Muhammad performed the same Salat as their concepts dicate
Who's concepts?
ProGod the various concepts as promoted by the people who post here.
I don't have to prove other people's concepts and of course not all of the concepts given here. The people here who espouse invented meanings of Salat ouside of the the resources for the Classical Arabic language have their reasons. Most of them believe that salat is a concept that covers other actions of the last prophet (God bless him) that we either find in the Quran or that they imagine him doing. I will never take the liberty of inventing meanings from context guessing without first consulting and preferring the meanings that were recorded from the speakers of that langauge when it was still a native language and where many Arabic speakers only spoke Classical Arabic and there was not situation of diglossia like we have now where Arabic derived languages are spoken and a simplified version of Classical Arabic is taught in the education system, allowing for fluency in both languages.
ProGod you also said "Also I would take each religious book separately and not try to group them together." I was joining them together in the category of assumed divine inspiration. That is a category for which placing the various books along side each other is appropriate.
The issue here is that Muslims, as well as all adherents to a theological or spiritual doctrine claim that thier conception and comprehension is true.But rememer that alot of people believe things with illogical or badly thought out reasoning, that includes Muslims. Please let us not deal with what people claim but rather with what the actual books claim.
True is subjective to perception. Fact is not. It is a fact that the earth revolves around the sun due to the verifiable data we can measure. It is a fact that vision is merely the response to light refracted by physical items due to verifiable data.
Actually those are theories and beliefs as well. Theories that cannot be debunked or have not contrary evidences become fact. These facts however are still theories as they are still based upon human percpetion. So I believe these things too but there is still the possiblity that we get some new knowledge that changes our perceptions of these things radically.
It is belief or theory that Muhammad was the last prophet of Allah Ta'Ala and that al Qur'aan Ash Sharief was revealed by this same Allah Ta'Ala to this same Muhammad. Muslims (submitters) must accept that they are upon no better footing than Mormons, Jainists, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Nuwaubians, Moonies, Confucians, or any other follower of a dogma in that they believe or accept they follow a supernatural source of guidance in their lives. Therefore they are subject to the same crucible of scientific testing and verification as anyone else who makes a claim..
Listen everything that we believe is on the same footing as we are dealing with human perception of reality. However as it concerns the reasons for why we believe what we believe this is the maker or breaker. If our reasons are logical and have no contrary evidences then they are sound, and just as fact as the earth revolving around the sun. What makes these issues more debatable is a lack of centralized authority when it comes to beliefs usually dealt with by religious texts. Much of what we believe scientifically has to do with either the effort to arrive at truths in order to materially progressor sometimes the politics of power or even general ideolgical beliefs that predominate in scientific circles. So believe all that you consider to be fact might not be that. All facts are theories and beliefs but they are theories or beliefs that stand before a complete lack of contrary evidence or a general lack of such evidences. New knowledge can come along and change that. In addition to that I do not believe in anything supernatural. God is the essence of nature. Again let's not talk about the populations and how they believe. The Quran is clear on that. Most people are like cattle. They follow things for tradition sake or other reasons that have nothing to do with truth. So let's not deal with the peopel but the idelogies. So I would rather deal with Confucianism, Islam, Mormonism, Christianity, Jainism, Buddhism etc instead of the people who follow these ways and their reasons for espousing them. Again I have no opinion on those beliefs that i know nothing about. And I think that Christianity should be separated into Trinitarianism and Unitarianism. I have my own ideas about most of these beliefs. And I could detail them if you want. But again, I care not about the followers. I care about the tenets and beliefs that are promoted in the texts of these religions. In essence I care about the reasonings of these ideologies not the reasons why people follow them. There is a difference. I also would consider that you start to view all ideologies on an equal footing and stop picking on the so called "religions."
Godbless,
Anwar -
Peace Aaron,
No, I admitted to not having read all of taha hussein's works in any signifcant quantity. However i have read about him and I did read about this verse and if I remember right I read the verses as well a long time ago. I'll look for it and produce it for you. However you can also go online and look it up for yourself. I don't mind spoon feeding if it benefits but should I have to?
Godbless,
Anwar -
Isn?t it amazing that I have seen no one who makes such accusation about Taha Hussein produce this ?verse? that Taha Hussein composed?
They don't? Well that is a problem.
you don't have to spoonfeed me you should just make up your mind whether or not you read it
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Peace,
Aaron. Actually you do want me to spoon-feed you. Whether I read it or not is my own business. I brought it up didn't I, so obviosly I am atleast familiar with it unlike you. And I also have the right to have my memory falter on something that i read so long ago. I do have my mind made up about what I know about Taha Hussein and his verse like the Quran. I know about it and I have read it before. But since you started off with a nasty attitude and ended up with one, I won't be nice and spoon feed you. How about this LOOK IT UP YOURSELF if you want to know what I'm talking about. You can get more bees with honey than with vinegar. I actually was willing to forgive your first infringement of manners and was searching the web for that verse but as of your last posting you can forget it. Look it up yourself if you want to know what I'm talking about. In the end I'd only be doing what you are supposed to be doing anyway by googling and searching for it on the web. Peace and best of luck. Maybe you'll luck up and I'll provide the verse for someone genuinely interested and who knows HOW to ask me to do the work for them.
Godbless,
Anwar -
Peace Anwar,
They don't? Well that is a problem. Also I am not appealing to the emotions of the reader, but this is a serious question that I don't think you have asked yourself or answered.
You don?t quote that alleged verse by Taha Hussein either, so it is equally your problem. If you don?t provide evidence and you never even read his work, then all your criticism of Taha Hussein is nothing but emotional prejudice and all this is irrelevant anyway. If you want to be taken seriously then first read his work.
Well, the scientific method is often occluded by subjective reasonings and biases. I also wouldn't say that it is as clear cut as that when it comes to analyzing literatre and history. Actually I find most Arab educated individuals that I've come accross to be very unscientific and rather rely on their titles to compensate for that.
Yes, and as we can see here unscientific people (Arabs or Americans or whatever) always disparage the scientific method.
However, I have read alot of western intellectuals works during college that gave the appearence of being more rational but covered up their unscientific methods with their rational rhetoric, like politicians.
Not understanding what the scientific method is and hence being fooled by those who claim to be ?scientific? doesn?t mean that the scientific method is to blame.
As far as the Arab empirical culture, there is alot of revisionist history going on. I think some of this anti-classical Arabic thought is coming from the fact that Arabic has changed from what it was a thousand years ago as a langauge (although it was accurately recorded) but the Arabs still identify with being Arab are still connected in ideology to the Arab empires and speak langauges still recognizable as being derived from Classical Arabic.
The changes didn?t start happening yesterday. They started happening shortly after the great reading was revealed and as soon as Arabic became the religious lingua franca. It suddenly became a language of prestige instead of a street language that was looked down upon as uncivilized. You on the other hand believe that the changes started to happen more recently, at the perfect time after the language has been conveniently formalized. Unfortunately, things in real life don?t happen so conveniently and perfectly.
So there is a big disconnect. But reading too much into literature becomes a purely subjective endeavor. Have you ever listened to literature scholars analyzing English poems from authors during different eras. Most of what they say is guesswork and without evidence, and it seems like Taha Hussein is up to this same old type of horseplay. Admittedly I'm going off of your description of his ideas. My impression of him is not positive at all cosidering his having invented a verse like the Quran and totally misunderstood the Quran's challenge. That says alot about his powers of insight and honesty to me.
But in the case of Classical Arabic and pre-Islamic poetry we have empirical evidence, including internal evidence from the great reading, that the poems? language is different than that of the great reading.
I hope that is not a serioius commnet. How can you expect poetry from over a thousand years ago to still be regularly recited? Poetry can be read on paper and easily not recited. Have you ever read a book of poetry? Did you recite all of that poetry aloud? So what are you talking about? Maybe you misunderstood me.
Now that you realized that you made a false statement, you added the word ?regularly. Your earlier statement was a typical example of unscientific thinking. In logic, there is a big difference between ?no longer recited? and ?not regularly recited?. Also, when you read poetry on paper (or anything for that matter), you are reciting it in your mind. This is indisputable.
I'll have to ask again, is this a serious comment? You are displaying something common in the general Arab mindset. That is that when one thinks he knows the truth he portends as if he knows the absolute truth and there is not doubt about it. If scientists or professionals want to act like they know the complete truth and defend that in a absolute way they are free to do that. But that is neither truly scientific or professional.
Great, I am glad that you realized this and that in this post you stopped saying ?the truth as I have it?. Since your arguments are not very organized, I will try to divide my response below into 3 main areas to organize things a little bit and make them easier to read while still addressing all of your points
- Tajweed
- How language status affects language
- Jahiliya poetry, Classical Arabic vocabulary and other misunderstandings
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- Tajweed
Furthermore I did not contradict my self at all following this. Let's see. You are not understanding something called tajweed and its development and I will deal with that answering your next comment.
Tajweed and its development are actually detrimental to your case. Tajweed was developed after the great reading was revealed. Tajweed didn?t make the great reading but it is the great reading that made Tajweed possible. In addition, even people who don?t know anything about Tajweed and who see a certain chapter the great reading for the first time and recite it follow the inherent rhyme in the great reading. Your idea that the rhyme is there because of Tajweed as opposed to the reality that Tajweed became possible because of the existing rhyme clearly puts the cart before the horse.
In chapter 55, Tajweed didn?t put the ?an? at the end of ?rahman? as a poetic license to make it rhyme with ?quran?, ?insan?, ?bayan?, ?7usban?, ?yasjudan?, ?myzan?, etc... The same goes for all of the chapters of the great reading. Pick any chapter, from the first to the last one. In chapter 1, Tajweed didn?t put ?im? at the end of ?rahim? to make it rhyme with ?3alamin?, ?rahim?, ?din?,?nasta3in?. ?mostaqim?, ?dhalin?. Similarly, Tajweed didn?t put ?as? at the end of ?nas? in chapter 114 and repeated ?nas?, 3 times and then added the ?as? and the end of ?khanas? to make it rhyme between the prior 3 and next 2 occurrences ?nas?. So the fact that there is a deliberate rhyme in the great reading is an empirically verifiable truth to everyone. Of course, the scientific method is based on empirical verification. Perhaps this is why you disparaged the scientific method above. You know that the scientific method with its emphasis on empirical verification doesn?t bode well for your clearly conjectural arguments about Classical Arabic and how the great reading should sound according to it.
Here again you are wrong. Firstly as I said earlier it would seem that the Classical Arabic poetries were recited with similar rhyme and metere as the Quran.
There is no evidence that Classical Arabic poetries were recited with similar rhyme and meter as the great reading. What you are saying is pure conjecture and therefore it is completely unscientific. On the other hand, and contrary to the great reading, what we see in so-called Jahiliya poetry is that the case endings are an integral part of the rhyme. This is again an empirically verifiable fact that everyone who read so-called Jahiliya poetry can verify for themselves.
With that I am not referring to the Quranic language, but rather tajweed, the art of reciting the Quran. That art involves taking letters out of the Quran in its pronunication to make it conform to rhyme.
In chapter 55, did Tajweed take out any letters from ?rahman?, ?quran?, ?insan?, ?bayan?, ?7usban?, ?yasjudan?, ?myzan?, etc... to make the chapter rhyme? Of course not!
Since pre-Islamic poems are no longer recited (they used to be) but only read with all of their vowels and using no poetic license (as the Quran can be as well),
There you go again with this ?no longer recited? nonsense. When you read a poem, the only way to appreciate it is to recite it in your head. Otherwise, you might as well be spelling it and not reading it.
Can you please bring evidence of such alleged Jahiliya poems that exhibits your conjecture of poetic license like that of the great reading that eliminates the case endings? Of course you can?t, because in contrast to the great reading the case endings are generally an integral part of the rhyme of Jahiliya poems.
the closest thing I can relate to this is the prophetic dua's found in the Hadeeth. When they are recited they are recited with the same tajweed rules as the Quran is recited. So both the Quran and the dua's of the hadeeth are living remnants of the poetic license that was often (but not always) employed in poetry reciting and songs.
If it was ?often? as you conjecture then please bring this abundance of alleged Jahiliya poem that exhibit such poetic license that eliminates the case endings.
So when you talk of Quranic language please do not assume that the way the Quran is recited is really Quranic langauge. It is an ancient artistic form of reciting poetry. The Quranic language is how you find it written with every single vowel. How it is recited is an artistic form of recitation that i am convinced was transferred from the way of reciting ancient Arabic poems onto the Quran to make it more attractive to the Arabs. I however have some doubts on things like qalqalah.
So throughout the great reading in every single chapter, it is purely coincidental that when you take out the case endings, a rhyme emerges and when you put the case endings the rhyme disappears. So what we can verify empirically in a repeatable and systematic manner, you claim is coincidental while what you totally conjecture without presenting any evidence we are supposed to believe.
Furthermore when did I say that a verse in the Quran is a sentence? And how did I ever assume that? I wish I could find a post of mine where I have openly said that in the Quran ideas in the form of sentences flow from one verse into another. I don't even believe that the Quran was revealed in verses like we have them. So where did you get this from? Again whenever a complete stop is made usually indicating a stop in an idea the last vowel is dropped.
There is no complete stop in an idea between ?alrahman? and ?3alama al quran?. ?alrahman? is a single word not a phrase and yet the case ending is dropped.
In addition to that the ta marbootah is pronounced as a haa or an open fathah and long vowels are also not pronounced. I'm saying that this is not Quranic language, but rather the art of pronunciation for ancient poems and songs which still exists in the recitation of the Quran and of hadethic dua's. There are some aspects of this that I believe were developed as the art of singing the Quran and others which I believe were native pronunciations. But we haven't even gotten to that point yet.
Which are native and which are not? If you say that dropping case endings is native then we agree. If you say that it is a poetic license then produce those ?ancient? poems that have the same phenomenon.
Furthermore I am specifically talking about the word that ends a phrase not each and every word.
But this is false. ?alrahman? in chapter 55 is a word not a phrase and yet the case ending is dropped so a ?word? is the lowest common denominator for which case endings are dropped.
In my opinion there are many poetic licenses that eventually became apart of the modern version of the Arabic langauge but this also has do with lingusitic substrates as it pertains to the Arab tribes that assimilated so many non-Arab ethnicities who also spoke similar Afro-Asiatic langauges.
Yet you are not able to produce a single ?ancient? poem that exhibits such poetic licenses.
Firstly I was clarifying to you that not only are case ending vocalizations dropped on words at the ends of phrases, but also the long vowels waw and ya. I pointed that out with ahaanani. So we cannot apply things that happen in Quranic recitation only at the ends of phrases as a matter of modes of poetic license to all words to the whole langauge. That is easy with case endings and ta marbootas for you because that is the common modern way of pronouncing Arabic words. But when we see that final long vowels are also cut making ahaananee ahaanan or al3afu al3af this does not vibe with modern Arabic pronunciation and turns your theory upside down. Again these are poetic licenses, some of which have entered the modern derivatives of Classical Arabic and some of which have not. I also just wanted to point out to you that those medial long vowels as you call them (they are not just medial, suqyahaa is found as suqyaahaa with an alif before the ha and ahlihaa as ahleehaa with a ya befoer the ha) only have to do with grammar as it concerns what the short vowels convey grammatically. When it comes to the Quran some things are more than meets the eye, and you need to understand the background of what you are reading or hearing for it to make good sense.
So what is the background? Is it that non-existent ?ancient? poetry that you can?t produce an example of?
I don't know what you think I'm admitting but it is not what you are saying. There is no 'therefore' in my conclusion. I am saying that there was a demand for poetry was modeled after the Old Arabic poetry to continue such Old Arabic poetic traditions. Not that there was a demand for people to invent poetry and call it Old Arabic poetry.
You admit that there was demand for poetry that was modeled after what people thought was the style of Old Arabic poetry. Then you make a strange argument that this is different than demand for people to invent poetry. You ignore the fact that demand is the father of invention. When there is demand for something, people will always invent ways to provide supply. This is natural.
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- How language status affects language
More assumptions on your part. Since when is it the case that when a langauge becomes official, formal and religious because of the fame of its speakers that it automatically stops being the language on the street and is therefore not the great reading? Just a few years a go those same people who became famous (and who brought fame to their langauge) weren't so famous. So how is it that when speakers of a langauge become famous and therefore their religious book and their politics famous somehow their language changes? How does status change a langauge?
Status can change a language quite a bit. Common languages are untaught. They rely on the innate grammar capacity which makes it possible for us to learn language as children just by hearing it and without having it taught to us.
For example, when a language becomes an elite language of prestige, then hypercorrections that serve no real purpose are introduced. The only purpose of such hypercorrections is to make the speaker sound more prestigious or learned. Classical Arabic case endings are precisely such hypercorrections that serve no real purpose. So it is not surprising that they are absent from the real common people language of the great reading as the internal evidence from the great reading clearly demonstrates.
To clarify an example that I gave to you before when Afro-American verncular English or Jamaican English can be used and is perfectly accepted as eloquent expression at let's say the Hip Hop awards or a Jamaican Dancehall or reggae awards, that langauge has reached a position of status among its speakers.
No it hasn?t. In reality, the average African-American looks down on this hip-hop street language and thus you will never catch Barack Obama or any other African-American political leader using this language in congress or even at press conferences.
That is exactly the same as when Arabs showed up in Arab courts (of the proxy empires of the Lakhmids and Ghassanids) to recite their poetry. The parents and grandparents of the Ummayyads before they became rulers of an empire spoke the same language they spoke. And the Quran was written in their langauge. And their fellow Arab tribes spoke their langage.
The Lakhmids kings and religious clergy didn?t speak in Arabic. They spoke Aramaic. The Ghassanids kings and religious clergy didn?t speak in Arabic either. They spoke in Greek. In fact, they continued to speak in Greek even after the Saracens? conquests. For example, Arab Ghassanid elites such as John of Damascus (whose real name was Mansoor) continued to use Greek in their writings well into the 8th century CE.
Aramaic and Greek were the languages of politics and religion (and Hebrew in the case of Jews) of the Lakhmids and the Ghassanids but on the street their subjects spoke a variety of vernacular Arabian dialects. One of those, the one spoken in the Lakhmid provinces is the language of the great reading.
Do you know what changed the langauge on the street (and not in the Halls and literature of the official dynasties)? The fact that the Arab soldiers, businessmen and religious leaders who came to live in the new non-Arab territories of what is now Iraq, Joradan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and north Africa married non-Arab women who did not speak Arabic or who learned to speak it badly. This is the beginning of the street Arabic that is so different from the Quran, the Hadeeth and traditional Arabic literature (Hijazans and Bedouins also went to and fro from their lands to participlate in these Arab empires and were also subjected to the langauge change) . There is no other explanation that has as much evidence as this. It is corroborated by historical circumstance, logic and what the actual early Arabs were saying about the changing of their langauge. Any other conclusion is based off of imagination.
Your theory has several major problems
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Your theory relies on you imagining that Arab men were sex-crazed and when they saw foreign women they suddenly married them on a grand scale. Unfortunately, such wild theories find appeal in some Arab intellectuals? chauvinistic imaginations. Of course, this theory is bogus and it doesn?t explain, for example, what happened to all the Arab women who were suddenly not able to find husbands.
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As in the course of any population movement, some intermarriage would occur. However, your theory ignores the fact that such intermarriage never changes the language of the land. This is because the intermarriage is always of a very small scale compared to the whole population and it actually works in the opposite direction. For example, an American moving to Mexico and marrying a Mexican is more likely to have to learn Spanish than his new wife having to learn English.
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Your theory contends that territories of what is now Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt were non-Arab. Of course, except for Egypt, this is false. But even in Egypt, an Arabian dialect was spoken in the Sinai so there is no doubt that Egyptians had some familiarity with the Arabian dialects.
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Your theory is confused and contradictory. You admit that the language of the great reading was a street language at the time but then you turn around and say that ?street Arabic? was different than the language of the great reading. On the other hand, the simple and free from contradictions fact is that the street Arabic in the Lakhmid provinces at the time was itself the language of the great reading.
So Old Arabic during the time of Ummayyads and before was the language of the street and the country side of the original Arab tribes.
I agree with this statement. Unfortunately, this contradicts what you said earlier about it not being the language of the street in those very same Umayyad territories.
And when the Arabs came to power and their language got some status it still stayed the same.
No it didn?t. As with any language that acquires a higher status, hypercorrections are introduced that serve no real purpose other than to give the impression that the speaker is more learned. Case endings are precisely such hypercorrections.
If Hip-Hop suddenly became the language of prestige in the US, then George Bush would be compelled to learn it and he might announce a cabinet meeting by saying ?my homies and I are getting together?. This is an example of hypercorrection of Hip-Hop language, because in reality according to the ?rules of grammar? of Hip-Hop he should be saying ?Me and my homies are getting together?. He might also hypercorrect by replacing ?me? with ?I? and say ?I and my homies are getting together?. Now unlike ?me and my homies? or ?my homies and me? which can be exchanged with no problem, ?I and my homies? and ?my homies and I? despite both being grammatical in English, sound awful in Hip Hop just like reading the great reading with the case endings sounds awful in Arabic.
Just like case endings, grammatically ?my homies and I? is a memorized form that serves no real purpose in a street language apart from making the speaker appear more learned. On the other hand, the real Hip-Hop grammar, like that of all street languages, is not memorized or taught. In fact, the ?me and X? form is the default, since it naturally turns up untaught in many dialectal varieties, whereas the ?X and I? form is only found in the taught versions of English. Similarly, the dropping of case endings turns up spontaneously in all Arabic vernacular varieties. So for a street language, which you admit the great reading?s language was, this is the default.
Grammar has a purpose. The purpose is not prestige but the purpose is make language understandable. Thus, expressions that violate grammar are incomprehensible nonsense. Since we can perfectly understand the great reading without case endings, we can conclude that case endings are not grammar but are a memorized form. This memorized form came into being when Classical Arabic ceased to be an untaught street language with an intrinsic grammar and became a taught language of prestige with memorized hypercorrections.
Where is your evidence that the Quranic language is different from these Old Arabic poems and the Quran?
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The empirically verifiable fact is that the great reading was meant to be recited without case endings while case endings are an integral part of so-called Jahiliya poems. I am not sure what you mean by Old Arabic poems so unless you went to Arabia and dug out some manuscript or inscription of an Old Arabic poem, I assume that this is a fancy name you concocted for alleged Jahilya poems. Perhaps this way you are hedging your bets since the world is increasingly catching up to the fact that Jahiliya poems are later day inventions.
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The internal evidence from the great reading which is corroborated by epigraphic evidence and which clearly indicates that the language of the great reading was a common street language. This means that it relied on intrinsic grammar. On the other hand, the Classical Arabic language of Jahiliya poetry relies heavily on memorized forms that serve no real purpose other than making the speaker sound learned.
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The Arabic Tashkil is borrowed wholesale from the Hebrew Niqqud, which was only used in religious texts or texts where prestige played a factor. The Tashkil exhibits the same exact systemic problems as Niqqud and the evidence points to both being invented at a later date after the language was formalized. You are in reality taking a dogmatic view about the Arabic Tashkil that is exactly the same as that of fundamentalist Christians who think that the Hebrew Niqqud is inspired.
As I've pointed out to you the hadeethic dua's that are still recited are done with the same artistic modes of poetic license that are employed when the Quran is sung. Yet if you read them without singing them they are read with all case endings.
Nobody here sings the great reading and yet all of us, even those reading a chapter for the very first time, naturally follow the inherent rhyme in it. So stop making up irrelevant arguments. If you read the great reading with all the case endings then it would be just to appear learned but people would probably laugh at you on the inside because you would sound so awful and pretentious (in other words like a wannabe making hypercorrections) so I hope that you would be wise enough not to do it.
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- Jahiliya poetry, Classical Arabic vocabulary and other misunderstandings
Wow this is modern cynicism at its best. Firstly histories can be true and told in story form. That does not take away from their reality. Have you ever heard of dramas based on real life events?
Dramatic stories based on real life are created after the past events. On the other hand, Jahiliya poetry was allegedly created as part of the event. It is good that at least you admit that Jahiliya poems are dramatic stories.
Have you ever heard of Odes to kings and ancestors?
Have you ever heard a king or an ancestor spontaneously utter poetry at every precisely opportune minute in his live? The problem that you don?t seem to be aware of is that in Jahiliya poetry the author and the hero of the story are supposedly one and the same. So by admitting that Jahiliya poems are like odes to kings and ancestors, you admit that the ?kings and ancestors? didn?t really utter them but they were uttered by later storytellers. It is good that you are becoming more rational since we started this discussion.
The fact that they are told in stories does not make them untrue.
It certainly doesn?t make them true either. The burden of proof is on you and those Arabicists who make the extraordinary claim that the poems? heroes really paused even when no one was listening and spontaneously uttered what you admit are ?stories? at every opportune moment in the story itself and that those ?stories? were not invented by later storytellers, whose job is, well... to invent stories.
The basic premise of Jahilya poetry is that it was uttered by the very poets whose life stories are intertwined in the poem. Since you admit that those are in reality stories about the past and the poets didn?t really say those poems but they were invented by storytellers then this makes this basic premise untrue and one cannot assume that the language in those poems is the language that the supposed ?heroes? spoke.
However, it is expected that Odes and the like are embellished versions of real events. Do you think that the odes of kings mentioned the negative things of that king if it didn't somehow make his character seem grander? Does that mean that those events or that that person didn't exist?
By asking me to prove a negative, you are demonstrating the typical fallacious thinking that permeates and clouds the minds of the majority of Arab-educated intellectuals. They also ask prove that Mohamed didn?t say this or that. You should really be asking the opposite question ?Does that mean that those events or that person existed?? The answer is a resounding NO. So the burden of proof is on you.
No. It just means that the inventor of that poem was an exaggerator (for his own reasons). Does that mean that such poems were invented after the Quran? No. It is true that they can be fictional but it is posible that the fictional aspect of the poem came from before Islamic times as well.
It is great that you admit that they are merely stories and that they can be fictional because the SOLE AUTHORITY for Jahiliya poetry is based on that they were uttered by the very heroes of the poems at the exact time where the story took place. If this basic premise is placed in doubt then one can no longer assume that anything in them is pre-quranic in the same way that one can no longer assume that any of the Hadiths was actually uttered by the prophet.
Who said that because they are pre-Islamic poems that they have to tell the truth? So you are conflating two issues here the first is whether the poems are historically accurate or fiction and the second is whether they were created in pre-Islamic or post-Quranic times. I am dealing with the latter and believe that they are pre-Islamic. The former doesn't concern me at all. And I have no opinion on it.
What you believe is irrelevant. You need to provide evidence for such belief. You have provided no evidence that they are pre-Islamic. You already admitted the obvious fact that they are merely ?stories? uttered by storytellers. So you now have to prove that the storytellers were pre-quranic despite the forces of demand and supply that resulted in the wholesale creation of such stories being post-quranic.
Here you are conflating issues again. I also mentioned that there were dotted manuscripts, and am specifically considering the non-dotted versions, so why are you pointing this out? Secondly the early dotting of scripts were for vowels only.
This is false. The early dotting was not for the Tashkil. The early dotting was for disambiguating the Nabataean script that Arabic was written in. In fact, this is so early that it is also seen in some pre-quranic inscriptions. On the other hand, dotting for Tashkil doesn?t appear until the 9th-10th century CE. The same exact useless dotting was used for Hebrew Niqqud long before Tashkil appeared. So Tashkil simply borrowed the concept from Hebrew when Arabic became an elitist language and hypercorrections were introduced.
Dots were used instead of fatha, kasrah and dammah. I am not referreing to the dots of jeem, khaa, dhal, dhawd, dhaw, zaa, faa or qaf. These were not dotted.
What you are claiming is patently false. There are many early manuscripts, including mundane non-quranic ones (for example PERF 55, where these were dotted and as I said there are even pre-quranic inscriptions where they are dotted.
Furthermore where did you get this "real" Arabic script stuff from? The Musnad script is an Ethiopic script.
Anwar, you can?t just dogmatically attribute everything to an African origin and then expect to be taken seriously in professional circles. The Ethiopic language didn?t even appear until the middle of the 300s CE. On the other hand, Sabaic and the other Arabian dialects used the Musnad script as early as BCE times.
The foreigness of a script has no bearning on it capacity to express a given langauge.
This is false. If what you are saying is true then please show us how the Arabic letter ?3in? or ?7aa? would be shown in the English alphabet without any ?bearing?.
Aramaic from what I know has every single letter that Arabic has, as well as Hebrew.
Anwar, you obviously know as much about Aramaic as you know about Taha Hussein. Aramaic has only 22 letters of the alphabet. On the other hand, Arabic has 28. It is simply inexcusable to make such completely false claims in a normal discussion, let alone a scientific one. Even a simple search for ?Aramaic Alphabet? in Google would have helped you to avoid such plunders. How do you expect any professional to take you seriously?
It looks more like the Arabs has an imperfect knowledge of the Aramaic script and added to it as they saw fit to make up for their inadequate knowledge of the script. Arabic can be and has been written accurately in Aramaic scripts. The dawd may be the only exception to the letters common to these langauges. The Arabs never had a script that they invented themselves. They borrowed both the Aramaic and the Ethiopian scripts to write their langauges. There is no such thing as a real Arabian script.
As you can verify based on what I said earlier, it doesn?t look like it is the Arabs who had imperfect knowledge but it is at least one modern American.
I am glad you are criticizing Muslim intellectuals. I can assure you that I am not apart of this class of people.
I think that you mean ?part? not ?apart?.
I agree that over the years since I have known you on Free-minds you have progressed a lot beyond the average Muslim intellectual. Even in the course of this discussion, I see progress. For example, it is great that you now acknowledge that Jahiliya poems are merely stories told by later storytellers. This would be unfathomable to most Muslim intellectuals who cling to Jahiliya poetry as if their faith depended on it. This just tells you how weak their faith really is.
I am just hoping you understand the motives of the author you are reading especially considering his conclusons about composing a verse like that found in the Quran. Intentions of an author are very importand and affect the works of that author. Rashad Khalifa's loyalties were clear. He rejected all hadeeth but a few. I also am suspicous of his intentions given that this is clearly hypocritical on his part. So I expect to see alot of hypocrysies in his work.
Since we can?t know the inner motives of people then they are irrelevant in scientific studies. Telling me that I am a follower of Rashad Khalifa because I concluded that Hadiths were not uttered by the prophet but by later religious storytellers is as wrong as you saying that I am a follower of Taha Hussein because I concluded that Jahiliya poems were not uttered by their heroes but by later storytellers. As for Taha Hussein, you would do well by reading his work first before making baseless judgments.
Also I have always had issues with the art of scrutinizing literature and pulling out conclusions about history and motives from such scrutinizing. I have seen alot of liberties taken when it comes to English literature and the Bible for instance (that Jehovist, Yahwist stuff is crap). I believe in honest assessemts" What does it say? Who does it say says it? Are there any evidences to the contrary? Using ones imagination to come up with possiblities by thinking things apart to oblivion is not good scholarship when it comes to scrutinizing the authenticity of a piece of literature. Your last sentence i agree with complety I commented in the same way earlier.
Perhaps you misunderstood what I was trying to say. What I said is that Taha Hussein fails to see is that whether the poems have a strong personality and the author really existed or not has no bearing on the dating of the poem (i.e. pushing the dating back to pre-quranic times). It simply speaks about the level of skill of the (post-quranic) author of the poem. If you still agree then great.
No when I say end of phrase I mean end of phrase, not end of verse. Go listen to a Quranic recitation again and you'll see what I mean. I am not talking end of verse I am talking end of phrase, end of idea.
So is the word ?alrahman? in 551 a phrase?!!
And as I explained tajweed is form of poetic recitation that employs poetic license. You cannot take that as completely respresentative of Classcial Arabic talk. What is completely representative are all the vowelling that you find on that paper. Why? Because if the people didn't speak like this where would they get the idea to put things in the langauge that don't exist?
They would get it from the Hebrew religious texts which employed the SAME EXACT useless Tashkeel but they call it Niqqud. Did you really think that Tashkil was invented by Arabs? Well sorry to bust your Arab nationalistic bubble.
Poetic license is for rhyme and style. We see how taking case endings off can improve rhyme in certain cases but where would the Arabs get the idea to add things to the language that never existed in that language in the first place?
Hebrew Niqqud.
And make it a matter of integral grammatical function. There is a difference betwee sukootun and sukootan that has nothing to do with aesthetics, but meaning.
There is a difference between sukoot and sukootan with a final Alif. On the other hand, making ?sukoot? as ?sukootun? doesn?t add any meaning that can?t already be figured out from ?sukoot? and ?sukootan? in the context.
The bedouins were relatively isolated because they were not in stable or valued towns along trade routes or any of the like. So their wandering in the deserts would have naturally made them more isolated than their city dwelling counterparts to foreign influences. Again this isolation is relative and depends on the eras that we are dealing with.
They were nomadic. So unlike city dwellers they covered large swaths of land and came into contact with more diverse populations and their language is going to reflect this diversity.
Of course they were not completely isolated. That is not what I am saying. And that relative isolation is also what allowed foreign words to enter into the language, as they were in contact with their city dwelling counterparts. Also there are trends of bedouinization and citification that people were subject to over the ages everywhere, even in Arabia.
Most Arabic words have in fact their origin in a different language. So Classical Arabic dictionaries trying to attribute almost each and every single word meaning to an Arab origin is a clear example of the Arab nationalistic bias that ails Classical Arabic studies. For example, Lisan Al-3arab falsely classifying ?allat? (5319) under LTT and claiming that it was called so because of an Arab man mixing dough (ltt) at her idol when the Nabataean origin and classification under ALH is readily obvious is moronic and dishonest Arab nationalism at its best. We are talking here about the most authoritative Classical Arabic dictionary suffering from such dishonesty and moronic bias. Fortunately, with an intelligent reading of Classical Arabic dictionaries one can easily separate the real meanings from the ones that were invented to promote Arab nationalism. So your claim that all meanings in Classical Arabic dictionaries, whether for ?salat? or any other word are 100% valid is simply false wishful thinking not grounded in reality.
Also araby and a'rab do have everything to do with ethnicity and tribes. I can prove that by the fact that arab and a'raab follow no adjective pattern from araba. There is only aruba which means to be a true Arab are to be a good speaker of Arabic. fa3al often relates to maf3ul, or even 3araab. But this does not exist in the case of arab. The root meanings of to be clear or to express oneself (form 4 and 2) have to do with the linguistic basis of the ethnicity, and how naturally they though that those who spoke their own langauge spoke clearly and those who did not speak their language did not speak clearly.
This is simply false and thus you can?t produce examples despite them being abundant. Take for example, ?alansar? in 9100 and 9117 or ?alawthan? in 2230 or ?alasbat? in 2136, 2140, 384 and 4163. They all have the same exact form and derivations as ?ala?rab?. So something having to do with idols/?alawthan? is ?something wathany?, something having to do with ?alansar? is ?something nasary? and something having to do with ?alasbat? is ?something sabaty?, etc... Therefore, something having to do with ?ala?rab? is ?something ?araby?. Certainly ?ala?rab? doesn?t mean ?people who speak more clearly? or ?people from a certain genealogy? but the term is clearly used in the great reading to mean people from the wilderness in contrast to city people or civilized people. Of course, it is not surprising that you completely ignore this empirically verifiable meaning of ?ala?rab? in your false arguments.
In fact, even in Lisan Al3arab, the meaning for the verb ?a?rab? is given as ?speaking in a rude or boorish way? and ?i?rab during sex? means ?dirty talking during sex?. Those meanings cannot be reconciled with genealogy or with speaking clearly but is completely reconciled with having something to do with vulgar people from the wilderness.
You are confusing language and linguistic quality with theme and format.
You are being deliberately vague again. Provide examples.
This is not what I admitted or implied in any way. I hope you understand what I was saying now.
Please see my question about the word ?alrahman? above and perhaps you will finally see the fact that when you don?t understand what you are saying, you can?t expect others to understand you.
Whatever. I have a problem with this because it is a total distortion of the truth. And that is why it irks me so much. It is so wrong and so wrong reasoned out that I can't believe you can say such things out of your mouth. I am all for alternative understandings, but I draw the line a badly reasoned conjectures.
Hopefully, you can finally see which side of the line you are really on.
What? It is obvious that Samia has no clue what Classical Arabic really is. If she was quick to adjust it was only fill the void of knowledge she had with some false concept that would justify that void. You also fall into this category, unfortunately.
Anwar, from what I have seen so far, all your knowledge of Classical Arabic (other than the progress that you made in the course of our discussion) is merely theoretical standard issue. Nothing you have said is beyond what is taught at secondary education level in any Arab government educational program. If you disagree then please list even one point that you made about Classical Arabic which is beyond that level.
Yes your idea of low functional load I know very well.
Yes now you do and you would not have learned this if you kept sticking to standard Arab governmental Classical Arabic secondary education.
But your reasons for why they didn't exist in the past is (to steal your expression) the straw man.
You don?t know what a straw man is, do you? A straw man is when you make up a conveniently weak argument that the opponent didn?t make and then refute that made up argument instead of the one really made by the opponent.
It takes alot of bad guess work to contradict every known form of Old Arabic literature to try to make Old Arabic somehow closer to modern Arabic by saying that case endings did not exist and were invented by the Abbasids.
What Old Arabic literature? It takes a lot of imagination to claim that Classical Arabic literature is Old Arabic. So unless you went to Arabia and unknowingly to the rest of the world dug out some Old or Proto-Arabic literature then please stop using this Old Arabic term so haphazardly.
All your reasons are based on exceptions (that have their reasons) and trying to apply them to the whole language. This is wrong, and completly bad science.
They are not exception. There is not a single instance in the great reading where the meaning cannot be figured out without case endings. So the fact that case endings are useless is not an exception and indeed it applies to the whole language.
Whether Classical Arabic is a close approximation ot the great reading or not is really not the issue. This is not a matter of different opinion, and how I should just take it easy. This is a matter of you're using horribly bad logic and science, and extreme reasoning to base your conclusions on.
What are you talking about? Whether Classical Arabic is a close approximation of the language of the great reading or an exact one is THE issue. What else is the issue? You never spoke Classical Arabic in your life and neither did anyone else. So there is no issue of learning Classical Arabic for communication.
And because of this I am convinced that you have an alterior motive that allows you to employ such horrible logic and science, and such extreme reasoning to come to your conclusions (and I'm convinced it is based on Modern Nationalistic Pan-Arab, revisionist ideas). There is nothing logical, and absolutely nothing historical that can lead anyone to believe that the same Arabic we find in the pre-islamic poems, the hadeeth and the Quran (in their written forms) is not the same Arabic, i.e. Classical Arabic. Any variation can be logically explained through the poetic licenses of tajweed that are applied to hadeethic dua's and the Quran when recited aloud as poetry or song. And the only reason we do not hear the pre-islamic poems with these licenses is because they are no longer recited by the people, although some do contain these licenses. It is also counter logical to assume that the Abbasids during their period of rule added to the grammar of the langauge as everything in Abbasid literature is identical to the 2 above mentioned sources. In song and poetry poetic licenses are used and in other literature, it is not. The only evidence that you have provided is conjecture; grammatical conjecture and the conjecturing of conspiracy theories. And in my mind this is unacceptable. I have very little tolerance for conjecture.
It is not surprising that everything in Abbasid literature is IDENTICAL to Hadiths and pre-Islamic poems because this is EXACTLY what one would expect if those Hadiths and poems were developed DURING the Abbasid era. So your observation actually confirms that they are post-Quranic. On the other hand, the language of the great reading is different as evidenced by the following obvious facts
- The great reading was meant to be recited without case endings.
- You admit that the language of the great reading was a vernacular. Case endings are useless memorized forms of hypercorrections that would not have been part of the intrinsic grammar of an untaught vernacular language. This is why they are spontaneously non-existent in ALL vernacular Arabic varieties.
- The great reading contains what would be glaring grammatical errors.
- Unlike Hadith and Jahiliya poetry, the vocabulary of the language of the great reading reflects earlier non-religious and non-Arab-Nationalistic usage (like ?a3rab? being used in contrast to city dwellers and not having anything to do with Arab nationalistic genealogy and Allat as the name of the Nabataean deity The Goddess as opposed to having anything to do with some Arab mixing dough, etc.).
Peace,
Ayman
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This is an excellent discussion )
