Khaled: Sadly mistranslated.... Sad for Islam that it is incomprehensible in other languages

Submitted by Plato (India), Jul 2, 2008 at 01:14

Khaled, you wrote:

>> To understand the true meaning of the Quran, you need to be able to understand Modern Standard Arabic because that is the language it was written in.<<

This would mean that the vast majority of Muslims are left to believe in a religion that is incomprehensible to them and will remain incomprehensible since Muslims claim that translations cannot bring out the true meaning of Allah's Arabic revelations.

When Muslims say this they fail to realize that they are undermining Allah's powers of expression in Arabic i.e. Allah could not express Himself in Arabic in such a way that translations in other languages would bring out the true meaning of the Koran. Did Allah not know that the overwhelming majority of His followers would know zilch of Arabic? Surely a very good reason for concluding that Islam is meant only for native speakers of Arabic

Regards

Plato

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".