Context required when quoting verses.

Submitted by Mo (United Kingdom), Jan 24, 2007 at 12:13

In The Name of Allah (swt) The Most Gracious The Most Merciful.

It is laughable the way you interpret the Quran. But it is an interpretation nonetheless, and it requires debates and reconciliation.

Allah (s) has sent messengers and prophets to all nations and tribes throughout the ages; it is logical and rational to send people form within themselves, who understands the people, understands their ways and customs, people would rather accepts their own then an outsider telling them what to do or not. With this in mind, it is natural that the language would be the same for the Warner and the warned, for obvious reasons. But in time these teaching brought by the prophets and messengers were manipulated and changed by people, and hence became something totally different. Hinduism's roots can be traced to a more monotheistic theocracy; this in fact can be confirmed by their high priests

Before the advent Muhammad (p) all messengers and prophets that came where sent locally, to specific people and tribes only, like the Israelites were sent continuous messengers and prophets. Jesus was a messenger that was sent only to the non-gentiles (As stated by him Mathew 10:5-6, 15:24). This involved numerous prophets and messengers (some hadiths say over a 144,000), Muslims believe the Quran to be the final testament to mankind, an unadulterated book, to be preserved and guarded from human activities. Now the verses that you presented are true within the context; so what is the context? The Quran is a book for the whole of mankind, but starting point, the people whom it was addressed were to those within the immediate vicinity of the Prophet (p). Because those geographically close to the Prophet (p) were Arabs in general, the Quran primarily addresses them. Without the foundation being built, one cannot expect to build anything, and the foundation is built upon the soil that you have already. The Quran address those Arabs involved primarily, to then reach to everyone else.

Now having said this, it does not negate the fact that the Quran was not addressing the whole of mankind. You emphatically say that the Quran is for the Arabs only, and you use verses taking them out of context to prove you argument. You use verses addressing a certain people and apply it to everyone else. Now lets then look at verses within its truest contexts and apply it to non-Arabs like myself, (I think it's relevant to state here a hadiths that springs into mind which states the Prophet saying "an Arab is someone who speaks Arabic" anyhoo...), there are dozens of verses to choose from, and all of them start with "Yaa ay' yu hannaas" meaning "Oh mankind" also dozens more which begin with "Yaa ay' yu hallazeena Aamanu" meaning "Oh you who believe" and not "Oh you ARABS" this is reason enough, but obviously there are many of such examples in the hadiths.

I believe it is good practice to learn the language of the Quran, to grasp the sweetness of it when reading it. To be able to read many books that has not yet been translated into English. It is not torture, but an experience, we Muslims believe that any practice that is done for the sake of Allah (s) we will be rewarded. So learning Arabic for the sake of getting closer to the book of Allah (s) is fine by us.

Arabic is not actually an alien language, there are hundreds of common English words that has its roots and derivation from Arabic. One such example is "Alcohol."

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