From: aabdalla@pollux.usc.edu (Ahmed Abd-Allah)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: Quran Translation
Date: 27 Aug 1992 23:11:08 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: pollux.usc.edu

>From: psyrobtw@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Robert Weiss)

>In article <l9q8poINNh6h@pollux.usc.edu>, aabdalla@pollux.usc.edu (Ahmed Abd-Allah) writes...
>>So not only can one read a translated Qur'an, one can also pray in 
>>"nonArabic" until he or she can memorize some of the Arabic.  The spirit
>>is more important than the word of the law, and the Prophet was 
>>foremost in recognizing this, at least the foremost of humanity.
>	Why should someone pray in Arabic? If the Allah of this world 
>is addressed in any language, will He not hear it? Why should one pray 
>in memorized words, the meaning of which may not even be known? It 

You bring up a good question.  Muslims should eventually memorize at
least a couple of verses of the Qur'an in order to obey the injunction
to pray in Arabic when it becomes convenient (i.e. the story of the
Persians which has been deleted from the original post).  Until they
do this though, there is no blame on them if they pray in nonArabic.
However, I don't understand your point when you say that once they 
memorize a verse or two of the Qur'an in Arabic, they automatically
lose comprehension during prayer.  This seems a bit strange: one may
not know the word-for-word meaning in the worst case, but so long as the
meaning is known in the mother tongue, then what is the problem?
I know lots of American Muslims who are at this stage, and not once
has anyone complained (including the ones still using English).  As I've
pointed out in a precious post, 80% of the Muslim world is nonArab, and that
amounts to roughly 800 million people.

Now the question may be Why?  In my opinion (and I repeat: only
my opinion), this is an incredibly simple and powerful way to
unite Muslims all over the world.  I don't just mean in a 
"romantic", one-for-all-all-for-one type of paper unity; I mean
a REAL pragmatic unity.  In fact, as I write this, it dawns on
me that perhaps the source of your confusion is that you (and many
other non-Muslims) don't know how Muslims formally pray (as opposed
to informal prayer, which can be in any language).  The formal
prayer of Muslims is performed five times a day, and is governed
by strict rules regarding the type and order of accompanying 
actions.  This prayer is very strongly recommended to be done in
a group.  I'm sure some of you have seen Muslims praying on 
television, standing shoulder to shoulder, bowing, prostrating,
etc.  
Now perhaps you can begin to understand why this FORMAL
prayer should be done in Arabic: so that the Muslim from Suriname
(South America) and the Muslim from Uzbekistan (Central Asia), 
when they meet in the mosque in Egypt (North Africa) have absolutely no 
problem performing the FORMAL prayer together.  "Hey presto: unity."

Like I said, any informal prayer can be done in any language.
So you see, Arabic in the formal prayer is for the benefit of
the Muslims - not for God.  I fully agree with you that He can understand
us in any language :-)  I would add though that we can express 
ourselves best to Him through the unspoken language of our hearts...

>seems that the life of Islam desires to make 7th century arab 
>culture predominate. Why is one of the attributes of the islamic god 
>that of ethno-centricism?

See above.

>Robert Weiss

Ahmed A. Abd-Allah

"O people!  Verily your Lord is One and your father is one.  All of you
belong to one ancestry of Adam, and Adam was created out of clay.  There
is no superiority for an Arab over a non-Arab, and for a non-Arab over an
Arab; nor for the white over the black nor for the black over the white,
except in piety.  Verily, the noblest among you is he who is most pious."

			- Prophet Muhammad from his last major speech
				before his death (the Farewell Sermon)

Xref: sparky talk.religion.misc:15418 alt.atheism:16373