Читать книгу The Reformation of Islam - Lorin Jenis - Страница 5

Muslims have always valued and praised the language of the Qur’an. The classical Arabic in which it is written is thought to be the very language of Allah, and is noted for its expressiveness and beauty. There has always been a reluctance to translate the Qur’an into local languages, and a time-honored convention prescribes that salat, Islam's formal prayers, be recited in the original Arabic. Converts to Islam are accordingly expected to memorize these prayers in a language that might be foreign to them. Muslims generally believe that a uniformity of liturgical practice throughout Islam unites the faithful in a common religious culture. The use of the original language also prevents the errors that might result from faulty translations from entering Islamic thought and practice.

There may be some Muslims who are not familiar with the history of the Protestant Reformation of Christianity. In Germany the medieval era ended when Martin Luther successfully defied the authority of the church in Rome; he then proceeded to translate the Bible from the original Greek texts into the common German of his day. The German Bible that he produced became pivotal for the development of the German language and German literature. It is widely thought to be a masterwork comparable to the King James Version of the English Bible. Martin Luther’s Bible prepared the way for the King James Bible and all subsequent translations.

The Reformation inspired by Martin Luther ended an age of relative uniformity in Christian liturgical language and practice. In the Eastern Church the Bible had retained its original language, Koine Greek. The Western or Roman Church used a Latin translation of the Bible. The scholar who translated the original Greek into Latin was the Church Father Jerome, officially a saint. St. Jerome made his translation in order that the common people would be able to read the book. “Ignorance of the scriptures,” he wrote, “is ignorance of Christ.” What is ironic is that the Latin Bible itself became unintelligible to the common people when northern tribes destroyed the Western Roman Empire, and several different languages replaced Latin. If the principle enunciated by St. Jerome had prevailed, the Latin Bible would have been translated into Old English, Old French, and Old German in the early middle ages.

But the Roman Church did not translate the Latin text because Latin was believed to be a sacred language. The text was thought to be inerrant, even though it was merely a translation of the Greek text. A somewhat similar situation prevailed in the Eastern Church, because with the passage of centuries the common people ceased to speak the Koine Greek of the original Greek Bible, and the Bible became difficult for them to read.

It is interesting that both Greek and Latin were thought, in the Middle Ages, to be the language of God, although the original language of the Old Testament, at least, was Hebrew. The Jewish people also considered the language of their scriptures to be the language of God. Supposedly God spoke to Adam and Eve in Hebrew. But the phenomenon of the “language of God” predates the earliest Hebrew texts. A language that was older still than written Hebrew, Sanskrit, was considered sacred in ancient India.

Sanskrit remained the liturgical language of Hinduism until the modern age, when the British made their language the official language of the subcontinent. Certain ancient Sanskrit texts were never translated into English, but many were. The subsequent loss of “authenticity” in the Sanskrit scriptures actually enabled Hinduism to journey out of India into the West. The first guru to teach in the West, Swami Vivekananda, undoubtedly spoke and wrote English far more fluently than Sanskrit, and he wrote his books in English. When he arrived in America in 1893 he lectured to his audiences in perfect, eloquent English.

We can see, therefore, that the British accomplished what the Mughal kingdoms, and before them, Gautama Buddha, failed to do. The Buddha refused to speak to his followers in Sanskrit and used only the common language of his time and country, Pali. The Buddha was in effect the St. Jerome and the Martin Luther of his day insofar as he anticipated their concern for the spiritual welfare of the common people. But once again, we find that the language which the original teacher shared with the unlettered masses eventually became a sacred language known primarily to monks and scholars. The Pali scriptures became a “canon” of texts similar to the body of Sanskrit scriptures. Pali became sacred just as Koine Greek and Latin were to become sacred in a later age.

The Prophet Muhammad was not educated in any institution of higher learning, and when he recited the verses of the Qur’an, the classical Arabic that he spoke was simply the common language of that time and place. The emissary of God, the angel Jibril, naturally had no choice but to employ the language that Muhammad understood. After the compilation of the Qur’an this language became the language of God.

By now my reader will begin to see the parallels between the history of Islamic civilization and the ancient and medieval Indian civilization, and the medieval European civilization. The earliest sages of ancient India taught in Sanskrit because it was the common language of their time. The Buddha taught in Pali because it was his country's everyday language. Moses taught in Hebrew because it was his people's native language. Jesus taught the people in Aramaic because it was their native language, and the evangelists wrote the gospels in Koine Greek because it was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean. St. Jerome employed Latin in his translation of the Bible precisely because it was a common language of his time and place. The Prophet Muhammad taught in classical Arabic because every poor person in Mecca and Medina spoke Arabic. And finally Martin Luther translated the Greek texts of the Bible into German because German was the native language where he lived.

In every case the language that began as the language of unlettered people eventually became a sacred language known primarily to scholars, monks, and priests or imams. The pattern is consistent, that is, except in the case of the German Bible and the other vernacular Bibles that were created in the Reformation. Soon after the Reformation of northern Europe the Enlightenment practically succeeded in replacing religious culture with a scientific, secular culture. There are people even today who believe that God spoke the King James English, but they are marginal in a world in which nothing is sacred. Educated and thoughtful people in the West do not think that the German of Martin Luther’s Bible or the English of the King James Bible is sacred, and they certainly do not believe that German or English is the language of God.

The question arises, then, if Islam should be considered a part of history, the common history of a world in which Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity developed in a similar, indeed almost identical way. I have the impression that many Muslims believe that Allah made a special intervention in history to create and preserve a religion that would not be subject to the vicissitudes of time. In the religion classes of my childhood, however, I was taught the same thing about the Roman Catholic Church.

I am now ready to consider the subject articulated in the title of this essay. The question of whether people who do not speak Arabic as their native language should perform their daily prayers in the vernacular is really a very simple one. The only consideration should be the efficacy of the prayers for the believer’s spiritual life. According to the principle taught by Jesus, that the Sabbath was made for man (Mark 2:27), we can clearly see that the human being was not created in order to perform a particular prayer, but the prayer was created to serve the religious and personal needs of the human being.

In nations throughout the world where Arabic is not the native language, the faithful who do not speak Arabic memorize pages of a language that is completely foreign to them, and then proceed to repeat what they have memorized during their prayers. It is obvious that that is not the way that anyone can pray from the heart; and it is equally obvious that God, whether we call Him Allah or use another name, values the prayer of the heart and not the prayer of the mouth alone. The heart of man speaks its own language which is not primarily verbal, and it is this language alone that is sacred, that we may rightly call the Language of God. Every prophet including Muhammad has taught this principle, and every sage and mystic has taught it.

I believe that the imams and scholars of Islam are aware of the problem caused by the universal adherence to classical Arabic in their religion. Their response is not like that of Martin Luther even though their aim is similar to his. Every responsible leader of the Muslim world would like to see sincerity in prayer, and true spirituality in the people’s religious practice. The tactic that they have employed is to teach Arabic to all Muslims, so that the faithful will eventually understand the Arabic prayers with their minds, and consequently with their hearts as well. The problem with this program is that, often enough, simple people may require decades of study in order to master an intricate language that may be completely unlike their own. Some languages, like German and English, share a common history, and many cognate words. The same cannot be said for Arabic and Chinese, or, for that matter, Arabic and English, despite a scattering of Arabic words in English.

Frankly, there is no time to learn a language if the religious life of the student must wait and wait until the language is mastered. True religion is a necessity of the human condition now and not tomorrow, and certainly not two decades from now. Accordingly, inevitably, I hold that the scholars and imams of Islam should allow Muslims to perform salat in the vernacular.