{"id":162378,"date":"2022-02-08T03:16:03","date_gmt":"2022-02-08T03:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=162378"},"modified":"2022-02-08T03:16:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T03:16:07","slug":"religious-coexistence-and-bilingualism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=162378","title":{"rendered":"Religious Coexistence and Bilingualism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Spahic Omer<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathir bin Qays said: \u0153I was\nsitting with Abu al-Darda in the mosque of Damascus. A man came to him and\nsaid: Abu al-Darda, I have come to you from the town of the Messenger of Allah\n(pbuh) for a tradition that I have heard you relate from the Messenger of Allah.\nI have come for no other purpose. He (Abu al-Darda) said: I heard the\nMessenger of Allah (pbuh) say: If anyone travels on a road in search of\nknowledge, Allah will cause him to travel on one of the roads of Paradise. The\nangels will lower their wings in their great pleasure with one who seeks\nknowledge, the inhabitants of the heavens and the earth and the fish in the\ndeep waters will ask forgiveness for the learned man. The superiority of the\nlearned man over the devout is like that of the moon, on the night when it is\nfull, over the rest of the stars. The learned are the heirs of the Prophets,\nand the Prophets leave neither dinar nor dirham, leaving only knowledge, and he\nwho takes it takes an abundant portion\u009d (Sunan Abi Dawud, Book 26, Hadith No.\n1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nhadith entails numerous important lessons. Two concerning religious tolerance\nand coexistence, and the importance of bilingualism, will be addressed here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious tolerance\nand coexistence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the man\ncame to see Abu al-Darda \u201c as per the above hadith – the latter was in the\nmosque of Damascus. The place was what later came to be known as the Umayyad\nMosque or the Great Mosque of Damascus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once Muslims\n\u0153opened\u009d Damascus to Islam (fath<\/em>), they had no place to worship. They\nneeded something urgently and the time was not right to embark on building\nactivities. At the same time, the city was full of churches. But as many local\nChristian residents decided to leave, and many others later decided to convert\nto Islam, some of those churches were slowly losing their functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, as\nit was the policy of Muslim liberating armies wherever they went, the people of\nDamascus were guaranteed security for their lives, their property and their\nchurches, and no Muslim was to be quartered in their houses. So long as they\npaid the jizyah (a poll tax on free non-Muslims under Muslim rule) and\ncooperated in matters of common interest, they were promised to live\nundisturbed and nothing but good was to befall them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was decided\nunder the circumstances that a section of one of the citys churches be\ndesignated as a small prayer house (musalla<\/em>). The church was dedicated\nto John the Baptist (Prophet Yahya). It contained the burial place of his head,\nover which a chamber had been erected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The place was\nsteeped in history. Firstly, it served as a pagan temple of the Arameans, then\nas a pagan temple of the Romans, and after Christianity had become the official\nreligion of the Roman Empire, it was converted into a church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the\narrival of Muslims, the building was shared by both Muslims and Christians. It\nretained its status as church, but now, partially, it became a makeshift mosque\nas well. Upon entering the church, the Christians would turn to the\nleft (the West) to go to their section of the church, and the Muslims would\nturn to the right (the East) to go to their own section of the church. They all\nshared the same main entrance. For the mosque section, no structural alteration\nof the building was undertaken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later however\nwhen the number of Christians in the city of Damascus dramatically decreased\nand the number of Muslims increased, it was agreed that the church in question\nbe appropriated by Muslims and then converted into a full-fledged mosque. This\nwas done by the sixth Umayyad Caliph al-Walid bin \u02dcAbd al-Malik who ruled from\n705 to 715 CE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subsequent to the\nconversion, the mosque retained John the\nBaptists tomb as part of its interior. There are still several structural and\ndecorative elements that testify to the mosques long and rich multi-religious\nhistory. There was nothing inappropriate in keeping them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abu al-Darda,\noriginally from Madinah, migrated to Syria and served as a governor there\nduring the caliphate of \u02dcUthman bin \u02dcAffan, the third rightly-guided caliph. He\ndied in Damascus before the death (assassination) of Caliph \u02dcUthman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that\nAbu al-Darda was teaching in the improvised mosque that was part of the\nchurch. Not a soul saw anything wrong, or inhibiting, in this, so much so that\nthis initial status of the mosque was hardly ever drawn attention to. Extensive\nreports are given only in the context of the caliphate of al-Walid bin \u02dcAbd\nal-Malik, albeit not as something problematic, but as a mere piece of history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, this\ndemonstrates that, historically, Muslims were paragons of religious tolerance\nand coexistence. That was integral to their successful propagation and spread\nof Islam. Commencing with the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself, Muslims\nwere also the originators of the notion of interreligious dialogue, with\nmosques often functioning as the venues of the proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, history\nis replete with evidences that invalidate the baseless claims to the effect\nthat Islam is a religion of violence and that it was spread by the\nsword, and that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his followers were vicious and\nviolent men who sowed barbarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance\nof bilingualism <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Islam and Muslims came to Syria, Arabic was not the lingua franca of the region, except among existing Arab tribes. There were several other languages that could lay claim to the honour. However, following the advent of Islam and as part of the natural Arabisation (migration of Arabs to the territory) and Islamisation processes, the Arabic language was rapidly gaining currency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teaching efforts of Abu al-Darda \u201c who had migrated from Madinah \u201c connoted an epitome of those processes. The whole scene depicted in the hadith quoted at the beginning, additionally, gave an inkling of the vibrant \u201c perhaps dramatic – diffusion of Islamic culture and civilisation on the global stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arabic was the official language of Islam, Islamic culture and civilisation. As expected, every Muslim had a special affinity with it and wanted to learn it as much as possible. Doing so provided a sense of belonging within the universe of Islam and its civilisational trajectory. It provided a spiritual identity, which transcended and overshadowed all other identities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Islamic culture and civilisation are not exclusive or discriminatory in any way. On the contrary, they are inclusive and egalitarian. Everybody has a place and rights in them, and everybody who can is welcome to enrich them. What is more, people are encouraged to remain faithful to the wholesome components of their diverse socio-cultural affiliations. Those are seen as enriching and energising, rendering the idea of unity-in-diversity as one of the fundamental and most dynamic principles of Islam as a complete way of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Arabic was\nthe official language, formally and institutionally promoted by authorities \u201c\nAbu al-Dardas being a governor and educator represented the trend \u201c such on no\naccount implied that other languages were suppressed. The provision in the\ntreaty by the Muslim commanders that \u0153nothing but good was to befall them (the\ncitizens of Damascus)\u009d – in addition to the assurances of total protection and\nwellbeing – was the guardian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach\nmade most especially non-Arab Muslims bilingual. The tendency was an\ninestimable national treasure. It facilitated the establishment and\npreservation of religious orthodoxy, of a unified learning culture, of\nreligious and national unity prospects, and of a religious and ummatic\n(collective as well as democratic) identity. It enhanced peoples communication\nand broadmindedness, making them feel at home in all situations. It made Islam\nmuch more easily understood, practiced and propagated. It also encouraged\nrespect for the otherness of others and aided religious and ethnic pluralism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was not uncommon that in times of crises, when the Muslim community en bloc<\/em> and its civilisational projections stood at a crossroads, Arabic as the lingua franca of institutions and of a great many sectors of Muslim societies proved as pivotal as peoples belonging to Islam. The language \u201c together with Islam itself \u201c was a warrantor of survival followed by renewal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accordingly, the centre of gravity of Islamic traditional educational systems always consisted of studies of the Quran and Arabic. The former represented the threshold, as well as the fountainhead, of the pure religious sciences, which ensured religious awareness and identity, while the latter stood for an instrument of all sciences and of the Islamic cultural and civilisational identity. Only with the Quran and Arabic on-board could the dream of Islamic ummah (Islamic supranational community or nation) be realised. Only with the function of those two could Islamic culture and civilisation genuinely flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an\nindication of this ethos, following the first two or three generations of\nIslam, most of the Muslim scholars were non-Arabs. Nevertheless, most of them\nwrote in Arabic, which they had perfected. Apart from many religious and\nintellectual sciences in which they served as front-runners,\nnon-Arabs even founded the Arabic grammar. Ibn Khaldun explained how that came\nabout: \u0153All of them were of non-Arab (Persian) descent. They were brought up in\nthe Arabic language and acquired the knowledge of it through their upbringing\nand through contact with Arabs. They invented the rules of (grammar) and made\n(grammar) into a discipline (in its own right) for later (generations to use).\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No surprise, therefore, that no sooner had the roles of the Quran and Arabic language been compromised, than Islamic culture and civilisation started declining irreversibly. Nor is it coincidental that such decline reached a nadir when the winds of nationalism \u201c and other small localised programs and visions – were sweeping across the Muslim world to the detriment of Islamic concepts of ummah, brotherhood and unity, and when the role of Arabic was either distorted beyond recognition or was abandoned altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most\npainful outcomes of this partly deliberately concocted and partly\nself-inflicted tragedy is that nowadays most Muslims can hardly read, let alone\nunderstand, Arabic and, by extension, the Quran. Yet a great many Arabs were\nmade prefer local dialects and some utterly distorted versions of Arabic with\nthe aim of becoming strangers to the pure Arabic language and to the Quran\n(i.e. to the pristine message of Islam).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, this is not a milieu where the potential of reviving the glories of Islamic culture and civilisation is feasible. It instead is a nightmare that must stop before turning a new leaf. The only way forward, it stands to reason, is return to the original teachings of Islam and its Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), but via the Quran as the goal (constitution) and Arabic as a mechanism. The only way forward, furthermore, is that Muslims become authentically good and be at least bilingual \u201c even trilingual in todays globalised world – and function as such, in the best way possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the central meaning of the sanctity of knowledge and knowledge seeking in todays context. Muslims are ordained to lead the world, and if nothing else, a statement of intent is to be made.***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Assoc. Prof. Dr. Spahic Omer is an academic in the Department of History and Civilisation, AHAS KIRKHS. The views expressed here are those of the author\/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of IIUMToday.<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Spahic Omer Kathir bin Qays said: \u0153I was sitting with Abu al-Darda in the mosque of Damascus. A man came to him and said:… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,8,21],"tags":[],"nelio_content":{"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"followers":[12,156,5],"suggestedReferences":[],"efiUrl":"","efiAlt":"","highlights":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162378"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162387,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162378\/revisions\/162387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}