Tag Archives: Arabic

The Myth of “Arabized Islam” & Other Fallacies of Pseudo-Islam (Part 1)

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Whoever the Most High is a witness for Truth, he need not claim it. The claim is a sign of his veiling from Truth and Peace.

A quote from dhū al-nūn from al-Sha’rānī, ’Abd al-Wahhāb. Lawāqiḥ Al-Anwār al-Qudusīyya Fī Manāqib al-ʿUlamā Wa al-Ṣūfīyya. Maktabat al-Thaqāfa al-Dīnīyya, 2005, p. 129.

In recent years, the Moorish Science Temple (MST) has become one of the many groups on the conscious chit’lin circuit; some of them Hanifs, most of them Sabians. Unfortunately, the unscrupulous reader might mistake the Sabians among them for Muslims or, even worse, a factual representation of history. As a Muslim researcher with a specialization in the Arabic language and Islamic history, it is my responsibility to debunk the bogus claims propagated by such groups.

In one recent YouTube presentation on TITANS TV, a Moorish Science researcher and self-proclaimed Arabic teacher by the name of Kemetian Adept Hieruphant attempted to advocate for his Sabian-inspired MST doctrine using George G. M. James’ Stolen Legacy, orientalist mythology about the Egyptian Sufi, Dhū al-Nūn (more on this in another post), and a hodgepodge of information to confuse you. I beseech the reader not to confuse claims to knowledge for actual knowledge, as was the message of Dhū al-Nūn. In this post, I will focus on deconstructing Kemetian’s treatment of Stolen Legacy and the history of the Moors.  

While Kemetian uncritically accepts James’ thesis, he provides little to no detail to demonstrate the MST position. Kemetian throws a lot of images and texts at you, but his attempt to connect the so-called Moors to the ancient Egyptians is weak because it has no basis in the actual history of North Africa or the Islamic world. He, like many so-called conscious folk, suffers from debilitating confirmation bias; believing his point of view is the only way of seeing the information. Why does he perpetuate a bogus conspiracy theory about the death of James? (A past professor of mine researched and debunked this claim) Why does he think that by virtue of genetic lineage he has a rightful claim to the knowledge of ancient Kemet without actually studying it? And what is a mystery school today other than a university? Kemetian’s misinformation not only reduces his credibility but also the credibility of anyone who takes this topic seriously.

Kemetian Adept | Moors Custodians Of Kemet’s Wisdom Teachings

George GM James’ Misunderstood Stolen Legacy

Kemetian introduces his presentation with the passage from Stolen Legacy that opens Islam and the Ancient Mysteries Vol. 1. In my book, I put forth a better way to understand James’ thesis, which lies in answering three main questions:

  1. Who were the Moors discussed by James.
  2. What knowledge did the ancient Egyptians possess?
  3. How did the Moors acquire ancient Egyptian knowledge?

First, the Moors of history were not followers of Noble Drew Ali or members of an organization called the Moorish Science Temple. “Moor” was an epithet used by Europeans during the Middle Ages to refer to people with dark features and Muslims in general, and North African Muslims specifically. Whatever its original meaning, it was lost on European people by the Middle Ages. They were not calling North African Muslims “gods” or anything of that nature.

If we take the European usage of Moor at face value, it means someone who is dark (relative to the average European phenotype) and/or from North Africa and/or Muslim. This is a broad span of people, which can encompass SubSaharans, Berbers, Arabs, Persians, and Indians and often times it has referred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in Muslim-controlled lands.

Johannes Andreas Maurus, a Spanish convert from Islam to Christianity (original pen and ink drawing by Maurice Hines)

Secondly, we must have an understanding of what knowledge was attributed to the ancient Egyptians. While James touches on this, he is not completely clear as to what that knowledge was. On the one hand, James characterizes this ancient knowledge as a secret, exclusively for Egyptians, transmitted orally from teacher to student, and forbidden to be written down. On the other hand, he writes that this knowledge was kept in books at temples and libraries, which were eventually copied and plagiarized by the Greeks (particularly Aristotle), and then they became the domain of the Greeks, Freemasons, Theosophists, and occultists. How James deduces this can be challenged on the grounds that he retrofits the concepts of contemporary esoteric movements on to ancient Egyptian Mystery Schools. This is only James’ speculation, not concrete proof.

Additionally, James reconstructs the ancient Egyptian curriculum using a mixture of Christian and pre-Christian Greek sources, whose works he sees to be untrustworthy since the pre-Christian Greeks allegedly stole knowledge from the Egyptian Mysteries and the Christians attempted to annihilate them. Nevertheless, the curriculum according to James was made up of the seven liberal arts, secret languages and mathematical symbolism, as well as magic. This included memorizing the books of Hermes that teach the hieroglyphs, cosmography, geography, astronomy, typography, how to slaughter animals, law, theology, medicine, among other subjects.

Many of these subjects where known and practiced all over the ancient world including ancient Babylon and India, as James alludes to, as well as in Europe and the Americas. There simply is no concrete proof that this curriculum originated in Egypt, no matter how much we want to believe it. In one aspect, it was a secret that died with the last Egyptian priest. Any other empirical knowledge they developed could also be reconstructed by other people with similar aims. Not only that, but both the Islamic civilization and later the current European civilization surpassed the ancient Egyptians in the empirical sciences (no matter what our criticisms of those civilizations are). It is also much more logical and backed by evidence to think that the world’s knowledge was an intergenerational, multi-ethnic collective effort rather than the work of one people.

Finally, how did ancient knowledge transfer to the the hands of the so-called Moors and then to Western Europe? I demonstrate this process in Islam and the Ancient Mysteries Vol. 1. I firmly demonstrate that Muslim civilization under the Hanif creed absorbed the knowledge of ancient Near East, serving as a bridge between the ancient and modern world. The following is a summary of this history.

Statue of Ibn Rushd in Córdoba, Spain

The True History of the Moors

What’s lost on Kemetian and the Moors are the key players in history that represented this passage of knowledge. If we were to question MST folk to name some of the Moors who conveyed knowledge from the ancient Mysteries, they would be hard pressed to name one. Yet, I have researched several of them for my book: the Ḥarrānian Thābit ibn Qurrah, the Persian family Āli Nawbakht, the Abbasid Translation Movement, and particular Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Rushd and their respective philosophical positions. There are countless more that historians have researched.

A synopsis of this history starts with the decline of the Mysteries, prior to Christianity. In the Greco-Persian wars, Alexander massacred Iran and sought to extinguish the Persian-Babylonian Mysteries and the knowledge they acquired. He brought their manuscripts to current-day Egypt and had them translated into Greek and Coptic and destroyed the Persian originals. The Greeks were therefore consolidating the knowledge of ancient Egypt and Babylon. As of the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, this knowledge was most readily available in Greek and Coptic (an advanced form of the ancient Egyptian language).

Christianity was a Hanif system that challenged the Sabianism that proliferated among Judaism and the so-called Philosophers. The disciples spread the monotheistic message of Jesus, which eventually became mixed with the ideas of gnostics (i.e. Sabians), such as Simon Magus, Menander, and yes, Paul. The early scholars of Christianity were educated in the schools of the Greeks and were able to argue the Sabians in their own terms. Though the Christians opposed the Sabians, they ended up absorbing much of the ancient knowledge in the Eastern Church, which split from the Western Church relatively early in the history of Christiandom.

In the meanwhile, the Persians sought to reconstruct their mysteries by reviving the manuscripts found at the extremities of the Persian empire near India and China. They were open to various sects of Christianity such as the Nestorians. Many of those Christians preserved ancient knowledge they inherited from the Greeks in the Syriac language. By the time the Muslims conquered, these works began to be translated into Arabic. This proliferated during the Abbasid Caliphate that funded the Translation Movement; translating the works of the ancient mysteries primarily from Greek, Syriac, and Persian, because knowledge from the ancient world was largely consolidated in these languages.

While the likes of Thābit ibn Qurrah, the Nawbakht family, and Ibn Muqaffaʿ played key roles in this Translation Movement, the effort cannot be attributed to one tribe, ethnic group, race, or religion. Thābit’s ethnicity cannot be ascertained although he was a native Syriac speaker and also spoke Greek and Arabic. The Nawbakht family were from a lineage of Persian Magians who specialized in astrology. Likewise, Ibn Muqaffaʿ was a Persian litterateur responsible for translating numerous books from the Persian and Indian literary heritage. Muslim and Arabic-speaking scholars of other faiths engaged these works for nearly a millennium, including the questionable works on astrology and magic. Yet, the most controversial issues centered on the philosophical concepts of the creation of the universe, pantheism, and the like, which I covered in the post Is God the Universe?  

Social media scholars from the MST and other so-called conscious groups cannot accurately describe how or why this passed from Muslim lands to Western Europe. The Christian Crusades against Muslims began in the 11th century, at the height of the Translation Movement. One should also observe that during this time, many Europeans were “orientalists,” meaning that they admired Arabic language, culture, and knowledge; see (Burnett, 2008, p. 22). Many in Western Europe, who have long since been cut off from the ancient Greeks, rediscovered the knowledge compiled in Greek through Arabic. As political enmity grew between Western European Christiandom and Islamdom, the intellectual affinity grew. One might notice that some of the most erudite scholars from Andalus, migrated to Egypt during the Inquisitions such as al-Qurṭubī and Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, etc. Khaled El-Rouayheb performed an excellent study on the influence of Maghribī scholars on theology and logic in Ottoman-controlled Egypt and prior. Many of whom were from the Ṣanhajah Berber ethnic group.

No narrative about the Moors’ passage of knowledge to Europe would be complete without mentioning the 12th century CE polymath Ibn Rushd (the grandson). In addition to being from a scholarly lineage based in Córdoba, he was a jurist, physician, and Aristotelian philosopher. In fact, he was known as the chief commentator on the works attributed to Aristotle. The untrained reader must remember that Aristotelian philosophy was at the core of Sabian doctrine, which was a proponent of the eternity of the universe. Ibn Rushd wrote a vehement defense of philosophy and Aristotelian concepts in his Faṣl al-Maqāl and Tahāfut al-Tahāfut against Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-Filāsifah. Although Ibn Rushd’s positions were rejected by most Muslim scholars, many European orientalists were enamored with his works. This even prompted the Christian theologian, Thomas Aquinas to write a response opposing the eternity of the universe.

Conclusion

The perspectives propagated by the Sabian factions of the MST amounts to nothing short of pseudoscience and a creative re-telling of history. Only simpletons are impressed. History does not begin with the interpretations of pseudo-scholars, but the collective evidence established by a body of researchers. Unfortunately, the MST lacks members who have advanced through the degrees of scholarship: sufficient tertiary education, specializations, peer-reviewed publications, academic integrity and humility, etc. Furthermore, there is nothing novel about their teachings. Their teachings are simply Sabian-Noir doctrines; the same doctrines that have confused our people for generations. In another post, I will unravel some of their doctrines and their erroneous characterizations of Sufism.

“Thoughts From Sudan,” No Longer Are They Just In My Head

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What do Dave Chappelle, Malaria, and the FBI have in common? They all make appearances in the latest publication from the Maurchives, Thoughts from Sudan. Once I graduated with my master’s from the Khartoum International Institute for Arabic Language in 2011, I thought I had closed that chapter of my life, but the thoughts from Sudan kept on coming back to mind. The emails and stories I shared with my family and friends throughout my travels and studies gave us all a good laugh. Some have encouraged me to publish them. So as of August 21, 2022, Thoughts from Sudan, the monograph, is available for the world to chuckle at.

Order it here.

Cover of Thoughts from Sudan

Thoughts is one of the works I will be publishing in the Islamic Literacy Series, in which I will address the elusive topic of how to embark on a path of studying the sacred sciences of Islam. My goal is to increase the Islamic literacy of the American Muslim community, young and old, by sharing my experiences, providing sound advice on study plans and strategies, and using my connections to facilitate travel to the Muslim world for advanced studies, if they choose to do so. Thoughts will be followed by the title, Towards Islamic Literacy, which will provide a definition to the much abused term “Islamic Literacy” and a practical model one can follow to achieve it.

Before I conclude this post, I want to share with you a brief passage from Thoughts. It’s about my landing in the Khartoum airport after being stranded in Detroit due to an interrogation with the FBI and Immigration, which made me miss my initial flight. This passage describes a nightmare scenario in which I landed in a foreign country with nothing three days after I was scheduled to be there. Check out my initial reaction to life in Sudan. The rest of the book is full of these types of scenarios.

From the chapter “My journey:”

As I flew into Khartoum, all I noticed was low level square hut-like dwellings. From my vantage point, it did not look a lot different from the Detroit terrain I just left. When it was time to finally exit the plane, I felt a gush of hot air overcome me; one that would not leave me until I left ten months later. I stood in a long line of people passing through customs, eventually entering the airport about an hour later. I waited quite a while for my luggage at baggage claim. Most people from my cohort grabbed their bags and left, followed by another cohort. However, I and a handful of other people were still waiting for our bags. It became evident that something went wrong, and a significant amount of people’s luggage did not arrive with the flight. So those of us still waiting, surrounded a 20-something airport employee and described to him our bags and their contents. He seemed like a nice guy, but he was unbearably slow.

Employee: “What was uh… in your bag?”

European Traveler: “I had some clothes…”

Employee: “Ok, clozes…” Writes something down for about fifteen seconds. “What kind of clozes?”

European Traveler: “Let’s see, I had some socks…”

Employee: “Yes. Sooks.” Writes something down for about twenty seconds. “How many sooks?”

European: “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe ten.”

Employee: “Yes. Ten.” Writes something down for about thirty seconds. “What color sooks?”

After what had to be several hours of chasing these rabbit holes, finally it was my turn, and I was the last one. Once I finished, I had something else to think about. How was I going to get to my destination? Dr. Lo’s Senegalese friend studying in the Sudan, Muhammad (Mamadou) Diouf, was assigned to meet me at the airport, but I could not imagine him waiting so long. First, I was three days late. Secondly, I exited the airport several hours after my flight was scheduled to arrive and it was already dark.

Upon stepping out of the airport, I was quickly approached by a taxi driver, whose question in Arabic I understood as, “Do you need a taxi?” To which I said lā (no). He looked at me in surprise and said in Arabic, “You speak Arabic very well!” This is something I and many other Westerners traveling in the Arab world experience. You say one word of Arabic to a native speaker, and they quickly compliment your Arabic proficiency, even if you know nothing more than that single word. Nevertheless, I welcomed the official transition from English to Arabic.

Shortly afterwards, someone who appeared to be Senegalese caught my eye. He was a lean, dark-skinned man with piercing eyes. We both approached each other asking the other by name. Alhamdulillah! It was a big relief that he waited. He ended up negotiating with that taxi driver to take us to the dormitory. First, we had to stop and exchange some of my dollars for Sudanese guinea, then we were on our way. Muhammad wondered where all my luggage was, to which I told him it was lost, and I had to go back to get it later. He said that the next day was a holiday in the Sudan, but we would make plans to go after that.

An image from Sudan I will never forget.

We arrived at his dark and dusty dorm room where he promptly began chopping up onions and putting rice in a pot on an electric heater. He gave me a pair of his shorts, a pair of sandals, and a bar of soap and directed me to the bathroom. Only in Moroccan rest stops had I seen bathrooms so filthy. Brown streaks ran up and down the ancient tile walls and pieces of hair were tucked between crevices. Was this the place I was to live for the indefinite future?

The Truth of Translation: The Sunni – Moorish Debate

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On Apr 19, 2022, a livestream debate between the Baltimore-based Moorish Science Temple representative, Taharka Bey, and the D.C. area-based Sunni Muslim, Tariq Ibn Jamil, was posted to the Moorish World Tv YouTube channel. The stated topic was “Can the Qur’an be translated?” With Tariq arguing the affirmative and Taharka arguing the negative. I find in this debate many teachable moments in terms of Islamic literacy, linguistics, the rules of engagement with regards to intellectual debate, and simple logic.

After hearing both sides of the core debate (there are many tangential debates), I will have to say that Taharka Bey is the victor for reasons that I will explore in this post.

Taharka Bey’s Argument

Taharka’s presentation of his position was stronger due to some key strategies that are align with sound scholarship and argumentation, which I will enumerate below. I will also point out flaws in his argument and gaps in his knowledge.

1) He argued the majority opinion.

The common position of Muslims is that the Qur’an is inimitable and it cannot be precisely translated, only explained through the lens of a combination of auxiliary sciences, not the least of which is Arabic linguistics. Arguing the majority opinion has its benefits in a debate. It makes supporting evidence easier to access and counterarguments easier to make because predecessors have already done the work.

2) He had a logical sequence.

Taharka has a clear logic. He begins by stating his premise, which is that in the “Common Tradition:”

Any translation of the Quran will be termed inauthentic if it goes against the established hadith (sayings and actions) of the Prophet and against the understandings of the companions of the Prophet.

45:00

According to the epistemology of Black Orientalists, transmitted reports are not valid evidence of a fact, which is diametrically opposed to the underlying epistemology of hadith science. Orientalists often use this as the first mode of attack, because in the modern age, oral transmissions are no longer perceived as valid. They prefer written evidence and documentation.

He uses this premise to make a number of points, before moving on to his next point:

In order to extrapolate the meaning of a particular Quranic verse, Muslims rely on exegesis, or commentary rather than a direct translation of the text.

49:00

He then makes a distinction between exegesis/commentary and translation. For instance, he takes a number of different English translations of a verse that uses the word taqwā to demonstrate that the various translators are making an exegesis of the word, because there is no direct equivalent in English.

2) He used substantial evidence that was relevant to the argument he was attempting to make.

Taharka’s used a mixture of primary and secondary source evidence. The examples of Qur’anic words without easy English equivalents were clear and plentiful (primary). Then he used statements from experts on the subject to back up his point (secondary). Taharka even cited an academic journal article, whose main author was a Libyan linguist who looks like an African American. The article can be found here: http://www.ijssh.net/papers/178-A10061.pdf.

He made a good point when he said that knowledge of linguistics is a prerequisite for translation (1:01:00). Unfortunately, not all translators have this background. Reading knowledge of a language alone does not always suffice for translation. Linguistics often gives the translator a bird’s eye view of how the two different languages function.

For more reading on this topic, you might want to read Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʹān by the Japanese scholar Toshihiko Izutsu. He was not a Muslim, but his work is respected in the Muslim world due to his ontological approach to Qur’anic ethical terminology.

Critiques of Taharka Bey

1) He began his argument on a faulty premise.

Taharka’s first premise, whose source he begged the audience not to ask about, though logical, is faulty because it is simply not true. While hadith and the understandings of the companions can contribute to the understanding of the Qur’an, they are not the primary determinants of a valid translation. For instance, the Shi’ah have different standards of hadith and do not accept the understandings of all the companions, but this does not render their translations of the Qur’an invalid. What renders a translation invalid is if it is not consistent with the original language and apparent meaning of the Qur’an.

However, I understand that the epistemology of Western Orientalism (in this case Black Orientalism) does not accept orally transmitted reports as valid evidence of a fact. Although this was the epistemology of the ancient world. They often claim to prefer written reports (“receipts” if you will). However, they do not acknowledge that they too accept oral transmission of information, as evidenced by the fact that they are engaging in a live oral debate rather than an exchange of written publications.

Also, when Tariq was showing a number of books to say that a translator needed to study a number of subjects to produce a translation, I noticed a few comments in the chat:

Showing off books is a weird way to prove a point. You should be able to recite and orate the contents of the books without referencing them. This guy only knows how to recite stories

ALL BOOKS ARE MAN MADE AND CAN BE TRANSLATED BY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD

Black Orientalists still have reservations about the written word despite their rhetoric about wanting “receipts” and written documents.

2) He relied on a few straw man arguments.

A straw man argument is a fallacy many debaters fall into when constructing arguments agains their opponents. Taharka’s first premise was a prime example of this. It was as if he propped up a dummy to beat up on to show that he is tough. Of course, we know dummies don’t hit back.

He also used a straw man argument on his point about the translation of the term maqām as “shrine” in surat al-Baqarah: 125. He used the most strict (Salafi) interpretation of Muhsin Khan’s Noble Qur’an to establish that the word “shrine” is a mistranslation. Khan translates it as “stone on which Ibrāhim (Abraham) stood.” However, this is an argument over semantics and what people understand when they hear a word in a particular language. It is possible that “shrine” is the most appropriate equivalence for the word maqām as understood by Arabic speakers. But the issue is that Taharka assumes that Muhsin Khan has the correct opinion with regard to Muslims creating shrines (which in the context of the verse is an anachronism because it is referring to Abraham, who predates historical Islam). This causes Taharka not to question Muhsin Khan’s word choice, which might be influenced by his Salafi ideology, or his understanding of the word shrine, which some English speakers might associate with pagan worship.

To further drive home my point, he used the example of the word kāfir to say that words have “implied meaning” (as do all words in any language) and an exegesis is needed to reveal its connotations (1:00:00). I would argue that the English language has a single equivalent to the word kāfir in the word “infidel.” The root k-f-r (ك – ف – ر) has a connotation to ingratitude, betrayal, and infidelity as evidenced in other the Qur’anic verses (see surat al-Isrā: 27 and surat Ibrāhīm: 7). However, modern translators avoid the word “infidel” because they are aware that it carries negative connotations in the English-speaking world, even though it might be loyal to the Arabic meaning (no pun intended). The avoidance of the term demonstrates my point about semantics, mental associations, and ideology.

3) He differentiated between exegesis (commentary) and translation.

This point is a matter of personal opinion, but one that is backed up by some scholars of translation theory. I believe that translation is a type of commentary. A translation should not simply be reduced to an exchange of words in one language to another. A translator looks at more than just the lexical meanings of words. A good translator is looking at the overall effect of the work. While I understand the distinction Taharka is trying to make, I simply do not agree.

SUNNI’S Al ISLAM vs. MOORISH SCIENCE’S ISLAMISM
Tariq Ibn Jamil vs. Taharka Bey

Tariq ibn Jamil’s Argument

As for our friend, Tariq, there are a few reasons as to why he lost the debate.

1) His presentation was not compelling.

Quite frankly, I think he bored the listeners because his points were not easy to follow. He was also very cerebral and soft-spoken. Furthermore, he interspersed his speech with too much Arabic terminology and quotations of Arabic passages. This shows a disregard for his audience, who primarily do not speak Arabic.

Moreover, his approach resembled that of a traditional Muslim scholar rather than a “hotep” debate. In these types of venues, a Muslim cannot appear to be too academic, because in the minds of the audience he will be acting “too white.” Likewise, if his approach is too “traditionally Muslim,” then he would be deemed “too Arab.” These are unfortunate facts.

2) He attempted to argue a minority opinion.

Those who argue a minority or unpopular opinion have an uphill battle. Not only are they less likely to have a wealth of supporting evidence, but their arguments and primary sources must be overwhelmingly convincing.

Tariq presented his argument in the form of a rare narrative gathered from an uncited Sunni tradition. His focus was on a translation of the Qur’an officiated by Salmān al-Farsī. By this, he demonstrated that it “can” be translated and it “was,” but his evidence was not strong enough to show that his translation was a complete or quality translation.

First of all, the story of Salmān al-Farsī’s translation of the Qur’an into Persian is not common knowledge, even among Muslims. So he has the added task of proving the existence of this translation. Otherwise, the listener will need to take his word for it. But even if he could produce this early Persian translation of the Qur’an (which I do not believe is extant), his audience would not have the tools to determine its accuracy, because the majority of the audience does not read Persian or Arabic.

Although I would not have taken his approach, Tariq could have emphasized more the fact that Salmān al-Farsī was not an Arab, but a Persian; although most Americans probably cannot differentiate between the two. A historical approach does not usually hold up in a debate unless it is backed up with a clear purpose and sound logic.

3) He entered a lot of unclear and irrelevant information.

The many details of Salmān al-Farsī’s story, the showing of books, and preachy statements were not relevant to his argument.Therefore, he lost momentum and wasted a lot of time speaking on the contours of his argument but making very few points.

Additionally, I don’t think the points he did make were clear to the audience. He could have devoted more time to discussing how vital the various subjects he mentioned in the books he displayed were to translating the Qur’an. Yet, he should have had a better selection of books because those that he presented were mostly not pivotal works in the fields he was referring to. However, the true scope of these fields would have required much more than 30 minutes.

Finally, there was also a woman (I’m assuming) named, Amutalha Abdul Rahman, who sought to aid Tariq’s argument, but it was not coherent. What I understood from it was that the Tafsir of Ibn Kathīr (mistakenly wrote Ibn Khair) had an AEU seal of authenticity. These things needed to be explained exactly how it contributes to the argument.

Concluding Remarks

As we can clearly see, there is a lot to learn from this debate. However, one thing lingered in my mind throughout. Why were they debating such a pointless topic? The answer to the debaters’ central question: Can the Qur’an be translated? is an emphatic yes. There have been multiple attempts at translating the Qur’an in various languages. Each attempt could be placed on a scale of subjectivity to just how loyal the translation is to the Arabic original. However, they could have asked a better question.

Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 6)

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In my post, Islam and the Ancient Mystery Schools (Part 5), I stated the theory of the contemporary Iraqi thinker, Fadil al-Rabi’i, that identified the Nasara of the Qur’an as the Hanifs. In this post, I will examine the linguistic evidence for his theory.

Raphael Tuck & Sons, The Holy Land. Nazareth, Fountain of the Virgin, Post Card, 1903, The Newberry Library, https://archive.org/details/nby_LL8170/page/n1/mode/1up.

Al-Rabi’i is from the line of scholarship that does not believe that the prophet ‘Isa/Jesus (peace be upon him) was from Palestine. Therefore, he rejects the claim that the word Nasara is related to the Palestinian town of Nazareth, the purported birthplace of ‘Isa. If this was the case, he argues, then everyone from this area would be called Nasara regardless of their religious affiliation. Jews, pagans, and other religious groups who happened to be from this town will thus be labeled Nasara, but this was never the case.

He subsequently follows up on the problematic etymology of the word initiated by Arabic language scholars such as Ibn Manzur (d. 1311/1312), author of the authoritative Arabic lexicon, Lisan al-“Arab. Al-Rabi’i finds doubt in Ibn Manzur’s treatment of the word. When discussing the words Nazareth and Nasara under the root nasara (ن – ص – ر), Ibn Manzur adds the statement of Ibn Sidah’s that this is a weak opinion and rare for a relative adjective (nisba) to take this form.

In addition, al-Rabi’i identifies the verb, ansara (أنصر), to be uncircumcised, as the origin of the word Nasara. In a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (prayers and peace be upon him), he stated:

You should not let an uncircumcised man lead you, nor one who holds his bladder or one who is habitually delusional.

The word anṣar, as used in this hadith, means uncircumcised. Al-Rabi’i believes that the word Nasara is really derived from this aspect of the word and was thus used for any group that did not practice circumcision. These groups sought to distinguish themselves from the Jews. Although, it was used for Christians and pagans who did not practice circumcision, it remained a term reserved for the Christians who continued not to practice it or did not see it as a religious duty.

Interestingly, some Arab tribes who rejected circumcision, practiced slitting the ears of a she-camel as a symbolic alternative to circumcision. This can be witnessed in the practice of the people of Salih, who were commanded not to abuse the she-camel that God provided to them.[1]

While al-Rabi’i makes some convincing claims, he also complicates our understanding of the Hanifs. According to this information, the Hanifs, if synonymous with Nasara, did not systematically practice circumcision as is commonly thought. Rather, it was left optional, leaving some to continue the practice and others to abandon it altogether. Al-Rabi’i’s theory is significant to unfolding the mystery of the Hanifs, but it is not conclusive. Yet no conversation on pre-Islamic religious history can be complete without an exploration of Sabianism, which I will undertake in a future post.

[1] Fadel al-Rabi’i, Al-Masih al-Arabi: Al-Nasraniyyah Fi al-Jazira al-Arabiyya Wa al-Sira’ al-Bizanti al-Farisi (Beirut: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 2009), 27-31.

Is Fusha Elitist?

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Student: Wow! You used to teach Arabic?! Fusha or Amiyya?

Me: Fusha.

Student: Don’t you think it’s elitist to speak in Fusha, though?

This is a conversation that transpired recently between me and a young American student studying in Egypt. It was a courteous conversation and the student actually wanted to hear my honest response to her question. My position is based on the following points, which I expressed to her, but I also think that my response warrants mentioning in a more well-thought out manner. The idea that fusha somehow aids in an elitist mindset reflects the miseducation American students of the language receive from their government and universities. Moreover, the push to the teaching of Arabic dialects has made students pawns in a broader political game.

This is not how we teach English

The powers that be in the U.S. will never agree to the use of American dialects such as African American Vernacular English, Hawaiian Pidgin, or Cajun as the language of instruction in schools. First, these dialects are not connected to a rich written heritage that learners can read in. Even if this heritage existed, it would disadvantage learners in an Standard English-dominated society by not training them in the register of language that is valued in the greater society, effectively making them foreigners in their own country.

Yet, Americans propagate the teaching of Arabic dialects both at home and abroad in contradistinction to the way we use and envision our own language. Before students know anything about Arabic, they are supplanted with ideas about its difficulty and are given the option to learn Modern Standard Arabic, Qur’anic Arabic, or Amiyyah. When people wish to learn English they learn a standard version of the language. Slang and dialectical characteristics are expected to be encountered and acquired later as students have more contact with native speakers of English. Why aren’t slang and dialects emphasized more in English learning pedagogy? Why don’t we speak more about the differences between British and American English, Jamaican Patois and Aboriginal English, Gullah and Nigerian English, etc.? Well, in addition to our notion of exceptionalism there are some deep-rooted political reasons for our view of the Arabic language, which I will briefly touch on in the following paragraphs.

The Weaponization of Language

In the summer of 2015, I was teaching a free Arabic-language intensive at a small liberal arts college in North Carolina. I advertised it on the Arabic-L listserv, a listserv for scholars, instructors, and Arabic nerds. I promptly received an email from Dr. Chris Stone of Hunter College (CUNY), asking me bluntly where I was receiving my funding. I told him that my position was funded by a grant from the Department of Education and I knew why he was asking to which he replied that he was glad to see the Department of Education was still doing its job and that he would advertise this intensive in his circle.

In April 2014, Dr. Stone published an article on the online Jadaliyya website entitled Teaching Arabic in the US after 9/11. He began the article discussing the situation in which he was stabbed outside of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. His attacker apparently wanted to take revenge for U.S. policies in the Middle East. He then brings to the reader’s attention the number of post-9/11 defense and intelligence funding opportunities for the teaching and learning of Arabic. He goes on to discuss the controversies within the fields of Middle Eastern and African studies concerning this funding.

These funds and newfound interest in the teaching and learning of Arabic in the United States has reshaped how scholars, teachers, and students approach the language. Under the pretext of teaching a more communicative approach, they have called on instructors to get students speaking as soon as possible. In 2002, the counterterrorism Arabist, Dr. Geoff Porter wrote a critical piece in the New York Times alerting the F.B.I. to the differences between various registers of Arabic, urging them to teach their agents a more natural language that will allow them to better understand wiretapped phones. Thus inserting a dagger into Arab language pedagogy. I once interned at a military archives that needed to sort through hundreds of Arabic fliers that were used for PsyOps during the Iraq War in the 2000’s. The Arabic in these fliers reflected the dry style of American military speech, rife with exclamatory commands and warnings, which I could not imagine being taken seriously by any Arabic speaker.

Anyone privy to the teaching of Arabic in American universities since 9/11 should be aware of this philosophical shift. The second and third editions of the renown Al-Kitaab fii Taʿallum al-ʿArabiyya series, taught at most universities, conspicuously increased its colloquial content. In the meantime, people serving in various branches of the American military were offered generous bonuses for proven proficiency in any of the “defense languages,” mainly the Egyptian, Levantine, and Iraqi Arabic dialects. Likewise, defense language and foreign service-oriented scholarships became plenty for students.

Arabic language fliers that were distributed in Iraqi war zones by the American military.

The Conspiracy

The debate over diglossia in the Arab world is a heated one. It was sparked by European Orientalists and colonialists venturing into regions of the Arab world and finding discrepancies between the written and spoken, formal and informal languages and the widespread use of different registers in different situations. While such differences were present, Europeans saw an opportunity to separate Egyptians and other Arab nationalities from their heritage.

Their aim was to do to the Arabs what they did to Africans in the Americas when they physically, mentally, and spiritually disconnected us from our language, culture and religion. Of course, this required a different strategy, because the Arabs were still in their lands and took a lot of pride in their language, culture and religion. The solution was a calculated plot to marginalize fusha and those that held to it.

Since the late 19th century, there has been an ongoing conspiracy to detach Arabs from their language, culture, and religion. This is meticulously documented by Dr. Nafusa Zakaria Sa’id in her book, Tārīkh al-Daʿwah ʾIlā al-ʿĀmīyyah wa ʾĀthāruhā fī Miṣr (The History of the Appeal to Colloquial Arabic and Its Effects on Egypt). She traces this conspiracy back to two Arab authors who published books on Egyptian Arabic with the sponsorship of Europeans. They even went so far as to publish high literature like the parts of the Bible and Shakespeare in colloquial Arabic on behalf of the Egyptians. Dr. Sa’id points out that all languages (including European languages) have registers, dialects, and colloquialisms, but only Orientalists with an agenda made these a problem.

Despite their many attempts to convince Egyptians to treat their dialect as an independent language, their ideas never quite took root, due to the strong influence of Azhar University and the public’s general reverence for their Arab heritage, regardless of whether they were Jewish, Christian or Muslim. They only began to see success once they started to open up schools that taught in European languages during the age of colonization. By cleverly marketing their schools, selective enrollment, a Western education was reserved for a new elite… Those who revered Europeans and their way of thinking by adopting their ideas, language, and lifestyle. While they naturally spoke their local dialects, their higher learning, which would ordinarily acquaint them with fusha, was replaced with a foreign language. Those that studied in Arabic were deemed backward and uncultured, making proficiency in fusha anything but elite. Unfortunately, this mindset still exists to this day in Egypt and other Arab nations to this day.

A Listing of Works Calling for the Use of ‘Amiyyah

  • 1838 – ʾAḥsan al-Nukhab fī Maʿrifat Lisān al-ʿArab by Muhammad ‘Iyad al-Tantawi
  • 1880 – Grammatik des Arabischen Vulgardialectes Von Aegypten by Dr. Wilhelm Spitta
  • 1886 – Al-Risālah al-Tāmmah fī Kalām al-ʿĀmmah wa al-Manāhij fī ʾAḥwāl al-Kalām al-Dārij by Mikha’il Sibagh
  • 1893 – “Why There is No Creativity Among Egyptians Now,” speech by William Willcocks
  • 1895 – The Modern Egyptian Dialect Of Arabic by Karl Vollers
  • 1901 – The Spoken Arabic of Egypt by J. Selden Willmore
  • 1926 – Manual of Egyptian Arabic by D.C. Phillot and A.P. Powell
  • 1926 – “Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Malta Speak Punic, Not Arabic” by William Willcocks

Arabs Are Not the Only Arabic Speakers

My final retort is that Arabic is not only the language of those who identify ethnically as Arabs. It is used by ethnic and religious minorities such as Copts, Berbers, Kurds, etc. It is also used by Muslims outside of the “Arab World.” In fact, some of the most eloquent and learned people in the language have been people I lived and studied with from a diverse array of backgrounds. They were students from West Africa, East Africa, and different parts of Asia who usually memorized the Qur’an and conducted their primary studies at madrasas of humble means in their home countries. They later went on to pursue higher degrees at recognized institutions in the Arab World. Though their introduction to the language was entirely in fusha, they would adapt to hearing a local Arabic dialect within a month or two, because they already had a strong foundation in the basics of the language. This has been the system in which non-native Arabic speakers acquired proficiency in the language for hundreds of years. However, Americans, out of their warmongering and need for Mcdonaldfication in all matters, have tried to jump the gun in language pedagogy by learning Arabic for nefarious purposes and without an understanding of the peoples that speak it.

This is not to say that I oppose the speaking or study of Arabic dialects. Indeed, natural speech is essential to communication and daily survival in Arabic-speaking countries as anyone who has ever studied in the Arab world may know. Unfortunately, there are many misunderstandings about the Arabic language in the United States and it will take a generation of learners with both expertise and a clear perspective of the language to unravel them.