Learning Arabic? Is it important?

Dan termasuk hal yang sangat menyedihkan, didapati seorang muslim begitu bangga jika bisa berbahasa Inggris dengan fasih namun mengenai bahasa Arab dia tidak tahu?? Kalau keadaannya sudah seperti ini bagaimana bisa diharapkan Islam maju dan jaya seperti dahulu. Bagaimana mungkin mereka bisa memahami syari’at dengan benar kalau mereka sama sekali tidak mengerti bahasa Arab…???

      Allah says in the holy Qur’an to the nearest meaning that “ And Allah has made Alqur’an easy for us to learn”. Look, what does it mean to us as the believers? Do you think Allah was just joking to us by saying this? The answer is NO. Allah SWT is indeed seriously wanting us to learn Qur’an properly. To learn Qur’an means to understand how to recite and to get insight of it. In what way? It is absolutely required to understand Arabic as a medium to reach that END. Getting to know Qur’an literally and comprehensively is demanding.
Just to refresh our mind as true believers, the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be always be upon him) once said in ahadits to the nearest meaning: ‘the best amongst you is those who learns Qur’an and teaches it’. The implication is that responsibility of each of Muslim is to learn in order to be able to teach Qur’an. In a broad sense, it is the right of Qur’an towards the believers to learn and to propagate it in any circumstance and to anyone. But it is the first priority to believers since this call was first addressed to the believers at the time of companions.
      Today, majority of the people who indentify themselves as MOSLEM value English excessively higher than any language especially comparable to Arabic. This is the fact as a renowned preacher in England and Europe, Sheik Muhammad Al Jaihany once in the noble gathering said that nowadays many people were dying of English. He appointed that most saudian or Middle East youngsters were exceptionally proud of being able to speak English rather than being Arabic speakers. He made an example how an eminent Islamic scholar is Saudi Arabia was very proud of sending his son to England. This is just one case. A lot more cases here and there in the Muslim world prove this awfully sadly news. May Allah safeguard us from such an irritable thought. What about us as azzam or non-Arab speaker? It is more or less similar. We feel inferior and therefore we put ourselves as second-grade when we learn Arabic rather than English. This is absolutely naïf. How can Islam as a solely TRUE civilization develop if such inferiority remains in the heart of the MOSLEM? How can we win over western civilization if we value our civilization lesser than theirs? A lot more such questions need to answer in actions.
      This lesson demands us as Muslim to ponder the importance of Arabic over the other languages in the world. The value will come to us if we try our best to get rid of our worldly perspectives about Qur’an and Arabic. Our motivation should start with full conviction of the promise of Allah, the Most merciful and the Most benevolence. Allah never denies His promise. Our conviction should be built on the fullest sincerity for The Almighty Allah’s sake, and then the door of understanding will gradually be opened. Why not open at once, one might ask this silly question. Again, Almighty Allah knows best that his creation called human being is extremely weak. Therefore, the door of understanding especially for Holy Qur’an is opened step by step according to level of sacrifice of a person. To which level of understanding can he or she reach depends wholly and solely to Allah. But Allah SWT is not blind.
I do believe that the only way to reach a comprehensive understanding of Qur’an is to learn Arabic in the first place. Then learn other requisite components of Arabic for especially use for Quranic texts. Never say too old to start to learn Arabic.

(wrote by : Ruslin Tendri
150 Dyke Road
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