The Qur’an as a Language

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Faculty member of Department of Quranic sciences and Hadith, Faculty of Theology, Karaj Branch, Islamic Azad University, Karaj, Iran.

Abstract

The Qur’an has been essentially considered by God the almighty and the Prophet as a language to be taught, not a sacred book for reading, reciting and chanting, nor a book of law and ethics. The Prophet founded His Qur’an teaching on listening and speaking, similar to natural training of mother tongue. Nowadays, we incessantly and continuously observe all various languages as being taught and learnt through hear-say-see methods, just like what the Prophet who his guidance is named in the Qur’an as “Uswat-on hassana” did to His early learners, Arabs and non-Arabs, with no differentiating, a full fourteen centuries ago. The main difference or contrast is that all other methods have considered the Qur’an as a book to be read, and hence they tried to teach its reading. But from the Prophet’s viewpoint, the Qur’an is a language which should be taught to everyone, next to mother tongue, parallel to it or afterwards, taking into consideration that Qur’anic language is not any human being’s mother tongue, so that even for the Prophet Himself the special Arabic of the Qur’an is not a native language and needs to be taught by God the almighty. This paper, at first, gives an overview of reasons and evidence proving that it had been so; then, synoptically describes how the Prophet taught Qur’anic language to the early Muslims (Sahaba); and finally, explains how his teaching of the Qur’an could be applied in Muslim societies around the world.

Keywords


Volume 1, Issue 1
September 2023
Pages 85-95
  • Receive Date: 04 June 2023
  • Revise Date: 21 September 2023
  • Accept Date: 21 September 2023
  • First Publish Date: 21 September 2023
  • Publish Date: 01 September 2023