Table Talk
by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
Chapter 7: Arabic the only Vehicle of the Divine Mind
Human language springs from articulate sounds; articulate sounds when, by the tacit consent of society invested with meaning, become words; and words are the vehicle of thought for conveying the mind of a speaker to his hearers. Often their function passes beyond the sphere of place and time in which they were first uttered. They become a storehouse of ideas for others, and the thoughts of one generation pass by their means to them that come after, when the words of the speakers are deemed to be good. In this way language has brought us the treasures of past wisdom and, but for language, we should have been the losers of the ancient philosophies.
But the languages of the world, almost without exception, suffer from the vicissitudes of time. Words change in form and meaning as man’s mental outlook changes from generation to generation. The language of a writer, however eloquent to express his mind to the people of his own time, will become, with the passing of the years, archaic in form, or in meaning, or in both. Old books, therefore, not being in popular language, are shelved and go gradually to oblivion, if they fail to attract the readers of the day; and even then, it is the translation and not the original that is read. Moreover, the same fate awaits the translation. Yet a few centuries, and the translation itself must be translated, because the language of the first translation has become out of date and unintelligible. And a translation, however conscientious, can never be the faithful representative of the original; hence it is no matter for surprise if the mind and meaning of the writers of old have, through successive and somewhat excessive translation, become absolutely obscure to the readers of a thousand years afterwards.
Herein is explained both the disappearance of the original texts of many sacred scriptures, and the human adulteration that has crept into their respective translations. That the Old and New Testaments alike have suffered thus, each in its degree, is generally admitted. On the other hand, however, I have elsewhere cited the case of the Vedas where, though the original language may have been preserved, its significance is today hidden beyond all hope.
Such being the circumstances, no one professing those faiths can well claim at the present time to be in true possession of the Divine Intent — so far as it has been vouchsafed to man — even if in ancient time that Intent had been revealed to his forefathers.
But if religion has for its purpose the revealing of the Will of the Most High to His people, and if that revelation has at any time become dimmed or lost, He will not surely leave His people to grope helplessly in the dark for ever.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” [Isaiah 9:2]
not once only in the world’s long history but often, just so often as the light of former revelation, flickering, has seemed upon the point of extinction.
Different Religions of Different Peoples:
History has seen periods in which the different branches of humanity had become separated from each other by natural or artificial barriers, with no means of mutual communication and no vehicles for the transmission of the wisdom, philosophy or religion of the one race to the other; but if religion from God came to enlighten men as to His ways, then surely every nation was entitled to have a religion from God, of its own. It had it, as we read in the Quran. All these religions did and do converge on a common basic principle; the difference being only in matters immaterial, and that on account of local causes; and if they seem to differ at present in some of their teachings, it is on account of the changes their respective languages have undergone.
Two or three hundred years passed after the advent of Jesus, before the world began to show signs of moving towards an ultimate unity. To this end, many factors had long been at work, and the universal tendency needed above all things unity in creed and faith, because religion had always proved to be the most efficacious means of welding conflicting elements into one harmonious whole. Religion is the lever of the machinery of Brotherhood; and if the Divine Intent had been to send one religion for the entire human race, as the last word from Him, would not His whole purpose have been thwarted and made of none effect, if God had revealed His mind in a language that was liable to change?
Of all the languages of the earth, Arabic is the most conservative and the Arabic of the Hedjaz [Hejaz] has always remained above corruption, preserving in its words their original purity both of form and meaning.
Let us suppose then, for the sake of argument, that the Most High had, at the coming of Islam, condescended to take counsel with the advocates of all existing different religions, for the purpose of selecting for His final message a vehicle which should be capable of conveying to coming generations to the end of time, the full true and perfect expression of His will, precisely as it came from Him. Would not Arabic the unchanging, have been commended by all as the most fitted to become the medium of the unchanging Word of God? Of all the languages then spoken, Arabic alone is living now. Go to the Hedjaz, as I did, and there you will find the language of the Quran on the lips of every child. It is to this change-tendency in language that we owe the loss of much that would have given us light and guidance in our understanding of religion. Many are the prophets whose life-stories would have shone as beacons to man’s footsteps in the darkness, had we possessed the genuine records of them. It is our misfortune that the lives of these great seekers after the Mind of God have become shrouded in oblivion for this very reason, and the most closely shrouded of them all is the life of Jesus, of which little is known.
Ill-advised Christian writers — and an average example of them may be found in Dr. Zwemer of the so-called “Muslim World” — are wont to harp on a comparison between Jesus and Mohammed. Invidious comparisons can serve no useful purpose, and we, as Muslims, are enjoined by the Quran to refrain from making distinctions between prophet and prophet. To disillusion such over-zealous missioners [missionaries], it is but necessary to remind them of the unauthentic character of the synoptic records, and to point out that there can be no comparison between myth and history. His life for the first thirty years is enveloped in a cloud of mystery, and of the remaining three, the accounts are meagre in the extreme. Delete the miracles from the Gospel narrative, and the record of events will barely fill half a dozen pages. What light can such a life hold for the world of today? When we turn to the sources of the record, our hopes sink lower — for those who related the events of that life were uneducated men, mostly of the peasant class — who, as such, by reason of their limitations were perforce the narrators less of actualities than of their own impressions — and we should not expect a clearer or more truthful replica from those impressions, in their turn, when in contact with the simple minds of fishermen and country folk. It is no matter for surprise that these unsophisticated disciples of Jesus should be interested in hearing tales of strange events and miracle stories, rather in looking for a message of light and guidance for the generations yet to come.
Again, parallels may be found in the Mishna and Philo, besides the Talmud and other Judaic writings, to much of what we read in the Sermon on the Mount, while certain of the parables extolled by Christian writers are also found in Buddhist literature which came into existence some two centuries before the birth of Jesus. In the face of meagre and unauthenticated records such as these, there can be no comparison between Mohammed and Jesus. But to return, words are the vehicles which convey our minds to the minds of others. Revealed words are the vehicles of God’s mind to us. If the words chosen by God, long centuries ago, to reveal His Will to man have, in the course of ages, become corrupted and lost the meanings they originally had, then the Divine Will is no longer revealed through them; and if, for reasons known to God, it had become necessary to give to the world one final word, after Jesus, would He not select as the last medium of His Will, the language of Hedjaz, which, alone of all languages, He has ordained to be immune from time and change.