How cool would that be? Pakistan was made for Muslims in the name of Islam so we may as well have the language of our religion i.e. Arabic as our national language.
Urdu should be made a regional language of Karachi for the Urdu (people of Indian-Mohajir descent) residing there, just like it is in the Urdu belt of north India, or like Punjabi is for the Punjabis, and Pashto for the Pashtuns in Pakistan.
I don’t think any Pakistani Muslim will have a problem with the language Allah chose to communicate His Last and Greatest Message in and the language He chose for His Greatest and Last Prophet (Peace & Blessings Be Upon Him & His Family/Children).
Many different races already have Arabic as their language from Africans to Berbers to Egyptians to Gulf people…
It’s kind of silly having Urdu as our national language because there’s no logic behind it, it’s a nice language but it doesn’t relate to a Pashtun or Punjabi in anyway, it’s the language of Urdu people from Dehli, Laknow and Hyderabad Dakkan in India, Pakistan wasn’t created in the name of their culture or specifically for them it was made in the name of Islam for a whole host of different ethnicities.
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those ppl who have arabic as their language r arabs....
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and those ppl who have urdu as their language r muhajirs (urdus)....
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but it wud be good to have a common language for all muslims in the world....
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Yeah that's it, say we get the Khilafah back one day Arabic would obviously have to be the official language of the state.
Pakistan is like a mini Khilafah, it is a state based not on nationality because we are a multi-national people (and not all Urdus or Punjabis) but rather on commonality of our religion Islam.
Rubbish. Karachi is a multiethnic city and its people need no special treatment.
At any rate, you’re right, Arabic should have been the national language. One of Pakistan’s founders, the 3rd Aga Khan (the leader of the Ismailies) campaigned to make arabic the national language on the basis that every educated muslim could read arabic, but he was overruled in favour of urdu which was the last commonly used ruling language across Muslim states in British India.
You could just learn Arabic.. Like you said most Pakistanis can’t even understand Urdu, I’m the only kid in my extended family who can speak very basic Urdu, but still better than most my cousins in Pakistan.
English is already our official language which is bad enough, making it our national language will be very wannabe and deafeat the purpose of independence from the Brits, it’s important because it’s the lingua franca of the world and we can’t cut ourselves off from everyone but people will learn it anyway..
Arabic should be our national language and Urdu, Punjabi, Pashto etc. should be made the provincial languages.
Pakistan's official language is English and it should remain this way.
We are not Arabs, so we do not need to have arabic as our national language.
Most of us understand and speak our national language, whichi is urdu. End of discussion
Urdu is meant to replace English as the official language of the Federal Government. Retaining English serves no purpose other than allowing the elites to suppress the majority. It’s not fair to have expensive English-medium schools for the elites, and using Urdu to teach in state schools. If Urdu is the national language then it should also be the official language for all levels, not just for petty official purposes. Nothing could be a greater insult to a “national language” than to have to play second fiddle to a foreign import, and give way to this legacy of colonialism in the higher echelons of Government.
I don’t see what the obsession with English has achieved. It certainly hasn’t brought us any economic benefits. All the BPOs go to India. Anyway, China doesn’t feel any shame in using its national language (Mandarin) for all official, business and educational purposes, yet they’re much richer than Pakistan ($5000 GDP per capita against our paltry $2100). So please, no twisting of economic arguments.
Is English necessary? It’s not essential. Yes, it’s an advantage to learn it, especially if you’re going to be working in the West. But students should not be forced to learn it. It should be optional. Furthermore, official work must be conducted in Urdu since this language is understood by the vast majority of Pakistanis, as compared to English which isn’t.
Why should we worry about communicating with the world? Do we suffer from a serious impairment of communication? You need basic English to communicate with “the world”, not the ability to compose poetry. In Europe and much of the Far East, people learn English as a second language. This gives them enough knowledge of the language to communicate at a basic level. They certainly don’t worship English; they certainly wouldn’t make it their national or official language.
Patience, Code bro! Let me bring this discussion to another end :D. The reason that we are not Arabs and hence should not speak Arabic is a lame one. There are many African nations who are not Arabs but have many languages including Arabic as their official language. Most importantly, we should have Arabic as a national language because we are muslims and our holy book Quran is in that language. One of the major dilemmas of muslim world is that Quran is not understood although it might be the most read book on earth. So, as a muslim and a believer of Quran, I would love to have Arabic as our national and official language.
And I would love to provide free Arabic language lessons to our burger friends (those in favor of english).
not everyone in pakistan is muslim. arabic has nothing to do with us. farsi would make more sense since historically its been our language for almost a thousand years. urdu is fine though, it reflects our culture. Sanskrit, Farsi, Arabic, and turkish makes up urdu wich is very appropriate for pakistan. It was the language of the mughals, during the golden age of islam on our sub cont. Just be happy with what you have, we will never be accepted as anything but pakis, get over it!
i agree. stick with Urdu, but make it more popular and compatible with technology, and please please use it for official purposes, like the higher courts, laws, judgments, administrative orders and other official documents.
The British popularised the use of Urdu by making it an official language at the provincial level (in both courts and offices). It would only show us up as slaves and impostors if we were to allow English to subjugate Urdu. No self-respecting nation would allow its national language to be marginalised by a foreign import.
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Pakistan's official language is English and it should remain this way.
We are not Arabs, so we do not need to have arabic as our national language.
Most of us understand and speak our national language, whichi is urdu. End of discussio
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We're not Brits neither and most of us are certainly not Hindustani/Mohajir/Urdu...
Urdu is only the language of Mohajirs and that's it, other Pakistanis learn it because they are forced to or because of an inferiority complex in the case of Punjabis, you saying that "most of 'us' understand and speak our national language" is a blatant lie, most of Pakistan is rural and people from the villages couldn't speak Urdu to save their lives and very few can understand beyond some basic sentences, even the non-Muhajir urban people are laughed at by you Urdu people for their "Paindoo" or "Akhrot" accents...
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not everyone in pakistan is muslim. arabic has nothing to do with us. farsi would make more sense since historically its been our language for almost a thousand years.
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Yeah but most people in Pakistan are Muslim and Pakistan was created for Muslims in the name of Islam.
Pakistan wasn't created in the name of north Indian Urdu culture or Persian culture.
And how the hell would Farsi/Persian be more appropriate, last time I checked Pakistan didn't have very many Farsiwans/Persians, 0.20% at most the vast majority of which are Afghan Farsiwans/Persians from Afghanistan, even sticking with Urdu is a better suggestion than Farsi/Persian.
You miss the point of why urdu was picked. In all the Muslim states in India just prior to the British takeover, Urdu was the language of statemanship and culture, having replaced Persian.
Languages such as Punjabi, Sindhi, Bengali, were spoken by the masses, and by poets and musicians popular amongst the masses.
But for the ruling class, the social elite, and for government, the language was Urdu. The Mughal Empire’s historic power base was Punjab, but Punjabi was never used in official documents. They used Persian and later Urdu for this.
This meant that Urdu was the only government language common across Muslim states and thus picked for Pakistan.
The other pan-Muslim language of state was Persian, and this was advocated by some because for most of the history of Muslim India the language of the state was Persian. However, it was phased out in favour of urdu shortly before the British arrival.
Arabic was the least popular choice for national language; because Arabic had not been a state language in India for over 1000 years.
I think Pakistan should make arabic it’s national language. Na yahan kay..na vahan kay…has caused so much consternation over the years. Funny how Indonesians, malaysians, UIghers don’t go arabize their names and pretend their ancestors were sand mavens.
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We're not pretending to be Arab, Arabic is a universal language for all Muslims and not just an ethnic language.
Who said we're forgetting our roots? We'll still speak our own native languages such as Pashto, Urdu, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Baluchi, Sindhi and follow our own respective cultures but the language of the state should be Arabic because Pakistan is not a nation but rather a multi-national state created in the name of Islam, and Arabic is the language of our religion.
