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*Originally posted by ChaChoo: *
All other prophets except prophet Muhammad (PBUH) were sent to specific societies. And each prophet brought a different message to their people and as far as I know they never contradicted each other. Islam as we know it was brought by prophet Muhammad (PBUH) for the whole of man kind for all times and for all people. The message was different from the previous messages and the audience was the whole globe.
So to respond to your query regarding why did the other prophet didn’t need to speak Arabic to understand Islam is simply because they spoke what their people spoke so they can communicate to their people. The scriptures that they brought were written in the language that was understood by them, so Arabic was irrelevant if even existed in those times.
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and thus my contention. regardless of the modicum of the message, it remains the same. we do not necessarily need to fixate on the medium, if the message can be cast accurately into another one. the importance of the language is only specific to the understanding of the message.
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Islam as we know it today is based on Quran. Quran is in Arabic and it is in a language that will never die and so far we are all witness to it. So if anyone wants to understand the true meaning of Quran must know Arabic. Not only that we need to learn about the history of Arabs from those days and the customs to be able to understand the events, Hadith and the tafsir of Quran.
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not really. I honestly believe that a complex, very alien (for us) language like arabic requires a decade to be learnt adeptly enough to even begin commenting on the Quran for ourselves. I've lived in the Gulf for 17 years, and my arabic is very limited indeed. When I read the Quran in arabic I have a very vague idea indeed of whats going on.
On the other hand, take an accredited translation. This person is either an arab by origin or someone with a very good grasp of it. His likelihood of making a mistake in translation is far, far, far, less than if you went and took a six month course.
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Now why Arabic and not Hindi or Pushto is a whole new discussion and I don't have the answer for that. But one thing is for sure Arabic was chosen to be the language to be used for verbal communication from God to His creature.
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correction. it was chosen to be a language for communication from God to His creature.