Re: Sheikh Character Assasination
For most of Islamic history, yes.
Translations were only reluctantly allowed in recent centuries, because a translation does not mean the same thing as the original.
Besides which, only under western colonial rule did you get muslims who were educated but not fluent in arabic.
Since before the West conquered the Muslim world, all education was done in religious institutes, every literate Muslim from Morocco to Indonesia was able to read and understand arabic.