blind reading

When the Faith entered the non-Arabic speaking world somebody made a brilliant discovery. Something that was unheard of before, that frankly remains amazing even today. It was possible to teach the heathens to mouth the words of the Quran without the need to teach them the language. They could even read the good book and sound exactly like somebody who understood. While remaining blissfully ignorant of the meaning. 

It was only in the last generation that English translations were made available to these communities and it was not because of the established men of the cloth but despite the moulanas. 

It was clear that it was not in the interest of the priesthood that laypeople had access to the meaning of the Quran. They who did not have the required contextual information would not know how to interpret the nuances. The fear might have been that the masses would take the words literally and in doing that distort the intent of the book.

Muslims are of the opinion that their holy book is sealed for all time and protected by God himself. This means that the word cannot be distorted and if the text was under threat of corruption, the lord himself,  would deal with the matter. 

Surely this Protection extends beyond the mere words. If the book was protected from corruption and this is absolute, then nobody should fear the ignorant, reading the book wrong, or misinterpreting the text to justify their wickedness. All this falls under the purview of protecting the Good Book and this is clearly the exclusive domain of God Almighty. 

Going back to my original thought. 

There must have been a holy man in the distant past who discovered that non-Arabs could be taught to read and write and recite Arabic without meaning. How could he possibly have arrived at this discovery? What were his motives? And when he made this leap, how exactly did he explain it to his peers? Where they incredulous at this amazing insight?

Or did they just write it off as just another proof of the miraculous nature of the Good book? 

M Parak Nov 2019