I was wondering why Urdu is such a popular language for Islamic material. I see many broadcasts in it online. Is it just that a large population of Urdu-speaking people Muslims? Are there historical reasons such as how Arabic is the language of the Qur'an?
I have an Urdu newspaper from England, and I thought it looked really interesting. Isn't Urdu similar to Hindustani?
Also, are there any other popular languages? Arabic, Urdu, what about languages such as Dari or Pashto?
I might have to not only learn Arabic, but Urdu as well!
Pretty much all of the primary sources of Islam are in Arabic, so it's all you need to learn to really study the religion in depth. I think the only reason theres so much Urdu literature around you is because of the large number of Urdu speakers who live in the West. (Like people from Pakistan... They're everywhere. )
^ Even majority of muslims in India also learn urdu in order to get islamic knowledge. It is one of the official languages of India and Pakistan. I agree with all of you that most of the islamic books are written in urdu. We can get books in all the languages on internet.
Dont waste too much time on Urdu, focus on the Arabic and deepening your knowledge on it to get a better insight on the Linguistic Miracle of the Quran.
Thanks a lot for all the advice. I'm a linguistics major, so it's inevitable that I'll be looking into Urdu sometime, haha. But, I'll be focusing on Arabic first. It's just all part of my fascination for Middle Eastern languages, culture, and religion since it all has a profound impact on the world.
Arabic is the language of the Quran, because it was brought down at the time of the Prophet, who was an Arabic speaker, it would be pointless in revealing it in any other language, no? Also, Arabic is the richest language, when trying to translate Arabic to English for example, its limited, the beauty and the emphasis of the words when they're in Arabic are taken away when they're translated. And also, at the time of the Prophet (PBUH) the Arabs (jahils at the time) were very well known for their poetry, and the Quran was brought to show them that no matter how talented, it is from Allah and he can reveal something better, to someone illiterate (Prophet pbuh) which is indicates he couldn't have made it up and the Quran is the true words of Allah SWT.
The Qur'an, judging on the readings and from what I've learned, is quite poetic. I've memorised a little, but I don't know too much to judge the Qur'an on a whole.
And the book is definitely helpful. This gives me the essential basics that I will need, so I can move onto intermediate grammar.
شکریہ
[Edit: Also, does anyone here write Urdu in the Devanagari script? Does anyone here know how to read it? It's an excuse to learn something new for me, hehe.]
Last edited by Wyatt; 02-22-2011 at 01:37 AM.
Reason: added question
The Qur'an, judging on the readings and from what I've learned, is quite poetic. I've memorised a little, but I don't know too much to judge the Qur'an on a whole.
The Qur'an is not poetry, nor prose. Rather, it is Unique in style because it is speech of the One who is Unique [God].
Read other Arabic texts (or any language text) and compare it to the Qur'an and you will see the difference.
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