Aga Khan on Arabic as National Language of Pakistan

[Sliver]

A translation of Quran is far more easier/helpful than making everyone learn arabic for it. Any one person who is well versed in Arabic and English can translate the Quran into English and millions (billions in fact) can read it without having to learn Arabic.

By professing to change the language to Arabic, dont you think the national identity of Pakistan will be lost?

England has welsh and Irish speaking communities. And I can daresay that some welsh communities hardly speak English but that does not mean they are alienated from the UK! Having a different language is simply not a boundary for any kind of nationalistic or group feeling.

WE can find brotherhood in anything. Nations living close together can become a brotherhood due to geographic location.
-Nations fighting against a common enemy (Nato)
-Nations working towards a vibrant economy
-Nations working towards a common scientific goal

Pakistan and China hardly have a linguistic or religious commonality. Dont they share a very strong and healthy relationship and accommodate each others aspirations in these aspects? I think the caliphate or Muslim brotherhood should accommodate these. And hopefully we have a "world" "caliphate" which also accommodates religious freedom so none of us have to fight others at least on religious grounds.


In short, if you want to find ways to peace and brotherhood, even the slightest of the pretexts is enough. If not even the silliest of reasons is enough to provoke hatred. If you are not speaking Arabic, does that make you a lesser muslim? are nt the principles of a religion much greater than a language?

The question is, does pakistan want to be pakistan or a part of the caliphate totally abiding by the rules of the caliphate? (part of caliphate). (Is speaking arabic a requirement for being in the caliphate in the first place? )

 

[waraich66]

U guys have four different indigenous languages in Urdu,Sindhi,Balochi and Pashto....

If there is a national language it should be among these 4..not an alien language..

p.s.: I as an Indian is not required to post these..but just my thoughts.

You forget Punjabi ,Saraikiand Hindku, only 5% population Pakistanis(mahajar) speak Urdu only , there should be national language which could creat bridge between all people which is only Arabic becuase they all learn Arabic to understand Quran.

 

[Ahmad]

You forget Punjabi ,Saraikiand Hindku, only 5% population Pakistanis(mahajar) speak Urdu only , there should be national language which could creat bridge between all people which is only Arabic becuase they all learn Arabic to understand Quran.

i think urdo is alot more popular than any other language in pakistan, urdo might not be the first language of more than 9-10%, but it is perfectly spoken and understood by every paksitani, so stick with that.

 

[araz]

We all muslims belong to one nation , so it is important to have one national language , it will help to creat unity all muslims of world .

Well Said Iqbal

"Aik hu muslim Haram ki pasbani ka liya"

It is shamefull that world muslim population is 1.5 Billion still they dont have any voice in family of nation because they are divided in languages ,countries and races( Arab and Non Arab).

What the Agha Khan said at that time made some sense. I think like most of you that urdu should have been our national language. However, we should have had a strong basis for Arabic and Persian in our sylabus. I think our founders have done us a great disservice by not doing that .If we had had some grounding in Arabic and Persian, our links with our neighbours would have been stronger and more importantly our links to the Quran would have been better. We have been kept from both by our predecessors and their short sighted views on this subject.
What essentially has happened is that English has taken over as our official language where as urdu languishes in the depth of depravity. We have such an inferiority complex built up by our educational system, that who so ever does not know english does not know anything.This is what the Agha Khan was guarding against and in that aspect he was right.
To people who have passed insulting remarks against him, i would say give him respect as an elder, if nothing else.You may not believe in what he preaches, but dont be disrespectful towards an elder .
Araz

 

[into the wild]

^^^ huhh does persian make sense??? if we learn persian to strengthen our relation ship with the neighbour, why dont our neighbours learn urdu??? and why dont we learn pushto also?? lol

 

[Ahmad]

^^^ huhh does persian make sense??? if we learn persian to strengthen our relation ship with the neighbour, why dont our neighbours learn urdu??? and why dont we learn pushto also?? lol

there is no harm if your neighbhours learn urdo,as a matter of fact it will have a good impact on our relationship in the long run. but dont forget that persian has a deep root in sub continent, Alama Iqbal was a persian poet, his persian poetry is alot more than his urdo work. and if i am not mistaken, persian was taught in pakistani schools not long from now.

 

[BATMAN]

It is perfectly alright to grow with (upto) 4 languages.
We all know in Pakistan people from north can speak pushto, dari, farsi, urdu, english, punjabi and arabic too.

I had a friend.. who was punjabi but in his childhood their family transfered to Peshawar, finally he graduated from Peshawar and today he work in middleast from last many years.
He speaks, pushto, punjabi, arabic and english of course.

I'm sure it is much more convinient to learn language in school.
i'm strongly in favor of making arabic as a cumpulsory subject.

there are many benifits as mentioned in earlier posts but imagine of people to people contact will improve.. we will have more opportunities to choose from...

Pakistanis had been artificialy caged into indian syndrome by zardari regime, we should be able to know, we are being kept in a well like frog by our politicians, while their own siblings are buying british and american passports and does not like to speak URDU.

 

[into the wild]

there is no harm if your neighbhours learn urdo,as a matter of fact it will have a good impact on our relationship in the long run. but dont forget that persian has a deep root in sub continent, Alama Iqbal was a persian poet, his persian poetry is alot more than his urdo work. and if i am not mistaken, persian was taught in pakistani schools not long from now.

persian was never taught in pakistani schools, as far as i remember..

allama iqbal persian poetry maybe for persians as we dont understand persian at all

 

[into the wild]

for arabic i would agree, as its pointed out, we can better understand quran, and pakistanis can build better ties working with arabs in ME

 

[Aeon]

Urdu is fine as a national language as it has connections to Hindi, Farsi, Turkic, Arabic, nicely representing the geopolitical convergence and crossroads that is Pakistan. English is also an 'official' language. On top of that, different provinces have their provincial languages.

And now add full blown Arabic up till grade 12? Or to negate Urdu as Arabic is installed in the bureaucracy all the way to the village? What would be the cost of such a transition? Maybe we should be careful and not go for any more 'arabization' than we can handle.

Urdu will be come in handy when trade and business with India goes up in the future as Indian economy rises. Maybe we should be learning Chinese instead of Arabic as China will be a big place to do business.

 

[into the wild]

Maybe we should be learning Chinese instead of Arabic as China will be a big place to do business.

but chinese know english??????, they are learning english as their country goes important internationally!!

 

[Ahmad]

Urdu is fine as a national language as it has connections to Hindi, Farsi, Arabic, nicely representing the geopolitical convergence and crossroads that is Pakistan. English is also a national language. On top of that, different provinces have their provincial languages.

And now add full blown Arabic up till grade 12? Or to negate Urdu as Arabic is installed in the bureaucracy all the way to the village? What would be the cost of such a transition? Maybe we should be careful and not go for any more 'arabization' than we can handle.

Urdu will be come in handy when trade and business with India goes up in the future as Indian economy rises. Maybe we should be learning Chinese instead of Arabic as China will be a big place to do business.

i think it is official ,not natioanl.

 

[Ahmad]

persian was never taught in pakistani schools, as far as i remember..

yes it was taught. i am not sure, but i think it has a place in pakistani universities too. i have even seen persian language teaching sessions on PTV too.

 

[mehru]

Well Aga Khan has the right to express his views but majority will not accept it. Most Pakistanis are able to speak Urdu and this is the language which binds us. I am in favour of promotional of provincial languages, not Arabic which in my opinion is definitely a foreign language. True that it it's the language of Holy Quran but translation is available in many languages so one can easily understand it if one wants to.
Basically people do read Holy Quran but hardly give time to understand it. That's where the problem arises.

 

[into the wild]

yes it was taught. i am not sure, but i think it has a place in pakistani universities too. i have even seen persian language teaching sessions on PTV too.

yes i now it, we have seem arabic news in ptv too, so dont get so excited lol...

and you can learn even german in the pak university, they have range of choices for language subjects..