بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah, the All-Compassionate and the All-Merciful, who created the human from a thing that clings and taught him eloquence and the use of the pen; peace be upon the unlettered Prophet whose speech was like a string of pearls.
In this article, by bad language, I am not talking about swearing, but the deterioration in and secularisation of language. My attention was first drawn to this issue through translation of Arabic texts into contemporary English. I struggled to match the richness of the Arabic vocabulary, even though I was drawing repeatedly on archaic vocabulary no longer used in everyday English which made it sound strangely formal and old-fashioned – almost Victorian. I ended up using many more words than were in the original Arabic in order to make it make sense. If I wanted to modernise it and make it more accessible, I knew I was oversimplifying the language and the conceptual thinking which the language expressed. I was translating many different Arabic words with the same few English words. At the same time, I realised that there were many important words in widespread use in modern English without exact correspondences in the Qur’an text. This caused me to reflect upon why they were not there, and what had caused them to appear in modern times. The tone of the two languages were very different. The Arabic was flowery and filled with respectful compliments and prayers which sounded odd in English. We are so used to trying to be objective that we do not wear our heart on our sleeve like this. If there is a tone to modern English writing, it is that it is democratic, deprecating and humorous. I realised that I thought differently in Arabic – it was a language of manners (the word for literature and for manners in Arabic are the same – adab). I wondered about what effect the differences in our approach to language have when writing about religion. I noticed that whereas Arabic is full of blessings upon the prophet and other pious epithets, many writers omitted them completely when writing in English, even though I am sure that if writing in Arabic they would include them as religious Muslims. Most of all, I imagined resurrecting the writers of the classical Arabic past and introducing them to modern thinkers. I wondered about what language could help the present and the past to communicate and understand each other’s views on the meaning of life.
George Orwell observed a negative feedback loop relating to language in his essay on Politics and the English language: “It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” He was concerned that poor language is used to deliberately mislead people about political issues. Yet precise use of language is also key to understanding religious texts. It is not only the English language that has been changing, but the Arabic language also, under the influence of modernity and of translation from European languages into Arabic. What has happened to language in modern times? How has the language we use to think about religion been affected? Is it affecting the quality of our thinking? Let us consider first the criticisms which Orwell made about the English language.
Orwell, writing shortly after the Second World War, argued that the English of his time was hackneyed, vague and meaningless. He contrasted the vivid, original and concrete language used in the King James translation of the Bible with the abstract, imprecise phrases derived from Latin and Greek roots found in modern formal English.
The original verse’s construction and style has a Semitic flavour, similar to Arabic, whilst the English vocabulary is overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon in origin. He then parodied it by translating it into modern formal English.
“I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
Here it is in Orwell’s parody of this same passage in modern English:
“Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
The original had five concrete examples of the way in which success is not based on ability; the modern version lumped all the examples into a category: “contemporary phenomena” or “competitive activities.” Orwell highlighted how this is imprecise and lacking in detail. He also noted that he had chosen vocabulary overwhelmingly derived from Latin roots. Such foreign-derived vocabulary is commonly chosen when writing formal English to show that the writer is cultured and capable of thinking in an abstract fashion. Orwell likened it to a mass of soft snow falling and obscuring all the details.
Not only that, but Orwell complained that modern English contains a lot of cliched phrases which are substitutes for verbs. For example, “compels the conclusion” instead of “shows”, and “shows no tendency to be” instead of “is not”. In fact, Orwell claims that there are so many of these phrases in use that “prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”
Orwell argued that such a use of stale language meant that the writer did not really have to think and these “ready-made phrases” even start to think for you! He argues “a speaker using this sort of terminology has already gone some distance into turning himself into a machine.” This is very interesting because if you take a newspaper article in English or Arabic and put it into Google translate, you will have a reasonable translation. Try this with some classical Arabic text, and you will have nonsense. Modern language is machine language.
What such language does allow the writer to do is to express an emotional meaning – the dislike of one thing and solidarity with another. Certain phrases (like Fascist) could be used as shorthand to indicate the political feelings of the writer or to induce a reaction in the reader. At the same time, euphemisms replacing concrete images means that unacceptable events can be considered with equanimity and with no painful mental images. Instead of the slaughter of innocents, one has collateral damage. Genocide becomes “rectification of borders”.
This stringing together of phrases is perhaps why I read a newspaper article and come away with the feeling that I have been told a lot of things but that none help with actually understanding what the issues are really about.
Orwell criticises this as producing a reduced consciousness, indispensable to political conformity. He says this vagueness is deliberate and enables meaning to be obscured, “like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
What about language and religion? Let us consider English first:
Secularisation of language: words with religious connotations are dropped from some discourses and substitutions are found where possible. New words are coined every year because there is no incentive to keep the old ones when there is no longer an appeal to authority (religious texts or ancient philosophers). For example, instead of talking about patience and fortitude, we tend to talk about resilience.
Religious language, being removed from daily life is unfamiliar and less accessible. Over time, religious words seem increasingly out of sync with the times (such as sin or transgression). This makes religion seem old fashioned and religious language hard to understand. This further encourages a discontinuity from past to present and also makes it harder to understand texts from previous centuries which draw upon religious language and symbolism.
The neologisms are not just updated synonyms but represent a subtle shift in meaning which is changing our very practice. For example, usury is unacceptable, yet interest is acceptable. In modern Arabic, interest is charged but known not by the Qur’anic word but by a new word coined through translating from English. People make a distinction between the two that may only exist on the linguistic level. By such subtle shifts a practice which was disapproved of by all the Abrahamic faiths is becoming normalised everywhere.
New words have a cachet which old words do not. People’s reputations are built upon their ability to market a new phrase. We are always looking for the next big idea. This means that rather than remaining with one discipline for our whole lives, mastering its principles and concepts in all their aspects, we are quite likely to rush from one idea to the next, on the assumption that it will be better because it is newer. We can see this quite clearly in our attitude to exercises classes. From aerobics to spinning to yoga to Zumba, we taste lots of experiences, but only at the level of a beginner. There is much less likelihood of us adopting a practice which can grow to maturity, and still less likelihood of us finding a teacher who has decades of experience with an inherited and therefore long-tested practice.
The flood of new ideas also creates confusions, because instead of refining a set of established ideas, such as the cardinal virtues, for example, we just keep manufacturing new character traits which are not necessarily linked to virtue at all. There are always subtle changes between the meaning of different synonyms, and by shifting between them without awareness and sensitivity to their subtleties, we are shifting the meanings of the thoughts and in our minds and hearts without even being aware. We have pulled up the anchor connecting us to the seabed of tradition and let go of the rudder of the ship of language, and our ship now drifts and lists upon the ocean of meanings.
Some religious words lose their power e.g. awesome, tremendous just means cool. Most religious people choose words and images to appeal to people unfamiliar with religious vocabulary. This is what we see in the adverts which we see outside churches, such as “upload your worries here” However, this raises the question of whether changing the language used for passing on a religion affects what kind of religion is passed on. Surely, the use of secular language for religion will secularise the thinking of religious people? I would argue that we have witnessed this, with an increase in focus upon everyday issues in this world rather than upon the traditional business of religion – the interior life and the next world.
يعْلَمُونَ ظَاهِرًا مِّنَ الْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَهُمْ عَنِ الْآخِرَةِ هُمْ غَافِلُونَ
They know the outer surface of the life of this world, and they are, of the hereafter, heedless. (Qur’an 30:7)
This leads to another negative feedback loop of the type identified by Orwell. Our language becomes secularised because our thoughts are irreligious, but the secularisation of our language also makes it harder for us to think in a religious way.”
In the Arab world, despite having a deeply religious culture, a flood of translations is changing the ability of people to access traditional religious texts. When translating from a modern European language, does one choose a word from the classical Arabic tradition, closely connected to Qur’anic vocabulary, or does one steer clear from that in order to make it more “secular” in conformity to the European language? Often, neologisms are coined in Arabic, which have altered the vocabulary of Arabic. Grammar has also altered to become more European in pattern. This makes the subtle and refined grammar of the Qur’an hard for even most Arabs to understand – although they might think that they do understand. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations can arise. We need to return to the ways of previous generations who were more careful in the use of language, understanding it to be a vehicle for the expression of the most profound thoughts of their civilisation.
