Latin script: a tool for colonisation

In today’s world of mass communication, language is generally perceived as a means of communication. Inherent within each language is the ability to convey ideas and concepts clearly. The Arabic language is a vital ingredient in Islam. This language is a prerequisite for understanding Islam. The qualities of Arabic language such as derivation, metaphor and Arabisation enable the language to be rich and relevant at all times. It is implicitly applicable to life’s affairs. The key for deriving law in Islam is through ijtihad and this can only be performed in Arabic. The Quran emphasis the importance of Arabic :

Allah (Subhanahu Wa Ta’aala) Says :
 
"We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran, In order that you may learn wisdom" [Yusuf 12:2]

" And this Book confirms (it) in the Arabic tongue " [Al-Ahqaff 46-12 ]

In Western thinking, the symbolism of language has acquired a significant political dimension as a result of the inclusion of language in definitions of ethnicity and nation. However, the Arabic language has no attachment to ethnicity or nation. The only reason Arabic became widely spoken and acquired the status it did was due to its attachment to Islam. Rasool Allah (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) made this clear in an incident transmitted by at-Tabarani and al-Hakim that some people spoke very lowly about Salman al-Farsi. They spoke of the inferiority of the Persian in relation to the Arabs, and upon hearing this, Rasool Allah (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) declared, “Salman belongs to ahl al-bayt (the Prophet’s family).” This statement of the Messenger of Allah (saw) disassociates all links based on lineage and tribal considerations.

Rasool Allah (Sallallahu alaihi wasallam) made it clear that the only bond, which has any significance, is the bond based on the Aqeedah of Islam. There is no bond of language. Arabic is a language used to access Islam and the only status among men that Islam recognises is that achieved through Taqwa only. So Mixing the Arabic language with Islam has nothing to do with nationalism. It is related to Islam and Islam only. Islam does not recognise nationalism as a bond amongst people.

The west recognised how important Arabic was (and still is) to Muslims.

"Whereas Latin developed into different languages, such as Italian, French and Castilian (Spanish) in the course of the centuries, Arabic did not split up into separate languages over the same period and in a comparable geographical area. The reason was that Arabic was the language of religion, Islam, as well as of government. This meant that in the first place the written language was shielded from the usual linguistic decay; and secondly, that the colloquial speech did not diverge as widely as might otherwise have been the case. As a consequence the spoken Arabic of countries as mutually remote as Iraq, the Sudan and Morocco, can be described as dialects rather than separate languages." J A Haywood, 1965.

Although there existed within the Islamic state many languages prior to its destruction in 1924 the ummah was unified. The colonialists introduced the concept of Turkish nationalism and Arab nationalism to us. The injection of this concept was fundamental to the destruction of the Islamic state. Within the Islamic world the Arabic script was utilised to write the other languages. Also Arabic heavily influenced the other languages within the State. A wide variety of languages had borrowed words (especially nouns) from the Arabic language. It was only natural that these languages were to be affected by Arabic. The language of legislation, the language of culture, the language of rituals and the language of scholarship was Arabic. Therefore day-to-day living within the Islamic state was immersed with an Arabic affect vernacular. From the political perspective terms relating to taxation such as Zakat, Ushr, Kharaj and Jizya, terms relating to social system such as nikkha, talaq, mehram, nasab, yatim terms relating to trade Ribba, mudaraba, aqad, terms relating to ruling Hukm, Qadi, wilayah, Amir, khalifah, etc… These words can be found in virtually all the languages used within the state. In other field of life we have, jinazah, salat, hajj, etc. These words have very specific meanings. The existence in common usage is evidence of how Islam prevailed.

After destroying the Islamic state the Westerner powers set about ensuring that the Khilafah would not return without great effort on our part. One of the policies they adopted was to get Muslims to be enamoured with western culture, thus distancing us from Islam. They realised the key to Islam is the Arabic language, so they used their agents in the Islamic world to introduce the Latin script and to abolish the Arabic script on the pretext of modernisation. Kamal Atatürk ordered a change from Arabic script to the western alphabet in 1929, declaring that 'our nation will show with its script and with its mind that its place is with the civilized world'.

This was forced upon the people to the extent that people were imprisoned for not being able to read the Latin script. He also set about a program of language reform by removing Arabic words from Turkish and replacing them with new Turkish words. By changing the script he ensured that the new generation did not have access to their history and the Islamic culture, which has been translated from Arabic into Turkish (uthmanli), which was written in Arabic script. By introducing the Latin script he made the corrupt western culture easily accessible to the new generation. This coupled with the banning of Islam from the public life (the Hijab, the Azhan) generated a nation, which became very distant from Islam. The changing of the script also reinforced Turkish nationalistic sentiments. Turkish is now a language-divorced form Arabic. In this respect it is dissimilar to Swahili and Urdu. Although they are different from Arabic in structure they still retain many common nouns. There was never such a concerted effort to purge these languages of Arabic words. Even the common proper nouns in Turkish became corrupted in pronunciation and choice of spelling. Therefore Muhammad became Mehmet, Ahmed became Ahmet, Izzah became Izzet, Uthmaan became Osman etc.

In fact changing the script and reforming the languages within the Islamic world aided the colonialists plan to divide this once unified Ummah into many nation states. It aided in developing national identity based on language. Changing the script made the language independent of Arabic and open to reform. Also forcing the ummah to learn the Latin script aided in introducing the foreign colonialist languages such as English and French. This then opened the gates for the introduction of western culture in the form of literature.

This language policy was debated amongst the ruling elite in Westminster in the1830s. The debate was specifically about the introduction of English to the natives of India but was later applied to other Islamic Lands. This policy was supported by Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose speech in Parliament on July 10, 1833, was the most eloquent expression of the new spirit within the British attitude to India. Lord Macaulay later wrote; “By good government we may educate our subjects so that they may in some future age demand European institutions. Whenever such a day comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.”

The colonialists started on this language policy soon after the First World War. The Latin alphabet in the Muslim lands under Russian rule replaced Arabic script in 1927-28, and Turkey abolished the Arabic script in 1928, replacing it with modified Latin. Somalia, in the last few decades, has followed a similar path. In India, since independence, the Arabic script, for hundreds of years employed in languages like Kashmiri, Punjabi and Sindhi, is being gradually replaced by the Devanagari alphabet. Hausa, the lingua franca of West Africa, spoken by over 50 million in that part of the continent, was for centuries written in Ajami - a form of the Arabic alphabet. It borrowed a great number of words from Arabic and these greatly influenced its vocabulary. However, in the early decades of the 20th century, due to the influence of missionary schools and British colonial officials, the Arabic script was to a great extent abandoned for that of Latin. Today, only some religious literature continues to be written in Ajami. Swahili, spoken by the coastal population of East Africa from Somalia to Mozambique and inland to Central Africa, has met a similar fate. One of the most widely spread languages in Africa, it contains many Arabic loanwords, but the British colonialist from the first day they set foot in Africa worked to do away with its Arabic script. By about the mid 19th century onwards, the Arabic alphabet was completely ousted by a Latin-based script. In the Malaysian/Indonesian archipelago up to the 13th century, Sanskrit was used in writing the dozens of languages used throughout the islands. By the 14th century after Islam had been introduced into the archipelago, by traders. The Arabic script began to replace Sanskrit by the peoples who had accepted Islam. The modified form of Arabic used in writing the Malay language became to be known as Jawi (in its present form, the Jawi alphabet has 35 characters. Twenty nine are adopted from Arabic and six are invented by the Malays), the Arabic name for Java. Besides propagating Malay literature, it aided immensely in the dissemination and understanding of Islam.

With the European invasions came the missionaries who introduced a Romanized script called Rumi. This has become the alphabet of both Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesian, virtually the same tongue - today the most widespread language in Southeast Asia. Even though Jawi is still taught in a few schools, it has lost much of its importance - almost disappearing in Indonesia and rarely used in Malaysia. The missionaries' self-serving arguments that the Arabic script is not as well suited for reproducing sounds in the non-Arabic speaking languages, has been swallowed whole by many of the educated Malay and other non-Arab Muslim people.

The plan of the colonialists is truly exposed once we look at the summarised table below, which show that amongst the colonialist whether they be French, British or Russians they had a common policy to remove the Arabic script and introduce the Latin script.The solution to this problem is not simple, even after the Khilafah is re-established it may take a generation before we completely remove the Latin script and reintroduce the Arabic language and the Arabic script.