Why does the Quran contain loanwords?

How can the Quran be an eternal text when it contains loanwords from other languages such as Greek, Ethiopic and Syriac (which even Muslim scholars admit)? A loanword by its very nature is adopted into a language at some point of history
>but it has become part of the Arabic
Sure, but it demonstrates that the text of the Quran was not eternal but written at a specific time. How could an eternal book contain words from non-eternal languages

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  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Wait, do Muslims claim the Arabic language is eternal? I thought they just said God chose to reveal the Quran in that language.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      We don't. The loanword idea is stupid anyway since lots of non-Arabs are mentioned in the Qur'an.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      They claim the text of the Quran is eternal. By necessity, that means the words it uses are eternal. Unless some Muslim wants to say that the Quran was just translated into Arabic by God

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        That means it's free from distortions. A Preserved Tablet.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Define distortions.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I don't see how an eternal language in the sense of being free from loanwords could even exist. Any new developments from the surrounding regions will lead to the adoption of loanwords. You can Arabize this with the root system, same as how Chinese do with their characters, but that's still adopting loanwords in a sense.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          A divine language could be eternal, created by God from scratch. But the fact that the Quran contains loanwords demonstrates its origin at a specific point in time, namely Late Antiquity, when Arabic had been influenced for centuries by for instance Greek and Syriac

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      they claim arabic is the language that angels speak

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        There's no evidence for or against this.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Oh, there's evidence against it.

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    What level of cope is this, Muslim bros? I'm thinking a solid 7.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      https://islamqa.info/en/answers/143146/how-we-should-react-to-websites-that-vilify-islam-and-what-are-the-ways-in-which-we-can-support-islam
      >The websites that speak ill of the religion of Allah and of His Messenger (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him) are no different from the gatherings where people say similar things that constitute kufr. In both cases it is haraam to stay in such gatherings and it is haraam to visit such websites, except for one who will object to what they do and is able to put a stop to these offences. If he is not able to do that, and those people carry on with what they are doing, then it is not permissible to remain in that gathering and it is not permissible to visit those websites.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Nothing is eternal. Matter is finite.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It goes far beyond just loanwords. There is an understandably quiet and unpublicized consensus among non-Muslim historians nowadays that the Qu'ran is just a strange mix of pagan Arabian myths, episodes from the life of Muhammad, but mostly Syriac Christian prayer books poorly translated into Arabic.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Poorly translated into Arabic
      I'm an Arab. The Holy Qur'an is the basis of the classical Arabic language. The poetry in the Qur'an is beyond anything I have ever read or will read. We can compare it to pre-Islamic poetry and see the massive difference. Even Arab Christians acknowledge this.
      It has nothing to do with Syriac or any other language. The Qur'an refers to itself as an Arabic Qur'an that can only be understood in Arabic. Perhaps read the Qur'an first before listening to so-called scholars who can't even speak or read Arabic properly.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >We can compare it to pre-Islamic poetry and see the massive difference.
        And just like that, you unknowingly agree with my statement. Pre-Islamic Arabic poetry is very different from the Qu'ran because it actually is Arabic poetry. What Muslims like to call the "poetry" of the Qu'ran are in fact the numerous passages which simply make no sense at all in Arabic unless you choose to understand them from an extremely allegorical or evocative standpoint. As many researchers have found, when you re-translate the text back in Syriac, all of these inconsistencies disappear and the entire text gets its original, literal sense back.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          No, it doesn't at all. Syriac translations in fact make no sense. The ruling for hijab becomes an admonition to tighten your belts. There are many such examples. These are scholars seeking to gain notoriety in their own circles. Not to be taken seriously. Only Arabic speaking scholars even deserve a listen.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >The ruling for hijab becomes an admonition to tighten your belts..
            Indeed it does, and if you had studied the context of this ruling, you would be aware that this makes a LOT more sense in context than the traditional prescription as understood from the Arabic reading, which is basically entirely rootless. Besides, all the supporters of the Syriac hypothesis naturally spoke Arabic, otherwise how exactly were they supposed to translate the text?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            They didn't speak Arabic. They only learned as much as was necessary to get published. Such people often make laughable mistakes.
            The tightening belts makes no sense. That wouldn't contribute to modesty. Nobody even wore belts. The idea of covering their breasts and hair makes perfect sense and is completely in line with Abrahamic tradition.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Typical Muslim behavior. "Noooo you don't understand, nobody but us can truly speak Arabic properly, thus non-Muslims can never study the Qu'ran". How convenient.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You don't have to understand Arabic to follow Islam. But to call yourself a scholar, you definitely do.
            Imagine some person from China explaining Shakespeare to you not speaking a word of English. Would seem farcical.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            You're taking the issue backwards. Nobody is claiming that being Muslim is impossible if you don't speak Arabic - although it does seem strange to follow a religion with a holy text that claims to be untranslateable if you don't understand the language in which it is written. The issue is, are you willing to admit that there are non-Muslims scholars out there who are able to perfectly speak and understand Arabic ?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I'm yet to know about a single one that does. If they do, they should write in Arabic instead of English as proof of their knowledge. Or at least, they should deliver a single lecture in Arabic. Even a single interview. Anything, really.
            I can address these claims on their own, of course. The problem is this usually is a waste of time as a cursory investigations reveals all these theories to be completely ridiculous.
            Secular scholarship is premised on the idea that Islam is NOT true. On that basis, anything they write has to be trying to erode the foundations of Islam. This is why it's especially dangerous to have these half-literate Westerners spreading their drivel. That is the only reason I even bother responding.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Secular scholarship is premised on the idea that Islam is NOT true.
            Secular scholarship is premised on the idea that any and all religions, by definition, are not true. There is no reason at all for islam to be exempt from the hypercritical reasoning used to demolish all other religions' claims at truth. Do not perceive secular scholarship as opposed to islam specifically. If anything, so far, Islam has been mostly left alone by secular scholarship, serious criticism and evidence of nonsensical Muslim claims have only started to surface relatively recently.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Yes, they attack all religions. I'm opposed to secular scholarship on religion in general. Scholarship should be done exclusively by clerics. At the very least, atheists shouldn't be allowed anywhere near religious scholarship. This is like putting someone who doesn't believe in democracy in charge of a democratic country.
            I'd read what a Catholic has to say about Catholicism. Even better if they are an expert in Latin, Greek, Hebrew. If some random atheist comes attacking the Catholic religion, whatever they write goes straight in the trash.
            A religion is accepted on its merits, not its demerits. If someone wishes to attack religion, they should form a philosophy of their own and preach that philosophy. Otherwise, they should stay quiet.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Aaahh, intellectual dishonesty, my favorite Muslim cultural trait.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It's not intellectual dishonesty at all. A religion can only be replaced by another religion. No religion cannot ever be a solution.
            So, why are we putting nihilists determine our moral framework? Would we let an anarchist be in charge of our legal framework?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >No religion cannot ever be a solution.
            So how come an ever-increasing fraction of the population, even in staunchly Muslim countries, manages to do without religion then?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            They aren't doing without religion. Their religion is liberalism developed mainly within a Christian framework. You can preach that religion as much as you want. Compare liberalism to Islam or Christianity all you want. But it has to be a comparison, not an attack. If you simply attack, you will be left with no moral framework at all to operate with, and be plunged into confusion, depression, and anxiety. Without moral certainty and moral confidence, a society collapses. As do individuals without moral certainty and moral confidence.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Aaahh, cynicism, my favorite Western cultural trait.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Third worlders really need to be banned from the internet.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Post hand

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Scholarship should be done exclusively by clerics. At the very least, atheists shouldn't be allowed anywhere near religious scholarship. This is like putting someone who doesn't believe in democracy in charge of a democratic country.
            So only Mormon scholars can study Mormonism? Every non-Mormon scholars has to keep his mouth shut about the fact that it's pretty strange some treasure digger claimed to have found a book written by israelites in America which he translated by looking into a hat?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Yes. And you can accept or reject that based on what they say. They have an incentive to provide enough evidence to convince you it actually did happen. They also have an incentive to not provide any facile evidence. They might censor some things, but those wouldn't be part of the religion anyway seeing as it's censored. So, there's no issue here.
            There can also be debates between Catholics and Mormons. You can be sure these debates will come down to doctrine. That and religious experiences are what we accept or reject religions based on. If I've had a religious experience based on Mormon teachings, no evidence in the world would convince me that they are false.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            every secular study on religion is the same shit. It's because of that we get garbage like "woah did you know christmas is saturnalia"

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >If some random atheist comes attacking the Catholic religion, whatever they write goes straight in the trash.
            If thousands of Muslims can do dawah against other religions and atheism without being experts in any topic, why would atheists not be allowed to attack Islam

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            They shouldn't. The modern dawah movement is about keeping Western Muslims from assimilating. But the truth is they never should have gone in the first place. It's essentially a way of coping.
            On top of this, Western nihilism along with freedom of speech provides a golden opportunity to preach to Westerners. They obviously aren't going to let this be opportunity pass by.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Is Islam so fragile that it cannot stand up to atheist criticism.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It can. And it is. But this does not benefit society. Especially when the arguments are so shallow.
            We could be having a discussion on doctrine right now. On philosophy. On mysticism. On man's connection to the Divine. Instead, we are discussing theories of half-baked academics illiterate in Arabic. What a waste of time!

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >On doctrine
            Ok, you want a doctrinal discussion, answer these questions and we can do it.
            >Which of the first 4 Caliphs we're rightly guided?
            >Is the shahada enough to make someone Muslim?
            >Why do Islamic rules not apply to Muhammad (number of wives, his wives remarrying after he dies)?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > I'm yet to know about a single one that does.
            You clearly don’t know about many things, and yet they exist. As for writing in Arabic, the middle east is an academic backwater, and the language of academia is English. Why would anyone write in a language for people who wouldn’t bother reading it anyway?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >Only Arabic speaking scholars even deserve a listen.
            Scared, potter?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            The sort of arguments are like some Chinese guy not knowing English going
            >Shakespeare actually wrote his works in Gaelic since he uses this one Celtic word. So, he must have been Irish.
            Anyway, have to go now. God bless you and guide you and me and the rest of Oyish to the truth.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            How about you address the content of the arguments made by the scholars, rather than base your argument on their supposed lack of proficiency in Arabic.
            I've no dog in this race, but just so you know: it's not a good look.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >The poetry in the Qur'an is beyond anything I have ever read or will read. We can compare it to pre-Islamic poetry and see the massive difference. Even Arab Christians acknowledge this.
        The early parts of the Quran are clearly written in saj, rhymed poetry which was used by Arab soothsayers. As Angelika Neuwirth writes
        >The early short sūras are styled in a kind of rhymed prose, labelled saj‘, known as the medium of the ancient Arabian soothsayers (kahana, sing. kāhin). Saj‘ is a particularly succinct rhythmic diction where single phrases are marked by prose-rhyme, fāṣila. This pattern of phonetic correspondence between the verse endings is not only looser than poetic rhyme (qāfiya) but also more flexible, thus allowing semantically related verses to be bracketed by a rhyme of their own and clearly distinct verse-groups be marked off. The highly sophisticated phonetic structures by this style have been evaluated by Michael Sells. Though the saj‘ style gave way at a later stage of qur’ānic development to a more smoothly flowing prose allowing for complex periods to form a single verse, closed by only a phonetically stereotypical rhyming syllable, the unit of the verse as the smallest compositional entity is an essential element of qur’ānic literary structure.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          She is simply looking for the genre it is the most similar to. Obviously, she can't posit a divine source. That'd get her kicked out of the academy.
          Also, only share Arabic sources with me. I've seen many such scholars cannot even understand Arabic or speak it properly. I would no more take them seriously than you would a scholar of Catholicism who doesn't understand Latin. Even then, at least the Bible is translatable. The Qur'an even according to itself is untranslatable.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >She is simply looking for the genre it is the most similar to. Obviously, she can't posit a divine source. That'd get her kicked out of the academy.
            lmao the absolute cope. Do you really think saying the Quran doesn't fall into a specific genre would get you kicked out of academia. This is pretty much a standard opinion among scholars. Alan Jones says the same thing and he's a lecturer and teacher of Arabic at Oxford University

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            It wouldn't get you kicked out. It just wouldn't be interesting.
            That wasn't my point anyway. My point is that secular scholars are setting out to look for similarities. So, even if they find a superficial similarity, that is what they will go with. On top of this, there's the lack of fluency in Arabic which makes things worse.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Alan Jones translated the entire Quran. If he can't understands Arabic then I only have to conclude that the language can only be understood by native speakers and no one can really learn it.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            That doesn't mean anything. I know people who translate based on other translations. If this man has written or spoken in Arabic, I can judge him. Otherwise, he's automatically disqualified from being a person of knowledge. Who would dare lecture a rabbi not knowing Hebrew?

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            >It wouldn't get you kicked out. It just wouldn't be interesting.
            >That'd get her kicked out of the academy.

            disgusting mud

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            > That'd get her kicked out of the academy.
            Uh, no, plenty of muslims in academia. She almost certainly doesn’t posit a divine origin because she doesn’t believe in it. Tell me, what makes you believe the Koran to have a divine origin, beyond being raised to believe that, and the book saying it has?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >The Qur'an refers to itself as an Arabic Qur'an that can only be understood in Arabic.
        So Islam is not universal? Is Allah just too dumb to make a holy book that can translate well into multiple languages, or otherwise reveal he Quran to different prophets in different languages? Why not reveal the Quran to Muhammad in multiple languages, similar to how the Quran has multiple readings?
        >The Quran is unchanging and holy, revealing it it multiple languages would ruin it.
        So why is there a verse sura 111 dedicated to shitting on a couple Muhammad knew? Why is there a verse banning Muhammad's wives from remarrying after death? It seems like these are entirely contextual to Muhammad's time and could be updated with different prophets.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Because those incidents serve as examples of what not to do. What not to be like. The circumstances of their revelation are well known. Human incidents stick better to our human minds.
          As for multiple languages, making it in one language is better. This has never been a barrier for any devoted Muslims. There are thousands of scholars who are not Arab. It's just that they bothered learning Arabic in depth as they saw it as a religious duty, unlike Western scholars who don't.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            There is no context in the Quran for sura 111, it give no instructions to avoid their fate. It is one of the shortest suras in the Quran.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        > The poetry in the Qur'an is beyond anything I have ever read or will read.
        You’ve been brought up believing that, and you almost certainly believe that Allah will fry you if you say otherwise, so your opinion is pretty much worthless. I can say that Paradise Lost is the highest form of the English Language, but to suggest that it is divinely inspired is ludicrous. Same with the Koran

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >How can the Quran be an eternal text when it contains loanwords from other languages such as Greek, Ethiopic and Syriac (which even Muslim scholars admit)?
    Because it isn't an eternal text, or divinely revealed, and because Mohammed was a barely literate conman.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >Quran was not eternal but written at a specific time
    The Platonic form of the Quran is eternal. The physical one had to be adapted to the [Current_Time] so that it's understandeable. None would understand the Quran in its age if it were talking of airplanes and nukes and aliens.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      So the Quran of Muhammad can be disregarded because it is not an eternal version, and we should wait for another prophet to give us an updated Quran.

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