Islamization of Linguistics

Abstract

I. NON-ISLAMIC LINGUISTICS UNDER RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES Linguistics has been struggling under the stranglehold of religious beliefs, superstitions, and ethnocentrism for centuries. The role and nature of human languages was perceived through the worldview preached by various religions. There have been claims for the divine origin of certain languages, conferring a special status on their speakers. Greeks, for example, believed that their language was superior to all other languages. It was the language spoken by the Olympian gods. Theirs was the only language with regularity, rules, and meaning; all other languages were arbitrary and meaningless, burburoi, whence the modern English word “barbarian.” In India, where Panini (sixth century B.C.E.) wrote the first comprehensive grammar of a human language, Sanskrit was believed to be the language of gods and worthy to be studied and used by the high caste of Brahmans only. The low-caste Hindus could not listen to the Sanskrit verses from the holy scriptures, and severe punishments were prescribed for such sacrilegious acts. As late as 1912, the Muslim linguist, Mohammad Shahidullah, was denied admission to the master’s course in Sanskrit at the University of Calcutta. The Hindu professors of Sanskrit were shqcked at the possibility that a Muslim could be allowed to read and hence defile the Vedas, the holy scriptures of Hindus. They bitterly opposed his admission. In the Judaeo-Christian world, too, similar unscientific views persisted until recently. Hebrew was God‘s own language, the language spoken in the heavens, the first language spoken on the earth and therefore the mother of ...