Our Ramadan is beautiful, though, Layla. Why shouldn’t it be since our hearts are still alive despite all that’s happened since your time? Yes, it’s true we’re no longer the lords of the world. Yes, it’s true we are scattered into over fifty different countries. But our hearts are one because our God is One.
Unfortunately, we no longer speak the same tongue, the beautiful Arabic in which you spoke with your family and with your lover. We now use that Arabic –that we call Classical Arabic– only at school, at mosque and in the Administration. Even in the media people do not always speak in that beautiful Arabic. In my country, Morocco, there’s at least a magazine fully published in Moroccan Arabic. And you have Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, and everybody has his own Arabic. If only we all knew the original Arabic in which the Koran was revealed! You needn’t wonder at it, since most of us have never been to school, for only at school can one learn the Arabic which you learnt at home as your mother-tongue. Now that Arabic is nobody’s mother-tongue anymore. That’s why most of us simply don’t know the Koran. And most of those of us who do read the Koran don’t understand it the way you and your people did. So the Koran has had little impact on our lives for a long time now. Even now we only know some of it through our centuries-long customs and traditions. And that’s one of the two most salient causes of our decline.
Yet, this tenuous connection with the Koran is far from being the only cause of our decline. The second biggest cause, you know, is the struggle for power. Iraq, and you know what Iraq was like, is now in a mess because people there are still fighting each other for power. It’s the same old greed for authority, the same old love of the throne, the same old craziness for worldly glory. Now we are so many countries because of that craziness. Each country has its own Arabic, its own “caliph”, its own army, its own frontiers.
And yet we are all one because God is One. We all read the same Koran. We go to mosque. We fast and break the fast with the same pleasure. And of that I’ll tell you more, Inshallah.
Good night, Layla!
Unfortunately, we no longer speak the same tongue, the beautiful Arabic in which you spoke with your family and with your lover. We now use that Arabic –that we call Classical Arabic– only at school, at mosque and in the Administration. Even in the media people do not always speak in that beautiful Arabic. In my country, Morocco, there’s at least a magazine fully published in Moroccan Arabic. And you have Algerian Arabic, Libyan Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Syrian Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, and everybody has his own Arabic. If only we all knew the original Arabic in which the Koran was revealed! You needn’t wonder at it, since most of us have never been to school, for only at school can one learn the Arabic which you learnt at home as your mother-tongue. Now that Arabic is nobody’s mother-tongue anymore. That’s why most of us simply don’t know the Koran. And most of those of us who do read the Koran don’t understand it the way you and your people did. So the Koran has had little impact on our lives for a long time now. Even now we only know some of it through our centuries-long customs and traditions. And that’s one of the two most salient causes of our decline.
Yet, this tenuous connection with the Koran is far from being the only cause of our decline. The second biggest cause, you know, is the struggle for power. Iraq, and you know what Iraq was like, is now in a mess because people there are still fighting each other for power. It’s the same old greed for authority, the same old love of the throne, the same old craziness for worldly glory. Now we are so many countries because of that craziness. Each country has its own Arabic, its own “caliph”, its own army, its own frontiers.
And yet we are all one because God is One. We all read the same Koran. We go to mosque. We fast and break the fast with the same pleasure. And of that I’ll tell you more, Inshallah.
Good night, Layla!
