I don't exactly remember how this moment of genius came to me, but I know it happened at some point within the last academic year. This post will mainly appeal to those readers with origins from the subcontinent and other close by areas (ie. all you pakis, darkies, and banglas - in geographical order (BTW don't think I'm racist, it's OK, I'm one of them:))), so I apologise if you can't relate to it, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless. So over here in England, well in London anyway (I gotta stop assuming that London is representative of the whole of England, it really isn't... the rest of the country pretty much sucks), when we just start school as little cute Muslims and Muslimahs, we normally start learning the Qur'an too. We normally go after school, or during the weekends, to the local masjid, a madrassa, or (as in my case) one of the kids' house where an imam (we'd call him molvi sahib) would come and teach us. Maybe I'll write about that in detail in another post, but that isn't really what this one is about (I actually learnt from a woman, but that's besides). So anyway, now that I'm older and wiser (and went from adorable to ahem dashingly handsome), I've come across a lot more books and other copies of the Qur'an besides those that we (Asians) have at home. It didn't hit me at first, but over time I think it just came to me. And I'm sorry to say it. I'm sorry to have to be the one to break it to you. But we've (Asians) been duped. We've been duped hard. OK so it's bad enough that when people ask us if we know Arabic we have to settle with saying that we can only read it (and I sheepishly say I can write it, too) and don't know what we're actually saying. But here's the newsflash: WE CAN'T EVEN READ IT. WE CAN'T READ ARABIC. All those copies of the Qur'an you have at home... they're not in Arabic! They're in URDU!! That's right, Urdu. Urdu Urdu Urdu. Think about it.. Remember those concurrent Urdu classes you took (which I never payed attention in, so I can't even do anything with that language), you ever wondered why the writing looked exactly the same? That's because it's the same script! OK, so they are very similar. Urdu contains all the same letters, with about 6 more I think (like I said, I'm no expert). But still, when we learnt how to read it, we were told all the Urdu names for the vowels. We weren't told that this is a fatha or that's a dumma. It was this is a pesh and that's a zabar. Even in terms of pronounciation, unless we learnt at the masjid or with a real imam (I didn't), we most of the time were given Urdu pronounciations. So 'ayn was just a norm alif sound, and dhaal was a za sound. I mean, talk about lazy! Like in Arabic, normally the vowels are ommitted in Urdu sentences. And it's normally written a lot more curly and flowery (which I think makes it a lot more confusing... BTW I've realised I use brackets wayy too much). I think things are changing these days, although I don't have any kids I can check that with, but it seems in general a lot of things like that are changing for the better now... AFTER my generation. Typical. Seriously though, go and pick up a Qur'an now. A Qur'an printed from an Arab country, and I guarantee you that at some points you'll just stop and errr for a few seconds. And I've got another one for you. Pick up a copy that has a transliteration in it. Go to surah 93, ad-Duha. How is it spelt? How is it spelt?? It says az-Zuha right!!! I KNOWWW! How messed up is that? I mean, ok, if you pronounce dhaal with a za it's forgivable, it's accpeted. But the emphatic daad (or duaad as we were taught) being pronounce as a za. Come onnn, that just ain't happening. That's not cool. You can't have us pronouncing it so obviously incorrect, that just defeats the whole purpose.
The point of this agonisingly long and brackets-filled post: Oi! Asians! Go learn your whole Arabic alphabet again, 'cos we don't know it! We don't even know the Urdu one.. we're missing about 6 letters :P.
(InshaAllah at some point I'll include a post on commonly mispronounced letters, although don't expect me to provide all the tajweed rules, I ain't that good...yet............................. inshaAllah :)).
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