Monday, April 28, 2008

Arabic Language: Kill or Cure?!

By:
Muslim




Hundreds of years ago, thousands of European and Asian students pilgrimaged Baghdad, Damascus and other Muslim mega cities of the Islamic Golden Era. Basically, they had to learn Arabic language to gain from the main sources of knowledge those days i.e. Arabic Libraries. What brought this fascinating scenery to my mind today was an email I received from the editor of the Arabic version of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Few weeks back, I was practicing my best hobby, surfing Wikipedia.com pages. I happened to read that the Arabic version of Wikipedia contains about 57,000+ articles only! This was a big shock to me!

The English version celebrated lately, a collection of more than 2,000,000 articles. However, this was not the reason of my shock! What shocked me most was the note that the Hebrew version of Wikipedia.com contained more than 75,000+ articles. This prompted me to email the Arabic version editors to ask about the issue. Well, to me, it’s an issue. A big one actually!

Another shock came in when I knew that Wikipedia Arabic has more editors than the Hebrew one! Thank God all these shocks haven’t come all at a time! else I won't be typing these words now!

What on earth is wrong with us? What’s wrong with Arabs? We are more than 22 states, with over 300,000,000 in population, and yet, we can’t beat others even in this one! Writing articles!

I happened to hear once that the amount of annual book publication in the Arab World is about the same amount of publications in Spain alone!
Honestly, I pray this info is wrong!

9 comments:

  1. Well, it seems I am the first arab reader of your article which is written in English. It will be good if you write in Arabic and increase the number of articles in wikipedia. Moreover, I tried a lot before in the Arab community in the IT related stuff. Unfortunately, they are sick community. Good luck

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  2. Thanks dear shuaib for stopping by my article. well, a lot of efforts need to be done to uphold the position of our great language, Arabic. this article is jsut a tinny light in an ocean of darkness!

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  3. I enjoyed reading this chapter. With regards to the number of articles published in Wikipedia, I'm not surprised if English outnumbered all other languages since it's the most dominant language in the world. However it is unfair to judge Arabs as not being competitive in writing articles. Look at China, they have 1.3 billion population but has only 174,000 articles, compared to Japan where the population is 127 million but has more than 300,000 articles in Wikipedia. Are Chinese people not competitive?

    If you are to compare Arabic and Hebrew in Wikipedia, then it does make sense to me as far as politics is concern. Btw, I'm not Arab. I do encourage you to keep on writing and I wish you all the best.

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  4. First of all it is my pleasure to be one the first who check your great website, may Allah reward you for it, sometimes I feel jealous of you I hope if I could have the same potential for our religion that you have and I ask Allah to give it to me and increase the one that you have. Regarding to the topic what we can do now is to prepare ourselves to be one of the people who can return back our golden era, I know it seems impossible nowadays, however if we have the believe and the faith I can swear we can do it...

    May Allah bless you Muslim

    Ahmed Banafa

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  5. Akum ..
    first of all , Nice blog brother Muslim, and very good try,

    secondly, It's really sad to hear these informations about the Arabs, but I think the problem is with us as Arabs, since we left the Qur'an behind our backs, and moreover we cling with the worst customs of the west, the problem with us because they(the west) are planning and we are playing, they are serious and we are still joking, and by the way to shock you again with some informations that say: "The Arab World has only 600 research center in various fields, while "Israel" alone has more than this number of research centers, and sorry to shock you and to tell you that "Israel" has tens of research center which is specialized in studying the Islamic history and especially the period of Salahuddin Al-Ayyubi in order not to face a second Salahuddin .. ya Allah, how many research center we have that study the zionist country in order to just know why we are unable to defeat it ???!!!!!!

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  6. Asalam alaikum

    first of all congrats bro. for making a step forward by making this amazing blog, and we will tray our best to make it alive insha allah.

    if i comment about the article, this issue between arabs and israelli wern't something started recently but it was a centries back, and unfortunately we took it in a political dimension only. while the jews tried from decades to lead the arabic world and muslims in general in every aspect that leads to progress.

    modernization which the process that human can control in its environment is still somthing that west belives not elligible for most of muslim countries. so if your counterpart can see you as a treat, would you ever think that they can allow for you to share the progress of developement with them?

    im now reading a book which called
    ON THE AGENDA which talks about the current issues and conflicts in U.S. foriegn policy, i started yesterday the middle east chapter, and i really got shocked the way even the west press confident enough to write about how U.S. cheated the arabs and how they helped their stronges allies(israel) to take over the power of the middle east.

    lastly, the war against arabs and muslims is endless, and every jews youth training his/herself to be the successor of his elders to make sure israel will be ahead. so the million worth question what is the stand of our arab and muslim youth about this issue?

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  7. Dear Ahmad, Izat, Abu Sayyaf, Faysal and Shuaib,

    Thanks for your contributions and may Allah grant all of us the motivation to uphold the task of spreading truth and justice in the Muslim world.

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  8. muslim, i tried to contact you by many different means but nothing could fullfil my wish till i find this cite. how are you?? and how the life is going in malysia.i wish you luck muslim.

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  9. i want to add more thing, actually i'm admired by your effots regard increasing the conscious in mslim community and discovering what is behind. bilal fannoun/Qatar

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