Learning Arabic

An Arabic class was established a week ago at the Westall mosque.It was surprising to me to learn that many friends of mine were interested to learn Arabic. The course is held every Tuesday and Thursday nights after Maghrib prayer. They believe that Arabic is the main tool to understand the religious corpus of Islam. It is almost impossible to better understand the deep of Islamic teachings without an adequate comprehension of Arabic. This likes diving into the bottom of the sea without vital equipments. Linguistically, we cannot see and touch the beauty and the attractiveness of the Qur'an and Hadits if we merely devour translated books.

Due to the scarcity of the resources here in Melbourne, I was surfing through the Internet. Luckily, I found it very helpful and simple, "Al-Arabiya bayna Yadayk" (the Arabic between Your Two Hands) and "Durus al-Arabiyah" (Arabic Lessons). The books are specifically published for non Arabic speaking students. Although the books cannot allude their Arabicness to some extent, I recommend you to download them from these sites: http://www.dhikrullah.com/egypt/?tag=bayna-yadayk http://www.kalamullah.com/learning-arabic.html I am in a hope that there are many people who very much concern with the development of this language. I am personally dismayed by the fact that many Muslims seem not to be interested to learn Arabic let alone the young generations of Arabs who prefer to show off their non-Arabic languages. It has been obvious that the standard Arabic is generally only a language of khutbah (formal speech) and news report while the Arabs prefer to speak 'amiyah. I am afraid in the years to come we are going to see the decline of interest among Muslims in this "jannah" heavenly chosen language. It has been true in Indonesian Madrasa where Arabic is the least appealing subject to the students.