When the Rot Sets In

When the Rot Sets In

1985 9 September 16-17 When the Rot Sets In (493) A “Maulvi” from Afghanistan went on pilgrimage to Mecca in 1980. On his return he complained to some friends about how corrupted the Arabic language had become. As an example, he cited the word “Thalatha”, which means three. The word, in Afghanistan and other Asian countries, is pronounced “Salasa”. This is a corrupted form of the original Arabic pronounciation which has developed in Asian countries because people there have difficulty pronouncing the letter “Tha” which occurs twice in the word “Thalatha”: Asians have now become so accustomed to saying “Salasa” instead of “Thalatha” that they have come to think that their pronunciation is the correct one. The Arabs, they say, do not know how to speak their own language. So it was with this Maulvi. “Everyone there says ‘Thalatha’ instead of ‘Salasa,” he complained.

In this case it is the Asians, not the Arabs, who are guilty of semantic corruption. But Asians have become so used to their version of the letter “Tha” that is the Arabs they accuse of pronouncing it wrongly. “Sa” instead of “Tha” and “Salasa” instead of “Thalatha” have been passed down from one generation to the next for so many centuries that those who have inherited this method of pronouncing the letter cannot conceive of it being wrong. But it is.

Exactly the same thing has happened with religion. The prophet of Islam left his followers with an authentic divine scripture and a fully documented account of his life and teachings. After a time, however, people began to read things into the Book of God that were not there; they adopted customs which they traced to the prophet although in fact he had never practiced them; they developed creeds and dogmas which they claimed were an integral part of Islam, but which really had nothing to do with the religion revealed to the holy Prophet.

After a time these innovations became so firmly established in the mass mentality that whenever a person came to revive the true religion of Islam, and sought to bring people back to the path laid out by the Qur’an and the Prophet, he was condemned as trying to set up a new religion. In fact it is the religion they have invented that is new, for it has come into being – in the name of Islam – after the Prophet established the true Islamic way. But centuries have passed and they have come to think of their new religion as the old, original one; anyone who preaches the true, authentic, old religion of Islam is accused of inventing a “new” religion.

This is the same accusation as people in ancient times used to make against their prophets:

“We never heard of this in the former faith. It is nothing but a false invention” (Qur’an, 38:7).

But it was their accusation that was false, not message of the Prophets. For each prophet taught the same message as that of the Prophets who passed before him.