Free the Arabic Language from the Shackles of Islam
Many people take pride in the beauty and eloquence of the Arabic language, believing it to be sacred because it is “the language of God, the language of angels, and the language of paradise.” Some even consider Arabic to be superior to all other languages, placing it on an unattainable pedestal. This false, dangerous, and discriminatory belief was, on one hand, a direct reason for the initial development of Arabic during the early days of Islam, when it was linguistically and structurally behind other languages at the time. On the other hand, this belief also stagnated the language, preventing it from evolving and freeing itself from religious terminology, which has become an obstacle to free expression, allowing Islam to completely dominate and control it.
Pre-Islamic Arabic: The Language of the Free
If we go back to pre-Islamic history, we find that Arabic was the language of free people in the Arabian Peninsula, expressing the simple life of the desert dwellers, far from the complex ideologies of other civilizations. It was a flexible and diverse language, used to express love, hatred, war, peace, romance, sexuality, criticism, and pride. It was not bound by strict linguistic rules but instead governed by musicality and poetic flow, allowing for natural creativity and artistic expression. This made it flourish in poetry and verse, despite its grammatical and orthographic limitations.
Speakers of Arabic were not bound by rigid grammatical structures, enjoying the freedom to alter and improvise in their speech. As a result, many Arabic dialects developed independently, some so distinct that they seemed like completely different languages. The original Arabic language was free, granting its speakers a spontaneous and unrestricted means of expression—a free bird soaring over the barren desert.
How Islam Took Over the Arabic Language
Before Islam, Arabic lacked dots and diacritics, consisting of only 22 letters. Learning the language was an inherited, natural process, much like any spoken dialect, shaped organically by society.
But with the emergence of Islam, the language was forcibly taken over, and deliberate changes were made to suit Islamic doctrine. This happened to many languages that were co-opted by religions and ideologies, just as Latin was once monopolized by the Church before later regaining its independence. However, Arabic never broke free from Islam’s grip, remaining frozen within religious constraints to this day.
In contrast, other languages liberated themselves from religious influence, such as Hebrew, which was originally a Jewish religious language, but later evolved into a modern, secular language. Meanwhile, Arabic remains confined within Islam, preventing its full development and restricting its usage to religious discourse.
The Erasure of Dialects and Linguistic Diversity
After Islam took control of Arabic, it stripped it of its freedom, erasing any pre-Islamic linguistic achievements that did not align with Islamic teachings. Even pre-Islamic poetry was manipulated, as Taha Hussein revealed in his book On Pre-Islamic Poetry, where he explained how entire segments of literary history were falsified to fit the Islamic narrative.
Additionally, Islam imposed the Quraysh dialect as the “standard Arabic language,” eliminating all other dialects. In effect, the entire Arabic language was reshaped to match the speech patterns of one man—Muhammad. Imagine taking one person’s way of speaking, extracting grammatical rules from it, and forcing an entire civilization to speak and write in that exact way—this is precisely what happened with Arabic under Islam.
Thus, Islam wiped out all pre-existing Arabic dialects, leaving only Muhammad’s dialect, branding it “classical Arabic” and falsely promoting it as the one true Arabic language. This way, Islam completely monopolized the language, ensuring that it only served Islamic doctrine.
People Rebelled Against “Islamic Arabic”
Despite these restrictions, Arab societies resisted linguistic oppression, creating spoken dialects used in daily life, escaping the suffocating grip of standard Arabic. The evolution of colloquial dialects in the Arab world was a natural rebellion against the authoritarianism of religious Arabic.
Similarly, some modern intellectuals and writers defied religious constraints and used Arabic to challenge Islamic teachings in various fields. However, they faced severe obstacles in publishing their works, were harassed and prosecuted, and many were accused of blasphemy and treason. As a result, many writers abandoned Arabic altogether, opting to write in foreign languages to escape religious censorship.
Liberating the Arabic Language is Now a Necessity
If we want Arabic to survive, we must liberate it from Islam—otherwise, it will suffer the same fate as Latin, becoming a dead language used only in religious contexts. Today, we see more intellectuals abandoning Arabic due to its religious constraints, preferring languages that allow them to express themselves freely.
Muslims must understand that Arabic is not Islam’s property—it is a human language that belongs to everyone. Islam has no right to monopolize it, just as it has no right to control people’s lives, thoughts, or cultures.
Final Message: Free Arabic from Islam’s Shackles
It is time to liberate Arabic from Islam’s grip and allow it to evolve into a modern and open language, just like any other language. We must remove the religious chains that confine it and make it a tool for free expression in all fields, instead of restricting it to religious discourse.
We must reject the illusion of Arabic’s sacredness and recognize that it is just a language like any other—subject to change, evolution, and modernization. It should not be a prison for thought or a barrier to progress.
At the end of the day, Arabic does not belong to Islam—it belongs to humanity.
Free it from religious oppression, just as we must free the Arab mind from intellectual stagnation and dogmatic control.
