Questioner: Peace be upon you. What I wanted to know is, when we begin to learn our namaz, why do we first learn them in Arabic, not in English?
Huzoor (rh): Because Arabic is the form of prayer in which the holy founder of Islam performed it. It is original, because the Qur’an was revealed in Arabic, because the message revealed to us by God was in Arabic. And you know, in translations, the original meaning is always not entirely and properly conveyed. Part of it is missed, and part of it is also likely to be distorted. So it is always safe to remember the prayer in the original words. Otherwise, from translation after translation after translation, we may start to deviate from the original message into something completely new. That tragedy has happened to the Bible itself, because from early translations it was re-translated and re-translated, and now the scholars are discovering that they have made many mistakes in that historical process. So to preserve the original language is highly important for the preservation of the message. Do you understand?
Questioner: yes
