Going Further with the Other - Non-Semitic Influences in Semitic Text

Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Sep 15, 2020 at 00:08

What we have exchanged for the past couple of months in the period of malaise that is the COVID-19 epidemiological worst-case scenario nightmare of the world, has been, as was intimated before, enlightening. Years of pouring through manuscript after manuscript and doctoral dissertations provided a dizzying amount of exegetical and hermeneutical descriptions of countless versions of just what the modern Christian was supposed to understand in order to do what was considered right and appropriate within the recognized Christian community, both mainline, evangelical, and charismatic.
Ultimately, getting to the heart of the message was being strained and hard to get past all the spiritual roadblocks, each rivulet of belief being dried up for the lack of true spiritual sustenance. Going back to the original source began to appear as the only way to clear up the muddy waters of the Jordan, so to speak. In the doubling down of the question of why the Quran was so easily accepted as a replacement of the 'extant' Judeo-Christian scripture available, it became apparent that translations of the Hebrew Holy Writ were not necessarily as holy to some as the Gospel message was not being handled spiritually correct.
Thus, the writings of the Quran were able to be introduced as a replacement theological convention, that with improper understanding of the Hebrew scripture, inferences of defective writings could be entertained. In you providing the key of how that occurred, in trying to see which version of the Islamic tenets were to be analyzed for tracing how the Hebrew scripture was appropriated, it as necessary to understand how the 'Arabic' understanding is just as confusing as an English translation, which many scholars say is an impossible task. Since Islam had a tradition of absorbing cultures they entered, so to we read of non-Arabic words being introduced into the Arabic vernacular, just as you have inferred.
Islam, as you have inferred also, and as others have said as well, is 'stuck in 7th Century Arabia;' yet if true, why does the Arabic influences seem to get stuck with deciding which Final Imam is the average Muslim waiting for to show modern Islam which way is the true way? It seems, as you have alluded to, that ancient Persian influences are still ingrained and many of the hadiths seem to support that. This appears to be one of the serious problems the world is facing; that Islam does seem to have contradictions; that an organized path to the ummah is still outstanding. Israel making a peace agreement with the UAE, a decidedly Arabic influenced society, cannot be a source of unity for that.
So, the conclusion for the moment is as you have determined, that in the absence of a conformed text, there is nothing simple in Islam.

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