"Ummi": illiterate or gentile?
- From: "Ayman" <drayman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 17:13:02 -0500
Vladimir Youssef Hattaat wrote:
Read the following verses in two ways........
[2.78] And there are among THEM ___gentiles / illiterates___ who know
not the Book but only lies, and they do but conjecture.
002.078
YUSUFALI: And there are among them illiterates, who know not the Book,
but (see therein their own) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture.
PICKTHAL: Among them are unlettered folk who know the Scripture not
except from hearsay. They but guess.
SHAKIR: And there are among them illiterates who know not the Book but
only lies, and they do but conjecture.
Had you stopped to think about who in the previous passages "them" in
2:78 refers to, then you wouldn't have made been so confused. You are
not entirely alone in such confusion and in fact the majority of Muslims
are similarly confused about the meaning of the Arabic word "ummi".
Starting in 2:40, the passages are talking about Bani Israel. So the
proposition "them" refers to none other than some people from Bani
Israel. Since Bani Israel are not gentiles so this completely rules out
the meaning of gentiles.
Similarly, 62:2 completely rules out that the meaning of "ummi" is
illiterate since certainly not all of the people of the prophet could
have been illiterate. Thus, both of the popular meanings that you
present are invalid.
Now Arabs think the word must be coming from the word for "mother",
which is "umm", so they would say "ummi means one who stayed the same
since he came from his mother, i.e. learned nothing, maybe somethings
but definitely not how to read and write".
I have a better theory.
The word was widely in use by Arab Jews, and probably an Arabic
rendering of the Hebrew word "goyim" which means "gentiles", since
Arabic lacks 'g' and 'o'.
Muhamad kept hearing the word being used by them and didnt really
understand.
He made the contrast between "the people of the book" and the "ummi
people".
And he figured it must either mean "those who were not given a book" ??
And later Muslims decided it must mean "illiterate", because they
couldnt make sense of the word either, and maybe they figured that way
Islam sounds more believeable because who could suspect of Muhamad
producing the Koran if he was illiterate, right?
You actually inadvertently negate that the prophet made up the great
reading/"quran" since it is unlikely that he would have used a word that
he doesn't know to describe himself and his own people. This just shows
that you have an agenda other than making sound theories and seeking the
truth in a logical manner.
The word "ummi" is actually closely related to the word "ummat", which
means general public/populace/masses. In order to understand the word,
we need to look at the great reading/"quran" and pre-quranic
archeological evidence. For example, another passage that sheds light on
this important word is in 16:103:
16:103. And indeed We know that they say: "It is but a human that is
teaching him." The language of the one they falsely attribute to is
non-Arabic, while this is a clarifying Arabic language.
The sign in verse 16:103 refutes the statement "It is but a human that
is teaching him" (which sounds similar to what you are conjecturing) by
saying that the language of such human religious teachings is
non-Arabic, while the great reading is in Arabic. The sign in 16:103
indicates that at the time the great reading was revealed there was
another non-Arabic language that was used for "religious" teachings and
that Arabic was not used for "religious" matters.
We know from inscriptions and manuscripts from the time of the prophet
that if a Jew wanted to learn religious matters, they would be taught in
Hebrew. If a Christian wanted to learn religious matters, they would be
taught in Aramaic or Greek. If a pagan wanted to learn about his
forefathers' Nabataean idols, he would be taught in Nabataean Aramaic.
All those languages are Western Semitic languages that do not even come
from the same branch as Arabic (Arabic descended from Safaitic and other
Southern Semitic languages). So what 16:103 is saying is confirmed by
physical archeological evidence.
This explains why Arab Ghassanids churches bear religious inscriptions
in Greek despite the strong Arab sense of identity that the Ghassanids
possessed. Interestingly, some Arabic inscriptions were found on
recycled rocks reused to build the church at Umm Al-Rasas in Northern
Arabia. The rocks are inscribed in Arabic graffiti with Arab people
names. This suggests that the church was built in an area where Arabs
lived and that it was catering to Arab parishioners. Despite the
parishioners being Arab, as we saw earlier the religious inscriptions
were foreign.
Even more interestingly, there are two leaves of parchment bearing a
part of the Septuagint text of Psalm 78 (LXX, 77) with an Arabic
explanation in Greek transliteration. The fragment was first published
in Violet B. Ein zweisprachiges Psalmfragment aus Damascus and was
recently restudied by M.C.A. Macdonald who has demonstrated that it
dates to the pre-Islamic period.
Now the question is why is the text a Greek transliteration of Arabic?
Clearly two deductions can be made:
1. The clergy doing the reading knows Greek (since it is in Greek
letters).
2. The audience for the explanation is Arabic speakers.
In all likelihood, this parchment was used in sermons to pre-quranic
Arab parishioners. Hence, the bilingual Greek speaking clergy put
footnotes in Arabic transliteration so that they can use it to explain
to Arab listeners who didn't speak the "sacred" Greek religious Lingua
Franca. This of course doesn't mean that they are generally
"illiterate". They were unable to understand Greek in the same way that
most 14th century English commoners were illiterate in Latin and yet
they were forced to listen to ceremonies in a language that they didn't
understand. This doesn't mean that they generally didn't understand any
language.
Throughout history, one of the ways that the religious clergy maintained
control over the common people has been to erect a language barrier.
This was the case for English until the 14th century when the language
of religion in England was Latin. Change was brought about by the death
of over half of the Latin-speaking clergy during the plague of 1348-54
because they lived in close quarters at monasteries. English speaking
commoners replaced these clergy and English services became widespread.
Shortly thereafter, English translations of the Bible started to appear
and not long afterwards, reformers, such as Protestants, began to
challenge the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
Another key word in 2:78 is the Arabic word "amany". According to the
Classical Lexicon of Lisan Al-Arab, "not knowing the book except
"amany"" in 2:78 means "except recitation". Lisan Al-Arab further
explains that Arabs used the expression "someone who "yatamana"" to mean
"when someone said what he doesn't understand". This would be the case
if you were a non-Latin speaker who was forced to recite the Bible in
Latin without understanding it. This is also the case with most Muslims
today who don't understand Arabic and yet recite the great reading like
a parrot without understanding it.
Thus considering all the evidence from the great reading, from Classical
Arabic Lexicons and from pre-quranic inscriptions and manuscripts, the
following meanings of "ummi" converge:
1. Is illiterate in the religious language of the elite, which is the
language of the previous books.
2. Is from the common people ("ummat").
Thus, it can then be seen that the great reading is talking about two
groups. On the one hand, the clergy and religious/political elite who
understand the language of the previous books (people of the book) and
on the other hand the common people who don't understand the language of
the previous books ("ummiyoon"). The later can be Christians, Jews,
pagans, etc. who spoke Arabic as a kind of street language of the common
people. So this was not a religious division but was more of a social
division.
According to 59:2, "people of the book" lived in fortified castles so
this further confirms that they were not average people but
political/religious elite. The advent of the great reading eliminated
the differences between those two groups and empowered the common people
by bridging the language barrier. This can be seen in the fact that
unlike Christianity and Judaism, the great reading doesn't promote a
clergy class or any kind of an organized church. Hence, you never hear
of the words Sheikh, Mullah, Mufti, or other so-called Islamic religious
roles in the great reading. Each individual is solely responsible for
his or her own salvation.
This has significant implications on how one must properly read and
understand the great reading. Any words with religious connotations
become immediately suspect since the language itself didn't have that
purpose. Also, as typical of common people street talk, the great
reading is full of idiomatic expressions to convey its ideas. When
reading this book the proper way from a pre-quranic common Arab citizen
perspective, one can see that this book is surprisingly secular and easy
to understand.
As theocracies emerged and political divisions turned into sects,
gradually in the span of a few hundred years after the revelation of the
great reading, Classical Arabic has been formalized and turned 180
degrees into an "elite" religious language and it stopped being the
common people language that it was. It is not surprising that at the
same time, the sectarian clergy regained control over the minds of
people. We see the effect of this in your confusion and the confusion of
most Muslims about even the simple word "ummi".
Peace on who followed the guidance,
Ayman
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