Can I Read the Quran in My Mother Tongue, Persian?

31 May, 2020

Q Dear Sir, my mother tongue is Persian. Why should I read the Quran in Arabic? In my country 90 % of population are illiterate, which means they are not able to read in their own language. How can they read the Quran in Arabic? Ninety-five percent of the population doesn't even know what is in the Quran. They are listening to the recitation of the Holy Book without knowing what they are listening to. It would be much simpler for me to read the Quran in Persian and then in Arabic.

Answer

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

In this fatwa:

You can read the Quran in Persian, but you must try to read the Quran in Arabic and, in sha’ Allah, after some time, you will learn to understand some of the meanings in Arabic.

In his response to the question, Dr. `Abdel-Fattaah Idrees, Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University, states:

The Glorious Quran is the miracle revealed by Allah to His Messenger Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) in the language of his people, the Arabs, who were the masters of the Arabic language.

Are There Any Non-Arabic Words in the Quran?

It was a challenge for them to produce the like of the shortest surah or chapter of it. Being the masters of eloquence and rhetoric, they failed to produce anything like it.

It is for this that all Muslims are bound to learn the Quran in its original language, for its miraculous nature is represented in its words, style and many other things.

Each single word carries more than one meaning. In translation, we just convey one of the meanings in the target language, but not all the meanings. On reading the translated meanings of the Quran we will never get the same impression we can get when reading it in Arabic.

Moreover, in a certain context, a word may have a certain meaning that is totally different from the meaning it may carry when it occurs in another context.

The Quran is not mere words or expressions; rather, it is something great and magnificent. Hence, no other human language can efficiently perform the same role of the Arabic language in expressing the meanings of the Glorious Quran.

It is important that you understand the meaning of the Quran and as Arabic is not your language, you will only be able to achieve this by reading the translation in your language.

By all means you can read the Quran in Persian, but you must try to read the Quran in Arabic and, in sha’ Allah, after some time, you will learn to understand some of the meanings in Arabic.

Almighty Allah knows best.

Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.