Chapter 4, Part 2: Views and Positions: Grammar, Poetry, Arab Unity and Religion

5. His View on Simplifying Grammar and Spelling

This was the address he gave at the Academy's diamond jubilee, marking 75 years since its founding.[1]

He holds that our Arabic language was, and still is, difficult for foreigners and for us as well, especially its rules of grammar and morphology, and of spelling too.

He says: I used to feel a pang of distress as I walked through the English and Italian lecture halls (and those of other living languages), which were almost bursting with male and female students...

And I often asked myself: does the fault lie in our weakness in the international struggle, or in the rules of our language, or in both together?

My inquiry gave me the answer: our great malady lies in the stagnation that has struck every part of our intellectual life for more than a thousand years...

In jurisprudence, the widest field for ordering religious and practical life, the gate of ijtihad, independent legal reasoning, was closed from the fourth century AH, and a thick curtain was drawn over reason. Islamic studies became commentaries on old texts which, when they were written, were marvels of excellence and precision, but which time itself began to pass by, so that they came to need open minds to read them afresh, as the laws of growth and evolution require.

In the same way the study of grammar and morphology froze at the rules laid down by the school of Basra, which were deeply influenced by philosophy, logic and scholastic theology... And so there entered into grammar things that do not belong to it and that it does not need, such as the theory of governing and governed words and of secondary and tertiary causes...

As the days went by, grammar became a science in its own right, and the language became a prisoner of its fetters and its rules. It also became an end to be pursued, when it is not, and should be nothing other than, a safe and easy means of conveying ideas and expressing them well, so that they may be passed on easily and understood correctly...

In the light of this he calls for simpler rules of grammar, easier keys to morphology, and agreement on a single set of rules for spelling. These are the chronic difficulties of which many sons of the Arab nation complain, and he does not exempt himself from that complaint.

He holds that anyone who traces the history of the Arabic language will find that the call to simplify its grammar and morphology is old. It began with the second generation, the one that followed the first fathers of grammar, when the great masters saw how rugged its paths were and wrote, for the young among their students, grammatical summaries drawn from their own detailed works to make things easier for them. That is what Tha'lab, who died in 291 AH, did, and Abu Ali al-Farisi, who called his summary "Al-Awwaliyyat fi al-Nahw," and Abu Uthman ibn Jinni, who died in 392 AH and wrote a summary he called "Al-Luma'."

The purpose of these summaries was to enable students to master the rules of grammar by simplifying its methods and ridding it of much of its detail, its philosophical theories and the principles of scholastic theology, which had begun to entrench itself in the various sciences.

He holds in high esteem the call that Ibn Mada' al-Qurtubi made in his book, small in size but great in import, "The Refutation of the Grammarians," and he considers that Ibrahim Mustafa took up the work that Ibn Mada' had called for when he wrote a book on grammar he called "Reviving Grammar." Dr. Ahmad Abd al-Sattar al-Jawari followed his example in his book "Toward Simplification," as did Dr. Mustafa Jawad, and Dr. Shawqi Dayf in his two books "Renewing Grammar" and "Linguistic Simplifications."

While Dr. Homad calls for the reform of grammar, he adds a caution: "But our support for the calls for reform must never be taken to mean that we wish to tamper with the language of our fathers, which has become the emblem of our dignity, the vessel of our culture and civilization, and the trust that our history and our nationhood have placed in our care. What we want is a reform that opens the paths of progress to Arabic and smooths for its sons the ways of mastering it and of easily commanding its rules of grammar, morphology, derivation and spelling, starting from the preservation of our heritage and within its framework."

He links his call to renew grammar along the road of cultural development with similar calls to renew Islamic jurisprudence, which well-meaning hands have begun to take up, so that it may take in the developments of the world and meet the needs of Muslims in this storm-tossed struggle.

For grammar and jurisprudence are bound by close ties, drawn from the rules for interpreting the texts of the sacred law, which are written in Arabic and which, to be understood and to dispense justice and rights in true measure, depend on the meanings of words and the rules of grammar, in the effort to reach the purposes of the Lawgiver, as He intended them: to govern the rules of conduct and to keep a balance between the interests of individuals and of the community.

He holds that texts are laid down to endure, but that their successive interpretation keeps them fit for every age... Without it, these texts remain cut off from society and do harm rather than good, because they keep the dead ruling over the living...

He notes that a torch shone in the East after Ibn Mada' al-Qurtubi, the Andalusian who had been a torch of grammar in al-Andalus. By the eastern torch, several centuries after Ibn Mada', he means the Hanbali jurist Najm al-Din al-Tufi of Baghdad, who shone in jurisprudence and who, like Ibn Mada', wrote a short treatise, small in size and great in value, on "maslaha," the public interest. In it he held that when a text in the fields of transactions and customs, not acts of worship, conflicts with the interest of society and of individuals, the interest must be given precedence and the text set aside. He based this call on the noble saying of the Prophet, "No harm and no reciprocal harm."

He stresses that the stagnation that struck grammatical studies also struck the study of jurisprudence. The jurists did not understand the true nature of al-Tufi's call for renewal, and jurisprudence remained sunk in its slumber for long centuries. Jurisprudence and grammar are two faces of one coin, Arab Islamic thought.

But just as grammar has found those who call for its renewal in our time, contemporary jurists have risen to call for the renewal of jurisprudence as well, such as Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, who says: "The Islamic mind must be formed anew, for its landmarks have been lost and it has been damaged," and Sheikh Mustafa al-Zarqa, who says: "After the eighth century AH, jurisprudence throughout the Islamic world fell into stagnation, lost its movement and its effectiveness, and became like a drugged giant."

He made it plain, with complete frankness and openness, that the blessed efforts of those who call for grammatical and linguistic reform will remain confined within regional borders unless their affairs are taken in hand by a single supreme body that represents all the Arab countries fairly and is fully independent of governments and of the institutions of the Arab League, so that it may take its decisions in close cooperation with the language academies from which it springs. Its decisions on developing grammar, morphology and spelling and on coining terminology must carry binding authority, so that they do not remain mere moral counsel.

He calls for the founding of a "unified Arab academy" to care for the language of the Arabs, nurture it and develop it, so that it can meet their scientific and cultural needs with ease and gentleness, within the framework of preserving identity and heritage.

On national questions he does not flatter anyone, and so we see him disagree with our teacher Dr. Shukri Faisal in explaining the causes of our backwardness as Arabs. In Dr. Faisal's view the causes of our backwardness are those well-known forces... the forces of the enemies of humanity who believe in distinction between peoples and set them in ranks, those cannibals who plunder the wealth of these peoples and abort their revolutions.

Dr. Homad comments on this view: "Do we not bear a direct and enormous responsibility for our backwardness? Today we are witnessing the birth of a huge giant in Europe, whose states have set aside their old hatreds and the blood shed in abundance on the battlefields over long centuries, and have merged into a great economic community, and are working hard to dissolve into an astonishing political entity. And yet we look on like someone stunned, who neither learns the lesson nor takes it in."

And he declares it with the force of certainty: "Certainly, had God granted Dr. Shukri a longer life, and had he lived through the heartbreaking events of 1990 and 1991 in the Arab arena, he would have made a radical change in his national thinking and in assigning responsibility for the causes of our backwardness."

And what would the two of them, may God have mercy on them both, have said, had God granted them longer lives, about the occupation of Iraq by American forces and their allies in 2003? About the partition of Sudan? About the repeated Israeli aggression against Lebanon? About the tearing apart of the Arab nation, as Arab rulers fail it and seek the help of foreigners against their own kin and people? Is this not due to the ebbing of the national tide and the absence of Arab solidarity?

6. His Loyalty to the Classical Canon of Poetry and His Opposition to Modern Poetry

He writes in his diary on Tuesday, 7 April 1942: "Yes, I used to love the old forms, the strong, virile diction and the firm craftsmanship of pre-Islamic poetry and of the poets of early Islam. But I also loved modern ideas when they came in a poem with meter and rhyme. What I have read of modern French poetry found a welcome echo in me, and I may have been influenced by Alfred de Musset and other Romantics... But I shall always shrink from this thing they call 'modern poetry,' because it is not poetry... At best it is prose... no different from any other prose, unless the difference lies in its subject."

He reinforces this leaning elsewhere, writing in his diary on Saturday, 5 September 1942: "We went to an exhibition of modern painting held at the Palais de Tokyo and walked through its halls looking at the paintings on show. The painters were followers of the Impressionist and Cubist schools, and I neither like these schools nor understand them, just as I do not like modern poetry that does not keep to meter and rhyme."

7. His Deep Belief in Arab Nationalism and Arab Unity

His diary, "Memoirs of an Arab Student at the Sorbonne, 1939-1945," has the following entry for 10 March 1942: "In the evening we met in Amjad al-Tarabulsi's room, he and I and Ra'fat al-Atassi, to draw up a charter for the minorities in our country, at the request of the students' committee. During the meeting I asked: are we Arabs or Syrians? I explained my point of view and said: when the Arab nation is united and forms the state it is destined for and deserves, the constitution that will be drawn up will guarantee the rights of all citizens. It will certainly provide for respecting the 'personal status' of every citizen, and that is enough, because equality among citizens will be complete, without any regard to religion, race or sex. We decided to ask the committee to drop this project as pointless."

Out of his national feeling and his belief in Arabism, he was one of the strongest supporters of the union between Syria and Egypt and one of the most anxious that it should last. His shock was therefore great at the secession of 1961. His loyalty to the union held firm throughout the years of the secession, and his joy was overwhelming when the figures of the secession fell and Syria returned to its unionist, national course. He went back to political activity for a short time, then gave himself entirely to university teaching outside Syria.

From his belief in the unity of Arab culture and his national view of Arabic literature, he supports the late Professor Shukri Faisal in his serious study of the methods of literary study and in his rejection of the regional theory, which studies our Arabic literature according to regional divisions. Here he says: "To be honest, I taught throughout my life the importance of the regional environment in the movement of crime, after the theory of heredity had long attracted me. But what a difference there is between deviance born of a corrupt environment and a creative movement springing from a poetic spirit that no doubt feels reality, yet hovers in the higher skies that are the homes of revelation and inspiration."

The regional theory goes back, in its literary roots, to the Frenchman Taine. Its starting point is a materialist rule: every event has a cause and every result a premise. But if the laws of matter can rightly be explained by this rigid determinism, literary life holds impulses, imaginings, emotions and inspirations that rebel against every material fetter and mold. In our time we see a psychological theory of the causes of crime come to the fore, alongside the environmental theory whose banner is held high by the American professor Sutherland. So the personal elements remain, in the life of literature, the strongest creative influences.

He goes on: "We who grew up believing in the unity of the Arabs feel something of a shock and a resentment when a regional concept is forced on our feelings that our souls cannot accept."

8. His Belief That Religion Is Love and Tolerance

Whoever leafs through his diary will see many references to those who exploit religion and to the ignorant, springing from his belief that true religion is the one that calls to good and enjoins what is right and forbids what is evil and wrong. Religion, in his eyes, is nothing but nourishment for the spirit and the soul and a bond between man and his Lord. In his diary for Friday, 1 October, the first day of the blessed Eid al-Fitr, he writes: "I prayed behind a Moroccan imam, and I have never felt a spiritual joy like the one I felt standing before God. I bear witness that religion is from God, and it is goodness and ease; it is the ignorant who make it complicated and load it with superstitions and innovations, until a man finds himself in a hateful atmosphere of endless hypotheses and the search for imaginary answers to them."

9. His Frank View of Mixed Marriage

He writes in his diary on Thursday, 15 June 1944: "A heated discussion took place between me and Marguerite (a Frenchwoman, the wife of his companion As'ad Chalabi) about raising children who have a foreign mother. I told her plainly my view that mixed marriage would harm the children, because the father will talk to them about his homeland, his race and his religion, and the mother will talk to them about her homeland, her race and her religion... and so the children grow up confused. If it is said that a mixed family can bring up its children as secular, our situation as Arabs is different, because our national cause is bound up with Islam, and Arabism cannot be imagined without its tie to Islam... This does not mean depriving citizens of other religions of their rights of citizenship, never. Arabism is the homeland of all, but Islam strengthens it and supports it." She did not accept this truth and seemed angry, and her husband took her side.

Endnotes:

[1] "Journal of the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus," part 1 of volume 71, January 1996.