Arabic Language in Pakistan

·         Graduates in Arabic do not find any work in Pakistan.

·  The methods of teaching Arabic in Pakistan are not modern.

·        The salary ofan Arabic teacher is less than that of an English or science teacher.

The Pakistani government issued a decision to generalize the Arabic language and teach it in all schools of Pakistan, considering it a principal language.

The community is pleased to present this study by Professor Ghulam Haidar, Professor of Arabic at Government College, Faisalabad, Pakistan, where he discusses the state of the Arabic language in Pakistan and the obstacles that hinder its progress and spread.

Lofty Position

Pakistan An Islamic Republic whose official religion is Islam, established in August 1947 under the leadership of the Great Leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The Arabic language holds a lofty position in the hearts of the people; they love it greatly because it is the language of the Qur’an, the language of the noble Messenger (peace be upon him), the language of the people of Paradise, and the language of all religious sources such as Hadith, Tafsir, Fiqh, and history.

Arabic & Religious Schools

The Muslims of Pakistan gained independence from British colonialism, which had controlled Pakistan for nearly one hundred years. The British often fought against the Urdu language in this land they considered part of England, using all means of propaganda to portray to Islamic peoples that Urdu was unsuitable for the requirements of modern science and thought. They made English education compulsory by law. As for Arabic, it had no status under the British, and the British government opposed education in Arabic, except in religious schools that had long taught Arabic and Islamic sciences. From these schools graduated many great scholars and eminent sheikhs, despite the persecution they suffered from the British against them and Muslim scholars. Among those scholars worth mentioning are Sheikh Abdul Haq Muhaddith Dehlawi, Shah Waliullah, and Sheikh Abdul Hakim Sialkoti. In our present time, professors such as Abdul Aziz Maimani in Pakistan and Sayyid Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi in India graduated from these schools.

Arabic Not Taken Its Rightful Place

About thirty years have passed since Pakistan appeared on the world map, but unfortunately Arabic has not taken its rightful place in this Islamic state, despite independence and liberation from colonialism.

It has had no noticeable presence during this period and has not flourished, although it was expected to spread in the country. Despite the great progress achieved by the Pakistani nation in education in agriculture, industry, medicine, engineering, and other fields, it faces difficulties and problems in teaching Arabic, including:

1. The people of Pakistan were liberated from British colonialism on the basis of Islam and obtained a homeland through their continuous effort, but they did not achieve cultural independence from the British. English remains a compulsory official language in Pakistan to this day, and every student must study it up to the bachelor’s level. By contrast, Arabic is only an optional language.
2. The second problem: Arabic is not the language of the Pakistani people, nor is Pakistan a region that speaks this language; therefore, it is taught as a foreign language in schools, colleges, and universities. In fact, it is not taught in English-model schools, and science students cannot choose this language in schools and colleges.
3. The third problem worth mentioning: the multiplicity of local languages in Pakistan restricts the teaching of Arabic.
4. Urdu is an official language like English, whereas Arabic is taught through Urdu in government schools and colleges. (In the Turkish era, Arabic itself was taught through Turkish, and grammar and morphology were authored in Turkish, as Dr. Mazen Mubarak pointed out in his book Arabic Language in Higher Education and Scientific Research.)
5. Arabic is not taught as a living language even in religious schools where clerics, scholars, and sheikhs teach Arabic Islamic sciences. The government is not responsible for them, and students who wish to join those schools must study all sciences in Arabic. Undoubtedly, students read books of Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh, Logic, Morphology, Grammar, and others in Arabic, understand them, and memorize the rules thoroughly. Yet evidence shows that most of them cannot speak it fluently. As for professors and sheikhs, they teach Islamic sciences and suffice with that, without giving special attention to teaching the Arabic language itself.
6. Arabic faces another problem: lack of care from officials, who do not pay attention to its advancement as it deserves.
7. Arabic is not taught as a subject in educational institutes and colleges except in one or two colleges in Pakistan. In reality, Arabic students do not gain admission to those colleges and find no place in them.
8. The number of Arabic learners is small in government schools and colleges. They also believe Arabic is a difficult language with no benefit in their practical lives; therefore, they prefer other sciences over Arabic and have no desire for it.
9. The ninth problem is the lack of employment for graduates. Students spend most of their lives studying Arabic sciences, obtain academic degrees such as master’s, yet find no work. Their hopes are dashed, others are influenced by them, Arabic is despised, and other sciences are seen as the means to reach important positions in government administrations.
10. The tenth problem is the lack of necessary facilities for the advancement of Arabic. For example, there is no Arabic language laboratory in the modern sense anywhere in Pakistan, nor any classroom for Arabic study in most schools and colleges. Students study Arabic under trees.
11. The eleventh problem is that methods of teaching Arabic are not modern. Professors do not use them in teaching Arabic; they teach without using aids, discussions, or exercises. Thus, they fail to arouse interest and desire in students to learn Arabic. Professors themselves are not able to speak the language nor acquire teaching skills.
12. The salary of an Arabic teacher in schools is less than that of an English or science teacher. This is also a reason for backwardness in Arabic education.
13. The thirteenth problem, which I consider the greatest, is that our teaching system is not free from defects and disorganization. Pakistan has had three systems of education since its beginning: the religious school system, the government school system, and the English-model school system. Each differs from the other, and this is also a reason for the backwardness of Arabic in Pakistan.

Let the curricula of education and teaching be as in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Arabic is one of the most important languages in the world for every Muslim in Pakistan, who wishes to study it and master speaking and writing it, because the importance of Arabic lies in learning religious matters. Now the Pakistani government has honored Arabic in its constitution and believes that the advancement and spread of Arabic is necessary, because it is our religious language on the one hand, and a strong bond to strengthen fraternal and friendly relations between Islamic and Arab countries on the other.

The government established the People’s Open University in Islamabad to deliver knowledge to every home, especially to those who, for some reason, cannot gain admission to schools, colleges, and universities, through correspondence, letters, radio, television, tape recorders, and other means.

Its first basic program was the spread of Arabic. To achieve this blessed goal, the People’s Open University works day and night with full enthusiasm and complete sincerity, exerting the widest efforts to generalize Arabic among the Pakistani people. It opened Arabic education centers first in big cities and will open others throughout Pakistan.

The university sent a group of professors to the Arabic Language Institute at Riyadh University to train in the latest methods of teaching Arabic to non-native speakers. Riyadh University bore all the expenses in this regard, and for that it deserves our sincere thanks from us and from the entire Pakistani people.

We affirm to all officials in the Ministry of Higher Education and Riyadh University that we may serve the language of the Qur’an in our country, and we are keen to benefit as much as possible from this opportunity granted to us.
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Ghulam Haidar Jeshti wrote this article
& Published in Al-Mujtama in issue (388), 19 Rabi’ al-Awwal 1398 AH / 28 February 1978 AD, p. 34.