Reply to the Orientalist Claims That the Quran Must Be Understood Through the Etymology of Words and Concepts of Non-Arabic Origin

Allah’s word, the Quran, is a text comprising revelation sent down in the Arabic language. Every person of average intelligence who knows the Arabic language in the form it had in the age when the Quran was revealed can understand the Quran very clearly.

This claim, rather than being merely a subjective claim, is clear from the very verses of Allah’s word that explain it. In this sense, this text itself informs us of such a claim in various verses.
After all, the Quran, which puts forward this claim, must also have been tested by the people living in that age. In other words, if we think of it for this age, there is a text and this text claims that it is very clear and understandable. If its addressee did not understand this text, a situation contradicting life would already have arisen at the very start. This is a situation contrary to reason.

Allah has made known that He will protect the Quran until the Day of Judgment. Believers who know that the Quran is valid until the Day of Judgment and that it will be protected live the peace and security of this. The Quran is a book of which a person is absolutely certain in its every ruling and every command, and which he will follow with a free and comfortable conscience. That people have such a “certain” guide is a very great blessing and mercy given from the Presence of Allah.
As an ease, so that people can grasp and understand more easily, Allah has explained the verses in the Quran in various ways. Allah makes known this style of the Quran in His verses as follows:
“We swear that We brought them a Book; We explained it in various ways, based on knowledge, to be a guidance and a mercy for a community who will believe.” (Surah Al-A'raf, 52)
“See how We explain the verses in various ways so that they may thoroughly grasp and understand?” (Surah Al-An'am, 65)
Despite these rulings of Allah, one of the important mistakes people generally fall into is thinking that the Quran is not understandable by every person. Most people suppose that a training lasting many years is needed for the Quran to be read, understood and lived. Most of those who reach this judgment have in fact not read the Quran even once. Or they have read it but have not tried to understand it, and from the very start have conditioned themselves into not understanding the verses.
Yet the Quran, as Allah makes known in His verses, is perfectly clear. For this reason every person who reads the Quran sincerely can understand it easily. That the language of the Quran is extremely understandable is a very great blessing for people. Indeed, Allah makes known in one verse that He has made the Quran easy so that people can read and understand it comfortably, as follows:
“We have made this (the Quran) easy in your tongue, so that you may give good tidings to those who have taqwa and warn and frighten a resisting people.” (Surah Maryam, 97)
While Allah, as a result of His mercy and compassion, has made His religion this easy for people’s understanding, what falls to a person is only to reflect on what Allah has made known and to apply it. However, while there is such an easy way, many people prefer the difficult one. They seek false guides for themselves, and they live far from the Quran, from which they could learn the purpose of their lives and which will be the means of their eternal salvation.

Contrary to the claim of Allah’s word the Quran itself, there are long and diligent efforts by two main schools aimed at making it incomprehensible. One of these, unfortunately a domestic (!) claim, is the traditionalist school, which believes that the Quran can only be understood by knowing the culture of narrations. According to them, understanding the Quran is not that easy. Additional knowledge such as hadith, occasions of revelation (sebebinüzul) and so on is needed. As this subject is not the subject of our article, I do not dwell on it. The second school is the claim of, in particular, atheist and Christian/Jewish orientalists. According to this view, Arabic is in any case a language based on Aramaic-Syriac. That is, without referring to the etymology of the words that entered Arabic from these languages, this text cannot be understood anyway. Accordingly, almost every word occurring in the Quran must be given meaning according to its etymological basis.
The aim of such orientalist claims, devoid of sincerity, is nothing other than to draw a hard curtain in front of the quality of being perfectly clear and understandable, which is the Quran’s very own claim.
This is an inconsistent forcing, not only for the Quran but also in terms of the methods of understanding all texts written so far. It is enough to know the meanings words had in the age in which the text was written. Etymological debates do not serve to understand that text better, they make it entirely incomprehensible. Because every language has features that change over time and create shifts of meaning. Let us try to open this up with a single example. For instance, at most twenty years ago the verb “iğfal etmek” was used in the sense of deceiving. Yet now it is used almost entirely in the sense of raping.

For instance today, if this word occurs in any prosecutor’s indictment, its meaning is the crime of rape. And what is correct is its present-day meaning. But a judge reading the indictment according to the word’s etymology may very well understand this as deceiving someone. So what matters is the meaning of the word in the age in which it was written. Even this simple and single example refutes these insincere arguments of the orientalists.

If the orientalists, in order to understand a number of Quranic concepts, had turned to the Quran itself instead of turning to Aramaic, Syriac, the Torah, the Gospel, Persian or Greek, they would have learned what these words mean by an easier and more practical method. To follow such a method it is not necessary to believe in the Quran. If the Quran is examined with an objective eye, it can easily be seen that it uses language very precisely, that it chooses its words with care, and that it explains the meaning of a word in any verse by means of another verse. So much so that, if the words of the Quran are subjected to a comparative analysis within the Quran, taking into account their various uses and their root, many verses can be understood without turning to any other source or language at all. The Quran is truly a book that explains itself and that Allah teaches.

I am also sharing a QUOTED example that shows this subject much more broadly:

Suppose that you read the following news item on a website:

“Sheikh Osman, coming from the Arabian desert, with seven fools around him, after drinking eight litres of sour cherry wine in the restaurant of the hotel called Şirin Turkey, turned to the know-it-all girl on the arm of the man coming out of the engagement ceremony in the hotel’s great hall and to her father and said: “My girl, you are very lucky. Your fiancé is at once squat, bald, self-employed and stingy. You will have no need to be jealous of him. May Allah grant that you marry! May He make you happy!””

An insincere orientalist, after drawing your attention to the fact that many words have passed into Turkish from Arabic, Persian, Mongolian and even English, will use his etymological knowledge and make the following analyses and speculations:

Şeyh: Arabic. Means old, aged.
Osman: Arabic. Baby snake.
Aptal: Arabic. Substitutes. Dervish. Beggar
Turkey: English. The bird turkey.
Şarap: Arabic. Beverage, drink.
Nişan: Armenian. Symbol, especially the cross.
Ukala: Arabic. The intelligent ones
Serbest: Persian. Head band; bound, certified.
Cimri: Persian. Degenerate, base.
Kıl: Mongolian. Tail hair
After sharing the above information, the orientalist turns the “real” meaning of the above news item into the following absurd meaning:

“The old baby snake, coming from the Arabian desert, with seven beggars around him, after drinking eight litres of sour cherry juice in the restaurant of the hotel called Şirin the Bird Turkey, turned to the intelligent girl on the arm of the man coming out of the cross ceremony in the hotel’s great hall and to her father and said: “My girl, you are very lucky. Your crossed one is at once squat, bald, the holder of a certified profession, and degenerate and base. You will have no need to be jealous of him. May Allah grant that you marry! (He looked at her father and) Mesut, you are a tail-hair man!” he said.

All the languages spoken on earth or sociologically extinct have evolved from and/or been influenced by other languages. Every language of course shows mutual permeability, at various intensities, in terms of certain concepts and words, with other languages that have found a place in its nearby geography. But texts written in this language, and the Quran is included in this. Trying to give meaning according to etymological origin is a very insincere move made for the sake of this Divine message not being understood…