Quotes about Arabic Literature

Larry Elder

In the last 1,000 years, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year.

The Christians love to read the poems and romances of the Arabs…. Christians have even forgotten their own language. There are a thousand who can express themselves with elegance, and write better poems in Arabic than the Arabs themselves.

At the time, the Muslim culture was far more advanced than the Christian. Also, the Roman Catholic Church was very sexually prudish compared with the more modern Arabs, To the distress of the Christian leaders, the Christians of Spain were attracted to the more modern Islamic society. This was just the opposite of today. Since the 9th century, the Muslims have become much more restrictive and prudish in their religion while the Christians and the West have eclipsed them and greatly modernized. So today, it is the Islamic leaders who worry that the Muslims are attracted to Western culture.

Lawrence Wright

The religious establishment (of Saudi Arabia) makes sure that millions of Islamic books are translated into other languages each year, but very few books are translated into Arabic.

Islam is a proselytizing religion, and the Wahabi sect that dominates the religion and even the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia, is a particularly fundamentalist exponent. Hence the translation of Islamic books into Arabic. The few books translated into Arabic reflects not only the fear of heresy and cultural imperialism, but there is a conservative Islamic view that everything that is valid and important to know is in the Koran and the Hadith. Therefore, no other books are necessary.

A. B. Yehoshua

I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.

Ameen Rihani

Old Arabic books, printed in Bulaq, generally have a broad margin wherein a separate work, independent of the text, adds gloom to the page.

Ibn Khaldun

All the sciences came to exist in Arabic. The systematic works on them were written in Arabic writing.

Nawal El Saadawi

During the '80s I wrote Memoirs from the Women's Prison. This is one of my most important books. It came out in Arabic in '83. About my experience in prison.

Etgar Keret

Being published in Arabic is a strong and consistent wish I have. I live in the Middle East and want to be in some sort of an unpragmatic dialogue with my neighbors.

Tariq Ramadan

Arabic is the language of Islam, but Arabic culture is not the culture of Islam.

Naguib Mahfouz

One effect that the Nobel Prize seems to have had is that more Arabic literary works have been translated into other languages.

Rabih Alameddine

When I published my first work, I thought I would never be able to go back to Lebanon. I thought they'd arrest me at the airport. I thought I would change literature as we know it. I thought I'd have men lining up at my door wanting to be my boyfriend. But later I discovered that no one read the book. Or no one cared. Right now, I have only one book translated into Arabic. Someday, maybe if the Syrian regime falls, there will be others, but probably another regime will come into power and it will employ just as much censorship.

Henry Hardinge

The studies in the Mohammedan schools and colleges have hitherto been confined to Arabic, the Koran, and abstruse studies relating to their religion, having always shown a marked aversion to English literature.

Many of the difficulties been Islam and the West can be traced to a huge gulf in what constitutes a proper education. In this case, the Indian Governor General was explaining to Queen Victoria that while the Hindus in India were getting very well educated and were qualified for many government administrative positions, the Muslims were not. See {630719}. Even in modern times most colleges and universities in Islamic nations are highly focused on religion to the expense of mathematics, the sciences, and non Islamic literature.

Yitzhak Navon

I grew up in Jerusalem and went to school here. I studied at the Hebrew University - mostly Islam and Arabic: Arab literature, Arab poetry and culture, because I felt like we are living in this region, in the Middle East, and we are not alone: There are nations here whose culture is Arab.

Nawal El Saadawi

Woman at Point Zero I wrote during the '70s in Arabic. It came in English in '82. So, almost ten years' difference between the Arabic and the English.

Michael Ondaatje

Men had always been the reciters of poetry in the desert.

Arabic Literature Quotes