Language and the Perception of Reality
The Necessity of Multilingualism
Aug. 14, 2025
Introduction
The debate over teaching or not teaching the Arabic language in our Islamic school still rages on. And the importance or the need to teach the Arabic language to our future generation still draws very diverse opinions.
On one side are those who believe in the importance of teaching Arabic, and in the fact that the Arabic language is an inseparable part of the Islamic culture. To those, teaching the Arabic language is a must if we are to preserve our Islamic culture.
On the other side are those who feel that language is, as cloths or food, a separable part of culture, and that the Islamic culture can be carried by different vehicles. Furthermore, teaching the Arabic language is nothing but an extra burden being imposed upon our children. Let’s teach “القرآن” , they say, but Islamic studies can easily be taught in English. Why the Arabic language? It is neither the language they are using nor the language they are going to communicate with in the marketplace.
And while this heated debate, occasionally, takes on a nationalistic fervor, its importance must go beyond the rhetoric, the nostalgia, and the narrow personal views or interests.
Indeed, language(s) are used everyday to communicate with, but the role of language transcends the faculty of communication.
Language has additional capabilities; from storing the intellectual wealth of a culture to guiding and constraining the intellectual processes of the people of that culture. Language, as Whorf pointed out, is a critical instrument of human reason and not merely a medium for the expression of thought. In fact, all high-level thinking is dependent on the language.
In this article, I shall argue that teaching the Arabic language is critical not only because Arabic is truly an inseparable part of the Islamic culture, but most importantly because it is very critical in shaping a Muslim perception of reality. Language does not only describe reality, but it also filters it too. And the change in language can transform one’s perception and appreciation of reality. Therefore, multilingualism is not only very desirable but also extremely necessary. The ability of our young generation to view the world through many lenses will provide them with unique views and prospective like no others.
Language
The term language has been put to a variety of uses or misuses. People often speak of flower language, body language and even the language of animals.
Although people do not confuse cars with driving, and scissors with cutting, one can see a persistent confusion between a thing and the use of the thing when it comes to language. People in many cases confuse language and communication; anything that is used to communicate with is called language.
Non-human communication systems are representational systems that are used for communication. However, language is an open system, a dynamic system, while animal communication systems are closed, and can do nothing but communicate.
Language has additional capabilities that go beyond communication. It is used to store information and allow human beings to carry out very complex thought processes. History is seen through the eyes of the languages used to record it. One cannot speak of a language independent of its people, or the culture that embodies. And the Arabic language is not only the language of “القرآن” but the language of the Islamic culture as well.
Language & Culture
The term culture is defined by some as the sum of all things that make up the way a group of people live their lives: how they dress, work, eat, study, raise children, respond to illness, worship, function within a family, and perceive time and space. This definition describes very well most homogenous cultures, however, the Islamic culture, by the nature of Islam, is a very diverse one. Muslims around the globe speak different languages, dress differently, and have many cosines. Yet, the Arabic language is the language that embodies the intellectual wealth of the Islamic culture.
Language helps people to retain and preserve their culture, and it is an inseparable part of the culture. The link between language and culture is so strong that the loss of a language inevitably means the loss of the associated culture as well. Therefore, teaching the Arabic language to the future generation of Muslims is very critical to the preservation of the Islamic culture. And with the diversity of the Islamic culture, multilingualism goes from being desirable to being necessary. It should be encouraged and facilitated in every way possible. Multilingualism broadens the mind and expands the intellectual horizon of the individual.
In teaching a language, we're trying to give students a language that will allow them to think in certain ways, believe in certain values that are important to us. Learning certain languages may have significant effect on adults even thought they are already molded.
Language and the Perception of Reality
Language, as Whorf pointed out, is not merely a medium for the expression of thought but a critical instrument of human reason. And that the "picture of the universe" or "view of the world" differs as a function of the particular language or languages an individual knows.
Researchers disputing the Whorfain hypothesis of linguistic relativity have been focusing on proving that the perception of the physical realities of the universe is language independent. Therefore, the perception of a bridge is no different between that of an Arabic speaking person or English speaking one.
However, human beings neither live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity. Social concepts, attitudes, and values are very much at the mercy of the particular language that is used as the medium of expression in a particular society. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" in its physical and conceptual parts is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language of that society. We see, hear, and otherwise experience the world’s realities as we do because of our language. Languages are predisposed to certain choices of meanings and interpretations.
While one can argue that the perception of the physical realities of the universe might be language independent, there are very compelling evidence for a very strong link between language and the perceptions of world conceptual realities. A language cannot express things that are not perceived by the society using that language. Language is what one uses to express cultural and religious concepts and values. And in the case of “القرآن” , Arabic is the mechanism (language) that is used to transmit those concepts and values.
Knowing the Arabic language is very critical not only for understanding the general meanings of “القرآن” , but for developing a frame of reference for seeing the realities of the universe in a specific manner.
The concept of “بر الوالدينّ”, as an example, would be severely altered using any other language except the Arabic language. The concept of “بر الوالدينّ” does not exist in most western cultures and in most western languages in the way that is being expressed in the Quranic Arabic, in “السنةّ” , or in the literature of the Islamic culture. The conceptual perception an Arabic speaking person of “بر الوالدينّ” is drastically different from that of an English speaking one regardless of the actual behavior of that individual.
The concept expressed by the English term “mother nature” neither exist in the Quranic Arabic nor in the Islamic culture. It should be mentioned that the word “الطبيعة“, which is commonly used as a translation to the word nature, does not exist in the Quranic Arabic. It is very clear that the term “mother nature” is an expression of the perception of a reality that is consistent with the evolution theory.
It is quite an illusion to imagine that one can adjust to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or expression of thought. This is not only true across languages, but within language too.
Even very intelligent and sophisticated individuals are not immune to euphemisms simply because they understand that that's what they are dealing with. Suzette Haden Elgin reports in here book "The Language Imperative" an illustrating example of the relation between language and the perception of reality. It is the story of Carol Cohn, a woman who, although strongly opposed to nuclear war, became a visiting scholar in a nuclear strategic studies program at a major American university.
“The nuclear situation at that time (in 1984 and 1985) struck her as "so dangerous and irrational that one is tempted to explain it by positing either insanity or evil in our decision makers." Her goal in joining the program was "to gain a better understanding of how sane men of goodwill could think and act in ways that lead to what appear to be extremely irrational and immoral results".
To fill her role as visiting scholar, Cohn attended lectures, talked with colleagues, interviewed graduate students, and did all the other academic tasks expected of her. She says that she started out obsessed by the question, "How can they think this way? “ But as she became more skilled in using the language of the program and more at ease with it, she found herself facing a different question: "How can I think this way?"
The English vocabulary of warfare (both nuclear and non-nuclear) is curious and ingenious. We keep our missiles in "silos"; the area on a Trident submarine where the silos are located is called "the Christmas tree farm." We "marry up" weapons systems when we combine them. One nuclear attack model is called "the cookie cutter." We use "clean bombs" to carry out "surgical" (that is surgically clean) strikes. When we're not using domestic images of family and kitchen and farm, we still use terminology clean enough to eat off it. When we talk about human death resulting from warfare on the evening news, however bloody and messy it may have been, we don't talk about "dismembering and decapitating people" or “burning people into ashes and charred fragments" or anything of that kind. We don't even call it "killing"; we call it "collateral damage." When we refer to the deaths of civilians, we ordinarily make those who died the do-ers rather than the done-to. We don't say, "We killed three hundred civilians in yesterday's bombing," we say "Three hundred civilians died during yesterday's bombing."
Cohn couldn’t function in the nuclear studies program without speaking its language. No one would accept her as a valid nuclear scholar, or take what she said seriously, or communicate with her in any of the ways her role required, unless she used English War-Speak or Nuclear-Speak. And as time went by, even though she remained as solidly opposed to nuclear warfare as she had ever bee, she made a disturbing discovery. "No matter how firm my commitment to staying aware of the bloody reality behind the words," she writes, "I found that I could not keep human lives as my reference point. I found that I could go for days speaking about nuclear weapons without once thinking about the people who would be incinerated by them. It will surely be obvious that people who can be put into this frame of mind are more likely to function efficiently as military planners and personnel that are people who keep thinking about charred corpses.”
To maintain the view of reality that she'd had when she entered the program, in which she perceived nuclear war as a matter of blood and guts and agony, Cohn had to constantly remind herself of those perceptions. And she couldn't do that while she was involved in language interactions in the program, of course; she had to do it on the side on her own. She found it difficult. She had to work at it."
Suzette Haden Elgin adds in here book “My personal conviction is that the link between language and culture is so deep and so strong that the loss of a language inevitable means loss of the culture and its worldview, and worldview unlike any other.”
It is obvious that the structure of a language one habitually uses influences the manner one understands the surrounding environment, and the picture of the universe does indeed shift from language to language. Simply put; thinking is relative to the language learned.
Concluding Remarks
The perception of the world realities as “القرآن” presents would be severely affected without our children knowledge of the Arabic language. It is very clear from the example of Carol Cohn that current events, history, and even the Islamic history would look very different when it is taught in English only. Language does not only describe reality, but it also filters it too. I believe that multilingualism should be an integral part of our curriculum, and for those who claim that teaching our children two or three languages is impossible should study the European school systems when it comes to teaching languages. For our young generation of Muslim, multilingualism is not a luxury they can survive without, it is a necessity. I believe that multilingualism will indeed enrich their minds, expand their horizons, and allow them to bridge the past with the future.
Dr. Basem Alzahabi