Is Islam a branch of linguistics?

[Boojatta]

Poll question: Is Islam a branch of linguistics?

Poll result (6 votes)
No, but like various branches of knowledge outside linguistics, it depends specifically upon the Arabic language.	(1 votes, 17%)	Vote
No, but it does happen to be the one and only branch of knowledge outside linguistics that depends specifically upon the Arabic language.	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Yes, it's a branch of linguistics.	(1 votes, 17%)	Vote
Undecided.	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Both Yes and No.	(1 votes, 17%)	Vote
Neither Yes nor No.	(2 votes, 33%)	Vote
None of the above.	(1 votes, 17%)	Vote

[YOY]

1. Here I thought it was a religion...

Why on Earth are you asking this?

[tekisui]

2. I just don't follow you anymore.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. This is rather like asking...

Is Christianity a brand of floor cleaner?
Is Buddhism a fruit flavor?
Is atheism a model of car?

[knitter4democracy]

18. Murphy's Oil Soap.

He was Catholic, and his family has given a lot back to his alma mater, St. Ignatius, the boys high school in Cleveland. So, if Christianity is a floor cleaner, I vote for Murphy's Oil Soap.

[uppityperson]

4. !

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[maxsolomon]

5. its not even "knowledge"

just stop. please.

[Azooz]

6. No - it just makes it interesting

I am not smart enough to get your polls, no idea what to click, so let me show off a bit more ignorance

Linguistics is boring and uninteresting normally, but in Arabic it gets plenty of TV time, the experts are stars and they can talk for hours about vocabulary, sentence structures and grammar and the people listen with attention to the end - it's not them actually, it is that one book (the Quran) that keeps them busy. Islam and Arabic have one and only one connection and that is the Quran. Linguistics explains why this is and the Quran, in turn makes linguistics interesting. The experts can and do talk of poetry and great books, but those are as boring linguistically and few care really.

[ZombieHorde]

14. "Linguistics is boring and uninteresting normally"

That is the first time I have ever seen that opinion stated. Thanks for the surprise.

[knitter4democracy]

16. That shocked me, too.

I love linguistics. Favorite (and hardest) class in college, hands down. Harder than Calc II, even.

[Zebedeo]

7. I Googled "Boojatta"

and got some very odd links to sites that used the Cyrillic alphabet and some kind of Thai-looking alphabet. I was going to comment on this, but I decided to first Google "Zebedeo."

I got a bunch of funny hits, including this one:

"Zebedeo is a troubled and often violent youth. With no recollection of his childhood, his experiences in the pirate city of Tortage and the lands of Stygia afterword left him given to random acts of cruelty and disinclined to trust anyone too far.

He is loosely attached to his guild Brutal Conquest, as a member of the lowest rank. To his mind the guild has only a passing attachment to things like honor and fair play, which suits him just fine. He has struck up tentative alliances with some fellow predators both within and outside of the guild, but even with these his back is never turned.

Zebedeo is more or less without direction for the time being, with his only clear goal being survival and to become an expert in the art of assassination and fighting dirty."

Got a chuckle out of this. I hope you do, too.

On edit:

I voted in your poll. I voted "neither yes nor no," just because I thought it was the most interesting option.

[HamdenRice]

8. Do not ask. Do not think. only Grok. It is the way of the Boojatta.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Is Boojatta a performance artist whose medium is Internet polls?

[Dorian Gray]

19. That was what I thought

too! LOL.

Sometimes I wonder why I click on them!

[edhopper]

10. I had

a back and forth with Azooz about how central the Arabic language is to the Koran. Rather than expand this discussion, Boojatta chose to post one of his incomprehensible polls that probably only Azooz and myself understand, and presents it in such a way that makes the discussion improbable.

[westerebus]

11. A no vote.

The study of Arabic as a language would be. Using the Koran is a kin to using the versions of the Bible (OT,NT) as a means to view changes in the modernization of the original language and those into which it was translated. If in fact the language(s) did change. While this study of the syntax, structure and vocabulary does in itself impart knowledge contained within the language used to produce the message, the message is not always translatable verbatim. In this case, as far as I know, there is not a lot of change in the literal construction of the original Koran in Arabic, compared to translations which are open to misconception or simple mis-translation. Not all languages old or modern keep good time as does the original transcription from which they came. Sorry to be so wordy. Linguistic class was thirty years ago and comparative religions about the same time.
It would be interesting to see an older Persian version in Farsi as a comparison. Then again having no knowledge of Arabic, I'm not much help. Things as simple as masculine or feminine pronouns for example have caused all kinds of trouble. Does the language use different tense to depict who is speaking or when they speak? So many questions. Boojatta got me again.

[Occam Bandage]

12. No. Linguistics is universal. Islam is a religion that has a major holy text that is written

in one language, and holds that the necessary compromises of translation amount to altering the word of God. This is not uncommon. ISKCON believes that straight-up translations of the Bhagavad Gita are useless; their Bhagavad Gita As It Is contains the original Sanskrit, a Roman-alphabet transliteration, a word-for-word literal translation, a natural-language vernacular translation, and a multi-paragraph explanation of that translation for each four-line stanza. I, personally, feel the same way about the Dao De Jing; due to the extraordinarily and deliberately ambiguous, poetic, and punning nature of the text, if you have not read it in Chinese, you have not read it. (I would point to the enormous discrepancies between the multitudinous translations as evidence of this).

I assume this poll was inspired by Azooz and his pseudolinguistic babblings.

[Boojatta]

13. Thank you.

ISKCON believes that straight-up translations of the Bhagavad Gita are useless; their Bhagavad Gita As It Is contains the original Sanskrit, a Roman-alphabet transliteration, a word-for-word literal translation, a natural-language vernacular translation, and a multi-paragraph explanation of that translation for each four-line stanza.

I see no reason for me to assume that it is impossible for a system of ideas associated with the Bhagavad Gita to be a branch of linguistics.

Perhaps a future revised version of this poll could include a new option such as the following:

"No, but like various branches of knowledge outside linguistics, it depends specifically upon one specific language (such as Arabic or Sanskrit)."

It occurs to me that Mormonism was created to allegedly have an "umbilical cord", but that there was an iron fisted and successful effort to ensure that no trace of any "umbilical cord" would remain in existence anywhere in the world. Adherents of Mormonism claim to be entitled to prestige on the grounds that they have documents that were allegedly translated from some exotic and unspecified foreign language, but the founder ensured that nobody had an opportunity to transcribe anything that could be said to be the original.

[ZombieHorde]

15. I believe that it is a branch of monotheism that uses Arabic the way that Christians

used to use Latin, and perhaps the way that Jews use/d Hebrew.

[knitter4democracy]

17. Linguistics is important in the faith, but it is not the faith.

Same as in Christianity. Most religion majors in Christianity have to take Greek so they can read the NT in the original Greek, and then they write long papers dissecting linguistically short passages. It's the same, though we allow for translation.

Taking a part of the faith and saying it is all of the faith is a logical fallacy--it leaves out too much. It's like saying the trunk of the elephant is all you need to have an elephant, when leaving out the tough hide, huge size, rounded feet, how they live and treat their family members, etc. is a huge mistake to make.