Harry’s Place

The great thing about that Gigg’s goal against Arsenal was the context in which it happened. It was at the end of a semi final replay, at the end of a terribly tight season.

Thanks for that DaveM. Your assessment as someone who has lived in an Arab country and studied the language is most valuable.

I suppose the equivalent might be if we ask how well equipped Victorians were to discuss sex using only the publicly accepted language. Answer: Not much.

DaveM, you wrote nothing here that isn’t obvious.

Also I would add that I think shallow thinking is a coping mechanism. When the principles and power structures that society is built on are all harmful, it’s safest not to think at all.

If you seem to have no thoughts, then you can rebel in shallow ways in order to preserve your humanity - and when pressed, it’s always safest to have no reasons for your actions, no reasoning, no principles.

If you have no opinion then you can not be guilty of heresy or treason.

Anyway I didn’t start writing this comment to say all that, but just to get a word in before the shitstorm of idiots calling you a racist, like they do to me whenever a dare criticize Muslim culture.

“If you have no opinion then you can not be guilty of heresy or treason.”

When the price of free thought is death, then the only ones left are those with no thoughts.

I think that the Arabic language is an amazing thing. It is beautiful to look at in script and as you said it is very descriptive and poetic. But it is a blessing and a curse as it is so easily misquoted and difficult to translate.

So much so that even people who’s first language is Arabic can dispute a translation or a quote. Add the nebulous classical Arabic (which is the language of the Koran) into the mix and confusion reigns supreme.

This becomes a big problem because in Islam god is monolingual, Arabic is gods language and the Koran is the perfect word of god and as such is not open to interpretation.

As a religion, culture and political ideology Islam is a mess partly due to the primacy of the Arabic language.

Also the use of Arabic is used to shield any criticism of Islam because any Muslim who realises your criticism is valid can just say that you have not read the Koran in it’s original Arabic therefore you have not really understood the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

You must know gods language to truly know gods word. Rather convenient don’t you think?

PS: DaveM anyone who calls you racist for this article is an ignoramus who is abusing the term racist and doesn’t deserve the respect of a reply. Although I feel quite within my rights to call you Man U Scum :-)

PPS: are you from Manchester or are you more of an armchair silverware hunter??? :-) ;-)

So what you are saying is Arabic=Newspeak.

Orwell was looking in the wrong direction.

Where’s Part 1?

“but nothing in the way of scientific or technological development”.

http://www.arabscientist.org/

This rather obsessive post verges on racism. Just because the author has spent time in Syria and can speak some of the language does not make it any less so. I don’t doubt much of what he says is true but its only a single, albeit unattractive, aspect of Arab culture. There is plenty unattractive about the West too.

Quite specifically racist too - the “inference” of Western superiority over the Arab race is clear. This is not appropriate for HP, better on LGF though I think even they might balk. You’d do well to take this down - plenty of fuel here for your detractors.

Bravo davem - best article of the month or the season.

BTW Unlike pseudo-atheist leftists who have embraced Islam and Islamism, davem and myself know a little about Arabic and the general culture in the middle east.

Then idealistic idiots like Bloo come along and display their ignorance.

Bloo: “Plenty unattractive about the West too”

Hey idiot - dont change the subject.

There is a name for Bloo’s logical fallacy (namely, X is now excused because Y also has committed said crimes at some point in the past.)

And the typical brandishing of the “racist” slur by the typical ignoramus-left.

For a Muslim (and a proud apostate, kiram to maqzet hammal Bloo) who has lived countless years in the middle east, let me say that Western liberal culture IS PREFERRED and MORE DECENT than any common Arab or Persian culture, and this by OBJECTIVE standards of civility and enlightenment.

So STFU Bloo.

Hamid - who lived in Jordan for 4 years among other places in the ME.

Here’s my favourite Al Jazeera clip. It’s as good as that Ryan Giggs goal.

Good post, Dave. Have you considered providing translations of Al Arabiya articles? And right on cue, you have an effort to terrorize you into silence.

Pretty damn odd definition of racism, Bloo, where one can praise the erudition and cultured beauty of a language, make no mention of race (or, even, religion which we’re told is the new race) and insist liberal Arab voices exists. But, you said “verges on racism”, so that’s you covered. Are you an Arabic speaker?

Quite specifically racist too - the “inference” of Western superiority

Even if this were true, it ain’t specific. Been speaking English long?

over the Arab race is clear.

There is no “Arab race”. Dave certainly didn’t say so.

http://www.arabscientist.org/>/blockquote>

What of it? There are Arab scientists a plenty, but they have to work in those dastardly Western institutions. One home-knitted webpage which you found after a brief google does not make a case.

You, not Dave, have heard criticisms of political and social models as racist rants. Admit it, you are scared of the “Arab race”.

You’d do well to take this down - plenty of fuel here for your detractors.

He doesn’t really have to listen to a single word you have to say.

“Nor even because it’s an incoherent mess which can’t quite make up its mind whether Mohammed Atta was a victim of CIA/Mossad manipulation or an Islamic hero.”

This is the crux of the issue.
This particular Arab discourse (which I have found it also in the slow-thinking Latin American anti-USA left) wants to consider a terrorist as an unaware victim of a cunning manipulation that led him despairingly and astray to committ the act that he was wishing for and that everybody applauds.

Saving the distances, it is as if there was said that a big conspiracy against Aleph exists, to force him to marry Angelina Jolie. She says yes, so she is certainly part of the conspiracy. Aleph lives happily all his life with her, and people still think that he was being led astray by evil people towards his happiness. Poor hero/victim! Long live the Religion of Peace or I will blow you to bits!

Bloo - Does it concern you that Al Jazeera broadcasts venomous antisemitism, see 33 minutes into the “Top Secret” programme above?

Plenty unattractive about the West too

Talk about avoiding the issue!

“bad writing is indicative of somebody with something to hide.” is a summary of the theme of a George Orwell essay called “Politics and the English Language”. Not original to Nick Cohen.

I’m trying to imagine what Orwell might have thought of post-modernism. Might he have seized on some of its origins in efforts to re-think a dying Leninism?

Thank you for writing this.

I thank God every day that I wasn’t born a poor little muslim girl, with depraved menfolk and no hope of liberty for myself or my children.

Carol, this is a discussion about the lack of subtle edges of the Arabic language, just one spoken by Muslims. The Muslim angle, which there is of course, is secondary. Have you any thoughts on the primary point?

Davem - many thanks, that explains a lot, in fact it is one of the most illuminating posts I can remember here. Unfortunately it underlines the enormity of the chasm between our respective cultures. It is Arabic’s tragedy to have evolved in a culture of extreme political correctness, where blasphemy is a capital crime, where you have to revere a murderous bandit at the same time as trying to live a decent life. Small wonder that their minds are crippled with doublethink.

Field - that’s a good analogy. I remember hearing a man asking his parents why they never told him about sex. Their response was quite simply: “We didn’t have the words”. (even the rude ones)

Joshua - many obvious things still need to be pointed out, and some took serious courage: Gravity, the Copernican universe, Evolution, Communism doesn’t work.

Bloo - I see your critical thought is also impaired by a screwed up world view, hence your hiding behing the brainless charge of racism. Arabs never translated anything until the 19th century - they got their “subordinates” (Jews, Greeks, Persians, Christians) to do their translations. Their hubris, even today, is quite breathtaking. The only original contribution of Arabs to science was in optics, by Al Hazen - 1000 years ago.

1984 was as much about language and its systematic abuse to control the people as it was about totalitarian systems. The syndrome the Arabs have got themselves into is what Richard Landes describes as cognitive egocentrism - essentially attributing your own world view to others who do not posess it. Liberals suffer from this in their paltry efforts to understand the Arab and Muslim world - they should all read this thread. In fact I recommend many of Landes essays on the thought fallacies that surround politics, and particularly the politics of Islam and Arab culture.

I see all the You Tube clips referenced in this thread now come up with:
We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.

How convenient!

A great, thought provoking post by Davem.

ta!

Sadly I do not have time at the moment to write a guest post about this newspaper columnist and blogger, but Sultan Al Qassemi regularly writes for The National, a relatively new UAE based paper.

His latest article is entitled, “Al Jazeera and the released terrorist’s birthday party” and I am sure it will be of interest to anyone interested in this particular thread.

By the way - I do advise checking out Sultan’s blog. It contains a number of articles that he has had published and it is pleasing to see them published in an Arab newspaper

Totally off-topic, I know but I don’t recall it being discussed elsewhere - could this be the single most inane CiF post ever:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/31/religion.race

Daven seems to be arguing something on the lines of the Sapir-Worf thesis: that a language (Arabic) so defines the world that it only allows people to think in certain ways. Paradoxically this is nto too far from the devout Islamicist view that the word of god is only expressable in pure Arabic. Each makes langauge the bound of sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Worf

Not only is this relativism (not something I thought HP admired). It is empiricaly wrong. It would deny that true translation is possible. No doubt poetry, and to some extent fiction are left without a lot of their colour and situated culture when translated. But philosphically all truth must be translatable. Whatever the social norms of Arab speakers (debatable - I find it hard to believe that an entire swathe of humanity from the Maghreb to Syria spends its life avoiding direct speech) there is always room for Truth, which is Great and Prevails.

“Not only is this relativism (not something I thought HP admired). It is empiricaly wrong. It would deny that true translation is possible. No doubt poetry, and to some extent fiction are left without a lot of their colour and situated culture when translated. But philosphically all truth must be translatable.”

No doubt, in other circumstances, and with a lot of effort, Popper’s “The Open Society and its Enemies” could be translatable to Arabic, and not only that, but understood by the large mass of the Arab world.
What DaveM says -IMHO - is that these circumstances don’t exist now, which is sensible, and not racist or relativist at all.
Think, for example, how you have misconstrued the meaning of DaveM post, even though you speak DaveM’s same language. Because you look for things that DaveM has not put in there.

I have a good test, Andrew.

Please, answer, what is Zionism?

Fabian, my point is to make a difference (analytically that is - hey ain’t I a philosopher!) between language and the culture it is in. DaveM seems to be assertign that there are inherently obstacles in ARabic I assume both colloquial and classical) to speaking directly abotu what is or what si not the case (why? how? as he says).

I put the same logic to work on a language other than English which i do speak, French, and find that written French is full of lots of ways of avoiding direct statements of fact, such as the use of the conditional for a reported crime, and the subjunctive mood for expressign doubt and emotion. Thus I conclude that French is the ‘language of diplomacy’ since it can swiftly avoid direct truth!

Quoi qu’il en soit: Ideology (what is Zionism?) is right at the borders betwen the two and by definiton is not the same as truth.

Carol, this is a discussion about the lack of subtle edges of the Arabic language, just one spoken by Muslims. The Muslim angle, which there is of course, is secondary.

I disagree. Language is a reflection of the needs of the people who speak it. If Islam disappeared tomorrow, then the need for rational thought and discussion would create new ways to use Arabic. Something would change, an new pattern would be imported into the language, and rational discussion would flourish.

Andrew, of course that there are things that are unthinkable (without a lot of effort) in any language, because you lack the concepts, and you are used to think differently.
This is really non debatable.
Democracy was invented by the Greeks, not by the Persians, I doubt many Persians understood what it was at the beginning.
Similarly with many peoples and many concepts.
Arabic is the language of a people who went from being warriors to being servants of dictators, to being spectators of history, to being resentful of it and believing in conspiracies.
They never went through a French revolution and they never accepted that Jews are people just like them.
What DaveM says is that they did not develop their language along with us, so many things are unthinkable or have to be expressed in metaphors to come through, which adds effort to communication.
So you could expect that their thinking processes are different, just like their habits and ideologies.

Re: Zionism, I would expect that an Egyptian or Iraqi Arab would define that differently than: “the Jewish nationalist movement” which is how I define it, and it is pretty neutral.

I can’t wait for part 3 in this series - perhaps you could title it The Arab Mind, and explain how these inhuman beasts brains function at the level of a dogs, and they hate their children, and rape their mothers and so on. Very useful material you provide Dave M.

In fact, posts like this serve the role of the fluffler, whose sole purpose is to give the reader a good solid erection, before they toddle off to fuck someone. In this case, its them backwards Arabs that’s getting fucked.

Andrew: Daven seems to be arguing something on the lines of the Sapir-Worf thesis: that a language (Arabic) so defines the world that it only allows people to think in certain ways. Paradoxically this is nto too far from the devout Islamicist view that the word of god is only expressable in pure Arabic. Each makes langauge the bound of sense.

Davem’s point is not about language centricity, another favorite idea of the idiotic cultural left. Nowhere has Davem made language the center of cognition. That centricity thesis is long debunked — see Pinker.

The point is that the political conditions imposed on the populace has now come to be reflected in the language.

So I think you understood it backwards.

As a speaker of a ME language, let me say that once the speaker for example emigrates away from that region, the same language tends to be used more precisely and more meaningfully with the flowery nonsense given a rest. And it is reformed in subtle ways, in order to make it rigorous and a better medium of direct expression in the new surrounding.

those nasty towel head, camal jockeys havent translated Marx into Arabic eh?

Jeezus.

Can we take up a collection and send TheIrie to a deprogramming centre?

“I can’t wait for part 3 in this series - perhaps you could title it The Arab Mind, and explain how these inhuman beasts brains function at the level of a dogs, and they hate their children, and rape their mothers and so on. Very useful material you provide Dave M.”

TheIrie, which Arab countries you have visited?

ps

DaveM surely has heard of the Marxist Internet Archive?

“those nasty towel head, camal jockeys havent translated Marx into Arabic eh?”

Something must have happened during translation, since those Arab Marxists that existed -a long time ago and in a galaxy far far away- thought that Jews were the burgeoisie and the Palestinians were the Peasantry.

DaveM says the following (re.Arabic):

It’s not like European languages, which are basically verbal ways to convey information on who did what, where, when, how and why. It appears to me that having developed in an environment that prohibits any sort of critical thought, especially in the fields of religion and politics, Arabic has become a means to avoid dealing with difficult issues.

It’s a Blog post and I won’t labour the point that this is pretty bald as descriptions of languages go. I would nevertheless point out that it is “arabic” which is said to be a “means” to avoid difficult issues, and which “prohibits” critical thought. Not the cultural and political atmosphere of the countries in which it is spoken.

This kind of argument-by-assertion that language stops/allows certain kinds of thought has a long linguistic history: such as the claim that Hebrew lacks a future tense (morphologically, not analytically, so does English but there you go) shaped the religious content of the Torah. Or even that (Professor Steiner) that the Indo-European tense-system, and the form this gives to counter-factual subjunctive conditional (like that one!) promoted the early use of scientific hypotheses (Conjecture and Refutation as Popper’s book called it).

I have read Pinker, which is precisely why I made the point that truth is translatable. There is are obviously ways in which grammatical structrues do influence how things are sayable. But I suspect that modern Arabic does not actually stop people thinking in terms of what is true and what is not, and if there is a great influence of religious poison in arabic speakers’ cultural and political life, this doesn’t prevent people from, conveying truthful information. Or thinking. I thought the Mosque and the State were there to do that job.

Fortunately such is the boundless creativity inherent in the nature of all languages and all peoples, that any Islamist Newspeak is as doomed as the the one Orwell dreamt up: an impossibility in fact.

It would seem to me undeniable that language & world view are intimately related. cf (to cherry-pick a couple of examples) the precision of German or the casual attitude towards sexual politics among speakers of languages lacking a neuter gender such as French. Sometimes stereotypes work.

Fabian

the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Maxrian thinking

I want an end to the Israeli state as the state is the non neutral muscle of Capital and nations are an arbitrary creation of capitalism.

One world and one people is the motto

ps

all states, not just Israel

“the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Maxrian thinking”

Tell exactly that to their faces.

Fabian

I am not interested in talking to murderous scum. I would rather talk with folks in order that they do not fall for that terrorist shite

But you could discover that the behavior of the PFLP towards you in the hypothetical case you shout “the PFLP do not have a f*** to do with Marxian thinking” to their faces, won’t be much different from the behavior of every other gun-toting Marxist group since Lenin.

You won’t be alive to enjoy the realization, though.

They may well call themselves marxists, it doesn’t make it so

If you want to believe what people say then there was a truly democratic country called the DDR.

The DDR was an Orwellian Police state of course, nothing to do with socialism. But hey…you have an anti communist axe to grind. Gawd forbid facts get in the way

What facts??

Standard history says post 1917 Russia was communist.

A basic undertsanding of socialism is sufficient to rubbish that nonsense but heck, look at Lenin’s writing. State Capitalism was a step forward, he said in 1918

Would you like more facts Fabian?

You are revolting, Ireson. I am never surprised when anti-imperialist imps such as you allow yourself the vent for the racist garbage in your worldview, but it doesn’t stop my being appalled.

So, if some Movement doesn’t nationalize the Means of Production, then abolishes the State, then arranges the situation so everybody receives according to his needs and gives according to his abilities, that is not a Socialist Movement?

Have you ever stop to think that the very fact that no Socialist movement was ever able of doing what you think they had to do, even though they claimed as loud as you that they were trying to follow Marx’s way, says something very meaningful and basic about the posibilities of the Socialist doctrine and the real consequences of trying to follow it?

In other words, don’t you see that Marxism is a Millenarian sect?

‘the casual attitude towards sexual politics among speakers of languages lacking a neuter gender such as French’

Welsh also lacks a neuter gender. Do the Welsh also have a casual attitude towards sexual politics?

Arabic also lacks a neuter gender.

Fabian, what is a “Millinarian sect” please? I did not realise Marxists were fond of millinery. I had always thought Milan to be the historical home of hat-making, hence the linguistic origin of the city’s name.

Dunno about casual, Bob; definitely ambivalent (the complaints are going to start).

Coatsey (G-d I hate that rhyme, but better than confusing you with Ireson), Dave’s left sufficient ambiguity that he’s referring to 20th Century Arabic and political milleu, not its development from early Semitic. Others have tried to do so, as if the language Thomas Aitkenhead tried to conceal his atheism with is different from mine.

It would be interesting to consider how Maltese presents itself.

Roley:

Why do you invent words? I have written “Millenarian”, not “Millinarian” like you. The joke about Milan really isn’t worth the effort.

Fabian

“nationalise” means turning means of production (land, mines, factories et al) into state property. Atlee’s Government nationalised in 45, as did the Bolsheviks after 1917 - that wasn’t socialism. Socialism is something else: common ownership, Free access, no money, production based solely on meeting needs.

You fail to notice central parts of socialist thought. There can be no socialism without a majority who understand and desire it. That’s a billion miles away from elitist Leninists. Socialists are democrats. That old bearded German was for the franchise, dont you know. The difference is we support workers, not the capitalist class

As for Millenarian….Nope. People are starving whilst firms make profits. Whats wrong saying that is wrong and we should change society in order that this never should happen?
.

Swahili has sixteen genders.

Thanks for this. I don’t know Arabic myself but I have long suspected that the difficulties we face in mutual comprehension lie deep in the structures of the Arabic language itself. It seems to be a right hemisphere language that follows intuition and feeling rather than left hemisphere logic. It is highly allusive, and there is a constant blurring of subject and object. Ie, confusion as to where the verb is going, making it logically imprecise, but emotionally powerful; ‘affect’ rather than ‘effect’. For instance, I have heard it said that in Arabic, instead of saying: ‘I missed the train’ you will say, ‘The train missed me’. Now there’s a cop out!

Agency is very important in languages that emphasise rationality. Who (precisely) did What to Whom; When; and How. Latin is very rational in that way.

Time is another concept that varies in languages.

The Hopi language has no tenses but has been found to be a good language in which to express the relations of quantum mechanics.

In Gaelic ‘give’ and ‘take’ are often used interchangeably. You differentiate direction by other aspects of grammar and context to indicate whether the movement is from A to B, or from B to A. But usually its use is limited to certain subjects where giving and taking are a bit allegorical; ‘I give a song’ is the same as ‘I take a song’.

Verbs are however expressed remotely as verbal nouns, ‘washing’ rather than ‘wash’. If you want to say, ‘I must wash the car’ you say ‘it is at me to be at the car’s washing’. Ie the realm of things (me; car) is at one stage removed from the world of actions; which have a kind of abstract transcendent eternal quality. The washing of the car exists at some level of time whether I am at it or not.

All interesting stuff.

Yet I find it hard to imagine that Arabic can’t handle the precision of science and natural philosophy as it once did. Arabs study to become doctors and clearly find ways to express agency with some precision.

So I wonder if deeper cultural forces are at work. All languages have their respective capacities for precision, agency, abstraction, however they are structured.

spgb gray, did you learn nothing new from the economic collapse of command economies?

I saw Polish farmers on my TV, not bothering to complain that tools weren’t very good or too expensive, but that there were none available to buy.

No goods can be used for need unless and until responsibility for them has been exchanged. This point even applies to donated bllod.

Arabic has a lot in common with Hebrew - they’re both Semitic languages - and both are similar in important ways to the Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish). If there were something about the Arabic language (as opposed to Arabic culture) which has a negative impact on thinking, one might expect speakers of these other languages to have similar problems.

I’ll be more specific in my disagreement with the one point about how limiting language is.

If you listen to teenagers speak, you’ll hear a lot of innovation - much which they’ll give up later for standard speech. But in any case you get they impression that they’re inventing English to suit them as much as learning it..

I think every generation moulds language to its needs. Language is arbitrary, and serves to express whatever people need expressed. If there is a need that isn’t being fulfilled then people will innovate or import.
No doubt language can can limit thought but not all thought is verbal and I feel that language can change awfully quickly when there is need and will to change it.

I worry though, also, that an Islamic environment limits nonverbal thought as well. Representative visual art is frowned upon, but I think that representative provides nonverbal symbols for thought, and to be impoverished in visual material is also be impoverished in thought.

Perhaps an argument could be made that there is a manner of thought in physicality, in sensuality, that is also being limited as well.

“Arabic has a lot in common with Hebrew - they’re both Semitic languages - and both are similar in important ways to the Celtic languages (Welsh, Breton, Irish). If there were something about the Arabic language (as opposed to Arabic culture) which has a negative impact on thinking, one might expect speakers of these other languages to have similar problems.”

But Hebrew was rethought by a Russian, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who, in fact, completely remade the grammar.
I almost can’t understand the Hebrew from the Tora.

“You fail to notice central parts of socialist thought. There can be no socialism without a majority who understand and desire it.”

So what do you do with the minority who understand but does not desire it?

Also the use of Arabic is used to shield any criticism of Islam because any Muslim who realises your criticism is valid can just say that you have not read the Koran in it’s original Arabic therefore you have not really understood the perfect word of the creator of the universe.

That line of reasoning (defense) can be quickly overcome by pointing out that differences in human language are a mere detail to the ‘creater’, and that if the Koran cannot accurately be translated into other languages, it therefore cannnot possibly be the word of god.

I once blurted out that response to a gloating, sing-song islamist, asking her how such severe limitations of language could be reconciled with god’s reputation for omnipotence.

She scowled, stalked off and never dAWA’ED me again.

Languages do have an impact on what can be thought, concieved of and revealed.

And they can also have a very real bearing on a culture’s ability to grasp the truth or to disguise the truth.

I speak both French and English, but when in tight situations, and for reasons of sheer strategy, will switch to french, using it as a lifebuoy because french is a MUCH better vehicle for floating a line of bullshit.

It’s even allowed me to get off the hook for a speeding ticket one time.

Is it any wonder that french was once the premier langugage of diplomacy?

Nothing bullshits better than a diplomat, a French diplomat.

Not because of Mohammed Atta’s father ranting on about his son’s innocence

Atta Sr. seems to blow hot and cold on this issue. Here he is talking to CNN in 2005:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/07/19/atta.father.terror/index.html

CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) — The father of one of the hijackers who commandeered the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, praised the recent terror attacks in London and said many more would follow.

Speaking to CNN producer Ayman Mohyeldin Tuesday in his apartment in the upper-middle-class Cairo suburb of Giza, Mohamed el-Amir said he would like to see more attacks like the July 7 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus that killed 52 people, plus the four bombers….

El-Amir said the attacks in the United States and the July 7 attacks in London were the beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war, in which there would be many more fighters like his son.

But Hebrew was rethought by a Russian, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who, in fact, completely remade the grammar.
I almost can’t understand the Hebrew from the Tora.

Yes, Arabic could probably benefit from its own Eliezer Ben Yehuda. It’s worth remembering that Ben Yehuda faced strong opposition from some religious Jews, who thought Hebrew should be a strictly “sacred” language, and not used for everyday affairs. There are still some ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that.

if the Koran cannot accurately be translated into other languages, it therefore cannnot possibly be the word of god.

That assumes that God would rather convince nonarabs to be Muslims rather than see them subjugated, and their cultures destroyed and replaced by that of the conquerer. Christians say “God loves you” I don’t think Muslims ever preach to nonbelievers that Allah loves them.