What language is the language of God?  According to a BBC poll, the majority of British Muslims — 65 percent of them — would have Muslim clerics in Britain preach in English, despite the fact the Qur’an, the Muslim holy scripture and a recitation of the word of God, is written and transmitted in Arabic. Only 38 percent of the overall British population concurred that sermons should be delivered in English.  

The poll, conducted in August of this year and including 1,004 adults contacted by phone in addition to another 204 conversations with Muslims, could well be a reflection of the anxiety felt by Muslim communities in Britain about the alienation, marginalization, and failure to integrate and assimilate if preaching is conducted in Arabic, in addition to the fact that English may be the mother tongue of many British Muslims.

It’s unclear, however, it if is even feasible for the majority of imams to preach in English; Chair of the Muslim Council for Religious and Racial Harmony, imam Dr. Abduljalil Sajid, offered the BBC the vague estimate “that only 10 percent (of imams in Britain) are well versed in English and 90 percent probably speak in their own mother tongue — Turkish, Bengali, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic and so on.” According to Sajid, “Fifty-six percent of our young people are born British and the only country they know of is England, the United Kingdom,” which underscored the importance, in his opinion, of preaching in English to the younger generation of Muslim Britons whose primary language is English.  

Mimi Hanaoka