Welcome back to Variant Quran.
I’m Daniel Brubaker.
Thanks for being back here.
In this video, I am going to be answering some of your questions and comments.
I have seen that some of you are waiting expectantly for new material, and I want to give it to
you as quickly as I possibly can without compromising the quality of it.
Now, as you can see, we got some snow here around where I live.
I love the snow.
I know many of you are in different parts of the world and may or may not get weather
like this, but I love it.
It is one of my favorite times of the year and favorite things to be in.
Alright, well, let’s just get to a couple of the comments from the last video.
And the first one here is from somebody screen-named “Final Turn.”
He says, “I am Muslim by identity and well versed with Quran and its Arabic.
All I can say is ’Thank you’.
I am following your work for quite sometime and really appreciate that.
To Muslim scholars I must say that they should be ashamed of themselves for telling a lie
to their audience.
Instead of appreciating your work, they are trying to degrade you.
You are doing phenomenal work!”
Well, thank you very much for that comment.
Let’s take a look at one more.
He or she says, “Regarding Arabic, the work you are doing with such ancient Arabic texts
is quite impressive, those manuscripts are almost impossible to read for a native speaker
and I am one.
It’s not about Arabic; it’s more about expertise in deciphering archaic Arabic rasms.
Beside that, I never noticed any mistakes in your Arabic, even in your pronunciation.”
Well, thank you very much for that comment.
I don’t want to say that comment.
I don’t want to say that I am amazing in Arabic, but I do appreciate the input of native
speakers on it from time to time and I’ve been complimented at various times, during
travels, on my Arabic and pronunciation … although it’s far from perfect and far from complete.
But it is very good to have encouraging words like that.
And, it’s also very true that a major part of what I’ve had to do is to focus attention
on learning to read the old manuscripts.
And that’s — as I mentioned before — it’s a technical task.
It’s not something that just any, even native, Arabic speaker can pick up and do.
It’s not an impossible task; obviously, I’ve been able to do it.
But, it just takes a little bit of specific and focused study in an area that is not necessarily
widely-applicable.
So, thank you for recognizing that.
Here’s another one from Jacob Thomason, who says, “I’m a native Arabic speaker.
Your work is amazing.
Even your pronunciation is also really good.
Keep it up.”
And, I’m fascinated by the name “Jacob Thomason” who is a native speaker.
I am not sure if that’s a screen name or your actual name, but thank you for that comment.
I’m fascinated to hear from somebody named Jacob Thomason who is also a native Arabic
speaker.
Here’s one from another commenter whose screen name is King Samial, and he says, “I
am an ex Muslim and a Yemeni Arab who speaks Arabic.
Your work is great; don’t let them try to play you.
Keep the good work up!”
Thank you very much for that.
It’s, once again, great to have that from someone who is a native speaker, a Yemeni
native.
Let’s move on.
This is from “Zanzabil al-Salsabil, and this person says, “Dr. Yasir Qadhi is not
a native speaker of Arabic, which he often boasts of.
His native language is likely Urdu and his knowledge of Arabic may not be better than
Dr. Brubaker’s.”
Well, I don’t want to — from my very cursory observation, I think his Arabic is probably
pretty good.
His pronunciation seems good, and I suspect that his Arabic is better than mine.
I don’t want to fault him, or knock him down in his grasp of Arabic.
I think it is probably very good, and that is my impression.
Alright, but this commenter continues, "From what I read about Dr. Brubaker, apart from
English and Spanish, he knows Greek, Arabic, German, Hebrew, Syriac, and French.
Dr. Brubaker’s knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac in addition to Arabic gives him a great deal
of edge as a scholar of early Quranic manuscripts.”
Well, OK, so I listed some of those languages there.
I don’t know if he — well, he left one off, actually, which is Malayalam — but
I have a little bit of knowledge in a number of languages.
My best language is Spanish, in which I am near-fluent, because I spent part of my childhood
living in Madrid, in Spain.
And so, that’s that.
Arabic is not at a level of fluency or proficiency in that way.
And these other languages, obviously I had to take German and French to pass proficiencies
for my doctoral work, and that was just a requirement, and so, I passed those proficiency
exams.
I’m nowhere near fluent in those, but I can read and understand a text — read and
understand a scholarly text in those, as is required for the type of work I’ve done.
I can read Greek.
I can read Hebrew, particularly biblical Hebrew, and I, in fact, teach Hebrew in my home every
week.
So, that’s something that I’ve been working on for a long period of time.
Syriac is something that I picked up at Rice as well.
Syriac is a language that is related to Arabic and Hebrew.
It’s a Semitic language very closely related.
Some important early texts are written in Syriac, and it’s just a useful language
to at least have a working knowledge in.
But, my level of proficiency in all these languages is not extremely high.
I took a semester of Syriac, and have the ability to read it and work through it as
I need to do for my specific applications.
And, indeed, these things, particularly the Hebrew and Syriac, as this commenter notes,
is very useful for somebody who is doing the type of work that I do.
Alright, here’s the next one.
It’s from Nathan Durant.
And, thank you for all of these comments.
Nathan says, “For a Muslim to accuse a Christian of having an agenda to convert is extremely
dishonest since we all know Islam is a proselytizing faith too.
He seems to be jumping on the current leftwing bandwagon, maybe hoping for support from that
crowd.”
Alright, and so, I don’t want to be negative in my comments, but I think that what this
— what Nathan observes here is actually a very good point: That Islam is a proselytizing
faith.
Now, that’s not to say something bad about Islam.
It is a proselytizing faith.
That is a fact, and that is just something that, you know, if Yasir Qadhi or others are
Muslims, then they would be doing that as well.
And so, it does seem a little bit strange to be accusing somebody else of doing that.
This commenter says, “Anyone who’s gone through the process of doctoral work knows
that a dissertation is NOT meant to be 100% error free.
That’s why you do doctoral work: to show that [you] know SOMETHING, not EVERYTHING.
If that’s the standard that YQ is using, he should also know that it can be applied
to his dissertation as well.”
And, I think that’s true.
I mean, again, that’s not faulting anyone — it’s just a fact of life in the world
of doctoral dissertations.
So, that was one of the points that I made in my last video.
And then, here are the last two that I’ll show you today, and then we’ll wrap it up.
This says, “Dr. Brubaker, I really appreciate your cool and gracious response.”
And, Nigel Greef says, Dr. Brubaker, you’re a real gentleman.
I respect your cool and collected manner.”
And, there were a number of comments like that.
But, I just wanted to thank you for those, and acknowledge them, and say, I hope that
my response is gracious and gentle.
I don’t want to be anyone’s enemy.
I do want to engage in the conversation, but there’s no need to be nasty about stuff.
So, thank you very much for watching these videos.
Please do like and subscribe.
I’ll try to get some more content out soon.
And, even more than that, to get my publications out and ready for you as well.
I’m also working on staying in touch with Shady Nasser because he had mentioned — we
need to get him on here after the publication of his book.
I have his book; I have not finished reading it completely.
Some of you have gotten it as well.
It is a little bit expensive, as are the Brill books.
That is just the reality of some of these academic books.
But there’s really good stuff in there.
I recommend it to any of you who are seriously interested in this stuff.
One of the wonderful things about it is a great appendix, an index that is quite useful.
And, of course, the substance of the book is wonderful as well.
There are a number of other books and publications that we need to talk about, but that’s it
for now.
Thank you so much for paying attention, for tuning in and watching, for liking and subscribing,
letting other people know about this channel.
More stuff is coming.
I actually have several more videos recorded.
But, the editing takes time and I want to make sure that everything is good quality
before I put it out there for you.
So, thank you, I know there are a lot of people interested in seeing more material.
I want to get it out to you.
Meanwhile, I’m so grateful for all of you, and thank you so much for your attention and
your interest, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Bye.