Interview with Dr. V. Abdur Rahim:Madrasas Do not Teach Arabic as a Living Language

Bismillah arRahman arRahim

This is an interviewed by Muqith Mujtaba Ali with the scholar of Arabic Language and the author of the famous “Madina Books”: Dr. V. Abdur Rahim (Bio)

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Madrasas Do not Teach Arabic as a Living Language

Mr. Muqith Mujtaba Ali met this distinguished scholar in Madras (Chennai, India) in July 1997 and interviewed him for Islamic Voice.(This interview was published in August 1997 issue of the Islamic Voice, a popular Islamic Monthly published from Bangalore, India)

Muqith: What led you to Arabic language scholarship?
V. AbdurRahim: Arabic as the language of the Holy Qur’an had fascinated me. When I was young, my father took me to a ‘Maulana’.

Dr. V. Abdur Rahim

Bismillah arRahman arRahim

I doubt there are any English-speaking Muslims that have pursued the path of learning Arabic(fus-ha) and have not heard of the “Madina Books” or it’s author Dr. V. Abdur Rahim. Yet, to my surprise, I had some difficulty trying to find any biographical information about the man behind the books. In my search I came across a few things which I might post later, but for now lets just stick with the biography. I tried finding his first name but haven’t found it yet, if anyone knows let me know, insha’Allah.

Dr. V. Abdur Rahim

V. Abdur Rahim was born in the small town of Vaniyambadi in the state of Tamil Nadu, India in 1933. After finishing his secondary school studies, he joined Presidency College, University of Madras where he majored in English Language and Literature. He graduated in 1957. In 1964, he joined al-Azhar University, Cairo, where he did his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Arabic Philology.

It is to be noted that Abdur Rahim learnt Arabic by himself. The school where he did his secondary school studies offered Arabic, but the lessons it offered consisted of only memorizing the conjugation tables. Abdur Rahim detested this method.  He thought that it was the most unnatural way of learning a language. Only dead languages like Latin, Syriac, etc. are taught this way. Living languages teach sentences straightaway. He decided to design a curriculum to teach Arabic to non-native speakers of Arabic.

In 1969,