Learning Arabic is a communal obligation, unlike logic. No one would claim that every rational person must personally acquire this language—least of all someone whom Allah has already honored with the noblest of tongues, a tongue that combines the highest degrees of eloquence and conveys the mind’s conceptions with the fewest words and the most precise definitions.

This was the very line of reasoning put forward by Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī in his famous debate with Matta the philosopher. When Matta began extolling logic and asserting that rational people need it, Abū Saʿīd replied that such need does not exist; the real need, he said, is to learn Arabic. For meanings are innate and intellectual—they require no special technical convention—whereas language, which one must possess in order to grasp the meanings that must be known, certainly does have to be learned. Consequently, mastering Arabic—without which the Qur’an and the Sunnah cannot be properly understood—is a collective duty, whereas logic is not.