“It was the blind leading the blind,’’ Amanullah said. “Nobody in the room knew what the sermon was about. It could have been a recipe for baba ghanoush and no one would have been the wiser.’’  – The Jakarta Globe

This is a strange case. In South East Asia where Islam is the predominant religion, Friday sermons are given in their respective native languages. Mosques in Singapore give sermons in English, in Malaysia they use Malay, in Indonesia it’s always in Indonesian. Sometimes there’s a bit of Arabic quotations thrown in at the start and end. 

In many of the mosques in Australia, sermons are in English for the benefit of the multicultural audience. Friday sermons consist of two parts and there’s nothing to stop the Imams from preaching in one language in one part and another in the other part. It’s surprising to read that there’s a debate about this in the United States.

Why do it at all when you or your audience can’t understand the language? An argument that was put forward was that the prophet Muhammad S.A.W used Arabic. Well guess what, he was Arab, he spoke only Arabic. If imitating him is the reason for the enforcement, Muslims around the world would travel on camels and horses, live in houses made of dirt, and so on and so forth. This is not the 800s, this is the 2000s. A lot happened in more than 1200 years.