ABSTRACT
Throughout fourteen centuries of history, Islam as a civilization has faced major external cultural challenges on two separate occasions. The first of these occurred during the early days of Islam, when Greek, Indian and Persian philosophy and science were transmitted to the Islamic world cotemporaneously with the rise of the Muslims as a power in the Middle East region; the second began about two hundreds years ago with European colonization of the Middle East. On both occasions, the Arabs found it advisable and even necessary to re-evaluate certain aspects of their own indigenous culture in light of the cultural and scientific challenges presented by the West. The Arabic language, the language of the holy Qur’ān, was not only the medium through which these challenges were debated but also itself a central subject matter of the debates.
