He said that Arabic is too hard

Several years ago, I was just starting to learn Arabic. And while taking a class at the mosque to learn the Arabic script, I went to a bookstore and found a few books on learning Arabic. I was a big fan of bookstores in those days, and would spend hours in there reading parts of different books that I couldn't afford to buy. But on the day that I happened to pick up these books on Arabic, an Arab man found me and asked me about studying Arabic. Then he went on to tell me how difficult the Arabic language is and how nobody can learn it unless they learn it from birth.

But I believe he was wrong.

I had a lot of opportunities for learning the Qur'anic Arabic in my first few years as a Muslim--not something that everyone can boast--and alhamdulillah now I can understand the vast majority of the Qur'an when I read or hear it, and hope to gain 100% comprehension within the next year. I'm certainly not going to be composing any Arabic poetry, or writing books in the language, but I'm pretty close to completing my goal of being able to understand the entire Qur'an in Arabic, without requiring a translation.

And I think that many Muslims have that same goal--to be able to read the Qur'an in Arabic and understand it. And honestly, it's a reasonable and realistic goal. Allah made it easy for us. Even though we might hear teachers say that the Qur'an is the most eloquent of Arabic language, and hear random Arabs say that Arabic is the most difficult language ever, we shouldn't buy into a myth of an unreachable Qur'an. No, we might not all be scholars of Arabic language, producing awe-inspiring poetry or even conversing in the language fluently. All we need is to be able to understand the Qur'an--not every last detail, not writing a tafseer, but to comprehend the text even at a basic level. And that is an amazing gift.

Don't be turned off by the naysayers, skeptics who think that Arabic is too hard. If your goal is the Qur'an, then inshaaAllaah you'll find it well within reach.