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When speaking with a (fairly devout) Muslim friend, she encouraged me to learn Arabic in preparation for the afterlife. She said something to the effect that I will be asked questions in Arabic, and I'll need to learn Arabic in order to reply.

Question: Must a Muslim learn Arabic to communicate with Allah in the afterlife?

Obviously, Allah is not inhibited in any way from speaking or understanding English, my native language. It seems like there needn't be communication difficulties.

Also, it seems like I could either learn Arabic while waiting for judgement day, or Allah could just say "be" and I'll know Arabic if He wanted.

It may be, however, that learning Arabic is an act of worship, or something along those lines.

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    Ask your friend whether she believes that Allah revealed the Torah in Arabic or Hebrew\Aramaic? Arabic is a human creation that developed over several millennia to its classic form ... God judges people on their morals and not knowledge of an arbitrary language.
    – UmH
    Apr 8, 2017 at 16:49
  • @Uma: I don't think my hayya will allow me to do that; she's far more devout than me. And it seems far too confrontational. (And we're not in the same country currently.)
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Apr 8, 2017 at 17:23
  • Sorry, didn't mean to make it sound confrontational ... just trying to make a point. The Quran emphasizes on the futility of making speculations about God without knowledge from the scriptures. There is no indication in the Quran or authentic hadith about the importance of arabic language for communication with the angels in the grave, nor with God in the hereafter ... what we are taught is that God rewards those who do good deeds and punishes the wrongdoers. If learning Arabic was essential to pass the test it would have been mentioned.
    – UmH
    Apr 8, 2017 at 17:45

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There is no mention of it in the Quran. There is no saheeh(authentic) hadiths that say this only fabricated ones. They are:

It was narrated by al-Tabaraani, al-Haakim and others that Ibn 'Abbas said that the Prophet said:

“Love the Arabs for three reasons, because I am an Arab, the Qur’aan is Arabic and the speech of the people of Paradise is Arabic.”

Ibn al-Jawzi ruled that it was fabricated and so did al-Dhahabi and al-Albaani, al-Tha’labi said it had no basis. Ibn Hibbaan said: Yahya ibn Zayd narrated ahadeeth from sound narrators so it is invalid to say that his evidence is true.

There are many different opinions. Some people say Arabic will be spoken, others say Syriac will be spoken because it was the language of Adam and others say the inhabitants of Hell will speak Farsi but we do not know.

However you need to learn Arabic anyway. The Qu'ran is Arabic so you need to learn it to read it. You need to learns Surahs to say in salah which are in Arabic. I can read Arabic and memorise it but I have no clue what it means.

What we do know is that whatever language questions will be asked, we will understand it otherwise why would we be asked them.

Allah knows best.

Source: Islam Q&A

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