A Comparative Study of Arabic Language Teaching in Malaysian and Iranian Schools (Logic, Goals and Reasons)

Arabic Language Teaching has become an important issue in many countries around the world, because Arabic is the official language of Islam. The main purpose of this article is to study the teaching of Arabic language in the educational system of Iran and Malaysia in terms of logic, reasons, and goals, so that assessing the situation of Arabic language teaching in Iran according to the standards of an almost successful educational system in which Arabic language has almost the same conditions as in Iran helps to identify its problems and harms. To achieve this goal, original sources related to Arabic language teaching in Iran and Malaysia have been studied and compared. In this research, Bereday’s approach is the main basis of work as the method of comparative research which first describes the current situation of the two countries and then compares and analyzes it. Then we try to answer the main research questions. And finally, we have reached to the conclusion that Malaysia and Iran have exactly the same situation in terms of logic and reasons for teaching Arabic, but in terms of goals, the difference between the two countries is very noticeable. Malaysia has set its educational goals based on a specific scientific standard (CEFR), but in Iran there is a kind of ambiguity in the goal of teaching Arabic language. And the authors of the textbooks have not made it clear what their purpose is in teaching Arabic language. And in order to properly understand the Qur’an and Islamic texts, we must first learn Arabic language correctly and in a scientific way, then use it to understand the Qur’an and religious concepts or other purposes such as tourism, economics, and so on. This is an important issue that has not been taken into account in writing Arabic textbooks in Iran.