Mysteries of the Arabic Language

Mysteries of the Arabic Language

The Divine Word: (كُن - Kun)

For instance, noon, first of all, if you look at Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's kaf and noon, right? This is the word that Allah is using to tell us how He creates things. (كُن - Kun) (Kun). The kaf is a hunched letter, right? Kaf. Whereas the noon is what? What's the noon? Tajweed. What's the noon? What's the noon letter? Well, what attribute does it have? That's one of the attributes. It's a nasal letter, right? It has a ghunnah and it's in the khayshum.

The noon is a vibrational letter. (كُن - Kun) (Kun) Right? And vibration is how things come into existence. Right? They move into existence. And this is why if you look at the Quran, when the Messenger of Allah, how did he describe the revelation? Do people remember the hadith? Like a bell. You see, he, the first thing he heard was the resonance. These letters coming into the world and then from that resonance moving in. So the resonance has meaning. And then the letters have meaning, and then the words have meaning, and then the ayahs have meaning, and then the surah has meaning, and then the Quran has meaning.

The Beginning and End: From Vibration to Silence

So it's beginning with meaning and it ends with meaning. It begins with vibration and it leaves by going out of vibration. It goes back to silence, to sukoon. The Quran always ends on a sukoon, right? Arabic always ends on a sukoon. It begins with a harakah and it ends with a sukoon. So it comes from this vibration but it goes back into its silence.

The Root Words of Breath: Nafas, Nafath, and Nafakh

Now if you look at these words, nafah, right? You have nafas. What does nafas mean? Nafas, to breathe, right? Now what does nafakh mean? To blow. What does nafath mean? Right? Does everybody know them? Nafas. It's the light breath. It's the breath that we're breathing all the time. Nafas. Then you get the tha. It becomes a little harder. There's hams there, the jarayan, right? Nafath. And then nafakh is isti'la. It's a blow. It's a strong blow.

And this is what Allah gave, right? That He blew into him, (نَفَخَ فِيهِ مِن رُّوحِهِ - nafakha feehi min roohi). He gave him his nafas. Right? So these are all related. They're related. And they change the third root which is known as the lam letter. It's a determinate letter. It's going to determine the difference of the first two.

The Letter Sheen: The Principle of Spreading

Now if you look for instance at words that have sheen in it, right? Sheen is what type of letter? Tafashi. What does tafashi mean? To spread out, right? Shajarah. What does a shajarah do? Right? It spreads out. Shaja'ah, right? What is shaja'ah? Bravery, right? Now what happens with bravery? What happens with bravery? What

happens when one person runs in? Everybody else starts getting braver, right? Everybody else begins to get brave, right?

What is shafa'ah? Shafa'ah. It's an intercession, right? What happens when you intercede? Your authority spreads to something else. What is shafaqah? What's shafaqah? Compassion moves out to other people, right? Something in your heart moves out. There's tafashi, right? So this is what's happening with Arabic. It's happening at all levels.

The Sacred Nature of Arabic Letters

The reason that most of this is hidden from us is because it's too much, right? It's too much. I mean letters, just the letters alone, it is considered by the Muslims traditionally to be kufr, to throw the Arabic letters into trash, right? It was considered riddah, right? I mean if you knew what the letters were, you'd never read an Arabic newspaper again, right? Because the letters have meaning.

The Root of Nafas: Precious and Contradictory Meanings

Now look at the word again, nafas. What's the root word? What's the root word of nafas? What is it? The root is nafisa, right? I mean if you go to the masdar, I mean the thulathi, the fa'ala thulathi. There's nafisa, yanfasu, right? And then there's nafusa, yanfusu. What does nafusa mean? Anybody? Nafusa. What's nafis? Nafusa, usually the fa'ala thulathi, it goes nafis, right? Nafusa, yanfusu, or nafisun. Precious. It has, it's precious.

So there's something about the nafs, right? The nafs is precious, it's nafis. Now, what does nafasa mean? Nafasa, does anybody know? Nafasa means to give somebody the evil eye. Now why do people give other people the evil eye? Jealousy, right? They're envious. Envious. They have envy. Envy, in fact, envious might be from invidious. Invidious is evil eye in Latin. They're envious.

Now what goes to the second form, naffasa, what does that mean? What's naffasa mean? Yeah, naffasa karabahu, which means what? He alleviated his distress, right? He alleviated his distress. Now what's nafasa mean? Competed with him. Now you compete with people that you're envious of, right? And then, tanafasa.

What's tanafasa? (وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ - was-subhi idha tanaffas) (Quran 81:18). Tanaffasa, right? (وَالصُّبْحِ إِذَا تَنَفَّسَ - Was-subhi idha tanaffas). He took his breath.

The Dual Nature of the Soul

And you can see in those words that the soul has this dual nature. There's these high meanings like being precious, naffasa, to help other people alleviate distress. Tanafasa, to become big. Raheeb as-sadr. And then there's these other meanings, to be stingy, right? To harm people. To compete with others. And this is what's going on with the nafs.

You have nafs al-ammarah, nafs al-lawwamah, nafs al-mutma'innah, right? I mean, al-mutma'innah, al-mutma'innah. What's the root of that? Mutma'innah. Yeah, which means what? It's actually, yeah, it's calm. It's

actually quiet. Aman is peace or silence. So it's a soul that's been stilled, right? It's been stilled.

The ammarah is what? Waswasah. It's compelling, right? Obsessive-compulsive, right? So the high soul is nafis, right? It's breathing. It's stilled. It's calm. The low soul is ammarah. It's low. It's stingy. It's miserly. It's envious. It's competitive. And then there's this middle soul between the two, the lawwamah, right? The one that's going between the two because they're both there. They're both there, so it's going between the two. Sometimes it's ammarah, sometimes it's mutma'innah. Until it reaches that level.

The Attribute of the Tongue: Truthfulness

Now, if you look, what is the attribute? See the Qibalah al-Bukhari, there's only one attribute of the tongue that's praiseworthy. All other attributes are blameworthy, right? What is it? Truthfulness. That's the only attribute that is praiseworthy of the tongue. Now, what is the opposite of truthfulness? Falsehood, right? Kidhb.

Now, why do we tell lies? There's interest, right? So it's a motive. Lies are for motives. What is it from? Why does a child tell the truth? I guarantee you, you have to teach your child a lie. Children do not know lies. And I guarantee you, if you never teach your children lies, they will not know how to lie. They learn lies. They learn them through very subtle ways.

Teaching Children Truth and Lies

They can learn them, for instance, by you saying something like, when the bell rings, you tell the child, tell them that your parents aren't home. And they go to the door and they say, my dad said to say that they're not home. He doesn't know yet to do that. He doesn't know that. And that's why children will say things that get their parents into trouble. Why is that man so fat? He hasn't learned yet that there's truth, you temper truth. You have to temper it.

So, sidq is that there's no motive. It's pure. And that's what a siddiq is. He's pure. Now, what is sadaqah? It's charity, right? What's different from charity? What makes charity charity? There's no motive. إِنَّمَا نُطْعِمُكُمْ لِوَجْهِ اللَّهِ لَا نُرِيدُ مِنكُمْ جَزَاءً وَلَا شُكُورًا

"[Indeed, we feed you for the sake of Allah. We desire not from you reward or gratitude.]"

We're not doing this for a reward. We're doing this from sidq an-niyyah. Right? The intention is pure. Sadaqah. That's what sadaqah is.

The Root Words of Nabata: Sprouting and Throwing Out

Now, I mean you can look at, I'm just going to look at a few other meanings here. For instance, the noon and the ba. Nabata. Right? What does nabata mean? To sprout forth. Right? To sprout forth. What does nabadha mean? (يَنذُ - Yanbidhu). Right? What's it mean? That's what we tell the awliya al-karama (كَرَامَةً بِذَلِكَ وَمَن نَّفَاهَا - Karamatan bidhalika wa man naffaha). What's it mean, nabadha? But it has the idea of throwing it away. (يَنذُ - Yanbidhu). Right? (مَنبُوذ - Manboodh) is the untouchables. The outcasts. They've been thrown out. Right?

Now, what does nabaza mean? لَا تَنَابَزُوا بِالْأَلْقَابِ

"[And do not insult one another or call each other by [offensive] nicknames.]"

What does nabaza mean? Yeah, to call somebody, to throw a bad name at somebody. Right? لَا تَنَابَزُوا بِالْأَلْقَابِ

"[And do not insult one another or call each other by [offensive] nicknames.]"

What does nabata mean? It's related to nabata. Ta and ta are related in Arabic, by the way. Like 'ayn and hamzah are related. You'll find that a lot. Ta and ta are related.

Naba'a. What's it mean? Anybody? What does Yusfan Zippoor mean? To draw out. Right? So what would naba'a mean? To come out, to gush out. What does naba' mean? (يَنبَعُ - Yanbau). Yeah, naba'. (يَنبُوعٌ - Yanboo') is a spring. So it's a spring that's flowing out. So each one of those is related to this idea of coming out, of coming forth, of being projected out. Right? Throwing out.

The Patterns of Arabic Language

And you go on and on like that. And you can go through the Arabic language. I guarantee you'll start seeing all of these patterns. And Ibn Faris is the great, he wrote his Mu'jam Maqayis al-Lughah. Right? So we have a great gift in the Arabic language. Allah has given this ummah a great gift. And we have to learn the language and utilize it. And we have to recognize also that this language is a way out of the madness of this modern condition of nihilism and meaninglessness. Because it restores the deep meaning.

Right? I mean you can create an entire cosmology based on the Arabic language. And there are scholars that have done that. Because the Arabic language does explain the world. It explains it. Because we believe, and this is the dominant opinion and anybody who really studies it has to come to that conclusion. We believe that the Arabic language is tawqeefiyyah. That Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given this language.

The Myth of Linguistic Determinism

Now I once mentioned that in a speech and I had a Saudi linguist come up to me afterwards and said that's not true that the Arabs have all these words for sand just like the Eskimos have all these words for snow. And it's a language that's determined by its environment just like any other language. That is not true. It's not true either that the Inuit Indians, there's Inuk and Eskimos. The Inuit Eskimos only have two words for snow. And there are actually more words in English for snow than the Eskimos have. And that somehow creeped into the literature. And there's a book that was written called the Eskimo Snow Myth and Other Linguistic Hoaxes.

Because somebody actually, you read stuff in the literature and a lot of people just assume because our epistemology, despite what western people want to admit, our epistemology is largely based on trust. It really is. They don't like to admit that. But they're all, if you read any academic work, it's filled with footnotes. Well, those guys aren't checking every single thing that was ever said. I mean they're trusting that their colleagues, you know, that they were being truthful when they made those statements. And it's not always the case.

The Hundred Monkey Myth

Sometimes there are things like the 100th monkey myth, which you'll see a lot in books. It's some Japanese

study that was done. And it was done, but they, you know, this idea that you get to this, what Rupert Sheldrake called morphogenic resonances, which is interesting, but they used this as a proof for that. That these hundred, 99 monkeys learned how to clean potatoes and then when the 100th one did, suddenly monkeys on other islands started doing the same thing. And so there's this idea that you reach a critical mass that it starts to jump to other places without having any material connections. And this is, a lot of new age books will repeat that story. But you'll actually find it in serious works. But it's just one of these, it didn't actually happen like that. It was a very poorly done study.

The Importance of Studying Arabic Language

So, my advice to myself and all of you is that we have to really study the Arabic language. We have to recognize what a gift language is that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has given us, al-lughah. Now in Arabic, lughah, the other word means to speak. But laghiya means what? Laghiya yalgha. That might be one meaning, but there's another meaning for it. What's laghiya? Empty talk. Laghiya yalgha is vain, empty talk. So the difference between speaking and vain, empty talk is a kasrah or a fathah.

The Ayn Letter and Its Meanings

And the 'ayn letter, I mean this is an isharah, and these are isharat. And isharat are different from established things. Al-qat', they have a big itiqan about isharat. But they're debatable points, and I've said that perfectly well. The 'ayn letter, 'ayn means the essence. If the 'ayn letter, if the essence, if the 'ayn is maftuhah, if it's open, then you're going to be speaking. If it's maksurah, you're going to be wasting your life in empty talk.

Justice and Oppression: Qasafa and Its Derivatives

And you can see this also in qasafa, means what? Qasafa. Yeah, oppressive. But what's qasafa mean? To remove oppression. So the difference between oppression and the removal of oppression is the difference between a fathah and a dhammah. Right? A fathah and a dhammah. And that's very interesting. Right? Again, because oppressors are arrogant, they raise themselves up. Right? They raise themselves up.

And it's also qasifa. It can be qasifa. So in that case, the kasrah indicates humility. A just man is a humble man. And then you look at it from other things, qasama, the mean there, which is the masdar word. Qasama means to distribute. And that's what just people do. They yaqsimu bayna an-nas. They distribute.

And that takes qaswah. You can't be compassionately inclined to one over the other when you're just. So qasa yaqsu means to be hard. So justice is hard by its nature. Whereas rahmah is not. Rahmah is soft. Right? There's a lot of really amazing things about this language.

Learning and Reflecting on the Language

So we should be learning the language and then reflecting on the language and reflecting on the Quran. And we should also be taking these meanings out. Because these people, to me, they're all like Helen Keller, not being

able to symbolize. They've become like animals because they've lost the ability to decode. And we have that ability. I mean, the Muslims, we can make sense of it. They can't make sense of it. We can even make sense of what doesn't make sense.

The Signs of the Last Days

You see, when we see people killing other people and then turning the gun on themselves, right, they don't understand that. What does that mean to us? There's a hadith. The one killing doesn't know why he's killing and the one being killed doesn't know why they're being killed. That is an 'alamah. That's a sign. And we can decode it. It means that we should get ready. We should be prepared. Right? Because these signs are all indicative of an approaching event, which is the qiyamah.

The Day of Resurrection: When Everything Speaks

And on that day, Allah is going to give speech to everything. Here, we're all veiled. Right? We're veiled. Our hands don't, you know, my hands don't, they're not telling you what I'm doing that I don't want you to know. My feet aren't telling you what I'm doing that I don't want you to know. And my body's not telling you what, my eyes aren't telling you. But on Yawm al-Qiyamah, that's not the case. They start speaking. And that's why we need to take 'ibrah.

The Bridge of Language: 'Ibar and Ta'bir

Right? There's another word, 'abara. Right? 'Abara means to cross over. And 'ibrah is being able to discern what's being said. In other words, the meaning. You go from the form to the meaning. You're able to go across that bridge, the majaz. Right? You're able to go across that bridge and to take an 'ibrah. Right? And mu'abbir is the one who's able to take other people from one place to another. He can take them to what's in his mind and explain to them what it is through the bridge of language. Which is a great gift, this bridge that Allah has given us. Language. Right? Ta'beer. The ability to take people across the bridge so that we move out of the subjective realm into the collective realm of his knowledge. The collective realm of humanity. And then we become bashar.

Why Human Beings Are Called Bashar

And the bashar is somebody, bashar means to remove bark from a tree. Right? Bashar. I mean, why do you think a bashar is called a bashar? Why is a human being called a bashar in Arabic? Hmm? Skin. We don't have hair. Look at all the animals out there. They're all hidden behind their hair. Right? You don't see animals blush. Right? You don't see them get red with anger. You don't see them, you know, the way that we can display bushra. Right? Bushra. Which works both ways, but it's from the addad. Right? Antonyms that are synonyms. This is what we can do.

The Prophetic Methodology: Give Good Tidings

And the Messenger of Allah said, (بَشِّرُوا وَلَا تُنَفِّرُوا - Bashshiru wala tunaffiru). You know, be people that go out to people, giving them good tidings (وَلَا تُنَفِّرُوا - wala tunaffiru), and don't scare them away. Right? Nufoor is to flee from something out of fear. Right? Nufoor. And nafeer is a group going on a war party. Right? And that's the way people make da'wah now. They're like war party. And there's some characters in England, unbelievable. We don't even have that in America. And these guys are literally out on a war party. And what kind of da'wah is that? It's not bushra, it's not tabsheer, it's tanfeer.

The Danger of Misguided Extremism

And the Messenger of Allah prohibited that. And, you know, Qadi al-'Iyad of al-'Arabi says, the worst thing about the munafiq is he has to claim that Allah and His Messenger are in accordance with his misguided beliefs. That's the worst thing about him. That he has the audacity to actually attribute his stupidity to Allah and His Messenger.