Language is a miracle

Auto-generated transcript:Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. Alhamdulillahi Rabbil Alameen. Wasalatu wasalamu ala sharifil anbiya wal mursaleen. Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa ala alihi wa sahibu sallam. Tasliman kathiran kathiran. Muhammadu. Brothers and sisters, alhamdulillah, we are my partner in crime. Mr. Aliuddin Haider and I are going to Bidar, to the Black Buck Sanctuary, which is also famous for raptors and for owls. And the next two, three days we'll be there, inshallah. I believe there is no Wi-Fi there, so I am recording this on the way there. We are on the National Highway, going on Bombay Road. Alhamdulillah, I am most grateful to Allah SWT for very, very special friends and brothers like this. Those company I enjoy were always there. And mashallah, alhamdulillah, Allah has enabled us to spend some beautiful time together. The topic that we have been talking about of being grateful to Allah SWT and the importance of that, I want to continue with that. The secret to the love. Of Allah. The love of Allah. To develop the love of Allah. The secret to that, the way to do that, is to be consciously grateful to Allah SWT. Now, alhamdulillah, we are all thankful, inshallah. But I am not talking about, you know, some general vague feeling of being thankful. I am saying, thankful for what? So, think about specific things. Think about specific. Think about specific things that we are and should be thankful to Allah SWT for. For example, take the, going to be the great miracle of language. Allah SWT has uniquely blessed human beings with two things. One is with the physical ability to produce sound of a huge variety. One is with the physical ability to produce sound of a huge variety. One is with the physical ability to produce sound of a huge variety. Different pitches, from a tenor to a soprano to a bass, different pitches and different levels of complexity. This sound production is what enables and makes language possible. Animals also make sounds. Obviously, all animals make sounds. Birds sing beautifully. But the difference between the song of a bird and the song of a human being is not only in the words and so on, which of course we can always argue that the bird's words we don't understand, fair enough, but also in the variety of the sound. Because at the end of the day, that bird song is only one set of sounds. Now, birds of course have different kinds of calls. So, each bird. It doesn't have only one. But if you just think about it, how many different calls does a bird have? Maybe four or five. But for a human being, the ability to produce sound is almost unlimited. So, that's the first thing. The second thing Allah gave us is the intellectual capacity to take a thought, convert that thought into what we call a word. So, that's the first thing. The second thing Allah gave us is the intellectual capacity to take a thought, convert that thought into what we call a word. Which is, which we then write, what we call write. Which is we make some squiggles on paper, which represent that word, which opens that thought. So, for example, I look at my wife, you look at your spouse, you look at your child, you meet your friend, and you have, you have a feeling, this thought and this feeling in your heart, which you have given the word love. So, I love my friend. I love my wife. I love my child. I love my, you know, father, mother. What is love? Now, the issue of what is love, there is, there are reams and reams of poetry written, and there are, you know, God knows, thousands and millions of pages of prose which are describing love. But that whole thing is condensed into one word, which is L-O-V-E. Love. Hub. Muhabbat. Ishq. You know, all, all of these things are in one word. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Different languages. I will come to that in a minute. So, this word, love. So, this love, when you say, when somebody says love, it opens this door in your mind and your heart to the actual feeling. Then you take this word love, and you write it on paper, right. There's a, there's an L, which is a vertical line, which is standing on a horizontal line, and then there's a circle, and then there is, there are two vertical lines which are at an angle, so that join at the bottom. Then there is one vertical line with four, with three horizontal lines, which is L-O-V-E. These squiggles, these marks on the paper, somebody who knows that language just looks at those marks on the paper and he produces the same sound, love, as the first person whoever said love. Now, imagine, just think about the complexity of this. Now, then, since these sounds and these squiggles are local, we have our multiplicity of languages. So, you have love in English, you have hub in Arabic, you have muhabbat or ishq in Urdu, you have prem in Hindi, you have anvu in Tamil. And you have pasam in Tamil and Marayana. I mean, you know, you go through the works, right? So, each language has a different word for the same feeling, for the same thing. So, when you speak Tamil and you are saying pasam or anvu, and somebody is speaking Arabic and he's saying hub, they are thinking the same thing. There's no difference. But they are describing it in a different way, with a different word. Right? Just feel. Reflect. That's why I say we should live thoughtfully. We should not live like robots. You know, somebody just turns the key and then we go around and around. We have to think and reflect. This is how we thank Allah SWT. Now, to me, the biggest advantage of language is not even communication. Communication is obviously one of the huge advantages where we can convey our thoughts and our feelings to each other and in different ways and so on. And that results in our... our own ability to influence, our own ability to guide, our own ability to make friends, right? And all of this. But to me, that is not even the biggest advantage of that. That is a huge advantage, but not the biggest. To me, the biggest advantage is that thanks to language and thanks to the fact that it can be written. Today, I can read Plato's Republic. A book that was written. Over 2,000 years ago. Right? Today, I can read the Kalam of Allah SWT. Jalla Jalla. This is my Rabb, which was the original part of the Quran. That's why it's called the Kalam. It's not called the Kitab. It's called the Kalam. It's the speech of Allah. Allah SWT spoke and Jibreel-e-Salam heard. Jibreel-e-Salam memorized that and he conveyed it and he spoke to Rasulullah SAW. And Rasulullah SAW memorized it. He heard it. And then he spoke it. Remember, until all of these stages, there's no writing. Right? It's all the spoken word. And then, Rasulullah SAW spoke to the Sahaba. And at that point, it was written down. The Sahaba also heard it. They memorized it. And then that was the time when it got started. It started to get written down. And Alhamdulillah, today, therefore, when I say Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen, just reflect on this. But I'm saying Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen. I'm reading it. I'm looking at it in the Musaf. But I'm actually making the same sound which was made by Rasulullah SAW, which was made by Jibreel-e-Salam, and which was made by Allah SWT. Now, imagine, this is the, what is the, what kind of feeling does it produce and should it produce in our hearts? To say that I'm making the same sound that my Rabbil Alameen. When he said Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alameen. So, this is the power of language. It's a language, therefore, gives human beings. It's a language, therefore, gives human beings the ability to convey their thoughts and actions across centuries, across generations. Literally, language made human beings immortal. Because the thing about mortality is that when you die, whatever is yours dies with you. Except, and in particular, except what you have written down. That's why the importance of writing over anything else, right? True, what you say, what your speech also, the people who hear you. True. True. People remember it for some time and so on. But, you know, after one or two generations, it goes away. Because nobody remembers that long, and maybe things are not mentioned, and after some time, it's lost. But what is written down remains, and it remains as long as Allah wants to give it. That's why today we have books which are, you know, as I said, 2,000 years or more, old, old, that are still there, and which can be read and understood, all because of the miracle of language. That's why Allah SWT. called language itself is among His miracles in the Quran. And Allah SWT made Arabic language, He chose Arabic as His language to convey His commands and His kalab to human beings. So, just think about this, and then we thank Allah SWT. Alhamdulillah, Ya Rabb, You gave us this ability. And therefore, we need to use this ability by learning language, by learning to communicate properly, and by writing, and by conveying. All that is good, and working against all that is evil for the pleasure of Allah SWT. We ask Allah SWT to help us to do that which is pleasing to Him, and to save us from that which does not please Him, and to help us to reflect on all the blessings that He has given us. Inshallah, we'll talk about this more, because I need to record a couple of these for when. so I ask, I request you please think about this, the power and the beauty of language and I haven't even, I just thought, as an afterthought I thought think also about when we make these squiggles we do that, there's an ability also to do that in a calligraphic way which is very artistic and there is some level of calligraphy with all languages with Arabic of course they've taken it to a very high advanced level where the Arabic calligraphy is an art form in itself, but even if you don't go all the way there,