The most wonderful thing about God’s speech is that it really is a guide book on each our journeys returning back to the Most Gracious.
We can, if we look carefully, find a part of God’s speech that talks directly to each of us, as if we were being addressed in the first person, on that turn, or cross path, that we might find on the road of our lives.
The writers amongst us know how much more powerful it is when we frame a sentence in an active sense as opposed to the normal passive descriptive.
Indeed communication is all about the transfer of meaning through the use of symbolic language. But it’s the framing that distinguishes a call to action from the normal description.
And that’s why Plato’s syllogisms have never carried any weight with me, because all that they say is at most a nothing.
Classically we find;
Plato is a man
All men are rational
Thus Plato is rational
; which actually says nothing because each of the premises could be false, and the conclusion could still be true.
And even if both premises are true, the conclusion could still be false and Plato might be the exception that proves the rule.
Here we are taught that sentences are of the form of subject- predicate, where the predicate provides some information about the subject.
And the syllogism is thus simply a descriptive argument, that can move you towards believing a certain idea.
But belief is one thing, and encouragement towards an action is a completely different thing.
And it is the descriptive form of what sentences should really be about that explains al-Ashari’s “bi la kayf”, (without a how), when we find God talking about Himself in His Speech. That we should accept it without trying to understand it, since we cannot understand it because it relates to the Most Gracious, and none is like unto Him.
And it is clear also from The Speech of the non-reflexive relation that exists between the Creator and what He created:
That He sees all, and yet none can see Him.
That He comprehends all, and yet none can comprehend Him.
But what al-Ashari misses is that the subject matter of the Speech is really about Man. And this is clear to any who reflects on it, it’s start and it’s end and most of what is in between it.
And that not all of speech is description.
The higher order is a call to action.
That is why in our system of belief we know that knowledge without action is but solely ignorance.
That after our lives reality changes and our actions actually come to us in a physical form.
That when you do Hajj then it comes as a man to intercede for you at the approach of the punishment of the grave, that your recitation of the Quran becomes like a shade for you on Yawm al-Hisaab, where there are no other shades.
And that when the sun is but a mile high from the stretched plain of Arafat on which we will all be raised anew.
So much so that a process, death itself, will be brought as a deer on that day and will itself be sacrificed.
That the Quranic speech is primarily there as a call to action.
And those verses in which God talks about Himself are likewise such a call, and it is for us to explore the meanings of that call and attach ourselves to the best of those.
Each of our journeys are the sum of our choices and our actions that emanate from them. And God’s speech is our guide, what better guide can there be?
And that is why we must try our best to emulate the Djinn when the Messenger (saw) said that they were better than us in relation to the recitation of Surah Rahmaan.
We each need to make that Speech personal to us.
For it is only then that that call to action becomes an imperative.
And then trust in the Most Gracious.
For He is the Maula of those who believe.
And what better Maula could you ask for?
Knowledge is sought, through study, reflection and then engagement.
Not logic, nor talks, nor this above.
