Language. I’m asked all the time how I am able to string together words and to create a web that captures the reader. It all goes back to me as a child. The avid reader that had an almost insatiable appetite for reading. It goes back to those reunions where I had to entertain my aunts and uncles while employing cultural gimmicks and jokes that were far out of my age demographic.

Those experiences, those plays, those poems in school, those bible verses that I memorized from the King James Bible (the Bible that codified the English language) all informed my language. Today I was listening to a podcast in which they were discussing how language is what makes us human. How the ability to speak and to transmit ideas and concepts via words is what shows our immense capacity for intellect above other animals.

It saddens me when I see that people could careless for the beauty of language. People that use language in such ugly ways, not realizing that language is such a noble gift.

It saddens me when language is used to deceive, to betray, to hurt and to breakdown others. Language is transformative, it has the ability to lift people, to change their situation, and to bring about hope.

You know, the Arabs prior to Islam were phenomenal in their acquisition and expertise in their language. They reached such heights that the poet was the most famous of people in their society and was almost sacred in their rank. It was in that society that the greatest pieces of poetry were hung inside the Ka’baa.

And it was amongst those people that the final scripture of God, the Quran, was revealed. A scripture that employed language so beautifully that anyone who heard it was touched. The people that read it had their lives changed, and the people that left it were ruined.

It is with words that you declare your belief in God and His messenger, with speech that you praise Him, with speech that the people are called to prayer, and with the Divine speech, “Be”, that you exist, are maintained and will stand in front of you Lord.

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