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Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Appreciating the blessing of speaking

2011/08/08

8th day of Ramadhan 1432 Hijriah (2011)

To be able to speak is indeed an amazing blessing. If we would just reflect on how complex the act of speaking is, we would use this blessing for better use. Speaking involves so many organs in its process, even up till now, scientists are still unable to create a unified theory about it. It involves the tongue, the lungs, obviously the nervous system, the mouth, and a whole lot more. Not to mention all the different languages that we have. An amazing act indeed!

The Muslim grammatical scholars agree that the ability to speak is one of the main characteristics which differs man from animal. In fact, many of them call man, the talking beast.

But when we think about how it is used nowadays, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We use it to insult people, for saying shameless words, for gossiping, and other displeasing acts, showing us that we may not deserve to have this amazing blessing.

In the Qur’an, it is said that the norm is, whatever we say, there is nothing good or useful in it. The words that we utter are useless, EXCEPT the words that we use to encourage charity, to encourage acts of righteousness / good deeds, and the words that we use to make conciliation or peace between people.

So in order to truly appreciate the amazing blessing of speaking, we should ponder how we use it. Do we say things that are good, pure, and beneficial? Or is it the contrary? May we be given pure tongues that bring goodness to whoever the listener is.

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