{Quick Reflections 21} Reading; Words or Meanings?!

Let us start with several questions. Try to stop after each question and give approximate answers.
How many books have you read during the past year? How many pages was each? How many sentences was each page? How many words was each sentence? Finally how many meanings or lessons did each word convey?
Now let us reverse the process! How many meanings or lessons have you learnt from your readings during the past year? Moreover, what percentage of these lessons have you applied in your life? Even further, how many of these did you teach others?

Now let us move to a few stories. Our Beloved’s (SAWS) companions (RA) were said to learn the Qur’an over several years. Why did it take them so long?
During the Prophet’s (SAWS) life even the disbelievers were moved and affected by “words” of the Qur’an. On the other hand nowadays even Muslims are not moved by the same “words”. Why is that?
Sheikh Sha’rawy (RAA) once said that knowledge is a Divine trust. It is a blessing initially given to all. If the servant continuously, persistently and sincerely applies that knowledge to his life and at the same time honestly and keenly spreads that knowledge to others, Allah (SWT) will bestow upon him unlimited smooth flow of knowledge.
Amr Khaled once said that it was tough for him initially to read religious books. In order to come out from his readings and be able to say 10 sentences he had to read a 100. Later on with his persistence on teaching others all that he learns he came to remember a 100 percent of his readings thus increasing his efficiency from 10 to 100%!

Our former scholars used to say that all knowledge is a calamity over their seekers except that which is practically applied by them.

What are we discussing here? Three main integrated issues; meanings of words, application of these meanings to our lives and spreading knowledge.

Now let us go through each one separately.

Words and their meanings; this is really interesting but sad! In our age repetition of words out of their true scope and excessive flow of information in addition to twisting of meanings to serve certain goals has led to a crisis the whole world is going through. Words have lost their true authentic meanings. With that loss values were lost. Twisted meanings of words are used to acquire materialistic gains. Meanings which are supposed to be a spiritual value are now subject for trade and business.
All the above occurrences can explain why we do not react to Qura’n (words and meanings) as even the disbelievers used to do hundreds of years ago. Isn’t it about time we stopped at every word and every meaning and thought about what that entails, how we interact with it and how it affects our lives?
Words like ‘love’, ‘friendship’ and ‘sincerity’ have completely lost their true values. Languages constituted of words and meanings are live and vibrant creatures that reflect the nature of human beings. Loosing true meanings of words means loosing our humanity.

The above principle automatically leads to the following question. How have we used words and their meanings practically in our lives? Are we really implementing or applying the true meanings of the words and values we learn to our lives? Or do we just read, read and read then throw all this behind our backs or just memorize it in our brains without truly applying them practically. It is the practical practice of meanings that keeps these meanings alive and preserves the meanings of words.
To give an example of how this can be done, I know of someone who spent 3 years reading one book; Kholok al-Muslim by Sheikh al-Ghazaly. When asked why, he said I could not move from one chapter to another without implementing the meanings of what I am reading to my life and it was not an easy task!
This is not a call for reading less but rather for meditating, understanding and applying much more.

Finally this leads to another question. What have we done in order to ensure that meanings are communicated and understood by others? In addition to practically implementing them have we taught all that to our surrounding community? How eager are we to teach others what we know? Zakat of money is 2.5% but zakat of knowledge is 100%!

One should not wait until he is asked or consulted to convey his knowledge, but seek to proactively teach it. A carrier of any knowledge should look and search for students or learners and not wait until he is looked for and found by other knowledge seekers. This way Allah with His Generosity will make knowledge seek him and ease for him the process of acquiring it.

Please read the first half of this article again.
Happy reading, happy meanings :-)