Call for Peace
Messages to Look for Peace
بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم
In the Name of Allah,
the Most Gracious, and the
Most Merciful
Please Do Not
Undermine
The Layman
OBSERVATIONS:
LETTER
3 May 2007
To
John Humphrys
Humphrys in Search of Allah
Language
Dear
Mr Humphrys
This letter is further to
my letter dated 28 04 07 where the base of the Existence of Allah was dealt with
under the concept of Unseen Forces. The subject matter in question
shall further be dealt with under the concept of Languages.
Mr Humphrys! Let us first look
at the literal meaning of the word ‘Language’ as per Oxford English reference Dictionary.
Language
·
the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the
use of words in an agreed way,
·
the language of a particular community or country etc.,
·
the faculty of speech,
·
a style or the faculty of expression; the use of
words.
Mr Humphrys! As the subject
matter: Existence
of Allah has to be based upon the concept of language, therefore, it
seems reasonable to see what St. Michael’s New
Illustrated Everyman’s Encyclopaedia says about the word:
Language
A language has been well defined by B. Bloch and G.L. Trager as
a ‘system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social
group co-operates’.
This makes it
clear:
1. that language is primarily a vocal activity
and that written language is secondary to spoken language,
2. that language is a social
activity, and
3. that linguistic symbols, or words, are arbitrary in the sense that that there is no direct connection between words and the realities they relate to.
Human language is also set apart from all other communication
systems by virtue of its infinite creativity.
Entirely novel
sentences are constantly being created,
by endless permutations from the stock of lexicon and sentence patterns.
There is an intimate connection between language on the one hand and social and cultural patterning on the other. Eskimos, for instance, have
innumerable words which specify different kinds of snow but no single term for
it.
Distinction made in the language of group of people (for
instance, in the range of their kinship terms) can provide the anthropologist
with suggestive data in the study of cultural organisation.
Nowadays, however, linguists talk less of a casual connection
between language and thought than of correlations between the two.
A serious interest in the problem of origin of speech was taken
by a number of writers and scholars in the late 18th and 19th
centuries, including J. G. Herder, who wrote a prize essay on The Origin of
Language, 1772, in which he argued that language was not a gift from Allah but
the result of impulses arising from man’s innermost being, and Jacob Grimm and E. Renan who, in studies published in 1852
and 1858 respectively, put forward the view that it should be possible to work
back by an inductive method to the origins of language.
Present evidence, however, is not even sufficient to enable us to
decide between the theories of the monogenesis of language (according to which
all languages derive from common origin) and the polygenesis of language
(according to which articulate speech arose independently at more than one time
and place).
There are, broadly speaking, two main principles according to which
languages may be classified, the genetic (or genealogical) and the typological.
One of the greatest and most lasting achievement of 19th
century linguistics was to prove beyond all doubt the genetic relationship of
certain languages, that is, to show that they derive from the same origin; in
particular, they proved the genetic relationship of most of the languages of
Europe and some of the languages of Asia which belong to the family of
Indo-European languages.
A similar genetic relationship has established for other groups,
for example, the Semitic-Hamitic languages or the Finno-Ugrian languages.
Attempts have also been made to compare languages, regardless of
whether or not they have a common origin, on the basis of their structure.
Recent attempts at a typological classification have met with
considerable degree of acceptance. Outstanding among these is the
classification proposed by Edward Spire in his book: Language, 1921, based on
three criteria:
1.
the type of concepts expressed,
2.
the types of formal processes or techniques employed, and
3.
the type of synthesis affected in the language (on this basis, languages may be
analytical, synthetic, or polysynthetic)
Linguistic
Linguistics has often been described as the scientific study of
language, in the sense of its being an
objective, empirical, discipline, concerned with devising procedures for
describing language at three levels:
·
semantics,
·
grammar,
·
comprising syntax and morphology; and phonology, including phonetics.
Two basic
principles are:
·
the need to
distinguish between the structural description of a language at any given time
and
·
the dynamic
variation in its structure, in time or in social organisation; and the need to
set apart from the description of patterning, unique to individual languages,
the search for what is universal and common to all languages.
Linguists are also increasingly concerned with discovering the
universal properties of natural languages as systems of communication,
providing logical and psychological constraints on the formulation of theories
of language, and ultimately on the kinds of questions which linguists can ask
about language.
Psycholinguistics is a particularly active field, involved in approaching a
restricted set of topics with the principles and methodology of both psychology
and linguistics. Experiments have investigated short-term and long-term memory,
speech perception, and language acquisition by children.
Sociolinguistics is concerned with language use, and aims to describe the
plethora of variations within a community’s linguistic conventions, without
ascribing social values to particular variants. Each variation is appropriate
to some group of speakers or to some social situation.
Applied Linguistics is concerned primarily with pedagogical matters affecting language
teaching and language learning.
Mr Humphrys!
·
From the article as per the Encyclopaedia it can be gathered that
there had been a great research in determining the origin of the language and still
there has been no concrete answer.
·
As the subject matter is to be dealt with for the understanding of
a layman therefore we have to make an effort to establish
the origin on the basis of common sense rather than the researches made by the
researchers.
Mr Humphrys! Lets us first
establish why there is need for a language?
Mr
Humphrys!
·
Each human being has a heart and a mind. Heart creates the feelings and mind thinks about it.
Similarly, eyes observe the creations of the universe and mind explores the properties of the universe.
·
Now the question arises how the feelings of the heart and the knowledge in mind can be communicated to other human
beings or to the outside world?
·
There is Voice Box in the body near the throat where the voice travels outwards. If the tongue does not make a move then it will
simply be plain voice but if the tongue makes a move then the voice takes the form of
words.
Mr Humphrys! The origin of the language can be
determined that when any eye observed an object, the mind gave that
object a name and when that name was uttered that became a language. However, to convey the massage
there has to be a set of principles and rules and regulation
which gave rise to the creation of Grammar and following
came into being:-
- subject,
- object,
- verb,
- first person,
- second person,
- third person,
- positive,
- negative
and so on and on.
Mr Humphrys!
·
Now the question arises that from which source the mind was getting
the guidance from? As there is no obvious source then it
has to be construed that the mind when it was thinking, an Unseen Force was
communicating the information in his mind. And this Unseen Force, an atheist or agnostic
mind call Nature, but a believing mind calls It Allah.
·
Let us for the sake of argument assume, that it is the
person who first observed the object, he created the
name, sequence of
words, grammar etc. In this case it is he who first has to tell the second person the perspective of his thinking, how he derived the name and
how the meaning can be understood. But this is not the case
because unless he tells to every person individually, nobody will be able to
understand what he is saying and what he means.
·
Therefore, one has to believe in that the Unseen Force is the Creator of this Universe
and the language originates from Allah Who is the Unseen Force.
·
Mr Humphrys! Under the article in the Encyclopaedia, let us look
at the following extract:
A serious interest in the problem of origin of speech was taken
by a number of writers and scholars in the late 18th and 19th
centuries, including J. G. Herder, who wrote a prize essay on The Origin of
Language, 1772, in which he argued that language was not a gift from Allah but
the result of impulses arising from man’s innermost being, and Jacob Grimm and E. Renan who, in studies published in 1852
and 1858 respectively, put forward the view that it should be possible to work
back by an inductive method to the origins of language.
·
J. G. Herder argued that the origin of language is not from Allah. This denotes that it was a belief that the origin of language is
from Allah. Had this not been the case then he would not have to write
an essay to argue that language is not gift from Allah.
·
No doubt he is right that:
but the result of impulses arising
from man’s innermost being,
·
Because it is the feeling of the heart and thinking of the mind which wanted to
express their feeling
and knowledge where the Unseen Force came to their help and this Unseen Force cannot be
other than Allah Who is Omnipresent .
·
Please think about the Unseen Force with an open mind. I
appreciate that it will not be easy to comprehend. However, gradually, the time will come when
you will believe in the Existence of Allah.
·
You will recall that in my letter dated 16 01 07 I had written
to you:
No doubt you will appreciate that people would express their view according to their own understandings and beliefs about the issue. When I listened to you first
interview with Dr Rowan William my impression was that:
You believe in Allah bu
you want to believe in Allah.
·
Therefore, the time will come that you will believe in the existence of Allah.
·
Mr Humphrys! Once you will believe in the
existence of Allah, then the attributes of Allah, His Greatness and
Magnificence shall be dealt with.
May Allah
be with You
Please
Remember in Dua’as
Wass’a’lam
Naseer
Aziz
Principal
Call for Peace
Messages to Look for Peace
PS:
Sponsorship
Brothers and Sisters! Please read the Post: Sponsorship in the Navigation Bar as to why it is
needed to keep conveying the Messages to Look for Peace until the Day
of Resurrection and how it will be expended until the Day of Resurrection.
Wass’a’lam
