avoid vain taco will live in home I
don't know we might home malleable those
who turn away from the level right and
lava is from lava language is from empty
talk because the vast majority of what
people talk about is meaningless right
if you think about what everybody on the
earth right now is talking about
subhanAllah really think about that all
this five billion people now right now
what they're saying and then he did this
and then he did that and old tomatoes
are so expensive now and oh I have to go
pick up my laundry and you know oh he's
an idiot or oh I'm so worried about my
mortgage payment and I don't know
and this is what people are talking
about all over the world you know you
hear a language that you don't
understand it sounds very interesting
and then you've learned the language and
they're talking about the same empty
things that people in your language are
talking about
so lava is from lava you know to be have
empty talk for mine lava filleted you
moretta hole and the one who speaks has
no Joomla and you can get into a whole
other meaning of that about the nature
of Jemma
because language is separateness and
silence is gathered miss when you speak
you lose gathered 'no sand that's why
silence is the prophetic nature you only
spoke when he had something to say
they say the focus of lies in an
automatic nests were either take a limit
they can never be fair he was thus most
silent of people but when he spoke he
spoke good things
what doesn't mean that we have to all
become morose and somber and because the
Prophet wasn't morose he wasn't a
Puritan alhamdulillah
and he wasn't morose he was a very happy
person he smiled all the time they
called him a Bach it's one of the names
imam see all he said was given to him he
used to tell funny things that made
people laugh he sat with his wives he
spoke sweet things you know so he was
he's not morose and we shouldn't become
morose and when you start seeing people
get morose you need to like tickle them
or something like that just you know
lighten up the Muslims have too much
heaviness on them nowadays you know
which doesn't mean we come frivolous
people right it's a balance between the
two not become morose not become
frivolous it's the balance between the
two and that's the middle way of the
Prophet Elisha he's a man who was GAD
that when they're needed to be did and
he was sweet when there was time for
sweetness that's his nature so Allah
knows
Shalala give us the benefit of his son
and it was to follow any question or
well I think you know part of what's
happened Arabic has become they called
the modern what they teach in the
university is use it and looked at what
is the standard language of the average
educated Arab now what's problematic
with that is a great deal of modern
Arabic is in fact English translated
into Arabic because what happened is the
newspapers traditionally the Muslims did
not have newspapers which was very
intelligent on their part but what
happened when the newspapers began to
come into the Muslim world and the first
one one of the first started was by
Allah Frannie and the Ottawa that was
pod and they they began to write these
articles now when they began to get on
to the news wires of the West
Reuters Associated Press United Press
International UPI they would get these
news things right in Cairo there'd be
some Arab in Cairo and then this news
story would come in and he would get it
in English and he would just translate
it into Arabic and most of them were not
educated islamically and or even very
well in Arabic their hack writers just
like most journalists are and so they
would say something like today America
played an important role in the talks
between the Israelis and the Egyptians
so he would look at that and he would
just say today Eliam America played an
important role naivet America Delrin
Mohan Minh right in the talks between
Israelis and eat chips and film ofawadh
Daniel is Sarah a Tegan one more serene
and they would literally do a direct
translation and then they would write
the whole article like that so for
instance lavador on started to become
used by Arabs it's now
two Arab idiom you won't find it in any
classical Arabic because the Arab don't
talk about playing roles because they
don't have a history of theater so it's
a metaphor that comes out of European
language because Europeans
indo-europeans have a long tradition of
theater so they have the whole idea he
played a role where as Arab don't have
that they have no idea of playing a role
because they don't have theatre
traditionally so there's an example of
an alien idiom being introduced into the
Arabic language that has become part of
modern Arabic discourse so you'll hear
Arabs all the time saying how the yet
adorable him or something like that and
he doesn't even know that it's not even
from his language now one can argue well
that's a Puritans view and language by
its nature is moving and blah blah blah
but from another point of view note
there's a platonic language and there's
a classical Arabic which is the language
of scholarship and and that's the Arabic
that traditionally was adhered to so so
what's happened is you get a lot of loan
words now and Arabic language another
example is the whole idea of point of
view which is alien to the Arabs
you know from so-and-so's point of view
min which has another fool and which had
another is a modern idiomatic
expressions taken from a European
expression so so modern Standard Arabic
you're going to learn a lot of these
modern idioms right and an interesting
book to read is a book called the Erebus
I think it's by Mac could be called the
Arabist a romantic of an American elite
I wouldn't buy it but if you happen to
see just one of the books you can skim
read it was written about the people who
studied Arabic in order to
for the American State Department and
it's very interesting because they used
to study quite extensively and then now
they're having more and more difficulty
but they had one man Hume Horan who was
the ambassador to Saudi Arabia and
because he spoke such good Arabic King
Fahad was very intimidated by him
because it was hard for him to you know
if I had speaks broken Arabic and this
guy would come and he was speaking
really good classical Arabic and new
poetry and things like that and so they
actually the Saudis asked for him to be
taken out and they sent some cowboy
rides he couldn't speak Arabic because
then they feel more comfortable because
they're uneducated people and sudden you
have a an ambassador who knows Arabic
better than you do and you're the king
of the place called Arabia the land of
the Arabs and it looks pretty bad so but
this man Hume Horan studied with a man
named Hamilton give who was one of the
big Orientalists and he was a head of
the Harvard School of Oriental Studies
and Hume was reading a book which was
written by an American at one of the
Arab Syrian Arabs of the 1930s and he
said it was all really lousy half-baked
philosophy that didn't really have
and he asked give you know and give told
him he said Hume you're dealing with the
Arabs now and this is as good as it gets
and this is the way that they look at
the Arab that there is no inter back
there anymore nothing so modern Arabic
what they teach in the Universities is
basically this kind of you'll read
things like it again you know
you'll read the OP card and and follow
saying the people of the Namib are
what's called the Renaissance of late
19th century Egypt that's at best they
won't give you for Edina vazhi or a
Muhammad's or really they don't and some
schools like I think Cambridge and
Oxford and things you know you'd
probably read some classical poetry but
in America in a lot of the universities
there they literally you end up MoMA
Hamid you're in that course what are you
reading
they're very superficial very
superficial I mean I know people that
went to Georgetown which is one of the
number one universities for
international study and they read so
that they can learn political language
just diplomatic language things like
that but to get into depth in the Arabic
language there's in the West there's
very few places where you'd have really
serious training and in the end also
you're not learning Arabic the way the
Arabs view the language and that's what
we want to see is how the era's
understand their own
not how the West has projected their own
ideas onto the Arabic language we want
to understand Arabic from the way it's
you know it was R was revealed the
meanings were revealed to the Persians
in the Arab Muslim because they had a
Muslim world view so while I wouldn't
discourage you know people that are here
in the West I think it's important that
we start getting into the departments
you know and displacing a lot of the
Jewish and Christian elements in the
department because they're very
antagonistic to Islam and there can be a
lot of good work done in middle-eastern
departments whether we can get into
those departments is another matter you
know because these have traditionally
been strongholds of Orientalism and the
enemies of Islam but it's it's a good
opportunity for for Muslims because of
the whole nature of what's happened in
the West now you know because they've
set forward these all these politically
correct ideas of multiculturalism and
pluralism and all of these things
whether or not they're going to fulfill
them is another matter and historically
one would tend to say no because they've
always talked about the rights of man
long and and
they're basically hypocrites so Allah
Adam but I think now in the United
States there's several very good Muslim
people that are in Middle Eastern or
Islamic Studies departments and they're
having an impact
you know people become Muslim in these
programs and this is important for us to
infiltrate these very
but I would tend to say the first thing
you know you can learn very good Arabic
I think probably I think you could get
to a proficient level in in a year and
and if you're starting with just reading
here in a month I think
inshallah in a month you can get to a
reasonable level of understanding how
the structure of the language structure
of the morphology and and and get to a
point where you can read the whore on
with a dictionary and be getting a lot
of the basic meaning but to move into
nuance of the language to get into
subtlety that's a lifetime study it just
goes on and on
so but the the language you know with a
serious commitment to the language I
think it can be learned in a reasonable
amount of time it's not it's not an
impossible task by
anything
the
I mean traditionally the anima they have
our books whole books written because
Muslims specially medieval Muslims were
very obsessed with like the Europeans
with memorizing vast amounts of
literature and being like that so they'd
say eat raisins and don't eat sour
things and use a see wax stick there's a
whole bunch of them but one
or on
I think the best what I've heard from
people is the best is tapped uh falafel
la Hamlet on you know memories a gift
from Allah
people have different degrees of
memories some people are very quick
memory some people takes them longer to
memorize in Mauritania traditionally
they've said and those people have
phenomenal memory they've said that it's
actually a curse to have a very fast
memory because people with fast memory
tend not to appreciate what they've
learned and they lose it faster and
people have to work harder tend to
appreciate it more and they don't tend
to retain it longer that's been their
experience of the difference between the
two you know there is the Muslims have a
lot of mnemonic devices as well for
memorizing things and poetry was one of
them learning things in didactic poems
and things like that so that's one of
the reasons why so much of the Islamic
knowledge was put into two PI G's which
jouza is a very simple type of poetic
schema that can be memorized easily so
that was one of the ways so but I think
part of it I have inshallah they're
coming on I guess on Saturday or
something like that but I have very good
series of handouts you know the
can use to learn and I'm going to cover
that follow on what what to do