Why Allah Swears by the Pen

Atmosphere. Alhamdulillah.

[Silence]

Continuing in the open opening verses of chapter number 68. also known as oron. All of them are correct. All of them are referenced by the scholars of Islam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala begins this chapter by saying noon noon. Now this word in the Arabic language we mentioned has three meanings. Non as a word the spoken word non has three meanings. Three potential meanings. Number one, who can tell me one of them? Huh? A whale. the fish, right? Okay. Allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala says okay what is the second the second meaning of the word noon in Arabic is a det What is a det very close? It could be a bucket, but it's used mostly is used mostly to mean an ink. Well, a bucket is an very close similar etmology. A dowet is an inkwell. You know, an ink will where it's the little.

[Arabic recitation]

Traditionally when you would write the the pens, they didn't automatically fill. You had to dip in the in the in the inkwell and then write. Right. So, is a bucket is an inkwell. Wasam.

[Silence]

Huh? And what is the third meaning of noon? Right. The letter. Now here is a very interesting point. Which one of these is the correct me meaning the letter is very good. Mashallah. The correct opinion is that noon here is the letter. Why? Because it's written in the mus by the companions as what? As a letter. Correct? Now that's if you see it written in the musaf. But if you hear it, if you hear it, the Arab who is well-versed in the Arabic language, which of these meanings would come to mind? All of them correct. The letter would come to mind. The whale would come to mind. The inkwell would come to mind. You know what's interesting? All three of these are mentioned in this surah. All three of these meanings are mentioned in this surah. The letter itself, every verse ends with what? With noon. And it is the most frequent letter in the chapter. So much so that you could refer to the chapter as noon or noon because it is the most frequent letter utilized in this chapter to comprise this chapter of number two. The whale Allah says at the end of the chapter.

[Silence]

This meaning at the is mentioned in the chapter and also the inkwell is mentioned or alluded to as one of the three components used to write. In order for me to write something, I need three things, right? I need to have ink. I need to have a pen. And I need to have something to write on. Right. Right. All three of these things are mentioned here in these opening verses. However, when we want to say which one is strongest, the letter non, right? But the other two come to mind. And this is what we refer to in English as a double meaning or a pun or sometimes it's referred to as a double antandra. But in in in modern use of the word double antandra, it usually holds a negative meaning, right? A vulgar meaning, a comedic meaning. However, a pun for instance, let's say does anybody here know a pun they can share with us? Let me get creative. Let's say I was a boss, you know, imagine, right? Imagine I'm a CEO. I'm a big shot. All right? And I have some workers and some of them are overweight, right? and I need to lay some people off. Right? So I say we need to trim we need to trim the fat here in this in this in this company. No pun intended, right? So I only fire the fat people and I say no pun intended. This is what we call a pun. It could be a metaphorical or it could be literal. Right? This is usually how puns work. When we have this in the Quran, this is extremely common in the Quran. Extremely common. And it's one of the reasons why Allah chooses the words that he does. He could choose a single word that would not have any other meaning to it. It could only mean one thing. But instead, he opts to choose a a word that has two, three, four, five meanings. Some of them have up to 14 meanings. The word has 14 meanings in the Arabic language. The word summed has seven meanings in the Arabic language. The word has up to 12 different v variant meanings in the Quran alone. Now are all these intended all of the time? No. However, very often when a word is used, another more specific word could have been used, but Allah opts for the and chooses the more general. That's on purpose. That's by design. That's for these things to come to mind. So when you hear we know this is the letter, this is the whale and this is what the ink the ink will right three things the letter is what's intended not just because of as Abu is Abu Hazim right Abu Hazim as Abu Hazim told us because of how it's written written, but also how it's recited. What do you mean how it's recited? When we go to recite, when a silent noon meets a well in the science of what happens to the noon The noon when it is second and it meets a wow. The tongue does not make contact with its final place but there is what is called which means we skip straight to the well. So it would be recited, right? But that's not how it's recited in the major recitations.

[Silence]

This only happens if the noon and the wow this this only happens if it is a separate word. And if we were to do that issue of we it would change the meaning. The intended meaning is the letter. We know this by the way it's written and we know this by the way that it is recited. However, the other two meanings do come to mind and the other two meanings are mentioned in the same chapter. He says noon, meaning the letteron, and I swear by the pen and what they write. I swear by the pen and what they write. Here we have a mention of the pen. Allah swears by it. He says, forctoch.

[Silence]

For.

[Silence]

Bean.

[Silence]

And so this word here, I swear by the pen. Is it the pen with a capital T or is it the pen meaning the the the instrument that is the pen? If we were to say the pen with a capital T, this would be a reference to which pen? Which pen? Huh? The first creation. The pen that Allah first created when he created the heavens and the earth. What did our prophet say? He said that the first thing Allah created was the pen and he said to it write said what shall I write? He said write what is to be until the day of judgment. That pen that is if we understand it to be the T with a capital T the pen. What about if we understand it to be the pen meaning the general pen the instrument. we would say the pen is mightier than the sword. Which pen? The instrument that is the pen and what it does right this would mean all pens any pens. The art of writing because writing is like telepathy isn't it? Why do we say the the pen is mightier than the sword? That is very correct. The scholars they have a saying. They say They say nothing matches or supersedes the blood of a martyr except for the ink of a scholar. Why? You know this issue of a pen being able to communicate ideas by way of writing. This here is telepathy. Imagine I can write this this book in my hand right now. This is a of the Quran. It was written by and before that the other half the second half is written by hence the the word. These men passed away more than 500 years ago, almost 600. Now I'm reading. They're communicating their words to me across centuries and across countless miles. How did their words reach me here and get into my mind and in my heart? And I am saying their words. They're using my tongue to say their words. Is that not a superpower? Tell me that's not a superpower. That is telepathy. You know how the human being always fantasizes about a a telepath, someone who can, you know, crawl into someone else's mind and make them say things and make them do things. This is telepathy. We take it for granted because in our time it's so ubiquitous. It's so common place. Everyone is literate. This is telepathy. And this is why literacy is so important in our time. Do you know why it's so important in our time? Why does the government care so much that you and you and you and him and her, they all know how to read? Why is that so important? Tell me. Why do they care? Influence. Why was the printing press designed originally? Originally, was it because the wealthy and intellectuals wanted to share this this knowledge with the impoverished? Is that why they looked at the common slave and the common man and they said, "If only you knew what I knew." I need to design something so that I can communicate this knowledge to all the world because I want everyone to know what I know. Is that why? Huh? Why the reason the printing press was invented in the first place was in order to make propaganda individualized right control. We say the pen is mightier than the sword. It is because I cannot make someone believe something with a sword but with a pen I can. I can I can make men draw their swords or sheathe them with the pen. With the pen, I can communicate with men and women in the future. I can change the future with my pen today sitting at a desk. Isn't that amazing? And so Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says, "I swear by the pen." This means anytime Allah swears by something in the Quran, I swear by this. I swear I swear by the moon. I swear by the sun. This is not for us to just overlook. You need to take a hard stop and really sit and think about what Allah is saying because when I in language when we swear by something let's say I want you to believe something I'm saying and I swear I say to you I swear by Allah what am I essentially saying by that what am I essentially saying well I'm saying believe me but what What does that mean about what I'm saying about Allah?

[Arabic recitation]

Then you know Allah is too great for me to mention his name and lie in the same sentence. Right? So in language, I only swear by something that I find to be what? great, significant, exalted, above, being used in that which is lowly. I wouldn't swear by any little thing. Right? I wouldn't swear by any little thing. I only swear on big things, on major things, on huge things, things that are grave, things that are grand. Right? So whether it is the thing that I'm swearing by or the reason I'm swearing, it is only for the most important things that I would take an oath. Now for Allah, he swears by whom he chooses, what he chooses, when he chooses. It is his creation and it is to his discretion. But as for the human being, can we swear by anything or anyone? We can only swear by Allah. The prophet sallall.aii wasallam says.

[Silence]

The prophet sallall.aii alaihi wasallam said whoever of you is to swear then he is to swear by Allah or remains silent. And he further said whoever swears by other than Allah has fallen into a type of kufur or shik. And he further said he is not of us the one who swears by am right. You know we this is a thing that the Arabs especially they find the entrustment to be a major thing right. So so they say they will swear by am we have this even in our modern times. And so the point is is that when Allah swears by something he is doing that in order to take the level take the words that are being said to the highest of levels of believability. But on top of that he is articulating the grandiosity of the thing that he is swearing by. Now look at the pen. Allah said at the very beginning all the way back four chapters ago, he said describing himself described himself as the one who taught by way of the pen. He taught the human being what he did not know before. He taught by way of the pen in order for me to have an advancement in knowledge. I can't go back to zero every generation. We'll never get anywhere. Correct? I take what is learned and known from the past and then I embody it. I embibe it, right? Absorb it, understand it, and then I build on top of it. Then I document it and pass it on to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation until we have advancements. Right? And this is why we can see humanity went from what they refer to as the stone age to the bronze age to the iron age. Right? Why? Because we were able to refine our knowledge. Without the pen, would this be possible? It would not be possible. it would not be possible. The pen is so mighty and it is so dangerous. It is so dangerous and that is why it is imperative that whenever we commit something to writing or whenever we subject ourselves to reading we only choose the best. The prophet sallall.aii used to make dua. Allah, I seek refuge in you from knowledge that is of no consequence. If he's seeking refuge from knowledge that is of no consequence, what could be said for knowledge that is destructive? You know how many people died or were murdered in the 20th century between World War I and World War II? You know how many? More than 80 million. It said that 10,000 people would die a minute in World War I. How much blood? You know where that came from? Darwin sitting in his table writing the ideas that the human being was a fish that crawled out of the ocean and grew lengths. That's where it came from. Communism, socialism, capitalism, , Nazism, fascism, in their most bloody forms all root back to the same common ancestor, Darwin. Charles Darwin. That's an idea. He had an idea. He had an idea and he wrote a book called the origin of the species. And he said in the origin of the species that he could imagine the reverse to be true in the first edition. He could imagine the reverse to be true. What is the reverse? That you know we all share a common ancestor. We came out of the water and were apes and then we became humans. The opposite could be true. He could imagine a bear. Listen to insanity. What it sounds like. He could imagine a bear that goes down to the water every day, goes down to the to fish at the ocean every day. That if he and his children and his children's children and children's children's children continued to do that for thousands or millions of years, that that bear would eventually turn back into a whale. Wow, that's amazing. Could you imagine what would I need to live underwater? What would have to change of my bi of my biology to live underwater? That's saying you could imagine a Honda Civic turning into a submarine eventually, right? It's insanity. But because of how it was written and because of the propaganda, what did it turn into? It turned into the basis of fascism, communism, Marxism, socialism, and plays a huge part in capitalism. All of this came from this one man. That's how powerful ideas are. Look at us here right now. We're all talking and spending our time with this. What what are we spending our time doing? We are reading and contemplating the book of Allah, the Quran, and what has caused it to reach us in no small part, the pen. We take it for granted, but it is one of the mightiest instruments Allah has ever bestowed upon any creature. Subhanahu wa ta'ala. We will take a stop there. We'll continue this tomorrow, inshallah. Subhanahu.

[Silence]

Wasam.