Research and Devolopment, as it were
– Bismillah (In the name of God), wa bihi ‘asta’een (and through Him I seek assistance) –
There have been times when I have had spurts of writing, and other, more stagnant periods, in which I had left my blog for several months. This last period, which has now almost eclipsed a year, is by far the longest that I separated myself from writing. The time has come to change this.
The reasons for this are many. The most salient one is the uphill struggle that I have been going through with getting to where I want to be regarding the content of my writing. FYI: I am trying to integrate a high level Qur’anic reflection to my writing, via the Arabic language. As I have written in the past, I am currently in Egypt now studying Arabic, barring the time of the Egyptian Revolution, I have been studying this beautiful language for about a year now here, on top of a few, not-so-helpful years back at the University of Florida. My study of it has been quite a humbling, yet eye-opening experience. I came to Egypt with the intention of really having my way with Arabic, that is I planned on gaining a firm grasp on the language within a year. I thought this was possible seeing how I would be studying only Arabic, full-time, four hours a day, plus a few hours of homework as supplement. So I gave Arabic my best shot. But the force and effort that I output came up lacking; Arabic took my best shot, and made a declaration that it would take 5 times the force of what I struck with to even make a dent in the language. Arabic is solid.
Anyone who has study Arabic extensively can bear witness to the fact that Arabic is a lifetime endeavor. People born in Arabic speaking countries, that is where Arabic is taught from an early age, but not necessarily spoken in its pristine form in day to day conversation (street language), have a hard time with the language. It really takes a 4 year college degree to appropriately grasp Arabic in any of the Arabic lands. So, of course, it has been an experience for me like non other.
Sometimes I become overwhelmed; I ask myself, “How can I manage this?” But with a little prayer and patience, I remember that Allah is with patient, and studying Arabic is a form of worship. So as much effort as I put in, I will see the benefit in this world and then in the here after. These periodic inundations that I experience, have led to me going into state of R and D. I needed to re-think the way I was going to write on my blog, but no big ideas came. Then, recently, I saw the light at the end of tunnel. Arabic rhetoric (Balaagha) is one of the main routes to reaching the treasures of the Qur’aan.
What is Arabic rhetoric, though? And why did it take me so long to get here? What lied before this? God willing, I will write about this in my upcoming posts. The time has come for me to get back to work, pondering, reflecting, and thus outputting.
More to come, soon…
