2.36. SPEECH (continued)

God says

… there are ever-watchful forces over you, noble, recording, aware of what you do! Q.82:10-12

(1) Read in the name of thy Sustainer, who has created, (2) created man out of a germ-cell!* (3) Read – for thy Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One who has taught man the use of pen – (4) taught man what he did not know.** – Q.96
*The past tense in which the verb khalaqa appears in these two verses is meant to indicate that the act of divine creation (khalaq) has been and is being continuously repeated. It is also noteworthy that this very first Qura’nic revelation alludes to man’s embryonic evolution out of a “germ-cell”— i.,e, out of a fertilized female ovum – thus contrasting the primitiveness and simplicity of his biological origins with his intellectual and spiritual potential: a contrast that clearly points to the existence of conscious design and purpose underlying the creation of life.
* “The pen” is used here as a symbol for the art of writing or, more specifically, for all knowledge recorded by means of writing: and this explains the symbolic summons “Read!” at the beginning of verses 1 and 3. Man’s unique ability to transmit, by means of written records his thoughts, experiences and insights from individual to individual, from generation to generation, and from cultural environment to another endows all human knowledge with a cumulative character; and since, thanks to this God-given ability, every human being partakes, in one way or another, in mankind’s continuous accumulation of knowledge, man is spoken of as being “taught by God” things which the single individual does not – and, indeed, cannot – know by himself. (This implants in him the will and the ability to acquire knowledge, receives its final accent, as it were, in the next three verses.)
Furthermore, God’s “teaching” man signifies also the act of His revealing, through the prophets, spiritual truths and moral standards which cannot be unequivocally established through human experience and reasoning alone: and, thus, it circumscribes the phenomenon of divine revelation as such.


Prophet said

8. “Even utterance of nice words is charity” -- H: Bukhari and Muslum. N: Abu Hurairah.

Man is very vigilant about every power that could be dangerous. And yet he is so heedless with his own power of speech. The irony is that, in the hereafter, this one could make a difference for him between the heaven and the hell!
On earth too, living could be so much positive and peaceful if speech was controlled. There would be no hurting remarks, no stressing one’s own benevolence injuring feelings of the needy, no hypocrisy, no lies, no false promises, no disclosing of secrets, no misguiding, no vulgar talk or songs, no flattery, no backbiting etc, etc.