In the previous post, I’ve tried to show how shakin, one of the Arabic words for doubt, might be defining another kind of doubt, not the doubt that’s wavering in its indecision, but the kind of doubt that has gotten established in the mind – and to try and prove this I’ve mentioned ayat 157 of Quran’s chapter 4, in which we read “And [for] their saying, ‘Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.’ And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it.They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption.”
III Part – Hanging doubt
Let us now recall that doubt is also linked to lack of trust, and so being the case to be in doubt is also to suspect to be false what’s conveyed as being true. So, we now have to look at doubt as being equal to suspicion – and this is exactly what we find in the mentioned ayat, not only through shakin, as we have already seen, but also through the noun assumption, as we are going to see next.
Assumption comes as a translation of Arabic word Zani, whose root, ظن, means opinion, supposition or conjecture, that is, subjective knowledge based on things that are not known through ocular perception. Furthermore, this is also a root that puts conjecture side by side with being suspicious, which might makes us think that, like conjecture, suspicion is not based on things that one sees.
Nevertheless, and curiously enough, the word suspicion itself is built on the notion of looking up or upwards – this is what Latin suspicio clearly demonstrates. Moreover, as it could as well denote to look at secretly or askance, it has been possible for the verb to give origin to suspectus, that is, mistrusted, that excites suspicion. But still, things are not clear… one might ask as to what sort of relation was originally established in Latin language that allowed the word to associate looking upwards with the pair suspicion-doubt. In my opinion, the source of the association lies within the concept of suspense itself. We say of something that is suspended that it is hung, and this is, basically, the first meaning of Latin Verb suspendo. But as it also meant to cause to be suspended, the verb allowed the meaning to make uncertain or doubtful, which, in turn, made it possible to be used tropically to denote both what is uncertain, doubtful, and wavering, hesitating.
It is probable that these meanings originate in the idea that the slightest force applied to a thing that’s suspended will make it move back and forth – and we already know how this type of movement seems the ideal to symbolize the wavering of the doubting mind. But there’s something else about a thing’s being suspended… In my previous article, “Why was the Qu’ran revealed in Arabic?”, I’ve showed how the the notion of firmness is dependent on the existence of a basis, a foundation whose roots lie under the surface. What I’m suggesting is that to things that are hung we attribute the opposite meaning, that is, a thing that is hanging is something that is essentially uncertain.
So, if suspicion begins with the mind’s looking upwards, and if what’s upwards is basically suspended, then the suspicious mind is in fact paying attention to things that are uncertain and doubtful, this meaning that hey are not themselves to be trusted.
In the fourth part of this analysis, I will try what doubt has to do with narrowness
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