V – Other consequences of narrowness for you to think for yourselves

In the previous post, I have tried to explain how doubt is like an obstructed strait that does not allow the conveyance of goods, thus giving origin to difficulty and poverty. As promised, in this final part of the article I will share with you some other consequences of narrowness, leaving you to do the reasoning for yourselves.

In the third part of my analysis, I’ve showed you that Latin verb suspendo, to hang, and 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“. Well, I’ll now add one other meaning: to choke to death by hanging, a meaning similar with Latin verb ango‘s to press together – and in relation to the throat, to throttle, strangle, this explaining why the verb ended up being used metaphorically both to to feel or suffer pain, and, most frequently, of the mind, to distress, torment. This is from were angustia is derived. Literally meaning a narrow pass, strait, when used metaphorically, angustia was synonym not only with want, indigence, poverty but also with difficulty, distress, perplexity. English anguish, Portuguese angústia, Spanish angustia, French angosse, all derived from angustia.

Let us stick with the throat, in particular with the windpipe, that sort of tube that allows the passage of air… because I would like to talk a bit about breathing, especially the breathing that is typical of climbing or of running, both of them situations during which breathing is rendered difficult. The Latin word that names this panting is anhelatio, and the action of panting is anhelo, to move about for breath; hence, to draw the breath with great difficulty, to pant, puff, gasp. You may not know its equivalent nowadays, but it probably helps if I say that Spanish anhelo is a derivative, and that it means to have a yen, yearning.

Next thing I want to do is to invite you to pay attention to the following ayat “[…] and whoever He wants to misguide, He makes his breast tight and constricted as though he were climbing into the sky.”  (6:125) The English words tight and constricted are translations of Arabic roots حرج (hrj) and ضيق (Diq), respectively – I’ve talked about them in the previous post, where we’ve seen that the first Arabic root means strait, or narrow; to become contracted, to doubt; to be in difficulty; and that the second one, narrow, or strait (a thing, a place); difficult, or distressing; doubt in the heart, straitness in the mind; poverty. I now want to add صعد (S’d), translated as climbing in the above mentioned ayat, and denoting a breathing with an expression of pain, grief or sorrow, or with difficulty; a long breathing. Before leaving you with your thoughts, I’ll just ask: is there any bridge on the horizon?

View the Original article

In the previous post I was drawn to conclude that suspicion, in its own peculiar nature, founds itself on the consideration of things that are uncertain and doubtful themselves. Through what we’ve seen so far, I think it is correct to assume that suspicion is not necessarily endemic to the wavering doubt, but it sure is endemic in a context where doubt has come to an halt. In other words, some individuals do maintain their wavering doubt throughout their entire life, whereas others put an end to the balancing of uncertainty by erecting a personal creed that is not founded on a firm basis.

IV Part – Straitening doubt

I would now like to invite you to consider another kind of doubt that we can find in two Arabic roots: حرج (hrj), strait, or narrow; to become contracted, to doubt; to be in difficulty; and ضيق (Diq), narrow,  or strait (a thing, a place); difficult, or distressing; doubt in the heart, straitness in the mind; poverty. These two roots bear a striking evidence of what seems to be an association between doubt and that which is narrow, which, in turn, is associated with both difficulty and poverty.

I find it very interesting to see something similar to this in Greek word aporos, meaning without passage, having no way in, out, or through; hence, of places, impassable; of states or circumstances, impracticable, difficult; and of persons, without means or resources, helpless; poor, needy. You might be thinking that this word is lacking the notion of narrowness… But it isn’t; in fact, the word derives from poros, originally used to denote a means of passing a river, a ford, ferry, being as well used as synonym of a strait, that is, a narrow part of the sea. Through this idea of a narrow passage, poros was also used to allude to those tiny passages in the skin – the pores. But what I really would like you to keep in mind is that poros‘ general meaning was that of means of achieving, accomplishing, as for instance the means for performing a journey.

But you may now be asking yourselves where’s doubt in those Greek words? To answer to your pertinent question I’ll have to introduce one other Greek word, formed with that same root por-. The word is porew, that means, carry, convey by land or water, traverse. So, what we have here is the implicit idea of a passage through which something is carried. Now, if you add the prefix ‘a’ you get aporew, that is, without means or resources (just like aporos) – in other words, that passage through which things were conveyed no longer exists, and that’s why the word means, of things, to be left wanting; and in general, to be at loss, be in doubt, be puzzled.

Let’s now go back to poros as the means of passing a river to add that we find this same meaning in Arabic root عبر (‘br), a thing by means of which one crosses a river (a boat, a bridge or some other thing) – but as it also means interpreting, explaining, or studying a thing, it is possible to assume that having a means of passing, or traversing, an obstacle such as a river is the same as having the means to study and thus understand what is not known. So, basically, doubt in aporew is referred to as the same as the lacking of means to carry or convey understanding.

As to poverty being associated with the lack of means to carry things through a passage… it suffices you to remember that what we call trade is strictly dependent on the possibility of using certain means to import or export goods, and that the lack of passages to the sea, for instance, is what fuels conflicts like the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the first of them being called a landlocked country, that is, a country that is not only cut off from sea resources, but also impeded of having access to seaborne trade. This same notion adopts one other aspect in the word embargo, that literally means to stay in the port, that is, the prohibition of ships to sail, thus impeding the conveyance of goods. More recently, embargos’ aim is to act as a barrier to the passage of all sorts of goods, thus weakening, and eventually, leading a country to poverty, as was the case of the embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Iraq.

In the final part of this article, I’ll leave you with some other consequences of narrowness for you to think for yourselves

Related posts:

1. A journey through the nature of doubt in Latin, Greek and Arabic Languages – Part 3 In the previous post, I’ve tried to show how shakin,...
2. A journey through the nature of doubt in Latin, Greek and Arabic Languages – part 1 In this article you will be following a journey through...
3. A journey through the nature of doubt in Latin, Greek and Arabic Languages – Part 2 In the previous post, we’ve discovered that the act of...
4. Why was the Quran revealed in Arabic? (III Part) In the previous post, i’ve tried to show why Arabic...
5. Why was the Quran revealed in Arabic? (II Part) In the previous post, i’ve tried to show that the...

View the Original article

In the previous post I was drawn to conclude that suspicion, in its own peculiar nature, founds itself on the consideration of things that are uncertain and doubtful themselves. Through what we’ve seen so far, I think it is correct to assume that suspicion is not necessarily endemic to the wavering doubt, but it sure is endemic in a context where doubt has come to an halt. In other words, some individuals do maintain their wavering doubt throughout their entire life, whereas others put an end to the balancing of uncertainty by erecting a personal creed that is not founded on a firm basis.

IV Part – Straitening doubt

I would now like to invite you to consider another kind of doubt that we can find in two Arabic roots: حرج (hrj), strait, or narrow; to become contracted, to doubt; to be in difficulty; and ضيق (Diq), narrow,  or strait (a thing, a place); difficult, or distressing; doubt in the heart, straitness in the mind; poverty. These two roots bear a striking evidence of what seems to be an association between doubt and that which is narrow, which, in turn, is associated with both difficulty and poverty.

I find it very interesting to see something similar to this in Greek word aporos, meaning without passage, having no way in, out, or through; hence, of places, impassable; of states or circumstances, impracticable, difficult; and of persons, without means or resources, helpless; poor, needy. You might be thinking that this word is lacking the notion of narrowness… But it isn’t; in fact, the word derives from poros, originally used to denote a means of passing a river, a ford, ferry, being as well used as synonym of a strait, that is, a narrow part of the sea. Through this idea of a narrow passage, poros was also used to allude to those tiny passages in the skin – the pores. But what I really would like you to keep in mind is that poros‘ general meaning was that of means of achieving, accomplishing, as for instance the means for performing a journey.

But you may now be asking yourselves where’s doubt in those Greek words? To answer to your pertinent question I’ll have to introduce one other Greek word, formed with that same root por-. The word is porew, that means, carry, convey by land or water, traverse. So, what we have here is the implicit idea of a passage through which something is carried. Now, if you add the prefix ‘a’ you get aporew, that is, without means or resources (just like aporos) – in other words, that passage through which things were conveyed no longer exists, and that’s why the word means, of things, to be left wanting; and in general, to be at loss, be in doubt, be puzzled.

Let’s now go back to poros as the means of passing a river to add that we find this same meaning in Arabic root عبر (‘br), a thing by means of which one crosses a river (a boat, a bridge or some other thing) – but as it also means interpreting, explaining, or studying a thing, it is possible to assume that having a means of passing, or traversing, an obstacle such as a river is the same as having the means to study and thus understand what is not known. So, basically, doubt in aporew is referred to as the same as the lacking of means to carry or convey understanding.

As to poverty being associated with the lack of means to carry things through a passage… it suffices you to remember that what we call trade is strictly dependent on the possibility of using certain means to import or export goods, and that the lack of passages to the sea, for instance, is what fuels conflicts like the one between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the first of them being called a landlocked country, that is, a country that is not only cut off from sea resources, but also impeded of having access to seaborne trade. This same notion adopts one other aspect in the word embargo, that literally means to stay in the port, that is, the prohibition of ships to sail, thus impeding the conveyance of goods. More recently, embargos’ aim is to act as a barrier to the passage of all sorts of goods, thus weakening, and eventually, leading a country to poverty, as was the case of the embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Iraq.

In the final part of this article, I’ll leave you with some other consequences of narrowness for you to think for yourselves

View the Original article

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

View the Original article

In the previous post, we’ve discovered that the act of doubting is in itself associated with the existence of two points that might work as a symbol of the mind’s lack of power to judge and choose accordingly.

II Part -Halting doubt

I am now going to narrate the part of my journey where I stopped to analyze one of the Arabic words that is used in the Qu’ran to convey the meaning to doubt. The word shakin is one of several built around the root شك (shk), that, in relation to a thing, affair, or case, denotes the quality of being dubious, and the act of doubting, wavering or vacillating in opinion.

But there was one other meaning in the root that caught my attention… an inconspicuous meaning that brought to my mind a verb that’s present in my native language… the meaning that, when applied to a camel, denotes he limped, halted, or had a slight lameness. Through Latin inheritance, Portuguese verb claudicar (derived from Latin claudico) gives testimony to this same association¹, that is, to limp and, metaphorically, to vacillate. It all begins in claudus, whose meaning limping, halting, lame, was used metaphorically to name that which is imperfect, defective or untrustworthy. But there’s more to add to this… the fact that this adjective claudus describes the one who has suffered the effects of verb claudo, to close, shut up, confine – so that claudus properly means shut in, hampered.

In short, we are invited to look at doubt not only as an impediment to proceed but also as an enclosure where the mind is shut in, which in turn suggests that the wavering has stopped. So, are شك and claudico telling us of a special, distinct form of doubt that is not assimilated with wavering?; that is, on the contrary, associated with a cessation of motion?
Some of shakin‘s occurrences in the Qu’ran lead me to conclude that this Arabic root is not conveying the meaning of doubt as a wavering, a vacillation of the mind, but instead it’s defining this specific doubt as the one that’s already settled in the mind, as it is clearly perceptible in chapter 4, ayat 157: “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.”.

¹Present in English as well through halt, to proceed or act with uncertainty or indecision; and to limp or hobble

In the next post, I will try to show how suspicion itself is not to be trusted by the same mind that has chosen it as an answer to doubt.

View the Original article

In this article you will be following a journey through the nature of doubt as seen by Latin, Greek and Arabic languages. During this journey, I will analyze some aspects of the concept and, whenever possible, they’ll brought to light with the help of the Qur’an.

I Part – Swinging doubt

As happiness, sorrow, grief, and pleasure, doubt is such an intrinsic part of our nature that no human creature is entitled to claim ignorance on what it feels to be in doubt. But the fact that is common to all of us, does not invalidate the need to understand it through reasoning; and as I try to avoid opinionism whenever possible, I will try to anatomize doubt with the help of words.

Having said that, the first think I want to show you is some simple definitions, taken from an English dictionary, that will serve as an introduction. So, to begin with, the noun doubt points to a lack of certainty, which makes it synonym with lack of trust, in which case doubt might be defined as one’s being suspicious about the truth, fact, or existence of something. In simple terms, to be in doubt can either show that one is uncertain on what to think about any given thing, or that one is tending to accept that, contrary to what others think, any given thing is actually false.

When looked at as a verb, doubt shows us that one of its consequences is to lead to an irresolution as on which of two or more possible alternatives, or courses, of action to choose. In relation to this irresoluteness we may also say that the mind vacillates or wavers… that is, it swings back and forth from one point to another without being able to make a decision… A bit like something that is hanging in the air, balancing between two points; and although there might be things that are nice to be looked at while balancing, like, for instance the tightrope-walker, I’m sure that nobody enjoys having that rather unnerving movement in one’s own mind.

Now we have a very powerful image to represent, or give shape to the act of doubting: the image of a tedious moving between two points that never change, as if one was always following the same way, back and forth, without getting, or seeing anything new – a monotonous landscape, indeed. And now that I’m making doubting equivalent to the useless treading of the same way back and forth, I remembered something very interesting: Latin verb dubito, from which doubt derived, literally means going two (from duo, two; and bito, to go on foot, walk) and, in general, to waver in opinion or judgment, to be irresolute, to hesitate. In other words, the concept of doubt itself is founded on the premise of the existence of two points of seemingly equal importance, that do not allow the mind to judge between them and therefore be able to choose.

In the second part of this article I will examine the Arabic root شك in general, and its meaning of doubt (shakin) in particular, to see if there’s a a connection between  the Latin and the Arabic concept of doubt.

View the Original article