Welcome to my website, “The Allure of Words”

Why did I choose this title?

I believe that words have the power of captivation. They have the power to ensnare us and lead us into their trap. This is made perfectly clear to us whenever we pick up a book by a prominent author. Such authors have the power to captivate their readers with their lofty ideas and the intricate ways they manage to shape their phrases. We are thus held captive by such authors until we finish whatever work we were reading at the time. This benevolent captivity is what stimulates us to read and drives us to continue reading.

Words, however, have another more malign way to captivate us, a way that we must strive to escape from. This is what faces incompetent translators when they try to rewrite works written in foreign languages to their mother tongue.

Such translators readily fall into the trap of literal word for word translations without attempting to decode the intricacies of those languages the cultural characteristics of which are far removed from our own Arabic culture.

The result is the advent of new Arabic phrases and word structures that bear no relationship to our culture. Yet unfortunately, these new contrived terms and structures often find their way into the mainstream, thanks mainly to the efforts of careless media outlets.

Linguists and language researchers understand the great influence words in general – and the captivating variety in particular – have on readers and recipients. Intelligent politicians have long realized the value of utilizing the talents of these linguists and researchers in writing the speeches that help them achieve their political aims.

This is another aspect of captivation that we must be wary of when we read or listen to the speeches politicians make lest we too fall captive to their ideologies and policies.

These are the reasons I chose “The Allure of Words” as the tile for this website.

In the beginning, was the Word

In the beginning, was the Word, “Be!” And, in the beginning, as well, the Creator taught Adam the names of all things. After God created the universe and Man, His means of connecting and communicating with His creations was through the Word via the Holy Scriptures and holy books.

And in the beginning as well, when God Almighty created man in his mother’s womb, He gave him ears to enable him to listen to words, and eyes and a tongue to read those words and pronounce them.

Ever since Man was banished to Earth, language has been a constant source of friction and discord between various peoples. But the language was also – and continues to be – an ideal means of bringing people together.

In “The Allure of Words,” the reader will find opinions and remarks about language, religion, and life.

And in the midst of the hustle and bustle of daily life, and the disagreements and work-related problems that arise between us as well as the stereotypical monotony that we were raised upon – and that we are still imparting on our children – which include “glorifying” the past with all its scholars, their books and their sayings, we see the past taking control of our minds; none but the exceptionally strong and enlightened can escape its clutches. Here, in “The Allure of Words,” I call for more enlightenment in order to free our minds, enable ourselves to think more freely and be more creative.

The Eye, the Ear, and Language

I am enamored of and passionate about languages. Since I was very young, I have been interested in the Arabic language through the books I consumed voraciously. Like many, however, my only contact with classical Arabic was through the silent printed word.

I was, however, fortunate enough to be able to work in radio, which enabled me to acquaint myself aurally with the beauty of spoken classical Arabic. It was then that I realized the importance of preserving the phonetic beauty of the language, a characteristic that is unfortunately lost on those whose only contact with it is through dead letters on a printed page. At that time, I learned much about the Arabic language.

I was born on July 4 in the early fifties of the last century in the Egyptian town of Fayyoum, which lies about 80 kilometers south of Cairo, and received my primary, intermediate, and secondary education in Fayyoum schools. I then moved to Alexandria to study at the Arabic and Oriental Languages Department of Alexandria University where I received a Bachelor’s degree in the Arts.

Having graduated I moved to Cairo where I began work as an assistant lecturer of linguistics at the Girls’ College of Ain Shams University. It was then that I attained a master’s degree, the subject of which was a linguistic study of one of the first books specialising in monitoring the indicative changes in Arabic semantics. That book was “The Book of Ornaments in Islamic Terms,” by Abu Hatem bin Hamdan al-Razi (d. 322H), who was an Ismaili preacher in the al-Rey region in Persia.

That study was the first step that led me to the study of linguistics and combining it with religious texts. The study was published in Alexandria in 1986. By coincidence, I found it posted on the internet among a collection of studies and research papers on Ismailism.

In the 1980s, I traveled from Cairo to London, where I embarked on a Ph.D. course at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The subject of my thesis was the study of phonetic characteristics of the recitation of the Quran in Egypt. It was the first study that involved recordings of Qur’anic recitations made by professional and non-professional reciters at the studios of the University of London. Thus did the relationship between modern linguistic studies and religious studies strengthen once again as far as my scientific career was concerned. My Ph.D. thesis was published in 2008 by Edwin Mellen under the title, “Sounds of Qur’anic Recitation in Egypt: A phonetic Analysis.”

As fate would have it, I subsequently had the chance to join the BBC Arabic Service. It was there that I recognized classical Arabic as a living spoken language the phonetic beauty of which must be preserved – a fact that was ignored by announcers who mostly dealt with it through dead printed letters.

I learned much from my sojourn at the BBC. My studies that revolved mainly around linguistics in general and phonetics, in particular, enabled me to discover another aspect of languages: their role as a human and social phenomenon.

This realization was, for me, the beginning of a new phase in which language – from my perspective at least – shed its cloak of sanctity. From then on, I began to deal with language in a scientific and objective manner, viewing it as a social phenomenon that is subject – as with all other social phenomena – to factors of change and affected by social, political, and economic elements.