Every word spoken or written has a morality that either pleases God or enrages him

Language is a moral entity. Speaking is moral, writing is moral, reading is moral, and listening is moral. Thinking and feeling are no exception. Words are sanctimonious. They cleanse us but they can contaminate us as well. For instance, repentance exonerates us but backbiting scandal-mongering defiles us. Besides power and magic, words have their morality that traverses the circumferences of religion. Although Shaheed Mutahhari writes that “morality does not exist sans religion” but society and culture of a particular place and period cannot be overlooked. It is there and it interferes with reshaping and restructuring moral, social and religious codes.
Every word spoken or written has a morality that either pleases God or enrages him. No, God is not an emotional being who feels like us. He is not anthropomorphic. Hence, words either please us as humans or anger us. They make us or break us. They leave indelible imprints never to be forgotten. We speak to them and they speak to us as well. We express ourselves by words and they reveal us with their power that works imperceptibly. speaking and writing is both expression and revelation. Both occur simultaneously. The former is intended but the latter is unintentional but it is there. Its presence sustains itself even in its absence. A word softens the hardest heart or it hardens the softest heart.
Words are so delicate. They require circumspection or they only reveal us ceasing the expression that we intend and continue exposing us- our mental and spiritual set-up. Linguistic morality is phenomenal as it surreptitiously affects our behaviours, our faith, our friendship, our professions and our social lives which is more important than our personal or individual lives as we are social beings and we have a society to live in and interact with on a daily basis. So language is to be taken seriously and everybody should be spoken or written after much deliberation. If the reflection button is on while speaking or writing, our words will have wonderful effects.
Shaheed Muthari writes that “most of the sins are committed by the human tongue if left loose”. Let me remove the misconception that we all are victims of that loose tongue means invectives only. No, a loose tongue means to speak angrily when calm and composure are prerogative and speaking calmly when a high tone of language is the need of an hour. Don’t ask me that high tone is never to be adopted; it is as mandatory as the composed tone of your language. We are dominated by circumstances and circumstances differ like people do. So when speaking does not become the tongue, one should restrain oneself to venture into any utterance because anger subsides but utterances never return once they are out. Hazrat Ali [as] says that “words are your slaves until you speak them but once you speak them. You are their slave”. He further says that “our tongue is like a shutter of a shop. Once the shutter is lifted, the internal stuff is noticed”. Hence words convey the idea that makes us human beings. They convey the emotions that define us and they reveal what we try to conceal.
Once in a classroom, I said speaking deceives us and writing reveals us. I still remember nobody talked on that day till my class ended. Everyone felt obstructions in speaking. Speaking is such a difficult task. It fails to catch the fluidity of thought as it is itself fluidity slipping every time a conversation is conducted. I was perchance wrong or right. I don’t know. But I know speaking both deceives us and reveals us simultaneously. I have seen and met multiple listeners who can easily sift chaff from grain in hours. Those who are experts in language know well how words work and carry loads of meaning that is camouflaged and cannot be observed and understood by everyone. Linguists are very fascinating people who know this trade very well. Language is both a sound and a silence that strikes and wrestles with each other like Rustum and Sohrab and one cannot be sure of who will win. Hence linguistic morality is the only defense and only truce.
The fluidity of language is ungraspable. It foils our intentions of hiding. When we actively speak, we choose words meticulously that impress the listener but we fail to observe that the language secretly conveys what we struggle to hide. Happiness, sadness, diffidence, nervousness etc. are evident while the speaking goes on. Unnecessary anger deteriorates beautiful relations. The tone says all and reveals all the love, respect, faith, understanding and maturity. Language is a speaking medium for mature people. It is so tricky that it can easily unite or disunite us simultaneously. When people, united by one language, began constructing the tower of Babel on the ordinances of the pharaoh, God diversified their language. So they disunited to never unite again. Pharaoh stood still seeing the power of words. Words perplexed him. He surrendered before them like an unarmed soldier.
Words require specific articulation in a specific modus operandi. That is socially recognized. Words intended to express love, reveal animosity and vice versa if the articulation differs from the acceptable moral code. Proper word articulated in proper pattern serves the meaning or the catastrophe is the fate of every utterance. Words smell like humans. They taste as well and their taste is the sharpest one. Soft-spoken words taste the sweetest. When Rabbi Simeon orders his servant to buy the hardest and softest things, he buys the tongue and gives it to his master. When inquired, the servant explains the power of words that make the tongue either the hardest or the softest.
When the Quran directs us to “say with your mouth what is in your heart”, it points to the disparity that had developed between the thoughts and utterances of humans but language does not always comply with our intentions. It reveals the hidden emotion that is intentionally hidden but unintentionally revealed. Language halts us to hide things and manipulate things but it happens only in the world of linguistics in which both speaker and listener are experts of this language but one expertise deceives another one. The speaker hides his intentions craftily but the listener understands emotions clearly as he knows the manoeuvring.
The writer can be reached at [email protected].

Azaad Bhat