Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: “And the likeness of those who disbelieve is like that of one who bleats, and he hears nothing but the call and the cry.”

The questioner : What is the interpretation of this? I mean, how does he bleat with what he hears nothing of but the call and the cry?

The Shaykh : By Allah, I do not recall in my mind that I have passed through the interpretation of this verse and stopped at it, but it seems to me immediately, without asserting what I have as they say, meaning knowledge of the Arabic language, that he speaks with what he does not comprehend; he raises his voice while he does not understand what he says. This is the utmost that can be said now before reviewing the statements of the exegetes.

The questioner : I asked a question in truth, and I always recall the state of my cousin’s son, a Saudi. They originally lived in Saudi Arabia, left it, then resided for a period in Syria and returned. This boy was truly afflicted with deafness after the age of five or six, after the age of six.

The Shaykh : Completely deaf?

The questioner : He stopped hearing, so now he speaks and talks correctly. When he used to come visit us, he would even sing. Now he follows the movement of the lips, so he learned a stock of information and words like lip movements, and he repeats them because he has the foundation of the language, the words he memorized when he was five or six years old, with the same pronunciation, the same way, the same Syrian dialect he learned from his mother. He builds on it the other speech he learned from his brothers. Glory be to Allah, he speaks it in the Saudi dialect. I do not know what the other words he learned later, these vocabulary items, he speaks them. Glory be to Allah, Saudi, as if the dialect... Of course, when he grew up, we presented him to all the doctors and such, including the doctors here, and they reached the result that he was afflicted with a fever.

The Shaykh : How old is he now?

The questioner : He is thirty-seven years old now, meaning.

The Shaykh : Okay.

The questioner : And among the coincidences, they were working him at the airport with Saudi Airlines, staying next to the plane, and they were operating the plane, and he was not hearing the sound. In Saudi Arabia, everything happens, so the state comes to my mind because I am trying to mean... But Glory be to Allah, since I started memorizing Surat al-Baqarah, this state comes to my mind and I say he bleats, this sound comes out with what he does not hear. This boy learned the Saudi dialect and the speech from the lips; he learned it truly, and he speaks and bleats in it, but they heard, but what do they say? It is about what? A call and a cry, as if he truly does not comprehend, as you mentioned that he does not comprehend. But the truth of the matter is that the boy when... he sings, because the singing he sings, he never heard it; he sings from his own instinct. Let us not say melody; the voice he puts in, even if he wants to make the thing singing, it is also from his own instinct.

The Shaykh : Innate, meaning innate.

The questioner : It seems that Allah knows best, here I do not know... It should not be my independent legal reasoning to say what comes to my mind when I read this verse, that this disbeliever does not understand the words of Allah, correct? So he bleats with what he does not hear, because even here there is a figurative meaning: what he heard, he did not digest it until it reaches the reality of faith, so he bleats a bleating, and this bleating is about... a clamor and something of this meaning. I am not saying that I asked this question to see if this interpretation coincides with the meaning I recall.
The presenter : In the first part.

The questioner : In the first part, after the hundredth.
The attendees: ...

The questioner : No, no, after the hundredth, definitely. We read above the hundredth and it did not pass us.

The Shaykh : Come on,Abu Layla : Why is your count this hour, thirteen?