The Meaning of Allah’s Saying: "Ha-Mim," and Whether These Letters Have a Meaning and a Wisdom

The Shaykh : Allah, Mighty and Majestic, says: Ha-Mim are two alphabetic letters with which Allah begins a number of surahs, that is, with alphabetic letters. Do these letters have a meaning, or do they not have a meaning? The stronger position—do not mess with it... leave it as it is—the stronger position is that they do not have a meaning. And by our saying that they do not have a meaning, we do not mean that their presence and absence are the same, but rather that in themselves they have no meaning. The evidence for this is the saying of Allah, the Exalted: The aspect of indication from the verse is that the Arabic language, in the case of such letters, does not assign them a meaning. And thus we say: Ha is an alphabetic letter, and Mim is an alphabetic letter; they have no meaning in themselves. However, they have a great and profound wisdom, which is that Allah, Mighty and Majestic, brought these letters to say to the Quraysh, who are the masters of eloquence and clarity: This Qur'an, which you were unable to produce a like of, or ten surahs like it, or one surah like it, or one story like it, was not foreign to your language, for it is composed of these very letters from which you construct your speech, and yet it defeated you.