Website: www.aaiil.uk

The importance of knowledge as stressed by the Holy Quran

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 25 October 2024

“Read in the name of your Lord Who creates — creates man from a clot (of blood) — read and your Lord is most Generous, Who taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.” — ch. 96, Al-‘Alaq, v. 1–5	اِقۡرَاۡ بِاسۡمِ رَبِّکَ الَّذِیۡ خَلَقَ ۚ﴿۱﴾ خَلَقَ الۡاِنۡسَانَ مِنۡ عَلَقٍ ۚ﴿۲﴾ اِقۡرَاۡ وَ رَبُّکَ الۡاَکۡرَمُ ۙ﴿۳﴾ الَّذِیۡ عَلَّمَ بِالۡقَلَمِ ۙ﴿۴﴾ عَلَّمَ الۡاِنۡسَانَ مَا لَمۡ یَعۡلَمۡ ؕ﴿۵﴾
“(By) the inkstand and the pen and what they write! By the grace of your Lord you (O Prophet) are not mad. And surely yours is a reward never to be cut off. And surely you have sublime morals.” — ch. 68, Al-Qalam, v. 1–4	نٓ وَ الۡقَلَمِ وَ مَا یَسۡطُرُوۡنَ ۙ﴿۱﴾ مَاۤ اَنۡتَ بِنِعۡمَۃِ رَبِّکَ بِمَجۡنُوۡنٍ ۚ﴿۲﴾ وَ اِنَّ لَکَ لَاَجۡرًا غَیۡرَ مَمۡنُوۡنٍ ۚ﴿۳﴾ وَ اِنَّکَ لَعَلٰی خُلُقٍ عَظِیۡمٍ ﴿۴﴾

The first set of verses which I have recited constitute the first revelation that came to the Holy Prophet Muhammad. Its very first word is the command to “read”. The first verse states that this command is being given by the Lord Who created us. This shows that all humans have been created for the purpose of reading to acquire knowledge. The next verse reminds us that humans have been created from a clot of blood or you could say the fertilised egg. It is very tiny, yet it develops eventually into a human being with a brain which is capable of acquiring a vast amount of knowledge, of storing it and analysing it. The third verse repeats the command to read, and says that your Lord is not only generous but most generous. The word karīm means generous, but here it is used in its superlative form akram, meaning “most generous”, generous without limit. The next two verses tell us what that generosity is: He “taught by the pen, taught man what he did not know.” Obviously, this doesn’t mean that God took a pen and wrote something in front of people to teach them knowledge. It means that the pen, called qalam in Arabic, is a tool for preserving knowledge, acquiring knowledge and transmitting it to others.

By mentioning the pen, the importance of writing is highlighted. Of course, when the earlier verses commanded us to “read”, this implied the existence of writings. You can only read if there is a writing to be read. But the mention of the “pen” is a direct reference to writing, because that is what the pen is used for. Till just a few years ago, a pen was a prized possession. Pens such as Parker’s pens were presented as gifts, like a watch or an Apple iPhone. A pen was always in your pocket, like a mobile phone is today. But schools have recognised that, despite all these electronic devices available with their keyboards, children, especially the younger ones, must still use a pen, pencil or crayon for their learning. We have all seen how enthusiastically children, even those who have electronic devices, pick up crayons to draw and colour with them. They learn by means of using a pen or pen-like instrument. This is an example of Allah teaching by the pen things which humans do not know.

As regards these words, that God taught by the pen what humans did not know, please note that there are two kinds of knowledge to be acquired. Firstly, there is the knowledge already discovered and known in the world but which has not reached everyone. To learn that knowledge, people attend educational institutions, particularly children, of course. Secondly, there is the knowledge not known at all to humans. That is discovered by humans through research. These words of the Quran show that this second kind of knowledge is always appearing in the world. It is the way that God has created this world.

The most remarkable and extraordinary point about these verses is that reading and writing among Arabs was very rare in the land and time where these verses were revealed. It was of absolutely no importance to them. The Arabs were known as an Ummī people, meaning those who were illiterate. They called themselves ummī and other nations living near or with them, such as the Jews, looked down upon them as being ummī. This word ummī is said to come from the word umm, which means “mother”. A person who cannot read or write is called ummī because he is still in the same state as when his mother gave birth to him and has not learnt or acquired the skill of reading and writing. The Holy Quran states explicitly that Allah has raised the Holy Prophet among the illiterates (62:2), and the Holy Prophet himself is called ummī in the Quran (7:157). In Hadith, the Holy Prophet himself stated:

“We are an illiterate people, who neither write nor keep account” (Bukhari, hadith 1913).

Despite this environment in which the Holy Prophet lived, his very first revelation begins by emphasising the necessity of reading and the use of the pen for mankind. As a human being, living where he was, it would have been impossible for the Holy Prophet to envisage that reading and writing would become indispensable for the future development of mankind. He could only have been taught this fact by revelation from God.

Being generally illiterate, the Arabs nonetheless successfully carried on business and trading, they preserved and passed on their history, they composed poetry and had oral recitations of their traditions, etc. They had a highly advanced language, Arabic. But this knowledge was largely confined to human memory. Even in our own times, we have seen illiterate persons running successful businesses by relying on memory alone. However, this imposes severe limitations on what you can do and how far you can spread knowledge, which are removed by the use of reading and writing.

The second set of verses I recited are also a very early revelation:

“(I swear by) the inkstand and the pen and what they write! By the grace of your Lord you (O Prophet) are not mad. And surely yours is a reward never to be cut off. And surely you have sublime morals.”

The first word of this verse is a letter of the Arabic alphabet, the letter nūn or n. There are a few chapters of the Quran which begin with a group of letters, like an abbreviation. So chapter 2, as is well-known, begins with the letters alif, lām and mīm, the letters a, l and m. Generally, Muslims treat these letters as an unknown mystery and they don’t translate them or assign any meaning to them. If you read an English translation of the Quran, you will find that almost all of them have the first verse of chapter 2 as A.,L.,M. In case of chapter 68, from which I just quoted, almost all translations have the first verse as: “N, and the pen and what they write.” However, Maulana Muhammad Ali has pointed out that there is a word in Arabic, nūn, which means an ink-pot, and that meaning fits here very appropriately, before pen and writing.

Again, it is quite amazing that, speaking to an illiterate nation which had no interest in reading and writing, this revelation begins by pointing to the instruments used for writing, namely, the ink-pot and the pen, and the writing itself, and says that these will testify to the truth of Islam. As knowledge spreads through writing, it will prove that the Holy Prophet was not insane or deluded in claiming to be sent by God, as his opponents alleged about him. Apart from not being insane in the medical sense, his aims of reforming the world and his teachings were not outlandish, crazy ideas. His teachings will remain forever, benefitting the world, as indicated in the words:

“And surely yours (O Prophet) is a reward never to be cut off.”

Never will a time come when people will cease to accept Islam and the Holy Prophet’s teachings be no longer required in the world. This is followed by the verse:

“And surely you (O Prophet) have sublime (or the most excellent) morals.”

The spread of writings in the world will show that the Holy Prophet had perfect sincerity, purest of aims and noblest of motives. People will also see that the Quran is not just a book written by pen on paper, but its teachings are illustrated in the life of the Holy Prophet.

It is also clear from the Quran that knowledge is not static but increasing all the time. This is indicated in the prayer taught to the Holy Prophet, which applies to every Muslim: “My Lord, increase me in knowledge” (20:114). About these words Maulana Muhammad Ali said in a khutba (on 9 May 1947):

“By means of this prayer the Quran has tried to create the urge and desire in a Muslim’s heart that knowledge should increase, and increase further, and increase yet more, and keep on increasing.”

When he mentions here the increase in knowledge that Muslims must strive for, he doesn’t only mean that an individual Muslim should acquire the knowledge that already exists in the world, but which he doesn’t have. He really means that Muslims as a nation must discover new knowledge and increase the knowledge which is available to mankind. He says that in the first three centuries of Islam, Muslims regarded this as their religious obligation. They made a study of all the available knowledge that previous nations had discovered and had written down, but the Muslims did not rest content with this. They further added to that knowledge by their own research.

The Quran also says: “And above everyone possessed of knowledge is the All-Knowing One” (12:76). From this we learn that, no matter how much knowledge any human acquires, or mankind discovers, God’s knowledge is always greater and higher than that. What this indicates is that God’s knowledge is infinite and unending. Man’s knowledge will always be limited, but he can keep on pushing that limit further and further, and it will keep on going without end.

There are two other verses in the Quran showing that human knowledge can increase for ever. One is:

“And if all the trees in the earth were pens, and the sea with seven more seas added to it (were ink), the words of Allah would not be exhausted” (31:27).

The other is:

“Say: If the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would surely be exhausted before the words of my Lord were exhausted, even if We brought as much again to add (to it)” (18:109).

The expression “Words of Allah” means knowledge about His creation. That knowledge is so vast that if man tried writing it down, all his resources for writing, pen and ink, would run out before it could all be written down. Today mankind is storing a vast amount of data on computer storage media. These verses of the Quran seem to be indicating that no matter how much storage space you have, measured in terabytes and ever-increasing units, it will always run out before the information that you are storing can be accommodated.

Lastly, I want to mention what the great English scientist Isaac Newton, who lived about 300 years ago, said about his numerous discoveries:

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

May Allah enable Muslims, not only to acquire the best of knowledge that exists in the world, but to contribute towards its growth — ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk