www.stand4islam.blogspot.com: Islam and Literacy

About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

10 Jan 2011

Islam and Literacy

From a linguistic point of view, the revelation of the Quran was the most important event in the history of the Arabic language. Islam nurtured the quest for learning.

Development of Arabic Writing

The Quran gave written Arabic a form that it had previously lacked. With the desire to preserve the correct pronunciation of the Quran, efforts were made to develop and refine the Arabic alphabet, so that the written manuscript could serve as an accurate aid to those with weaker memorisation, wanting to revise what they had learned from the lips of their teacher. It was within the same context that the first great Arabic grammarian Abul-Aswad al-Du'ali developed the dot system in the first century of the Islamic era. The dot system helped to clarify and establish distinctions which were otherwise unclear in the language. In fact, it can be maintained that, had it not been for the strong desire to preserve the Quran, its form, grammar, pronunciation and accuracy, the Arabic alphabet and writing system might not have developed as quickly as it did.

Literacy

E.H. Wilds observed the zeal with which the Muslims held education, teaching and learning. In his book 'The foundations of education ,' he wrote ; ".... education was so universally diffused that it is said to be difficult to find a Muslim who could not read and write." According to the Quran, learning and gaining knowledge is one of the highest forms of religious activity for Muslims, and of the ones most pleasing to Allah (God). Hence, mosques were turned into classrooms, as were the streets, marketplaces and private homes.

The House of Wisdom - Bayt al-Hikmah

The House of Wisdom was a place where scholar-translators tried to translate into Arabic the important philosophical and scientific works of the ancient world, especially from Greece and Egypt. The House of Wisdom was set up by Khalifah (Caliph) al-Mamun in 1004 in Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid Khilafah (Caliphate). It was the greatest "think tank" the medieval world had ever seen. Without the translations and research that went on here, much of the ancient Greek, Egyptian and other knowledge would have been lost to the world.

Libraries

In the tenth Century, Cordoba in Spain was by far the most civilised city in Europe. It is said to have had seventy libraries, the largest of which had 600,000 books. As many as 60,000 treaties, poems, polemics and compilations were published each year in Andalusia (modern day Spain). The library of Cairo had more than 100,000 books, while the library of Tripoli is said to have had as many as three million books before it was destroyed by the Crusaders.

Muslims and the Paper Industry

The large volumes of books found in libraries were made possible after Muslims acquired the skill of paper making from the Chinese, who otherwise kept the art a closely guarded secret, more than 400 years before the rest of non-Muslim Europe. The Muslims employed linen as a substitute to the bark of the Mulberry that the Chinese used. In the process of making paper the Muslims invented and improved methods of maceration. From then on an industry was born where many paper mills were built in Baghdad, with the industry spreading to the various parts of the world. Paper mills constructed in Damascus were among the major sources to the rest of Europe. The impact of Muslim manufacturing of paper was a significant one for the history of literature around the world. It also a paved the way to a new revolution - printing.

Influence on European Literature

No western author epitomised more than Shakespeare the fascination and awe which Europe felt towards the prosperity and the rapid advancement of the Islamic World. London in the time of Elizabeth I had close links with Morocco through trading. It was through Shakespeare's merchant friend that he obtained a great insight into Morocco, its people and culture. Among his most attractive characters, are two Arabs, or as he refers to them, 'Moors.' Othello was the lead character in the play of the same name, and the Prince of Morocco was one of the noblest figures in the Merchant of Venice. His character are said to be modelled on Sultan Ahmad Al-Mansur. There are a total of 60 Barbary (Morocco) references in Shakespeare's plays. Arabic Literature, in addition to being an intellectual achievement of the Muslims, also represents one of their most important legacies to the West. It is an aspect of Islamic heritage which, although often neglected, offers important insights into the understanding of Islamic culture and its contributions.

[Taken from www.islam-explained.info]

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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”

[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]

"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"

[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]

"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."

[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]

"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."

[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]

"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."

[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]

“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”

[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]

"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."

[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]

"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."

[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]

“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”

[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]

"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"

[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]

"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."

[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]

"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."

[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']

"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"

[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']

"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.

[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]

"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"

[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]

"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"

[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]

“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”

[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]

“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”

[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]