God says
- Read in the name of thy Sustainer, who created – created man out of a germ-cell! Read – for the Sustainer is the Most Bountiful One who has taught [man] the use of the pen – taught man what he did not know!*** -- Q.96:1-5
*** “The pen” is used here as a symbol for the art of writing or, more specifically, for all knowledge recorded by means of writing: and this explains the symbolic summons “Read!” at the beginning of the verses 1 and 3. Man’s unique ability to transmit, by means of written records, his thoughts, experiences and insights from individual to individual, from generation to generation, and from one cultural environment to another endows all human knowledge with a cumulative character; and since, thanks to this God-given ability, every human being partakes, in one way or another, in mankind’s continuos accumulation of knowledge, man is spoken of as being “taught by God” things which the single individual does not – and, indeed, cannot – know by himself. (This double stress on man’s utter dependence on God, who creates him as a biological entity and implants in him the will and the ability to acquire knowledge, receives its final accent, as it were, in the next three verses.) Furthermore, God’s “teaching” man signifies also the act of His revealing, through the prophets, spiritual truths and moral standards which cannot be unequivocally established through human experience and reasoning alone: and, thus, it circumscribes the phenomenon of divine revelation as such.
Prophet said
1. “Whoever treads a path seeking knowledge God will make his path to heaven easy”-- H: Muslim. N: Abu Hurairah.
2. “On the Resurrection Day three persons will intercede: the prophets, the learned and the martyrs!” -- H: Ibn Majah. N: Usman-b-Affan.
3. “If you learn a chapter of religious knowledge whether it is in practice among the faithful or not, it will be better than one thousand units of non-obligatory prayers” – H: Ibn Majah. N: Abu Zarr.
4. “Circulate from me though it be a sentence”-- H: Bukhari. N: Abdullah-b-Amr.
5. “Search knowledge though it may be in China”– H: Baihaqi. N: Anas.
