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The importance of knowledge as stressed by the Holy Quran – 2

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 8 November 2024

“Allah will exalt those of you who believe, and those who are given knowledge, to high ranks.” — ch. 58, Al-Mujādilah, v. 11	یَرۡفَعِ اللّٰہُ الَّذِیۡنَ اٰمَنُوۡا مِنۡکُمۡ ۙ وَ الَّذِیۡنَ اُوۡتُوا الۡعِلۡمَ دَرَجٰتٍ ؕ وَ اللّٰہُ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُوۡنَ خَبِیۡرٌ ﴿۱۱﴾
“And certainly We have brought them a Book which We make clear with knowledge, a guidance and a mercy for a people who believe.” — ch. 7, Al-A‘rāf, v. 52	وَ لَقَدۡ جِئۡنٰہُمۡ بِکِتٰبٍ فَصَّلۡنٰہُ عَلٰی عِلۡمٍ ہُدًی وَّ رَحۡمَۃً لِّقَوۡمٍ یُّؤۡمِنُوۡنَ ﴿۵۲﴾

I am continuing with the topic of two weeks ago of the importance of knowledge as stressed by the Holy Quran. The first verse which I recited indicates that those believers are raised by Allah to high ranks who have knowledge. Their faith is not merely believing what they have been told to believe, or believing without ever having thought about it. Their faith is supported by the knowledge they have acquired. They recognise the truth of the faith by means of their knowledge. The second verse states that in the Quran itself Allah has explained its teachings by pointing to knowledge, and that is how the Quran becomes a guidance and a mercy for those who believe in it.

When Bukhari compiled the sayings and the acts of the Holy Prophet, as reported by those who saw him, into one collection — and he did this work 1200 years ago — he organised the reports by subject. For each subject, he has a section called a book. The first book in his collection is about how revelation started coming to the Holy Prophet and in what manner it came to him, the second book is about what the Holy Prophet said regarding faith and matters of belief in Islam, and the third book deals with what he said about knowledge. By adopting this sequence, Bukhari has pointed out that the basis of Islam, where Islam starts, is the revelation which came to the Holy Prophet. The next basic point is what are we required to believe by Islam, and after that the next point is the importance of knowledge.

Now we may ask: On what grounds did Bukhari decide that the importance of knowledge comes next to declaring faith in Islam? Right at the beginning of his book about knowledge, he has given a heading: The Superiority of Knowledge. Under this heading he quotes the verse I recited at the start of this khutba: “Allah will exalt those of you who believe, and those who are given knowledge, to high ranks.” And he follows this verse by quoting another verse which I dealt with in my previous khutba, the prayer: “My Lord, increase me in knowledge.” From these verses, Bukhari concluded that in Islam knowledge is next in importance to faith. So, this is not a new interpretation we are giving in this modern age to these verses of the Quran about the high place of knowledge, but Bukhari presented the same conclusion 1200 years ago.

A mistaken idea has arisen that when knowledge is mentioned in the Quran or in Hadith, it means religious knowledge only. According to this wrong idea, in the verse, for example, “My Lord, increase me in knowledge”, we are only asking for our knowledge relating to the religion of Islam to be increased, such as on the issues of its beliefs, teachings and practices. And again, according to this wrong idea, the sources of knowledge are only the Islamic books and texts, such as the Quran and its old commentaries, Hadith, books of Islamic law, etc. But it is clear from many verses of the Quran that knowledge refers to all branches of knowledge relating to the world around us, including all the various sciences, history, medicine, psychology, etc. It tells us that there are signs in the creation of the world around us for those people who possess the power of intellect and understanding. It says that these are the people “who remember Allah, standing and sitting and (lying) on their sides, and reflect on the creation of the heavens and the earth” (3:191).

These is also another kind of knowledge the importance of which is stressed in the Quran. It is accurate knowledge of events around us. The Quran says:

“But if any news of security or fear comes to them, they spread it about. And if they had referred it to the Messenger and to those in authority among them, those of them who can search out knowledge of it (or, investigate it) would have known it” (4:83).

News of “security” is some news which makes us happy or reassures us or appeals to our prejudices, so we are likely to believe it, and news of “fear” is the opposite, that something terrible is about to take place and advising you to do something. The Quran says that there are people who spread such news without confirming whether it is true or not. It advises that there should be some authority, with the capability of investigation, to whom people should refer anything they have heard, who can look into the report and find out if it is true. We all know that this is one of the most serious problems in the world today, and we encounter it every day. There are some voluntary groups who dedicate themselves to investigating whether some information that has been circulated is true or a hoax or a misunderstanding. This is what Islam advises.

In connection with knowledge about the world, it is not only Muslims whom the Quran encourages and urges to reflect on Allah’s creation, while remembering Allah, and to pray to Allah to grant them more knowledge. The Quran refers to all humans as benefitting from knowledge of the world. In a group of verses addressing all humans the Quran says that the creation of human life, the relationship between the male and the female, the creation of the heavens and the earth, the diversity of the colours and languages of human beings, and the resting of humans during the night and their working during the day, all of these are signs from God. But these signs can only be recognised by what the Quran calls “a people who think”, “those who are learned”, and “those who possess the power of intellect”. See 30:20–24. In some places the Quran gives the example of the use of ships for travel and transporting goods as being signs from God (2:164, 16:14 etc.). In a couple of other places, it mentions the sun and the moon as providing humans with a way of measuring years and time (10:5, 17:12).

When the Quran says that there are signs of God in all of these, it doesn’t only mean that by just looking at these marvels of nature, by observing them, humans can reach the conclusion that there must be a creator and designer of all these things. It also means that humans, by acquiring knowledge, practically benefit from all these creations, and this indicates that if there is a creator He is benevolent and merciful. It teaches us, as Muslims, that Allah has not limited His mercy to only those who accept Him and worship Him, but that any people who strived to acquire knowledge, they benefitted from their discoveries in their daily lives. So Muslims must accept the knowledge discovered by other civilisations as part of this mercy of Allah.

In their early history, Muslims had no hesitation in accepting the existing knowledge developed by the nations before them, such as the Greeks, Romans, Indians and Chinese, even though these nations were idol-worshippers or deniers of God. In more recent history, when Western nations became dominant and they produced new knowledge in a wide range of fields, many of the traditional Muslim religious leaders in the Muslim world declared the new knowledge as the devil’s work which would lead Muslims away from Islam, and they instructed Muslims to shun and avoid it. In this way, Muslims deprived themselves of the knowledge that had come, in fact, due to the mercy of Allah on humanity. Eventually, the force of circumstances and the needs of the time compelled even those traditional Muslim religious leaders to drop their opposition.

Another point to remember is that, in order to benefit from Allah’s creation, it is not merely sufficient for humans just to observe this creation and look at it. Humans have to study it properly, make detailed records of it, and apply their own understanding to the knowledge that they acquire. As I mentioned above, the Quran says in a couple of places, that from the sun and the moon humans get knowledge of how to compute years and to do calculations. But when we look at the sun or the moon in the sky we don’t see a clock above us, marked with hours and minutes, nor do we see a calendar above us marked with days and months. It was humans who decided that when the sun is at its highest the time should be called noon or 12 o’clock, and the day be divided into 24 hours. Similarly, giving names to the months of the year, or deciding which year should be year 1 of the calendar, were human judgments made in accordance with what was useful and convenient for people. So humans have to apply their own reason and understanding in order to use the knowledge that is obtainable from nature for their own benefit.

In one place, the Quran issues this instruction addressing all humans:

“Do they not see how Allah originates the creation, then reproduces it? Surely that is easy to Allah. Say: Travel in the earth then see how He makes the first creation, then Allah creates the latter creation” (29:49).

Now, because the Quran in many other places tells people to travel in the earth to see how previous nations and civilisations were destroyed, and see their ruins to learn a lesson from it, this instruction here has been taken to mean the same thing, that you should travel to see how earlier nations were replaced by later ones. But the words of this verse can also be taken to refer to the creation and development of life on earth. We see television documentaries in which the presenters travel to various parts of the world and show us the present-day creation of trees, animals and birds. And from this, they draw conclusions about how this creation originated and what it may have been like in the past.

The famous English scientist Charles Darwin went on a five-year long sea voyage from England, going around the whole world during 1831 to 1836. He observed living creatures and their remains, recorded his observations and collected specimens. From his travel and research, he formulated his theory on the origin of life on earth. Whatever one may think of his theory, and even scientists have modified it from how he presented it, it is a fact that he travelled in the earth to see how the later creation had developed from the first creation. However, he was unaware of the principle taught in the Quran that all mankind is equal and the best are those who show the best behaviour. He was under the influence of European colonial ideas of his time, and he believed that his theory proved that some races, in particular his own race, were superior to other races, physically, mentally and morally, by their very nature.

May Allah enable Muslims to acquire knowledge in all fields of learning and to shed light on it from the teachings of the Quran — ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk