Holy Islam, Holy Poverty, Holy Illiteracy and Holy Backwardness

I was much perturbed to receive an email quoting a hadeeth  from Sunnan Ibn Majah V:4290, saying about Allah (swt) loving the illiterates over the educated Muslims. That made me go to the internet in search of the hadeeth for myself but what I came across there is still more disturbing. I found an article Holy Islam, Holy Illiteracy, Holy Poverty and Holy Backwardness, duly supported by seemingly authentic references on a website islamoscope.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/holy-islam-holy-illiteracy-holy-poverty-holy-backwardness/. A few excerpts from it are appended below:

In Islam, pure illiteracy is divine. The uneducated prophet of Islam called himself "a guardian of the illiterates sent by Allah" (Bukhari, 3:34:335). Another hadeeth (Sunaan Ibn Majah V:4290) reveals that Allah loves illiterate people and hates educated people and he had promised the first entry to Paradise to the illiterate Muslims and the last entry to the educated Muslims.

Allah not only loves illiteracy but poverty also. As Imam Ghazali, one of the greatest Muslim scholars of all time, had pointed out; prayer, a big family and poverty will ensure Paradise. To promote further admiration of poverty among the Muslims, Ghazali wrote that Allah and His Prophet praised one who remains satisfied with poverty. He even goes to the extent to exhort Muslims to condemn wealth but praise poverty because it is better than wealth (cited Kasem, 2006).

This is how illiteracy and poverty are glorified in Islam as Allah's will. Illiteracy and poverty often go hand-in-hand and followed by backwardness. This is how Muslims achieve all three together. Non-Muslims will never be able to catch up the Muslims in this field.

My first reaction was to discard the article as absurd, offensive and an affront to malign Islam by the non-believers. But then, on a second thought, I could not  dispel this notion entirely that if authentic hadeeth are quoted by the writer, could such ahadeeth not influence the psyche of the innocent believers and cause (encourage) them to remain illiterate, ignorant, poor and thus backward to gain Allah's pleasure?!

Qura'n asks us again and again to learn and learn more, acquire knowledge, think and ponder over the obvious signs. Coaxes us to acquire knowledge by drawing a comparison between the learned and the not-learned. A hadeeth asks us to go to even China in search of knowledge. And, yet on the other hand we have ahadeeth and historical material contrary to it and against learning and making progress!

How can we overcome such dichotomy?

Truly

Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)

30, Westridge-1

Rawalpindi 46000

Tel: (051) 546 3344