بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
Al-'Alaq - 96:1
Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists),
Al-'Alaq - 96:2
Has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood).
Al-'Alaq - 96:3
Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous,
Al-'Alaq - 96:4
Who has taught (the writing) by the pen.
Qatādah RH said that the pen is a great blessing from Allah SWT. One of the scholars said Allah referred to Himself in the above verses as Al Akram, because it is out of His generosity that He taught us how to read and write.
Seemingly unrelated: When I was in JSS 1, my Social Studies teacher gave us an assignment: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Slavery. My Primary 4 teacher had told me that everything that had an advantage surely had a disadvantage (HIGHLY DEBATABLE), so I assumed the reverse was the case. I wrote the assignment as every clueless 12 year old would— because of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, we have a lot of talented black musicians, and of course, a black person had recently been elected as POTUS. As ridiculous as my “advantages” were, she thought they were correct. If I had been asked this question when I was older, I would’ve considered it to be inappropriate. How would anyone imply that there was anything good about human beings being exchanged for alcohol and gunpowder, transported under the harshest conditions, and subjected to live a life of horrific physical and mental torture in a strange land?
I think the word “advantage” should not be used when talking about matters like these. Perhaps less insensitive words.
Such dark phases serve as a reminder to what human beings could be capable of.
I guess “it is all in the past” and people have evolved.
On a Sunday, in 1739, the Stono Rebellion took place. The enslaved Africans of South Carolina heard about a Spanish proclamation to free slaves that could make it to St. Augustine, and this served as the long awaited glimmer of hope needed to fuel an uprising.
They held arms, and marched in hundreds to their freedom, behind a banner with the word “liberty” on it, hoping to reach to St. Augustine. They marched for some miles before the slave owners caught up on them.
The narrator said very powerfully, that the failure or success of a rebellion is not the point, but the mere fact that it happened. That is something to think about, but our topic today is about literacy.
Historians believe that a slave called Jemmy, who led the rebellion, was a trained soldier from Angola who knew how to read before being sold into slavery. Jemmy probably came across the article talking about the Spanish Proclamation, and that served as a motivation.
After the Stono Rebellion, laws were enacted, one of which prohibited slaves from learning how to read and write. Jemmy, and his likes proved to be a threat to the slave owners. A slave that could write, could forge papers declaring him free. A slave that could read, could understand what the biblical texts actually said. Special “schools” were created to teach the slaves religion. These “schools” taught them that slavery was ordained by God, and you needed to obey your owner to make it to heaven.
One of the slave owners was recorded to have said:
“If you teach him how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master”
It was believed that the way to keep a people in an endless pit of gullibility and enslavement was to take literacy away from them.
But this is all in the past and human beings have evolved. Right? Such tactics are not employed anymore. Right?
***long pause.
The ability to get information from tiny symbols written on a parchment truly is one of the greatest blessings Allah has given us.
What should be said about a person who can read, but willingly chooses not to?
Assalaamu Alaykum.
subhanallah!!!
Verily to succeed in life and afterlife we must obey the first command " READ IN THE NAME OF YOUR LORD WHO CREATE"