Symposium on Religious Law

By: Azizah al-Hibri, Esq.

“Prophet Muhammad, who carried the message of Islam, was illiterate. The first divine world revealed to him was the imperative: ‘Read.’ The rest of the Qur’an is replete with verses that emphasize the importance of the pursuit of knowledge. For example, the Qur’an exhorts Muslims to ask God to increase their knowledge. It underscores the importance of knowledge: ‘God elevates by several degrees the ranks of those of you who believe and those who have knowldge.’ The Qur’aneven asks rhetorically in one passage, ‘Say, are those two equal: those who know and those who do not know?'”