Muslims & The Post-Literacy Society

A Khuṭbah by Imam Marc Manley

﷽

The Opening Ḥadīth

قَالَ لِيَ النَّبِيُّ ﷺ: اقْرَأْ عَلَيَّ
فَقُلْتُ: أَأَقْرَأُ عَلَيْكَ وَعَلَيْكَ أُنْزِلَ؟
قَالَ: فَإِنِّي أُحِبُّ أَنْ أَسْمَعَهُ مِنْ غَيْرِي
فَقَرَأْتُ عَلَيْهِ سُورَةَ النِّسَاءِ حَتَّى بَلَغْتُ

Sūrat al-Nisā’, 41

فَكَيْفَ إِذَا جِئْنَا مِنْ كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ بِشَهِيدٍ وَجِئْنَا بِكَ عَلَى هَؤُلَاءِ شَهِيدًا

قَالَ: أَمْسِكْ، فَإِذَا عَيْنَاهُ تَذْرِفَانِ¹

Why Do We Not Like to Read Today?

Not the Qur’ān. Not other books.

Part of the reason why we don’t read is because we understand the act of reading, like most other things today, through the lens of pleasure. More specifically, our pleasure. And so if it’s not pleasing to us, or it does not please us, we don’t read. For the same reason why we don’t pray or give to charity or abstain from backbiting.

Roughly one in four American adults, ages 16–65, demonstrate low literacy skills, struggling with everyday tasks like reading instructional labels or short texts. This level increased 9% from 2017 to 2023.

Add to that this uncomfortable fact:

Many people were alarmed to discover that many of the large artificial intelligence conglomerate corporations are endeavoring to convert every book in print into a digital and digitally-consumable format, subsequently destroying those books in the process.

Some critics are warning that this is being done by intention or at the very least, by way of externalities and collateral damage. Either way, we are moving towards a post-literacy society, a society in which people will not only lose the capacity to read but the very source materials of which can be read will disappear.

Given that the Qur’ān, the Final Revelation, begins with a command to “read” and “recite,” and given that literacy has always held a lofty position amongst Muslims and in Muslim civilization, it is a curious and tragic turn of events that Muslims are not leading the charge against the destruction and deconstruction of a society that reads into a post-literate one.

What Happens to Us When We Read (and Don’t)?

When we read we acquire many things:

• knowledge: internalized understanding, the ability to interpret, contextualize, and apply information based on experience, reasoning, and judgment.
• information: structured data, facts, figures, context, and raw details organized to describe a specific subject or event.

Today we exclaim: “We are living in the information age!” or “the information superhighway!”

But don’t you see the problem with this thinking?

• What “age” puts information before knowledge?
• What “age” substitutes information for knowledge?

In other words, we’ve moved from a process of internalizing knowledge—

وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ

—to externalizing it, and in that process we empty ourselves of a life-giving process, because reading is primarily an internal process, an internal act; an act of devotion; an act of purification; an act of enlightenment. And when we no longer read, our light fades.

In this ḥadīth, ʿAbdullāh ibn Masʿūd was astonished that the Messenger ﷺ asked him to recite the Qur’ān when it had been revealed to him. But why?

• The Prophet is teaching us that we have to read it ourselves.
• We have to pursue knowledge ourselves.
• We have to process this book in our hearts ourselves.

فَأَجَابَ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ بِأَنَّهُ يُحِبُّ أَنْ يَسْمَعَهُ مِنْ غَيْرِهِ

He ﷺ replied that he loved to hear it recited by someone else.

1. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the narration of ʿAbdullāh ibn Mas’ūd reciting Sūrat al-Nisā’ to the Prophet ﷺ. See the full explanation at dorar.net. ↩