The Culture of Reading

I HAVE tried to call attention, via the last three articles, to the subject of education. The first article tries to show that Muslim philosophers of the 10^th century, with the help of the Qur’an, synthesized a clear relationship between religion and science. Allah (SWT) revealed to the prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) a Qur’an that contains a wealth of information about natural phenomena, allowing them to direct their intellectual energies to investigate and study nature through observation. The second article pointed to a much more pervasive “cancer” among Muslim families concerning a “comprehensive” education: the inability to inculcate a deep appreciation for both secular and religious knowledge. Through testimony from an Imam, I have tried to show that Muslim students in all phases of life must study both sources of knowledge with the same intensity. The third article tried to illustrate that the secular disciplines taught in colleges and universities world-wide – including the natural or “hard” sciences and the human sciences – could not have been synthesized in a historical vacuum. Modern science as we know it today is due to an Islamicization of the West that began somewhere in the 10^th century and spanned some 500 years.

This article seeks to point out a startling phenomenon occurring in the United States, the “land of the free and the home of the brave”: a marked decline in that “urge” to read, an intellectual exercise that, if practiced routinely, will serve to enlighten us as a collective about ourselves and the wider world. This is so because there is no “cosmopolitan” culture to support this art. Too often our electronic media, that is, either television or our talk-radio heads, inform us about domestic and international political, economic and social issues through convenient sound-bites; consequently, we are not aware of a wider historical context in which to situate such important matters. Many of us - and I speak of Muslims as well as non-Muslims – remain unaware of our rich cultural heritages. Human history has shown us convincingly that one historical factor has informed and supported a culture of reading: it is religion. Had it not been for the Qur’anic revelation, for example, Christian and Jewish apologetics within the Western world - St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Maimonides - would not have become acquainted, once again, with philosophers of classical antiquity, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. The Medieval West witnessed an unprecedented display of what Professor Mazrui has called “synthesis”; this period of history witnessed the great religious philosophers of the three great religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – grappling with connections between, for example, religion and science, or morality and ethics, with some important insights. With the decline of Christian religious influences in the Western world, beginning in the 15^th century with the publication of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, this “glue” began to unravel. Religion is the “glue” that allows its adherents, through a “culture of reading”, to make these important connections among what we see now as disparate intellectual disciplines.

According to Professor Ali Mazrui, who delivered a speech at the Westminister University in London in late 2000, the earliest Qur’anic verses linked the biological sciences with the science of the mind. The professor reminds us that the Qu’ran proclaims that ultimately all knowledge comes from Allah (SWT) and exhorts its adherents to avoid arrogance. In fact, Allah’s (SWT) first command to the prophet Muhammad (p.b.u.h.) was the imperative – read:

“Read! In the name of thy Lord, who created (all that exists), Has created man out of a mere drop of congealed blood. Read! And your Lord is the most Generous. He who has taught by the pen which they knew not…” (96:1-5)

According to Professor Mazrui, this simple but profound Qur’anic verse set the stage for a culture of reading and has influenced various stages of human civilization toward a lofty level of intellectual curiosity.

Modern civilization today is adrift as it owes little allegiance to religious knowledge. Modern historians say that Western civilization has “evolved” over the centuries. The philosophical “mindset” of “rational materialism” whose nutrients stemmed from a nasty divorce of religion and science, influenced the Western mind to “scorn” religious knowledge and to forge a new civilization based on the pursuit of profit. Adam Smith, the British statesman that penned The Wealth of Nations, framed civilization in economic terms, while the British philosopher Bertrand Russell stated that modern civilization is born out of the pursuit of luxury. At this point in Western intellectual history, a once vibrant investigation into synthesizing, for example, religion and science, had been extinguished.

I once spoke with a young man about reading in today’s society. He told me matter-of-factly that reading for young people is like “poison” today. There is the internet, the I-pod, the video-games, the cell-phone, and “instant messaging”. Not many of us today relish a hard-copy of a good book. Many of us think there is no time to read a chapter of a book.

A recent report compiling 40 studies conducted by universities, foundations, business groups and government agencies here in the United States since 2004 showed convincingly that we are doing everything else but reading. “This is a massive social problem”, remarked NEA chairman Dana Gioia. “We are losing the majority of the new generation. They will not achieve anything close to their potential because of poor reading”. Here are some findings:

The average person between the ages of of 15 and 24 spends 2 to 2 ½ hours per day watching television and 7 minutes reading (italics mine);

Almost half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure;

The number of 17-year-olds that never read for pleasure increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004;

Almost 40 percent of college freshmen (and 35 percent of seniors) read nothing at all for pleasure, and 28 percent of seniors read less than one hour per week;

Among college graduates, prose-reading proficiency declined from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003;

Seventy-two percent of employers rated high-school graduates deficient in writing. Thirty-eight percent of employers cited reading deficiency.

The study found, not surprisingly, that, regardless of income, levels of reading for pleasure correlate closely with levels of social life, voting, political activism, participation in culture and fine arts, volunteerism, charity work, and even regular exercise (italics mine). It also found that the more books there are in a young person’s home, the higher the average scores in science, civics and history.

I use this space to make a corollary point: both Muslims and non-Muslims are victims of modern civilization due to a disinterest in religious knowledge. Muslims can do much to foster once again a “culture of reading” throughout American society. To accomplish this feat, however, Muslims can no longer detach themselves from today’s civilization for the purposes of declaring it “depraved”. At present, there is a plethora of literature influencing young Muslim minds that castigates Western civilization as one that purportedly directs a “corrosive” society bereft of spiritual values. How can Muslims be exemplars of their faith while simultaneously castigating the societies they live in?

Two influential Islamic scholars, I think, are dedicating their lives to re-juvenate a reading culture here in the United States. Shaykh Hamza Yusuf and Imam Zaid Shakr share a commitment to revive history among their students – Muslim and non-Muslim. Both view knowledge as a “synthesis” and by consequence are strengthening a renewed interest in religious knowledge among Muslims. Consequently, they, along with other Islamic scholars affiliated with the Institute, are helping to foster a “culture of reading” among non-Muslims at the Zaytuna Institute based in California.

That the culture perpetrated by this glorious religion is morality (hayaa) and simplicity is no occasion for extremist groups to contrast it with a modern culture based on immorality and extravagance. The truth is that Muslims should view both levels of cultural activity as is and that our actions and demeanor should serve as an example. Just a few days ago I told a neighbor of mine (a non-Muslim) that I was fasting. She looked at me incredulously and asked me how I did it! I answered that Muslims the world over perform the fast yearly for Allah’s (SWT) Pleasure. I told her that the word “breakfast”, for example, are two words juxtaposed together, signifying that Muslims “break the fast” in the evening before prayer. Now she says she would like to try fasting!

The extremist groups today that purport to be standard-bearers of Islam, in particular Al-Qaeda, thrive on a “clash” of cultures. These groups are not true representatives of Islam; they are psychopaths and are to be frowned upon in the severest terms. This “us vs. them” mentality is no longer applicable in a globalized community. There are no “black-and-white” interpretations of history. History should be described as a synthesis.

Future generations shall not be led to believe that civilization is purely “the pursuit of profit” or “the pursuit of luxury”. And the “culture of reading” must be revived so as to maintain a balance between secular and religious knowledge, the proper ingredients of a balanced civilization.

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be contacted at: drummondhugh@verizon.net