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Read in the Name of your Lord, Most

Generous

By Sheikh Salman al-Oadah atIslamToday.net

Allah Almighty says:

Read! And your Lord is Most Generous, who taught by way of

the pen. He taught humanity what they did not know.

[Srah al-Alaq 96:3-5]

Allah refers to Himself in this verse as Most Generous (Akram).

This is the superlative form of the word generous (Karm), so here

Allah describes Himself as being more generous than any other.Though Allah refers to himself as generous many times in the Quran,

this is the only instance where he uses the superlative term MostGenerous.

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Therefore, we should carefully consider what Allah chooses to give

as an example of His generosity in this particular context.

What Allah speaks about here is how He taught humanity by way of

the pen. In other words, He is Most Generous to us because he gaveus the gift of being able to learn and acquire knowledge. Moreover,

He gave us the gift of reading and writing, whereby they could store

and pass on acquired knowledge, preserve their history, and develop

the sciences, the arts, and every aspect of civilization.

Indeed, Allah has taught humanity what they did not know thoughHe creates each human being in a state of ignorance:

And Allah has extracted you from the wombs of your mothers

not knowing a thing, and He made for you hearing and vision

and intellect that perhaps you would be grateful.

[Srah al-Nahl 16:78]

Though we are born in ignorance, Allah has provided us with theability to learn. We should consider the great volume of knowledge

that humanity has been able to accumulate throughout the course of

history, in every science, discipline, and technology, every craft, art,

language, and industry.

Only Allah can fathom the full spectrum and scale of our collective

human knowledge. Consider all the books that have been written by

hand, how many are sent to the printing presses every day, and howmuch is now published daily on the Internet.

Any one of us can only hope to acquire the smallest fraction of that

great blessing of Allah which is our collective human knowledge. We

should also not forget the common sense, conventional wisdom, and

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practical life-knowledge that we barely take notice of but which is

indispensible for us to conduct our daily lives.

Consider how much a person from the Stone Age would have to

learn simply to navigate our everyday modern urban environment,and we can get an idea of how vast and complex this practical know-

how really is.

This is just one aspect of how Allah is the Most Generous (Akram).