Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

Page 39

ISLĀM
31 as an armor against our enemies. With knowledge, the servant of God rises to the lieight of goodness and to a noble position, associates with sovereigys in this world, and attains to the perfection of happiness in the next.”* And there is a word of the Prophet which seems to me so striking, so unexpected, that I repeat it here: “The ink of the scholar is more valuable than the blood of the martyr." Unexpected declaration for a Prophet for whom so many had been martyred. And yet how profoundly true. Ali, the beloved, the son-in-law of the Prophet—from him sprang all Islām's learning and the wonderful outburst of her knowledge. He would lecture amid struggle and warfare. He would stand up to teach, and to bid young men study and learn and master the sciences above all other things. And there is a definition given of science which is worthy the quoting : “ Enlightenment of the heart is its essence; truth its principal object; inspiration its gnide; reason its accepter; God its inspirer; and the words of man its utterer." + Not many grander definitions of science than that have been spoken by human lips. For one hundred years the followers of Ali studied, while the other side of the Musulman world was fighting and conqnering"; one hundred years of quiet study, and then the work began; and what a work! From the eighth century till the fourteenth in the hand of the child of Islām is gripped the torch of science. Wherever they go they carry learning with them; they conquer, but where they conquer they found schools, wiversities,
* Ibid, pp. 531, 532. + Ibid, p. 537.