Islam and Modern Life — Page 19
ISLAM AND MODE RN LIFE 19 of 1,000 well - armed, well - mounted veteran warriors to wipe out Islam by use of force. And the Prophet had to go out of Medina to meet them with 313 ill - fed, almost starving, ill - armed, and not at all mounted, almost, people. And anybody making any estimate would have laughed at them and said, well, these people will be wiped out in 10 minutes’ time. But the reverse happened. And again, it’s not my purpose to go into that detail. And practically all the leaders of the opposite host were killed on the field o f battle, and many of them were taken prisoners. And those prisoners were brought into Medina. The Prophet said, now there are among you, who are the prisoners, some people who are literate. Now the ransom of each such person is that he should teach the al phabet to 10 of our children. That will be your ransom. Now that’s simple enough. Now, again, Islam does not stop short there at general exaltation towards science and learning and knowledge and so on. It goes much further. It establishes this central posi tion, this doctrine, which in a sense we find in the first chapter of Genesis also, because all these guidance(s) came from God. Though unfortunately being translation upon translation upon translation upon revision, it does not appear in the same words th ere, but the idea one finds there, all the same.