Prevalence of writing and increase in ignorance.

Many of us take for granted the abundance of books that are available in 

the modern age. However, the majority of people in history have never 

even held a book in their hands. One reason is the lack of education as 

most people used to be illiterate so there was not a big demand for books. 

Another reason is scarcity; books were difficult and expensive to produce 

because each copy had to be written manually by hand.

This has been 

the norm for most of human history, and seventh century Arabia was no 

different. Muhammad was born into a society in which very few people 

could read or write. It is estimated that the number of people who were 

literate in his locality of Mecca did not exceed seventeen [148].

Muhammad himself could not read or write. There were even whole societies 

that didn't have any books, they didn't write anything down because they 

only had an oral language.

Against this backdrop, Muhammad made the prediction that writing will 

one day become prevalent among mankind:

Ahead of the Hour, people will only greet those whom they know; 

trade will become so widespread that a woman will help her husband in his trade; ties of kinship will be severed; people will bear false witness and conceal true testimony; and the pen will prevail. 

[149]

This prediction by Muhammad is in fact loaded with accurate prophecies. The statement "people will only greet those whom they know" has been fulfilled by the advent of densely populated cities of the modern age where it is common for people not to speak to their 

neighbours [150].

The statement "a woman will help her husband in 

his trade" has been fulfilled by women entering the workforce in large 

numbers, especially in Western societies [151].

The statement that "ties of kinship will be severed" has been fulfilled by the breakdown 

of traditional family values. Such values, which have long been the 

fabric of society, are now broken [152]. One symptom of this is the 

increasing number of old people who are put into care homes by their 

families. It has also been fulfilled by the breakdown of community 

values; one symptom of which is the whole philosophy of liberalism 

that has swept the majority of the 'modern' world, a philosophy that 

is based on individualism and individual rights over the rights of a 

community.

For the sake of this chapter, we will focus in detail on 

the statement that "the pen will prevail". The Arabic word used by 

Muhammad for pen is 'qalam' which also carries the wider meaning 

of writing, or anything that is written down in general [153].

This perfectly describes our world today in which it is the norm for people 

to read and write and there is an abundance of books, newspapers, 

and magazines. This has only been made possible thanks to fifteenth 

century technological advances such as printing that took place over 

800 years after Muhammad's prophecy.

For the first time in history, written materials could be produced in vast quantities.

The increased efficiency of book production brought with it a decrease in prices 

and a subsequent increase in book consumption as they were now 

affordable to the masses. To put this into perspective, the fifteenth 

century saw about the same number of manuscripts printed in Europe 

as had been produced by hand during the entire preceding fourteen 

centuries [154]. With the advent of the internet, writing is spreading 

even more. Anybody with a computer or smart phone now has access 

to millions of books with just the click of a finger. It's quite powerful 

that Muhammad, who could neither read nor write, prophesied the 

spread of reading and writing.

It's important to point out that book production, and knowledge in 

general, has not always been on the increase as time goes on. From the 

sixth century, the Catholic Church made a concerted effort to protect 

and bolster its position of dominance and power. It closed institutes 

of philosophy, banned books, and suppressed any scientific thought 

that threatened its own biblical outlook of the world. The masses 

were forbidden from owning the Bible and authors were even burnt 

alive for writing books that opposed the Catholic Church's religious 

doctrines. The ancient Greek chronicler John Malalas recorded: "During the consulship of Decius [529 CE], the Emperor issued a decree 

and sent it to Athens ordering that no one should teach philosophy 

nor interpret the laws" [155].

As a result, Europe entered into a 1,000 

year period of intellectual slumber. Thus the "lights went out" on rational thinking and Europe entered the Dark Ages. Indeed, Europe's 

creative energies and inventiveness are acknowledged much later, 

only from the dawn of the "scientific revolution" in the sixteenth and 

seventeenth centuries.

In addition to predicting that writing would become prevalent, Muhammad also foretold that another sign of the end of the world would 

be that "ignorance will become widespread and there will be much 

killing" [156]. Here Muhammad stated that there will be widespread 

ignorance and evil acts such as killing.

The twentieth century is without question the bloodiest century in history, far worse in terms 

of global devastation than any previous era. While fatality statistics 

vary, the First and Second World Wars alone have seen estimates of 

total deaths ranging from 50 million to more than 80 million. We have 

also witnessed mass genocides that have sadly resulted in the deaths 

of tens of millions. As time goes on, mankind continues to develop 

weapons with greater potential for death and destruction. The twentieth 

century saw the development of atomic weapons as well as their use 

on civilian populations. There are now nuclear weapons capable of 

destroying entire cities, with governments having stockpiled enough 

nukes to destroy the entire earth multiple times over. This is despite 

the fact that the masses can read and have access to more education 

and learning than at any other time in history.

We have a strange 

situation of knowledge being more readily available to mankind and 

yet killing being rampant. Both these predictions by Muhammad are, 

when taken together, quite paradoxical. If Muhammad were guessing 

then he would have predicted an increase in writing and decrease in 

ignorance due to mankind's enlightenment. But he actually predicted 

two opposites, this paradoxical situation of writing being prevalent 

and evil acts such as killing being widespread.

The historian Niall 

Ferguson notes this paradox of our modern age:

Why? What made the twentieth century, and particularly the fifty 

years from 1904 until 1953, so bloody? That this era was exceptionally violent may seem paradoxical. After all, the hundred 

years after 1900 were a time of unparalleled progress. [157]