Mankind should be proud to have a man such as Muhammad as a member, for despite being illiterate he was able, ten-plus centuries ago, to bring laws that we and other Europeans would be very happy if we could reach the same level.
The German Orientalist Sigrid Hoeneker said, in her famous book The Sun of Allaah is Rising in the West, concerning the spread of libraries in the Arab and Muslim world:
The libraries grew in every place like plants in good soil. In 891 CE a traveller put the number of public libraries in Baghdad as more than one hundred. Every city had a library where any ordinary man could borrow whatever he wanted, or sit in its halls to study and read whatever he wanted. Translators and writers also gathered in halls that were set aside especially for them, discussing and debating as happens nowadays at academic conferences of the highest level.
The French thinker Gustave le Bon says in his famous book The Civilization of the Arabs (translated into Arabic by Aadil Zuaytar):
If the Arabs had taken over France, then Paris would have become like Cordova in Spain, a centre of civilization and knowledge, where the man in the street was able to read and write, and even compose poetry, at a time when the kings of Europe did not even know how to write their names!
