BOOKS AND READING

Just reading any book at all is not knowledge. Reading a book without a teacher multiplies ignorance. In Turkestan the culture of reading books has a history of more than a thousand years. Reading books is a serious matter, and it cannot be left unsupervised. An important point about the culture of reading and teaching books is this: one cannot find in a book an idea contrary to the idea the author wanted to express. A book taken as a whole reveals the author's carefully worked-out concept. In a classic book, self-contradiction is not to be seen. In a cheap book it is. That is why the author himself must interpret the book, state plainly which truth he means to convey, explain it orally, and the reader must accept this. Here the reader becomes his disciple, and he in turn explains the book in this way and passes it on to the next link. In this way the text approved by the author and its interpretation remain as a legacy. When a book is read with a teacher, he protects a person's mind from misunderstanding the book and explains the meanings hidden within the text. Reading one book after another, whatever falls into one's hands, leads a person to wavering and to having nothing to lean on. He may even set off not toward the goal the book intends, but in the opposite direction.

Notes

1. Uzbek is the name of a people. The Uzbeks are a great nation. Uzbek is the name of our mother tongue. However well-read a person may be, he should refrain from sayings like these: 1) Uzbeks take bribes; 2) Uzbeks hoard; 3) Uzbeks don't read; 4) Uzbeks don't think; 5) Uzbeks are traitors; 6) Uzbeks don't unite. All these sayings are nonsense. They are not a fair description worthy of a people, of a nation. A person who is Uzbek should be ashamed to run down his own nation. Whoever, as though telling the truth, runs down and belittles his own people and nation is, to put it mildly, unlearned and ignorant; to put it bluntly, a liar and a traitor.

2. The truth is that Ibn Sina, al-Farabi and other scholars were studied in the West because of the depth of their knowledge; had the West not studied them, it would not have achieved technical progress; so the claim that someone made them famous is utter nonsense.

3. The world of scholarship is vast, and it is natural for scholars to disagree with one another. It is quite ordinary for one to reject another man of learning. One should not make a tragedy of this. Every recognized scholar has a truth he has come to understand, and it may remain the truth for him, while others may respectfully reject it. Trying to understand any text without commentary leaves a person confused.

4. Unexpected (or expected) fame can waylay a person like Satan and disgrace him.

5. Sometimes not reading a book can be better even than reading it. That is, a book the mind cannot bear cripples the human mind. Not reading such texts, which the mind is not strong enough for, is a thousand times better than reading them and going about babbling ignorantly.