Hi -Tech Muslim, I must thank you for your affirming words and the understanding you are showing and sharing... I have an early start tomorrow - it is nearly 11.00pm here in the UK... and I am trying to curtail my habit of staying up late ... It's not easy to break off from a healthy exchange like this... Also, I have a book I am desperate to read, which is about how Chinese explorers circumnavigated the world a full century before the Europeans such as Vasco de Gaga and Columbus (who used the Chinese maps)!

I recall justifying going to the library by telling my mother, 'Our Prophet said, In pursuit of Knowledge, if the scholars have to go to China, they must go".

When I was teaching in the UAE, I copied out this Hadith, and put it up : 'The ink of the scholar is more valuable than the blood of the martyr'.