If you want, I will tell you what the highest knowledge is, which raises people in rank: it is humility.

—’Ubadah ibn as-Samit, when asked about the following hadith

‘Truly, Allah will not take away knowledge by snatching it away from people, but by taking away the lives of the people of knowledge one by one until none of them survive. Then the people will adopt ignorant ones as their leaders. They will be asked to deliver judgements and they will give them without knowledge, with the result that they will go astray and lead others astray.’

—The Prophet Muḥammad

(Read on pg 13, Ibn Rajab, Ibn al-Qayyim, al-Ghazali, The Purification of the Soul. Al-Firdous Ltd. London:1993.)