I have always opposed mixing religion with politics this is a good example of why. This is what you get when illiterate mullahs issue fatwas that have real consequences for everyone. Btw, similar fatwa was issued in India that banned people from learning English. As a result Hindus excelled and Muslims were left behind.
More than five hundred years ago there was a revolution in information technology; Johann Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press for the Roman alphabet. This made possible a further revolution, a revolution in the transmission of knowledge. Down to the middle Ages, oral-transmission was the normal way in which knowledge was passed on. Knowledge was stored up in men; the art of memory was amongst the most highly prized of arts;scholars were masters of mnemonic tricks. Print did not begin to become established in the Islamic world until the nineteenth century, four hundred years after it began to become established in Christendom.