Nay, but ye (for your part) honour not the orphan. And urge not on the feeding of the poor. And ye devour heritages with devouring greed. And love wealth with abounding love. [Surah Al-Fajr (17-20)]
We Live in Cairo, a production at @americanrep beautifully captures the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The confusion, idealism, and optimism during the start of revolution to struggle, comradery, and jubilation of success, and then disagreements, sacrifice, and despair as post- revolutionary reality turns out to be a negative image of the dream. Writers Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour have done an excellent job in capturing the nuances of the Tahrir Uprising through this musical. No stereotypical representation of Egypt or Egyptian. No whitewashing of complexities of this revolution. The cast brings a high energy performance that spills over to the audience and the audience joins in clapping when the revolution succeeds and sinks in their seats deeper during the second act. The creative team has done a wonderful job of capturing the emotion and confusion as the revolution began to unravel and hijacked. People were so busy fighting Mubarak regime that there was no consensus de...
In India whether triple talaq or word "talaq" said in one sitting results in a divorce or not has been a matter of debate for too long. To find out the truth about triple talaq and a statement by Taslima Nasrin that quran says that earth revolves around the sun encouraged me to read quran with translation. On and off, I have been doing that and I have consumed lot of translations and tafseer in Urdu and English. I have been reading Ma'ariful Quran for many years now. Ma'ariful Qur'an is an eight volume tafseer of Quran written by Late Mufti-e-Azam of Pakistan Mufti Muhammad Shafi. He is the father of Mufti Taqi Usmani. I like this tafseer because it is very comprehensive and brings opinions of other ulema as well. Today, I finally finished volume 5 and started the sixth volume which started with Surah Mariam. The translation of quran in this tafseer is the one done by Shaikhul Hind Maulana Mahmoodul Hasan.
In Surah As-Saffat, Allah declares Himself as Rabb-ul-Mashaariq i.e. Lord of the easts. Not sure why most translators have translated it as the Lord of the sunrises. But if we stick to original Arabic then question arises east from where? is it east from the reader's perspective or east of Hijaz? Also, how many easts are there? As-Saaffat Lord of the heavens and of the earth and all that is between them, and Lord of the sun's risings. (5) Lo! We have adorned the lowest heaven with an ornament, the planets; (6) سورة الصَّافات وہ پروردگار ہے آسمانوں کا اور زمین کا اور جو کچھ ان کے درمیان میں ہے اور پروردگار ہے طلوع کرنے کے مواقع کا۔ (۵) ہم ہی نے رونق دی ہے اسی طرف والے آسمان کو عجیب آرائش یعنی ستاروں کے ساتھ۔ (۶) Next verse, except for Pickthall everyone translate kavakib as start. It says that stars are ornaments of the sky (nearest heaven), this also raises lot of questions about nature and function of the stars. And then continue reading till verse number 10....
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