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)]
By Kashif-ul-Huda, TwoCircles.net, Engineering is his profession but community activism is Faizur Rahman’s passion. Urdu-speaking native of Chennai, he writes on religio-political issues in mainstream newspapers of India. Faizur Rahman is an executive committee member of Harmony India, an organisation to promote secularism and communal harmony which is headed by Mr. N. Ram, the Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu. He is also the founding secretary of Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought in Islam. He talked to TwoCircles.net on ways Muslims in India can improve their economic conditions only if we check some wasteful and unnecessary expenditures. TCN : Recently in a workshop attended by Muslim community leaders, you created quite a ruckus by saying that Muslims should not go for umra every year. Why are you against umra? FR : Please allow me to clarify. First of all, I am not against Umra. I only pointed out that Umra not being an obligatory ritual in Islam one need not perform it every...
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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