Bookreviews by Manju Gupta - Organiser - New Delhi, India
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The view on the Quran by non-Muslim scholars and presented by the author begins by presenting a brief historical survey of the close contact maintained by Muslims with other communities of India is a natural phenomenon of living together while exchanging and influencing religious and other views of each other.
India has been the centre of major religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, which too have flourished here. The author says that as generally agreed upon, the Hindu philosophy that emerged after the advent of Islam in India, had also Islamic flavour; on the other hand, Islamic philosophy has also been influenced with Hindu thoughts. He believes that a clear example of this has been Sufism which appears closer to the Hindu Bhakti movement.
He quotes K. Satchidanand, “No one denies that throughout Indian history, there have been some Muslim and Hindu kings, saints, scientists, scholars, poets and artists, who have studied, understood and admired each other’s ways of living, polity, religion…Such men would have not only promoted mutual tolerance and understanding, but enabled mutual assimilation of the two cultures among some sections at least, up to a point.”
After quoting other Indian scholars like Atulananda Chakrabarti, Dr Tarachand, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others, Dr Hasan cites the cases of Muslim poets of the past who were very much impressed with Hindu religio-philosophical thoughts which they versified into poetry. They took their images, thoughts and ideas from Sanskrit as unhesitatingly as did Hindu poets and accepted Hindu mythology and wrote on Hindu deities with as much enthusiasm and reverence as any Hindu would have done. He also cites the example of Malik Muhammed Jaisi of Uttar Pradesh whose works were “purely Hindu in content”. He says that similarly the works of Addus Sakur and Sayyid Sultan in Bengal were “imbued with ideas of the Shiva cult and mystic tantrism”. He talks of Karam Ali of Bengal who sang praises of Radha and Krishna and Karim Ali, who composed a hymn in honour of Goddess Saraswati. He adds that Mirza Mazhar Jan-Jana, a famous Urdu poet and a Sufi, declared that Hindu gods, Rama and Krishna, should be regarded as prophets and the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Bhagwad Gita as gifts of divine revelation, basing his argument on the Quranic text which says, “And every people hath its guide” and “to every people we have sent an apostle”.
The author quotes the scholar K.A. Nizami who said, “Unlike al-Biruni who had studied Hindu religion at the philosophic level, the Muslim mystics decided to comprehend it at its psychological and emotional levels. They were concerned more with emotional integration than with the ideological synthesis which was a very slow process and touched only a limited section of intellectuals.” He then gives names of Sufi saints like Muhammed Afdal Sarkhush, Mirza Bedil, Khwaja Hasan Nizami and others who by propagating Sufism served as a major medium of “sympathetic interrelations between the two communities.”
(...)
Dr Vazeer Hasan: The Study of the Quran
Adam Publishers & Distributors
328 pp, Rs 300.00
Thursday, November 09, 2006
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Thursday, November 09, 2006
Quran and India
Bookreviews by Manju Gupta - Organiser - New Delhi, India
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The view on the Quran by non-Muslim scholars and presented by the author begins by presenting a brief historical survey of the close contact maintained by Muslims with other communities of India is a natural phenomenon of living together while exchanging and influencing religious and other views of each other.
India has been the centre of major religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, which too have flourished here. The author says that as generally agreed upon, the Hindu philosophy that emerged after the advent of Islam in India, had also Islamic flavour; on the other hand, Islamic philosophy has also been influenced with Hindu thoughts. He believes that a clear example of this has been Sufism which appears closer to the Hindu Bhakti movement.
He quotes K. Satchidanand, “No one denies that throughout Indian history, there have been some Muslim and Hindu kings, saints, scientists, scholars, poets and artists, who have studied, understood and admired each other’s ways of living, polity, religion…Such men would have not only promoted mutual tolerance and understanding, but enabled mutual assimilation of the two cultures among some sections at least, up to a point.”
After quoting other Indian scholars like Atulananda Chakrabarti, Dr Tarachand, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others, Dr Hasan cites the cases of Muslim poets of the past who were very much impressed with Hindu religio-philosophical thoughts which they versified into poetry. They took their images, thoughts and ideas from Sanskrit as unhesitatingly as did Hindu poets and accepted Hindu mythology and wrote on Hindu deities with as much enthusiasm and reverence as any Hindu would have done. He also cites the example of Malik Muhammed Jaisi of Uttar Pradesh whose works were “purely Hindu in content”. He says that similarly the works of Addus Sakur and Sayyid Sultan in Bengal were “imbued with ideas of the Shiva cult and mystic tantrism”. He talks of Karam Ali of Bengal who sang praises of Radha and Krishna and Karim Ali, who composed a hymn in honour of Goddess Saraswati. He adds that Mirza Mazhar Jan-Jana, a famous Urdu poet and a Sufi, declared that Hindu gods, Rama and Krishna, should be regarded as prophets and the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Bhagwad Gita as gifts of divine revelation, basing his argument on the Quranic text which says, “And every people hath its guide” and “to every people we have sent an apostle”.
The author quotes the scholar K.A. Nizami who said, “Unlike al-Biruni who had studied Hindu religion at the philosophic level, the Muslim mystics decided to comprehend it at its psychological and emotional levels. They were concerned more with emotional integration than with the ideological synthesis which was a very slow process and touched only a limited section of intellectuals.” He then gives names of Sufi saints like Muhammed Afdal Sarkhush, Mirza Bedil, Khwaja Hasan Nizami and others who by propagating Sufism served as a major medium of “sympathetic interrelations between the two communities.”
(...)
Dr Vazeer Hasan: The Study of the Quran
Adam Publishers & Distributors
328 pp, Rs 300.00
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The view on the Quran by non-Muslim scholars and presented by the author begins by presenting a brief historical survey of the close contact maintained by Muslims with other communities of India is a natural phenomenon of living together while exchanging and influencing religious and other views of each other.
India has been the centre of major religions like Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam, which too have flourished here. The author says that as generally agreed upon, the Hindu philosophy that emerged after the advent of Islam in India, had also Islamic flavour; on the other hand, Islamic philosophy has also been influenced with Hindu thoughts. He believes that a clear example of this has been Sufism which appears closer to the Hindu Bhakti movement.
He quotes K. Satchidanand, “No one denies that throughout Indian history, there have been some Muslim and Hindu kings, saints, scientists, scholars, poets and artists, who have studied, understood and admired each other’s ways of living, polity, religion…Such men would have not only promoted mutual tolerance and understanding, but enabled mutual assimilation of the two cultures among some sections at least, up to a point.”
After quoting other Indian scholars like Atulananda Chakrabarti, Dr Tarachand, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and others, Dr Hasan cites the cases of Muslim poets of the past who were very much impressed with Hindu religio-philosophical thoughts which they versified into poetry. They took their images, thoughts and ideas from Sanskrit as unhesitatingly as did Hindu poets and accepted Hindu mythology and wrote on Hindu deities with as much enthusiasm and reverence as any Hindu would have done. He also cites the example of Malik Muhammed Jaisi of Uttar Pradesh whose works were “purely Hindu in content”. He says that similarly the works of Addus Sakur and Sayyid Sultan in Bengal were “imbued with ideas of the Shiva cult and mystic tantrism”. He talks of Karam Ali of Bengal who sang praises of Radha and Krishna and Karim Ali, who composed a hymn in honour of Goddess Saraswati. He adds that Mirza Mazhar Jan-Jana, a famous Urdu poet and a Sufi, declared that Hindu gods, Rama and Krishna, should be regarded as prophets and the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Bhagwad Gita as gifts of divine revelation, basing his argument on the Quranic text which says, “And every people hath its guide” and “to every people we have sent an apostle”.
The author quotes the scholar K.A. Nizami who said, “Unlike al-Biruni who had studied Hindu religion at the philosophic level, the Muslim mystics decided to comprehend it at its psychological and emotional levels. They were concerned more with emotional integration than with the ideological synthesis which was a very slow process and touched only a limited section of intellectuals.” He then gives names of Sufi saints like Muhammed Afdal Sarkhush, Mirza Bedil, Khwaja Hasan Nizami and others who by propagating Sufism served as a major medium of “sympathetic interrelations between the two communities.”
(...)
Dr Vazeer Hasan: The Study of the Quran
Adam Publishers & Distributors
328 pp, Rs 300.00
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