A Bit of Background on Our Qur'an Reader
Dr. Pasha
(Bringing Islam to the World One Concept at a Time!
Taking the Qur'an to Every Home and Heart that Needs It --
And which One Does Not?)
Whoever can, among you, my submission is: If at all you can, please find a latest copy of our Qur'an Reader (Newest Edition) and read it.
This is a little book with a big history. And with a pretty long history too, going back all the way to the earliest 1970s.
Starting with 1970, when we first started doing Allah's Work in the so-called West -- first in Los Angeles, then in Gary, Indiana, and then in Trinidad, West Indies, and throughout the Caribbean, including Guyana, we saw a gap we could not fathom.
There was no way available we could see for English-Speaking Muslims to learn to read the Qur'an -- in its original Arabic.
And we all should know and understand that the Arabic language -- Clear Arabic: Arabiyyin Mubeen, as God himself puts it in the Qur'an -- is the language in which God sent down the Qur'an.
And Arabic is the language in which the Qur'an exists to this day, and in which it shall exist forever, and in which it has existed forever.
Fi Lawuhin Mahfooz!
So, when we started our work in the English-Speaking West, so-called Working for Allah, as we think and talk about it now, it became obvious to us that without some effective way and means for connecting the English-Speaking Muslims directly with the Divine Arabic Text of the Qur'an, our work was not going to go anywhere.
So, we started work on this Reader.
It took us days and weeks and months -- we can even say years -- for that Reader to take final shape and to become public.
We also had another most pressing need knocking at my door -- for me and my wonderful wife, Allah bless her: Our own little daughter, may Allah bless both of them, and all my children, and grant them all a long, healthy and most wonderful life in This World and a most coveted place in Paradise in the Next World, needed to be educated in the Qur'an.
It was that time, in her life -- in every Muslim child's life.
She needed to be taught and drilled into becoming an expert reader of the Text of the Qur'an -- in the original Arabic. So, this lent the matter of producing the Qur'an Reader a little bit of greater personal urgency, if such was ever needed.
In any case, Allah blessed our efforts beyond we could ever imagine.
It is all part of that miraculous Aayat Karimah:
Wa Yarzuqhu Min Hayithu Laa Yahtasib!
Abdul Samad, Allah grant him Jannat, first produced this Qur'an Reader in his own printing business for the first time as a public book. Then, after Abdul Samad joined Allah, his wonderful daughters did the same, Allah bless them.
And the book remained so forever, until those of us whom Allah has blessed started to bring out newer editions of it more lately.
In its own limited way, this book, it is fair to say, has unleashed a revolution in Qur'an reading in the English-Speaking part of the West.
We ourselves have personally trained several generations of Muslims of all ages -- from 7 to 70 -- into reading the Qur'an Karim, using this book.
My wife, Allah bless her, and give her long life and full health and happiness, and Deen and Iman, and all my children, opened her home, and undertook heroic efforts, and made amazing arrangements, to make it possible for generations of young and old English-Speaking Muslims, including new comers into Islam, to enter our home at all times that suited their convenience, and make it possible for me to train them into reading the Qur'an.
She was so young at that time, my wife. Allah bless her, And God Almighty had brought her up in such wonderful circumstances from her parents' side, not mine. Because I was a Faqeer then just as I am a Faqeer now.
A beggar at Allah's doorstep!
As Ghalib says, and what powerful poetry it is:
Daa-im Padaa Huwa Thayray Dar Par Nahim Hu Main!
When I conducted my Qur'an sessions at night, after Isha, my wife would fall asleep in the chair, all too precariously, with our baby still perilously clenched in her arms.
Allah bless and grant Jannat to Yusuf Mitchell and his wife. What a great Mujahid he was! And she was!
Haji Yusuf would gently pick up the baby from my wife's arms and perch him on his enormous belly and walk with him, up and down the hall, while the late-night Qur'an sessions were in progress -- every night.
And my young wife would then fall asleep in her chair.
I had to run these late-night Qur'an sessions because that was the most convenient time for my "students." Most of them worked during the day.
And many of them -- some of them very old -- traveled several hours by car and bus to get to and from the Qur'an so-called "classes."
Allah bless them all! What troopers they were!
And how they made me realize and see with my own bare eyes what real Islam was all about and what true love for Allah's Deen was all about.
These were people, many of whom were new converts, young and old alike, and many from a traditional, hereditary, legacy Islamic background. But they all, Allah bless them, had one thing in common:
They did not know how to read the Qur'an correctly.
And they also had another thing in common:
They were not going to let anything in the world stop them from learning to read the Qur'an correctly!
And many of them simply could not speak a single word or even a letter of a foreign language, except may be a smattering of Spanish, including Urdu, Farsi or Arabic.
Some traveled several hours each day, by bus, from distant countryside to get to my home to learn to read the Qur'an -- using this Qur'an Reader.
And how mightily they struggled to say one letter of the Qur'an right! Allah bless them! For, their tongues, accustomed all their life to English language and its ways, will not easily turn to utter the Arabic pronunciation of the Qur'an.
