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Dr Zahir Ahmed began his career as a space scientist at NASA in the early 60s. A recipient of the NASA Achievement Award, Dr Ahmed was in Bangalore recently for the Preview of his film, God of Abraham.
The Film God of Abraham is the latest from the repertory of video filmmaker Dr. Zahir Ahmed. Shot in various locales related with Prophet Hazrat Ibrahim, peace be upon him, God of Abraham traces the common roots of world’s three great faiths viz., Christianity, Judaism and Islam which converge on patriarch Ibrahim or Abraham as he is also known. Prophet Ibrahim trudged great distances over desert lands of the Middle East, sired two sons, Ishaq (or Isaac) and Ismail (Ishmael) from his wives Sarah and Hajira (or Hagar), got them settled in Palestine and Arabia and thereby became the celebrated father of the longest line of seers.
Ahmed’s film narrates the tales of Ibrahim’s journeys from Ur (now in Iraq) to Palestine and then to Makkah, in the heart of Arabia and then back and forth between the two places. Isaac’s progeny proliferated and issued forth a series of prophets beginning from Yaqub, Yusuf, Dawood, Sulaiman, Moses to Jesus (peace be upon them). The film captures their adventures and travails in Palestine and Egypt. Ruins of Pharaonic Egypt, story of Moses, his upbringing in Pharaoh’s palace, his role as the liberator of Israelites, drowning of Pharaoh, return voyage to Palestine have been captured through magnificent monuments and museum relics. It often casts a mesmerizing spell. The camera brings to viewers panoramic views of river Nile, sprawling 21st century Cairo and life in its labyrinthine maze of lanes and bylanes, the palaces and pyramids of Pharaohs, caves and graves of Ibrahim and Joseph in Palestine. A couple of rabbis and bishops provide the scriptural content in between.
The film brings to light the commonalities shared by the three faiths by focusing on the persona of Hazrat Ibrahim, his staunch faith in one supreme God and extreme devotion to Him. But for his sacrifices, the three faiths that emanated from the holy land of Palestine would not have had the reign on the hearts and minds of nearly half the humanity today.
Bangalore-born Dr. Zahir Ahmed who did his BE from Bangalore University in 1959 and then acquired MS and Ph.D from the prestigious Yale University at New Haven at Connecticut, is one among the 100 noted US scientists who affixed their signatures on the spaceship Megellen sent to explore Venus in 1989. Ahmed, who was in Bangalore recently, began his career as a space scientist at NASA in the early 60s. He worked on the Apollo Space Programme and was power engineer for the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) aboard Apollo-11 which put the first man on the moon on July 21, 1969. With no sign of life and life-support system on the moon, the NASA discontinued the Apollo mission after Apollo 16. However Ahmed continued to be associated with Viking and Mariner mission to Mars, Megellan Mission to Venus, and Voyager Mission to Jupiter.
Now based in California, Ahmed is currently making video films. His first film titled, Timeless Time was almost a serendipitous venture. He had stumbled upon a verse in the Quran which had talked about a 1000 years on the earth being equivalent to a moment in the divine reckoning. Ahmed made a closer examination of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity and found that time had no dimension in the divine design and was relevant only to the earth and the human beings. He wrote a special paper and presented it in the ISNA conference in 1989. It was very well received. Thereafter, he transferred the concept into a video film. This was way back in 1986. This launched him into the filming career.
He travelled to Spain with American author, T. B. Irving and filmed the Spanish Islamic heritage in a film titled Muslim Spain in 1991. He later found several traces of Islamic architecture in the churches of Central America. Most of these architects and masons had travelled with Columbus to the New World. Dome of the Rock in 1994 and Islam-Africa to America on the slave trade, traced the history of advent of Islam in America through slaves. He says the Black history in America is also the history of advent of Islam in America through black slaves who came from West Africa.
Is Man’s quest to explore Solar system reaching its logical end?
Space scientist Dr. Zahir Ahmed feels so. He opines that none among the planets in the system shows prospects of sustaining life in its conventional sense. Oxygen and water are absent in the atmosphere of the Earth’s cousins. Though Mars has shown some moisture, the ongoing explorations have nullified the historical view of this large planet holding large quantities of water in what were considered channels on the Red Planet.
Dr. Ahmed says that, now agencies like NASA are directing their efforts at probing deeper into space. But much will depend on developing appropriate material to construct spaceships capable of traveling at a speed of closer to that of the light. Certain materials are being evaluated, but any conclusive stage is not likely any time soon.
Ahmed says the mission to Jupiter presented a formidable challenge. The planet is 1000 times bigger than Earth and has such a strong electrical field or Radiation Belt that ordinary components burn. But special components were selected for Voyager and it successfully withstood the electrical field of Jupiter over one lakh miles. The Voyager is now headed to a star almost four light years away from the Earth and very faint telemetric signals from it are received infrequently. In fact, it has even left the solar system.
A recipient of NASA Achievement Award, Ahmed who retired recently, says the NASA has been greatly downsized and allocations are at an all time low for the space programmes. the magnitude of downsizing could be imagined from the fact that at Hughes Aircraft, a NASA affiliate, now has only 30 per cent of its former personnel working. “Space programmes are no longer a priority area for the US. At one time, nearly 1.4 lakh technical personnel worked for it. Look at how the whole nation went gaga over success of the Apollo Missions or the landing of the man on the moon. But now nothing enthuses people about space missions”, he opines. He says a breakthrough will come only with a massive increase in speed of the spaceship.
NASA is currently concentrating on probing into deeper space through building of space stations and universe mapping from Hubble Telescope. Ahmed therefore cautions against reading too much into Colombia and Discovery missions which he describes as only taxing ventures into the space. He says space tourism is being promoted for common men and women.
Dr. Ahmed applauds the ISRO’s Chandrayan mission for putting an Indian on the moon. Asked if India should be devoting its precious resources on this scale, he says it should not be judged merely from the angle of putting an Indian on the moon. ‘The mission would upgrade India’s space technology to a high calibre which would stand it in good stead in future’, he comments.
Zahir Ahmed can be contacted at : ivprod@earthlink. net, 2790 Skypark Dr., 110, Torrance, CA., 90505, Tel. 001-310-6256222, website: www. islamic-video.com
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