Book Review

A Literary Insight
Academy Publishers
86-Ist cross, 5thmain, Maruthi HBCS Layout
Bangalore-560029
080-26680279
Price Not mentioned,
Pages 141


The book under review provides insight into the passages referring to Nature in the holy Quran. Nature and its diverse manifestations make a recurring theme in the Quran. Several of them provide broad hints to very complex scientific facts that could not have been comprehended by the 7th century Arabs who formed the earliest audience of the message brought by the holy Prophet of Islam. However, today’s man with his well developed empirical skills has access to deeper meanings of these passages. One such reference was to the development of the human embryo which led French embryologist Maurice Bucaille to establish a link between the Quranic text and contemporary facts.


Author Tahsin Ahmed has put his reflections on these passages and brings to relief the centrality of the divine strategy of using Nature as a medium to guide the human thought. The author elaborates the reference to constitution of human fingers to today’s fingerprints, a crucial element in forensic sciences. Oceans merge but still their waters retain their distinct traits. Honey bees produce honey with medicinal properties out of the nectar collected from a wide flora. Milk flows out from amidst urine and dung from the cattle. Birds fly in the sky without the aid of monitors, radars and without the risk of crashlanding. Water being the very essence of the biological constitution of all animals too finds a mention in the Quran. A delicate sprout tears the hard earth asunder but man has to use heavy machinery to gain the same result. Water cycle and seasons provide the human being with ideal conditions for a sustainable livelihood.


Variety and diversity in the seemingly similar groups and classes of animals too provides enough pointers to the divine scheme of things. All these manifestation of nature are there to urge man to study, contemplate, observe, reflect, appreciate, understand and think and perceive the greatness of God and seek his guidance and submit himself to his obedience.


Arabic language’s capacity to provide layered meanings to themes becomes evident to any careful reader of the holy Quran. Each meaning unravels the doors to new interpretation in epochs and eras ahead.


The book compresses a lot of such insights between the covers and makes it a useful compendium of references to Nature. The book has been produced with a commendable and sophistry.

B.F.Habeebur Rahman Bijli
Thanal Pathippagam,
13/39-Sheikh Dawood Street,
Royapettah, Chennai-600014,
thanalpathippagam@gmail.com
Rs. 100, pages 200


Forces of aggressive nationalism paint India in a monoculture pattern and thereby mount pressure on subcultures and communities to dissolve their identities into the mainstream. This is problematic in a country of India’s vastness and diversity. Communities with special ethno-linguistic and religious characteristics form the sub streams and contribute to the richness of plural culture just as the tributaries add to main river system.


The book under review is an attempt by author Habeebur Rahman Bijli to explode the myth of monoculturalism. The engineer-turned-writer, Bijli’s book is a litany of lament of ills afflicting the Muslims in particular and the depressed and underprivileged classes in general. However, text of the book wavers hugely through the book and makes it a grand ensemble of grievances which have been put in popular idiom. The book although focuses on issues of popular concern, and also in common man’s parlance but fails to pinpoint the core of the malady. A great variety of thoughts and issues have been jumbled together.


The author may be correct in pointing at urbanization and industrialization as the main forces that lend the current strength to the communal forces.  Role of political institutions, media and academia in pushing the saffron agenda is too evident to be denied.  But a good many people are bound to disagree when the author lays blame at the doors of Brahmanical order. Similarly, analysis is deficient when he presents Islam to be a panacea. In its current state, the community is a much pale shadow of its glorious past and has fewer intellectual resources to upgrade its faith into a 21st century ideology or code for the humanity.


The answer to the Muslim maladies is buried deep in the verbiage of the book. It says: The Islamic and Arab states need to understand financial, technical, geographical and military facts in the complex maze of Arab-Israel issue and cool headedly analyse the situation lest we repeated the past mistakes. This theme needed to have been broadened to develop into a cogent prescription.


Being a collection of essays and speeches, the book suffers from lack of coherence required of a book and needs the basic skeleton of facts to reinforce arguments. There is also some scope for better editing even though production compensates the inadequacies to some extent.