Saturday, July 2, 2011

Professor Abdur Raheem Kidwai

Abdul Majid Daryabadi was not a Maulana.
But perceptive Maulanas revered him as a Maulana.
Mostly people use the title Maulana before his name. This is amply justified. In fact Nadwa accepted him as an honorary Nadwi.
Now the matter of fact is that he had for daughters.
And his brother had four sons. Clear?
Good now the home work is where did he marry his four daughters?
You got it right. Four daughters married to four of his nephews.
Son of one of those daughters is now a Professor at the English Department of your beloved Alma Mater.
He is professor A.R.Kidwai.
His research work is on Byron-because he has used some concepts that are taken from Islam-or something like that.
And then there is some more work that he has done.
Or much more work.
Like the book, with Manazir Ahsan, on Muslim response to Rushdie. Very civil response to an obscenity.
And the constant book reviews that appear in Muslim World Book Review. This periodical is a fitting tribute to Islamic scholarship where Muslim scholars use the Muslim idiom to analyze the things around us, the books, from a Muslim perspective at a level that sooner or later will bust the orientalist juggernaut.
Lord willing.
Then there is his work on English translations of the Holy Qur'an. We have an old article, from 1993, at a Middle East journal where he has taken stock of English translations of the holy book.
This article has developed into a book now was published way back in 2007, in excellent production quality, from Saudia. Unfortunately there is outlet on the internet from where it is available. Some enterprising person should do something to make it available to the masses. (Please leave the author to do his work.)
Here is a link covering his lecture on this matter at Oxford.