According to Dileep Padgaonkar :
Coming back to the book vs book response. Book, or books, have been written in response. May be Maulana Khan has read them or may be he has not. Even if he has read them then his statement really is more of a subterfuge then sagacity. Having chosen to hobnob with the detractors of Islam he expects other also to follow suit in the act of submitting to the apparent powers of current epoch. When such suggestions come from a person who has written hundreds of books on Islam then the clear and sure conclusion is that the tenets of the religion of Allah(SWT) has not entered the required quarters of his personality. And this reminds yours truly an incident about Maulana's erstwhile mentor. His mentor too was famous for expounding Islam. Somebody got impressed because of his book on the veil in Islam. This person got a chance to visit the family of Maulana Khan's mentor but found that the veil was honoured by laxity of implementation. Needless to say that this person was disenchanted.
The sad thing is that people, that is the Muslims, are by and large disenchanted with Maulana Khan. More sad thing is that Mr Padgaonkar got impressed by this person whose loyalties lie with those people whom, thankfully, agrees not to be the real representatives of Indian society.
... the noblest utterance has come from the outstanding Islamic scholar, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan: 'The answer to a book is a book, not a ban' The response to real or imagined apostasy is to pit your case against the case of the apostate and leave it to the faithful - as well as to those who are beyond the confines of your faith - to decide for themselves The response is not to proscribe his book, seek to bar his entry into the land of his birth, let alone to issue an edict to get him murdered.First things first - no one in India has issued a fatwah to the effect mentioned in the last sentence above. Mr Padgaonkar is a very responsible journalist, even if we do not agree that his job as the then editor of the the then most prominent English daily of India was the second most difficult job after the Prime Minister of India. He is expected to choose his words carefully. He made a lapse in this case.
Coming back to the book vs book response. Book, or books, have been written in response. May be Maulana Khan has read them or may be he has not. Even if he has read them then his statement really is more of a subterfuge then sagacity. Having chosen to hobnob with the detractors of Islam he expects other also to follow suit in the act of submitting to the apparent powers of current epoch. When such suggestions come from a person who has written hundreds of books on Islam then the clear and sure conclusion is that the tenets of the religion of Allah(SWT) has not entered the required quarters of his personality. And this reminds yours truly an incident about Maulana's erstwhile mentor. His mentor too was famous for expounding Islam. Somebody got impressed because of his book on the veil in Islam. This person got a chance to visit the family of Maulana Khan's mentor but found that the veil was honoured by laxity of implementation. Needless to say that this person was disenchanted.
The sad thing is that people, that is the Muslims, are by and large disenchanted with Maulana Khan. More sad thing is that Mr Padgaonkar got impressed by this person whose loyalties lie with those people whom, thankfully, agrees not to be the real representatives of Indian society.