Review of the whole week

taughtbythepen — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:11:38 +0000

Taught by the Pen

Sunday 7^th Feb to Saturday 13^th Feb

Surah 96 Verse 1 to 5

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Read in the name of your Lord who created,

Created humans from a clinging cell.

Read! For your Lord is the most Generous One

Who taught by the pen,

Has taught man what he did not know.

Yesterday saw the conclusion of a week long book festival organised and arranged by the Muslim Women’s Association of Edinburgh with the help of the City’s own Radio Ramadan Edinburgh.

It was apt that the first ever book festival featured Robin Yassin-Kassab with his first ever novel Road from Damascus. Robin proved to be a charming guest and a great advertisement for a writer; he loves his work and although the novel took him 3 years to write he loved every bit of the experience. Since the novel is packed with complex characters and interesting scenarios it was not difficult to engage him in discussion on its many topics; a recurring theme being why people turn to spirituality.

After a break for book signing, Robin was followed by Dr Hasan Beg who presented his talk about the history of India’s first Mughal Emperor, Babar. Dr Beg has travelled the length and breadth of India collecting photographs of the sites and locations of places Babar has visited and written about in his autobiography: Waqi-i- Babar. These were fascinating to see and Dr Beg’s personal medical analysis of Babar’s history has led him to list the emperor’s injuries and illnesses and conclude that Babar died at the young age of about 47 due to TB.

Monday evening (8^th Feb) brought together Dr George Wilkes and Dr Mujahid Islam once again. They had previously met on Radio Ramadan Edinburgh in 2009 to discuss the influence of Islamic philosophy and teachings on the Jewish philosopher Maimonides of the 12^th century. The discussion continued at Taught by the Pen to encompass the wider influence on the disciplines of science and maths by the techniques developed by Muslim scholars throughout the Middle Ages.

Dr Wilkes’ insight of the interaction between Muslim and Jewish scholars was enlightening and he happily extended the discussion by taking questions from the audience. Dr. Wilkes is a Committee Member of the Jewish Law Association, and has had a long involvement with post-conflict dialogue and human rights organisations and he is the founding Director of the Religion and Ethics in War and Peace Making Programme.

The subject of the Wednesday evening (10^th Feb) was British Muslim Soldiers presented by Major Gordon Corrigan. The talk was illustrated with photographs of Indian soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front in 1914 to 1915. Considering that the subject of the trenches are usually the European soldiers of the Allied forces depicted in the poems of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, it was a revelation to be shown that one third of the troops at this time were in fact from India.

Major Corrigan presented stories of the Sepoys serving in the British forces with clearly illustrated facts and amusing anecdotes. He pre empted the debate of British Muslims being “tricked” into fighting Ottoman Muslims by showing photographs of propaganda leaflets dropped by German planes amongst the British Muslims. His conclusion is that the British Muslim soldiers were aware of whom they were fighting but as with the Christian French and the Christian Germans fighting each other in Europe, he considers that it made no difference to their allegiance.

The conclusion to the week of Taught by the Pen on Saturday (13^th Feb) started with the lovely Elizabeth Laird reading extracts from her various children’s novels and relating the fascinating and uplifting stories of her travels around the world. She has lived in war torn Beirut and worked with orphaned children in Ethiopia, two of whom she was able to meet up with when she returned recently to Africa and found that they had grown into self sufficient adults able to take her out to dinner.

Elizabeth’s novels, although for children, do not skim over the sadness and tragedy that war brings upon children. She did, however, read from her forthcoming book of Iranian folk tales collected during her travels in the country. Her advice to future writers was:

1) Read, read and read.

2) Write regularly

3) Live life to the full

Elizabeth’s inspirational talk was followed by the equally inspirational Shaykh Abdul Aziz. Not only did he talk about his dear friend, Imran Sabir, who passed away last year but he also showed us how Imran’s influence continues in the work of the foundation he helped to set up: www.kitaba.org

Kitaba: Islamic Text for the Blind strives to make literature available to partially sighted and blind people. Only a small section of users prefer Braille publications, the majority prefer to use a software programme that allows their computer to “speak” what is written on the screen.

Shaykh Abdul Aziz brought along one juz of the Quran in Braille and explained that according to the Shafi school of thought one didn’t have to have wudu to touch it because it was not the whole Quran although it was in Arabic Braille. English Braille users only need to learn a few extra symbols to use Arabic Braille and the Quranic Braille has to include clear stopping points at the ends of verses.

The clear message from Shaykh Aziz is that people are not disabled…society disables them by not providing adequate facilities for the needs of individuals. Leicester Masjid has made arrangements for Mahomed-Abraar Khatri to bring his Guide dog to the mosque but most people with disabilities don’t even need that much change adopted to help them integrate into society. It is a simple matter for a masjid to provide a wheelchair user with a clean wheelchair to transfer to on entering a prayer area to allow them to attend congregational prayers.

Saturday’s event was also attended by Gavin Neate from guide dogs for the Blind, Javed Ali author of The Blessings of Ramadan and the popular Japanese Calligraphy was facilitated by Harumi.

Taught by the Pen aimed to inspire people by bringing them in contact with authors. With the guidance of Allah, from the feedback throughout the week, it is clear that this was achieved.

For anyone who missed this week you will be able to catch up with the talks from Taught by the Pen on Radio Ramadan Edinburgh later this year.

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Review of the whole week