Book Description

Have you ever reflected on this verse of the Holy Quran: "O my Lord! Truly my people had made the Quran mahjur" (25:30)? This word (mahjur) has much deeper meanings than its usual interpretation. You may have seen an animal with its rear leg tied to one end of a short rope and horn or neck to the other, in a way that animal's head is contorted preventing it from moving freely. Such animal (per Arabic dictionary) is called mahjur and al-hijaar is the rope with which it is tied. The deeper meanings of the referred verse would be that the people had "tied" the Quran with the "rope" of their vested clarifications to alter its meanings as per their wishes. How befitting to name such dilemma as the Agony of Quran?Agony of Quran is the English version of my well-known Urdu book Quran Ka Dukh which is the culmination of six years of my research and reflection on Quran and relevant tradition. It received an overwhelming response from the people of understanding who requested an English translation of the book for enhanced understanding. These people included Dr. Khalid Masood the then-chairman Council of Islamic Ideology of Pakistan and Justice (retired), Majida Rizvi, the then-chairwoman National Commission on the Status of Women, Pakistan. Then I received an email from Mr. Jamshed Akhtar, a member of the Islamic Fiqa Academy India and the author of great books such as The Ultimate Revelation, In Search of Our Origins and the origin and fate of universe. Akhtar wrote that one of his friends brought Quran Ka Dukh from Canada to India and presented it to him with an urge for its translation in English, and after reading it he also thought that it should be translated to English in order to reach people around the world. So, we started translating the book, which contains replies to some of the most sought-after queries such as: is destiny predetermined, is effort not included in supplication (dua), is woman lesser mortal, is moment of death predetermined, what is the true concept of tauba, can sawab be transferred, does the world belong to nonbelievers only etc? As far as the question of why I wrote this book is concerned, I recall as a schoolboy being intrigued by a question that shook the very foundation of my head and heart. If Genghis Khan was bad, which he was according to my history teacher because he was jabir, then how is God good, which He is according to my Islamic studies teacher because He is jabbaar? Apparently the two words (jabir and jabbaar) meant the same. How could these two contradictory statements be correct at the same time? This was the question I posed to both my teachers the next day and the unanimous answer I received was that this type of query is conjured up in one's mind by Satan. I felt frightened, but the thought did not leave my mind until I became older and started to explore the Quran on my own. It did not take me long to realize that I had studied about Genghis Khan from an Urdu textbook, and in Urdu, jabir means oppressor, whereas I read about God from Quran, which is written in Arabic and according to Arabic dictionary al-jabr means the following: "To reform something in a way which needs force, so the splints used for mending broken bones are called al-jabair, and jabeera is the rope with which the splints are tied. Al-jabir is the one who mends broken bones."So, when we say that Genghis Khan was jabir, it implies that he used force to break bones but when we say that Allah is jabbaar, it means that He uses force to mend broken bones. Both the processes are painful, but one is used for destructive reasons while the other is applied for a constructive purpose. Al-jabaar is one of the ninety-nine attributes of Allah, which means the mender of all cosmic and human weaknesses. After realising how intricate this issue was and how simple its solution was, I thought of searching for more and more such queries. I collected 24 burning questions and tried to find out their answers in this book.