The day is not so far when the non-Muslims would be lining up for the Holy Qur’an; the Patna book fair confirmed it recently. The Holy Qur’an was the most selling book in the fair with more than 500 copies sold and most of it bought by the non-Muslims. The fair started on December 1 and lasted till December 13.
Mushtak Umri, the sales manager of New Delhi based Goodword Book, sold around 250 copies of the Hindi Qur’an with more than 100 copies of the English Qur’an and “over 75 per cent buyers were non-Muslims.”
This rise in the sale of the English and Hindi copies of the Holy Qur’an, however, drips the sale of Urdu and Arabic Qur’an a bit. Umri said he has sold less than 25 copies of the Arabic and Urdu copies of the Qur’an.
But, rise in the sale of the Qur’an is not in fact a sudden upsurge. Last year in Mizoram also Umri sold 250 copies of English version of the Qur’an where before this, the Bible used to be the most adorable book among the Christian concentration state.
Moreover, people from Maktabe-e-Imarat Sharia also informed that a large number of Hindus bought the Qur’an in Hindi for they wanted to read and know Islam from the original sources. Manish Sinha, one of the buyers agreed, “We wanted to know more about Islam.” Ratneshwar, the fair’s main organiser, also marks it as a good sign adding, “We came to know about the demand of books on Islam among non-Muslims, it is a good sign.”