8,000 copies of Holy Qur’an were sold by the Madhur Sandesh Sangam during the week-long book-fair in New Delhi in November last. Other publishers also did brisk business.
After 9/11, there is a general curiosity to know about the Holy Book, which its critics or ignoramus believe incites Muslims to violence against non-believers. That was, and is, the chief reason behind the “sale” of Holy Qur’an.
Muslims, out of respect, do not use the word “sale” for the Holy Qur’an. They use hadyah or gift for price. Because the Qur’an cannot be valued in terms of price as basically it is a book of Guidance or hidaayah. And Divine Guidance cannot be measured in terms of price or cost.
For centuries, the Qur’an has been written by hand or has gone through calligraphy. Pt. Naval Kishore’s press in Delhi had its own calligraphers. Panditji, in Saafa, sported a well-kept Islamic beard. Every kaatib would first make ablution and then start calligraphy of the Holy Book. Panditji would also, with all humility at his disposal, remind the kaatib to this effect.
Now the computer has made the job easy. Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgeer, who considered the kingdom treasury a trust of Allah for the service of the subjects, did not take a dime from it. Instead, he would begin calligraphy of the Qur’an. It was through its hadyah that he ran his family. Once a subject paid him more than the normal hadyah. The emperor thereafter fixed the hadyah so that nobody could cross the limit. His other means of livelihood was caps, stitched by him. Even today, the Qur’an calligraphed by Alamgeer is available here and there in museums. But caps are not. In October last a copy of the Qur’an, calligraphed by Aurangzeb was found missing from Srinagar’s Sri Pratap Singh Museum. One cannot understand the mind of the thief who stole and steals the Qur’an.
According to AFP, a 13the century Qur’an was, not long ago, “sold” for a world record price of a $2,320,917, in London. The Holy Book was sold as part of an auction of art from the Islamic and Indian world that brought in a total of £5.9 million. Dated to 1203 and written entirely in gold, with marginal notes in silver, it is the earliest known, complete, dated Qur’an. It broke the record for a Qur’an, and the record for any Islamic manuscript, “sold” at auction.
Also “sold” was a nearly complete 10 century Kufic Qur’an, which is thought to originate from North Africa or the Middle East, which fetched £916,500 compared to its pre-sale estimate of up to £600,000.
Following the 9/ll, which we believe was basically a handiwork of the Zionists, triggered the demand of the Qur’an in the western hemisphere. When the non-Muslim prisoners read it, some of them embraced Islam. This sent alarm bells in the White House, resulting in silent but systematic purge of Islamic literature from the prisons. The chaplains were directed by the US Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that were not on a list of approved resources, all in the name of venting terrorism. Has the step prevented terrorism, the roots of which do not lie in the Qur’an or Sunnah, but in the Judaisation of Jerusalem and the US ambition to Christianise the world?
Yes! The Qur’an is a, rather the Last Book of Divine Guidance. But it does dispel the Djinns from human bodies. Even the cassettes of the Qur’an do it. I have tried it. Would you like to?