ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Bilal's Bedtime Stories (part Two) Al Quran - the Great and Holy Book About a hundred years ago, England had a powerful Prime Minister. He was a Christian belonging to a high section of the Anglican Church. His name was Gladstone. One day in the year 1882, he was speaking in the British Parliament on how to weaken the power of Muslims in Egypt so that the British could continue to rule over them.

At one stage he raised a copy of the Holy Qur'an in his hand and said that so long as this book remained with the Muslims in that country and they respected and followed it, the British would never be able to dominate them. He added that the only solution was to try and separate the Holy Qur'an from the Muslims of Egypt. At the end of the speech; a committee was formed to decide upon ways and means of carrying out Gladstone's recommendation.

The committee resolved to send some experts to Egypt who would launch a campaign which would weaken the faith of people and make them suspicious of the truth of the Holy Qur'an. The aim was to discourage people to refer to the Holy Book and gradually make them turn against the Islamic way of life. In the course of this political and vicious programme, a learned man by the name of Dunlop was sent to Egypt as a teacher.

He prepared many books containing lessons which were nothing but propaganda in disguise. One of the lessons on history was based on showing how Egypt was lagging behind and was not making progress because of Islam and the Qur'an. It alleged that people of Egypt were much more civilized prior to the coming of Islam. Such ill-intentioned programme first succeeded to a small extent in influencing the youths at schools.

Then the Holy men of Al-Azhar university protested to the authorities and demanded that an end be put to it. Now let us find out what are the qualities of this book which the enemies wished to remove from the Muslims. The Holy Book is known as 'Al Qur'an' which means 'The Reading', the reading of the Prophet of Islam who never went to any school. Prophet Mohammad (S.A.W.) had retired to a cave on Mount Hira not far from Mecca. One day Angel Jibrail (Gabriel) came to him and said "Read".