ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Completion of Argument Introduction In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah the Lord of the worlds and blessings and peace be upon the best of creations, Muhammad and his Purified Progeny. So to say: An Urdu weekly, “Rizwan”, used to be published from Lahore, which publicized itself on its banner to be “The Religious Voice of the Ahlul Sunnat wal Jamat”. The editor of the weekly was Maulana Sayyid Mahmood Ahmad Rizvi.

The Imam Husain special issue was published between 28th August to 14th September 1954 (Issues no 31 to 34, Vol. 6). On pages 11 to 16 the editorial contained various objections against the Shias under the title of “The thorn and the flower”. Most of these objections had been the oft-repeated ones of the elders of editor of Rizwan and which have already been replied thousands of times. But, the Rizwan editor has presented them in such a way that his readers would feel they are his own creations.

Other objections concocted by Maulana Sayyid Mahmood Ahmad Rizvi have exposed the level of his knowledge. Replies to a majority of these objections were published in the Razakar newspaper of Lahore, till the authorities banned this publication. It was then that my respected friend, Sayyid Jamil Husain Rizvi wrote to me to expose the facts behind the objections.

In compliance of his wishes, I wrote replies to two objections at a time and had them published in Al-Jawwad Magazine of Varanasi, India (March 1955 to March 1958 issues). Maulana Zafar Hasan, editor of Noor Magazine, Karachi, published in article form, my discussion about ‘Bada’[^1] and stated that he had not seen anything better than that in Urdu language. And as for the favor of your Lord, do announce (it).

[^2] When I had written those articles I had no access to many books and sources that I required. In spite of that, thanks be to Allah, the replies proved very effective, quite sufficient and became a wealth of information for the preachers of India, Pakistan and Africa.

During the compilation of these replies, there were two instances when it was impossible to write anything without looking up the original references and I did not have the concerning books, neither there existed any library from which I could obtain them. On both the occasions I sought the help of the Master of the Age (May Allah hasten his reappearance) and the Imam favored me and solved the problem in no time.