Reading the Qur’an: By Ziauddin Sardar

Reading religious texts can be cumbersome. Particularly if the religion is not that which one is brought up in. Plan B. Interpretations, translations, excerpts. Reading the Qur’an is a mix of all these, with underpinnings that attempt to tear the revered text away from obscurantist clutches and misinterpretations.

Reading the Qur’an is a wonderful trip. Even if one does not agree – or is not convinced -- with some of its bits and pieces. A whole lot of miasma hovering over Islam’s holy book gets cleared. Especially when one feels the love for the book that the author shows.

Like for many south Asians, Qur’an is not just a holy text for Sardar. It is a whole tradition, inculcated into a child who sits on the mother’s lap while she reads it out and interprets it for the child. I can easily replace the Qur’an with the Ramayana in this happy and peaceful imagery and see myself in Sardar’s place – the meaning and context remaining intact.

The systematic “learing” of the Qur’an in the tradition way has not stopped Sardar from interpreting the book on his own dynamic terms and rendering a tight slap on the “collective conscience” (I have begun to hate this term now, thank you SC) of obscurantist ‘authorities’ of Islam.

The underlying feel one gets out of the book is that Quran is not a set of laws, but a set of principles to live through a dynamic world.

A must read for Muslims and non-Muslims.

A few words for a real hero...

The dust is slowly settling down. The Delhi braveheart's funeral pyre is now ash, her last remains by now perhaps one with the Ganga's already overburdened waters. The sordid year has just breathed its last.

Now, I believe is the time to spare a thought for the one shining example that may have saved Indian chivalry from complete degradation. One man, who, when we were all expressing our anguish, silently felt the worst. The man who saw it all in all its gruesomeness. While the graphic descriptions of the gangrape have shocked us, only he was scarred for life.

Stoic silence may mean anything -- a deeply disturbed mind, or plain fortitude. Because what he lost two weeks back, and again following her death, was much more than a relationship or perceived self-respect. What he lost was perhaps all that he was made up of.

As the six brutes took turns to snuff out the torch of manhood, one man lit a candle -- a candle much more brighter than those held by all of us angry souls.

So, here's to THE man. To, perhaps, 'Nirbhaya/Amanat's' only friend in need.

A tribute to his courage, silent suffering and sheer tenacity.

Salute, sir!