By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
New Delhi: An essay on commonalities among different faiths by Biju Abdul Qadir, Executive Editor of Young Muslim Digest, has made it to the short list for an international award in the ‘critical writing category’.
The 2007 essay titled First Principles,which was published first in the July-August 2007 issues of ‘Young Muslim Digest‘ monthly, has made made it to the short-list in the ‘Critical Writing’ category for the International Award for Imaginative Critical Intervention given in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, and the MEMEFEST 2014 International Festival of Radical Communication, Slovenia, under the theme, ‘Radical Intimacies: Dialogue in Our Times’.
File photo of Biju Abdul Qadir
About 250 entries for this global award were received from 26 countries, with the ‘First Principles‘ essay apparently being the only entry selected for the short-list from India. On 15th November, one finalist from each category will be selected and flown in to receive the Award at a function at Melbourne.]
The essay has been put in ‘Other works’ section, below the ‘best works’ on the website of the event.
Qadir’s article has originally been published in the October 2007 issue of the Young Muslim Digest, an Islamic monthly published from Bangalore since past 30 years. Qadir is Executive Editor of the periodical. He is also the Managing Editor of IQRA Publications, Bangalore.
A graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Karnataka University, Qadir’s interest in Islamic Studies has generated several English translations of popular Islamic literature since 1999. He was conferred a special award for his poem, ‘Mercy for Mankind,’ at the Islamic Writers Alliance International Poetry Awards (USA, 2006) for defending the character of the Prophet, at a time when the Danish ‘Jylland Posten’ cartoons controversy had reached fever-pitch. Earlier, his story-essay, ‘Madrassa-e-Yusufiye,’ dealing with issues of freedom of expression, the nature of law, and the abuse of human rights, as relevant to the contemporary Muslim world won two international awards (2005, Writers Pro, Canada & 2007, MEMEFEST ’07 International Festival of Radical Communication, Slovenia).
The abstract and full essay can be read on the event site: In a world growing smaller by the day, differences in ideas and belief-systems continue to be rendered meaningless in the context of a ruthless standardization of life throughout the globe. However, despite this forced uniformity, issues of faith have refused to die out in the process, partly because of a certain commonality in the scriptural texts of monotheistic religions as they exist today. The relationship between the Judeo-Christian and Islamic scriptures is a classic example that highlights the continuity of the religious experience although this has been more due to human manipulation of the earlier scriptures. The following story-essay strives to put this fact in perspective through the interaction of Max, the Muslim protagonist, the Wayfarer, Max’s inner guide, and his Christian interlocutors who engage him in a discussion on comparative religion, human free-will and predestination: themes that are as old as man himself.
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