By Mohammed Siddique, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad : First of its kind International Islamic Book Fair opened in Hyderabad today with more than 30,000 titles on wide range of subjects in different languages on display. Inaugurating the Book Fair at sprawling Hockey Grounds on Friday afternoon Moulana Mohammed Sirajul Hasan, former Amir, Jamat-e-Islami Hind said that the good books aimed at building character and propagation of knowledge and true Islamic teaching was need of the hour. “The world is witnessing an unprecedented materialistic development and progress. But man on the other hand is going down the hill as far as spirituality and character is concerned”, he said.
Moulana Sirajul Hasan urged the Muslim community to take the correct image of Islam before the world by introducing Quran to the non Muslim communities in their own languages. “Quran today is available in every Indian language”, he said.
The Islamic Book Fair, organized by Huda Book distributors and publishers, has attracted books from leading publishers all over the world. “Apart from several leading publishers with in the country, publishers from Pakistan, UK, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Beirut have sent their books for the fair”, said Mohammed Azharuddin, who heads the Hyderabad based Huda book distributors. “This is a unique exhibition because for the first time such a large number of Islamic book publishers from all over the world have gathered under one roof providing an unprecedented variety of books to the people”, he said.
“Quran in all the regional languages of India are available in this fair to the people who are curious to know about Islam”, he said. Similarly Islamic literature of different schools of thoughts in different languages including Urdu, English and Arabic was also kept at the fair.
“There are books on Quran, Hadith, Seerah (life of prophet Mohammed), history, Islamic banking and finance and several other subjects and themes are on the display here”, said Azharuddin. The exhibition is attracting a large number of visitors and lovers of the books.
Addressing the opening ceremony, state’s minister for minority welfare Mohammed Ali Shabbir said that educational backwardness of Muslim community was a big tragedy because the first message of Holy Quran to Muslims was to learn and educate themselves. “The educational backwardness among the Muslims is worse than the Dalits. In Andhra Pradesh 83000 students had enrolled in first standard of Urdu medium schools but by the time they reached tenth standard their strength had come down to 10300 and more than 80% students had dropped out”.
Underlining the commitment of the state government to eradicate the educational backwardness among Muslims, Shabbir said that the government had earmarked an amount of Rs 140 crore to pay the tuition fee of Muslim students studying in 16 different professional courses including engineering and MBBS.
“The initiative of paying fee of the poor students is paying rich dividends. In engineering stream alone 20,000 Muslim students have enrolled themselves this year in government, private and minority colleges. About 4000 of them are in the reservation quota. The parents of all these students will not have to worry about the educational expenses of their wards”, he said.
The government will pay tuition fee of Rs 30,000 for an engineering student and Rs 50,000 for medical course.
The ceremony was also addressed by Moulana Khalid Saifullah Rahmani, Rector, Al Mahadal Ali al Islami, Moulana Hameeduddin Aauqil Hussami, Ameer Millat-e-Islamia, Dr. Syed Shah Khurso Hussaini of Gulbarga shrine, Moulana Shah Akbar Nizamuddin Hussaini, Ameer, Jamia Nizamia and Malik Moatasim Khan, Ameer, Jamat-e-Islami, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.
The book fair will continue for ten days.