ME AND MAULANA: A PERSONAL RECOLLECTION OF WAHIDUDDIN KHAN - John M. Butt

Maulana’s death was an extremely sorrowful event for all of us. We miss him at every moment. The message he left for all of us, in which he said that when we hear the news of his death we should give the response like Abu Bakr, made me extremely serious to get involved in the mission work. The Sunday classes started by Professor Farida Khanam, Dr. Saniyasnain Khan, moderated by Dr. Rajat Malhotra have brought the CPS global community together again on the same platform. My husband, Dr. Nasim Siddiqi and I started coming to Maulana in the early-2000s. After we started coming to Maulana’s classes, we realized we were following traditional Islam. After coming here we understood the difference between form-based and spirit-based worship (ibadah). Our life since has been a continuous effort to perform spiritbased ibadah. Through Maulana we were able to understand Islam, Quran and Hadith in the contemporary idiom. New terms like Creation Plan of God, pre and post-death periods, Godoriented and Hereafter based living became meaningful for us to understand the purpose of our lives. I feel our biggest learning is to understand the importance of dawah work. We have personally seen the printing and publishing of translations of Quran and supporting material in different languages to make Islam understandable to people. We also involved ourselves in the distribution of the material to what extent we could. I personally feel that we have to exert a lot more effort, which I intend to do going forward.