FROM MAULANA’S DESK

FROM MAULANA’S DESK 1. The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2012, Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, Jordan. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, born in 1925, in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, is an Islamic spiritual scholar who is well-versed in both classical Islamic learning and modern disciplines. The mission of his life has been the establishment of worldwide peace. He has received the Padma Bhushan, the Demiurgus Peace International Award and Sayyidina Imam Al Hassan Peace award for promoting peace in Muslim societies. He has been called ’Islam’s spiritual ambassador to the world’ and is recognized as one of its most influential Muslims1. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and are part of university curricula in six countries. He is the founder of the Centre for Peace and Spirituality based in New Delhi. RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW T HE most popular formula among people today is ‘right here, right now’. This means that people want to live in their present and are not willing to think about the other side of life. The concept of ‘right here, right now’ is not workable. This thinking is against human nature. The sensible decision can only be one in which a person makes eternity his goal. According to human nature, anything less than eternity cannot truly be man’s goal. If a person adopts a method which is not in accordance with his nature, then he will forever live in stress. According to a survey, roughly 150,000 people die every day. Among the dead, there are people belonging to all groups—children, youth and the old. Long life has always been man’s beautiful dream. All the kings and rich people wanted to have a long duration of life and were ready to give all the wealth they possessed for it. But history tells us that all of them failed in achieving this goal. By nature, man desires an eternal life but he only gets a very short span of life. In the present age, longevity has become a subject of medical research. But to this date efforts towards lengthening human life have failed