FROM MAULANA’S DESK

FROM MAULANA’S DESK 1. The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2020, 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. SCIENCE: A MEANS OF REINFORCING FAITH W ITH the splitting of the atom, all of man’s conceptions of matter have been drastically altered. In fact, the advance of science in the past century has culminated in a knowledge explosion, the like of which has never before been experienced in human history, and in the wake of which all ancient ideas about God and religion have had to be re-examined. This, as Julian Huxley puts it, is the challenge of modern knowledge. The articles selected for this issue present and propose an answer to this challenge with the conviction that far from having a damaging effect on religion, modern knowledge has served to corroborate and consolidate its truths. Many modern discoveries support Islamic claims made 1400 years ago in the Quran. The contents of the Quran are not at odds with scientific facts, and future knowledge shall keep bearing out this fact, as it has done so far. The Quran says: We shall show them Our signs in the universe and within themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the Truth. (41: 53)