TAZKIRAH
Pronounced by world-fame scholars : "most successful and
universal Law of nation building"; "Exposition of infallible and divine
sociology";"solitary oasis in barren literature of religions"; "a Monumental
Work,"--(Royal Society of Arts).
"Tazkirah", Mashriqi's most powerful book, was designed to appear in ten
volumes, six of which had already been completed when the first one was
published in 1924. Mashriqi suspended publication of the remaining
volumes and started The Khaksar Movement,
with social service to all, and military drill as its main features.
"Tazkirah" is a higher commentary on the Quran, which he describes as the
last Message of God to man. It contains an exhaustive exposition of the
Divine Law, what he calls the Religion of Nature, which governs the rise
and fall of nations and civilizations. The first volume of "Tazkirah" has
four sections. The
first, which is in Arabic, constitutes the author's main theorem on the rise
and fall of human societies, and a verdict on the fluctuating fortune of
the world Muslim community. The section following the Arabic text are in
Urdu and consist of 132-pages Preface, a 100-page Introduction, and a
172-page text of the book proper. The Introduction deals with the Quranic
version of the law of the man's evolution as a species and the collective
conduct of human societies determining their ultimate destiny. The
Preface, which precedes, discusses the conflict between various
religions, the distortion of the Message brought by prophets, the tussle
between Religion and Science, and the compelling necessity to resolve
these conflicts before mankind becomes extinct through its own follies.
Even when analyzing the fate of human communities and man's ultimate
destiny, Mashriqi has looked on everything as a mathematician. It was as a
mathematician that he discussed in 1926 the theme with Einstein on his
return from Cairo via Germany, and tried to impress upon him to come out
of the shell of a mere physicist. In his address to the mathematical
society of Islamia College Peshawar in November 1928 - a decade and a
half before he had been the principal of the college - he made a
particular reference to it. He said, "If I have presented a
book (Tazkirah) to
the world that has no peer it is because of mathematics. If I had left
mathematics and gone on to higher things it is through mathematics. If I
have left studying mathematics and have seen a higher truth in the Koran
it is through mathematics. In fact, the first truth of the Koran dawned
on me while I was busy day and night preparing for the Mathematics Tripos
at Cambridge".
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