“EVERY Muslim must pledge to offer the Holy Qur'an to at least one non-Muslim in a year; this way he will be giving out almost 60 copies in a lifetime, and if each one of us embarks on doing so, we can flood the world with the Holy Qur'an,” said Dr. Abdul Raheem Mohammed Moulana, who wrote the first direct translation of the Qur'an into Telugu from Arabic, adding that this is his message to the Muslim community. “The Bible is available in 150 languages while the Holy Qur'an has been translated into only 50 to 60 languages. A lot of people whom I have given the Qur'an have asked me for another copy,” he said. The Telugu translation of the Qur'an or the ‘Divya Quran Sandesham', which was released recently in Jeddah, took Dr. Moulana 12 years of perseverance and patience to complete. “I would read the Arabic Qur'an daily for five to seven hours when I was off-duty, writing the meaning of each word in Telugu directly in the margins of the Qur'an itself. I completed this in two years. Then I chose the most suitable Telugu words to complete the translation. I revised it many times. When I approached the major madrasas in Hyderabad to get my work reviewed, all of them rejected it saying they were busy and that they do not understand Telugu. Then I went to one Brahmin Telugu scholar in Hyderabad who finally reviewed it for me from a literary point of view,” he said. There are an estimated 98 million Telugu speakers in India, especially in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh and there are more than 5.5 million overseas Telugus. There is a large Telugu-speaking community in Malaysia. “Most of them do not know any language other than Telugu. It is important that the Message of Almighty Allah reaches them; I decided to translate the meaning of the Word of Allah so that it is available to each one of them,” he said. About 4000 to 5000 translated copies of the Qur'an have already been distributed in Andhra Pradesh free of charge. Further copies of Dr. Moulana's translation of the Holy Qur'an into Telugu will be published by the King Fahd Complex for Printing of the holy Quran (KFCPHQ). Dr. Moulana, a native of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh who acquired Saudi citizenship two decades ago, studied in Telugu medium up to the intermediate level and learnt Arabic from scholars of the Umm Al-Qura University. He said he was not fully satisfied with the other two Telugu translations which used old classic Telugu and were not a direct translation from Arabic. A nephrologist by profession, the Saudi scholar heads the Department of Nephrology in the King Abdul Aziz Hospital in Makkah. His name has been included in the “Who is Who in the World” compilation for his professional and extra-curricular achievements. He is also credited with the first ‘Single Needle Dialysis' and the first pure ‘Ultra-filtration' in the Kingdom Dr. Moulana commended the atmosphere in the Kingdom, saying that it is the best place to practice Islam. “Many non-Muslim expatriates have reverted to Islam while residing in Saudi Arabia. The atmosphere here brings about many positive changes in them,” he said. Dr. Moulana, who is married with four children, is now working on an ‘Arabic to Telugu' dictionary as he said such a dictionary is not yet available in the market.
