Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Study On Religious Thoughts

I have read Quran, our holy book in Islam, once in Arabic language. I was a teenager that time and didn't understand the meaning and it's impact. Later I attempted to read the Bengali translation of Quran but stopped after making some progress. Few months back, my friend Nitol was talking to our another friend Emon who started reading and telling everyone to read a very good Bengali translation of Quran with Shan-e-nuzul. This is exactly what I was looking for and it ignited in me the desire to finish Quran with proper understanding.

Sometimes early this month I proposed my friends in Bay Area on a systematic and combined study on Islamic history and events from Quran. Some of them seems really got interested with this proposal. Then I started looking for resources considering the following objectives.
  • Resources on Quran, Hadith that are accessible electronically or via internet. I am an IT guy and I have very less time available in a day when I can afford to stay away from computer.
  • Bengali as a reading language to make reading and understanding better.
  • Accessible from mobile so that I can use my train time, waiting time in shops, vacation time from hotels etc that doesn't require me to find new time from an already very busy life in USA.
  • The objective is to learn, have knowledge not only to gain some sawab so that when we talk to the outside community many of whom are non-muslims, we can talk enthusiastically. It's true even when we are talking in a Muslim community.
I have compiled a few resources below.
  1. Athan (Installable Software) - http://www.box.net/shared/x6wlbwtgks - You can easily install and set your city in this software and you will here Athan on your local time. Also it always tells in your dektop status bar when is the next prayer time. I like this very much.
  2. Bangla Quran (Installable Software) - you may download it from http://www.box.net/shared/egvy9ioocw - It is so good that accelerated my energy to read Quran in Bengali. Thanks to Amin who sent the link to me. If I can;t read it from mobile then as an alternate I plan to use the web version here - http://www.islamdharma.net/index.php?m=quran
  3. A general purpose Islamic portal - http://www.2muslims.com
  4. Tafsir of Quran may be found here - http://www.banglakitab.com/quran.htm, but the problem is to quickly find out which surah is in which link/URL. This is courtesy of Shahriar.
  5. To print out and read at home (although Bengali translation in book format is widely available and hence there is no point of printing it for us) - http://www.qurantoday.com/bangla.htm . This is also thanks to Shahriar.
  6. The hard copy of the holy book that Emon (Sazzad of Atlanta) has that includes Shan-e-nuzul and explanations.
I hope this time I will really be able to finish Inshallah, even if it takes few years.

Update: Another friend of mine in the same group sent me the following 2 links.

6 Minutes Daily English Quran -
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/quran/dailyquran/dailyquran.asp

In Bengali - http://www.quraanshareef.org/index.php?linkid=1024

While surfing in the net for MP3 formats of Bengali translation of Qur'an I found this link -

http://www.aswatalislam.net/DisplayFilesP.aspx?TitleID=180

So I should be able to record those in a CD to listen in the car and also I can listen to individual files (each for one Surah) from iPhone.

1 comment:

Ashik Uzzaman said...

One of my friends in that group mentioned above, Sayeem, sent me this link to find out the answer of one of my queries -

http://www.islamonline.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=306

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