Book ‘The Prophet Promised in World Scriptures’ by Ali Unal and Harun Gultekin
Please see at this link a brief note which I have prepared on the book The Prophet Promised in World Scriptures, a 2013 publication by two Turkish authors, Ali Unal and Harun Gultekin. This book covers the same subject and ground as Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi’s book Muhammad in World Scriptures, a Lahore Ahmadiyya publication.
What is most remarkable is that this book frequently mentions Maulana Abdul Haq Vidyarthi and his book, and fully acknowledges making use of it. Such acknowledgement is quite rare to see in writings by Muslims who use material from his book. The authors have also added their own discussion and analysis of the subject, so this book (unlike other such writings) is not merely a copy of the Maulana’s book. Our congratulations to these authors!
— Zahid Aziz
From Abdul Momin:
This is the second encouraging news that I have read concerning the mindset of the general Muslims within the past two months.
On November 1, 2019 an article titled “Who is a ‘kafir’ appeared at the following website:
https://www.dawn.com/news/1514167
Coincidentally, the author of the article is also from Turkey. The article begins with the following two paragraphs:
“AT the magnificent St Peter’s Square in Rome recently, Pope Francis welcomed a group of unusual guests: members of Nahdlatul Ulema (NU) from the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia. The head of the delegation, Sheikh Yahya Cholil Staquf, gave the pontiff documents outlining the vision of a “humanitarian Islam” his organisation has been promoting.
The tenets of this vision reject Islamism — the politicised version of Islam that aims to establish the caliphate as a political system, and to make Sharia the law of the land, despite the diversity in modern societies. It also includes a proposal that is quite new and ambitious: that Muslims should stop calling non-Muslims ‘kafirs’. This is necessary, the Indonesian Sheikh Staquf said, so that Muslims can “view others as a fellow human beings, fellow brothers in humanity”.
The article continues to plead for a humanistic interpretation of Islam. The last paragraph states:
“When that humanist idea is challenged at the expense of Muslims, we Muslims rightly complain about ‘Islamophobia’. But we should also challenge the non-Muslimophobia in our ranks. The NU deserves praise for addressing this deep-seated problem in the Muslim tradition.”