THE STORY OF MAURICE BUCAILLE’S INSPIRING CONVERSION TO ISLAM

He was head of the French study team to examine the mummy of
Pharaoh that
was brought from Egypt to Paris late in the 1980’s.

Maurice Bucaille was born to a French parent and, like his family, he grew up a Christian. When he ended his secondary education, he joined Faculty of Medicine, France University. He excelled at medicine until he obtained a BSc degree and worked hard until he rose to fame, becoming the most renowned and cleverest surgeon ever in modern France, but a story happened to change his life completely.

Story of his conversion to Islam:

France is known for its unique interest in archeology and heritage. When  French Socialist President François Mitterrand assumed power in 1981, France asked Egypt, late in the eighties, for the mummy of Egypt's pharaoh so that it would conduct a string of monumental and processing experiments. Actually the body of Egypt's most notorious tyrant was transferred to France, and, strangely, the French president and his ministers as well as senior officials in the country lined up near the plane carrying the pharaoh's body and bowed down to him as if he were still alive! After the ceremonies of the royal –like reception to Egypt's pharaoh were over, the tyrant's mummy was carried nearly in the same red carpet reception way he received. Then the mummy was transferred to a special wing at the French Monuments Center, and renowned archeologists, surgeons and anatomists started to conduct a study on this mummy in an attempt to delve into its mysteries. The senior surgeon and the scientist in charge of the study on this mummy of the pharaoh was Professor Maurice Bucaille. While the processors were busy making restoration to the mummy, their head (Maurice Bucaille) was thinking otherwise. He was trying to discover how this pharaoh died when, late at night, he concluded his final analyses. The remains of the salt stuck in his body was a shining evidence that he had drowned and that his body was retrived from the sea swiftly after he drowned; it was also obvious that they rushed to mummify his body so that his body would remain intact!! But he (i.e. Maurice Bucaille) puzzled over a question: How did this body- to the exclusion of other mummified bodies of other ancient Egyptians- remain that intact although it was recovered from the sea?" He asked himself. Maurice Bucaille was busy conducting a final report while thinking as to whether the pharaoh's body was recovered from the sea and mummified immediately after he drowned. But one of his company whispered in his ear, saying" There is no need to rush about this issue, since the Muslims say that this pharaoh did drown". At first, he vehemently rejected this say and did not believe it, citing that such a discovery would be reached only through sophisticated, modern and accurate computers. Another one accompanying him surprised him more when he told him that the Muslims' Qu'ran in which they believe narrates the story that says he drowned and that his body remained intact even after he drowned. He got more surprised and kept on asking" Where did the Muslims' Qu'ran quote these data from while the mummy was not discovered until 1898 AD, i.e. about 200 years only, given that the Qu'ran has been recited by Muslims for over 1400 years, and given also that until a few decades ago the entire mankind including Muslims did not know that the ancient Egyptians had mummified their pharaohs?!.

Maurice Bucaille stayed up all this night gazing at Pharaoh's body, thinking deeply of what his fellow researcher told him about the Muslims' Qu'ran explicitly establishing that this body was recovered after drowning, while the Christians' Gospel (Matthew and Luca ) narrated only the story of pharaoh when he was chasing Messenger Musa( SAWS) without mentioning the fate of his body at all.

"Is it believable that Mohammed ( SAWS) knew about this over one thousand years ago while I have only just known it ?!" he said to himself .

Maurice spent a sleepless night, and asked for a version of the Torah. He devoted part of his time to reading the Exodus in the Torah which read, "And the water turned to drown the military tools and horses of Pharaoh's army, chasing all of them until it left nobody".

But this text only furthered Bukaille's astonishment; since even Torah did not narrate that the body was recovered and remained intact due to the processing and restoration which it did undergo.

France sent back the mummy to Egypt in a splendid glass coffin. But , since he knew about the story circulated by Muslims on the intactness of this body, he decided to pack his baggage and travel to Saudi Arabia where a medical conference happened to be held with a galaxy of Muslim anatomists attending.
There, told them about his discovery, i.e. that Pharaoh's body was kept intact even after he drowned. One of the conferees opened the Mos'haf and read out the ayah in which Allah, SWT, said, " So today We will (safely) deliver you with your body that you may be a sign to the ones succeeding you; and surely many among mankind are indeed heedless of Our signs.” (Yunus, ayah 92).
In his excitement, he stood before the attendants and loudly said, "I have converted to Islam and believed in this Qu'ran"

Bucaille's Achievements:

Back to France, Maurice Bucaille completely changed and spent ten years only busy conducting a study as to how far the recently scientific facts match that mentioned in the Holy Qu'ran, trying to reassure himself that the Qu'ran has never contradicted with any single scientific fact, so that he eventually came up with the conclusion that Allah, SWT, said of the Qu'ran, "Untruth does not come up to it before (Literally: between its two hands) it nor from behind it; a successive sending down from (One) Ever-Wise, Ever-Praiseworthy.

These years which French Maurice spent conducting this study did bear fruit, after which he came up with a earth shaking book on the Holy Qu'ran which jolted the entire Western states, with the title of the book reading ," The Bible, The Qu'ran and Science, The Holy Scriptures Examined In The Light Of Modern Knowledge"

All of a sudden, the book sold out , and even hundreds of thousands of it were translated from French to Arabic, English, Indonesian, Persian, Turkish and German, extending to include nearly all East and West bookstores; one has come to see it with any Egyptian, Moroccan or Gulf person in the US.

Mad Reactions:

Some of the Jewish and Christian Clergy, out of malicious hatred, have come to counter the facts which the book established. However, what they wrote was nothing but a futile debate and desperate attempts through devilish suggestions. One of them, by name of Dr. William Campbell, authored a book titled, "Qu'ran and Holy Scripture, in the Light of History and Science" . In this book of his, he wandered and wandered but in the end he failed to achieve anything. More surprisingly, a Western scholar kept on reading the book authored by Bucaille in an attempt to counter it, and by the time he ended it, he had converted to Islam and openly uttered the two parts of the Sahabah!

In the preface of his book, Maurice Bucaille said," These scientific areas which Qu'ran established to the exclusion of other Scriptures filled me with deep surprise early on, since it never struck my mind to see such a large amount of scientific issues in such a variable and accurate way that they are a mirror image of what has recently been discovered in a book which has existed for more than 13 centuries.!!

He also said," First, I studied the Holy Qu'ran in a subjective and unbiased way, in an attempt to find by myself that the Qu'ran texts and the givens of the modern science match and do not conflict. Before this study, I earlier knew, through the translated versions of the Qu'ran, that the Qu'ran stated so many natural phenomena. Thanks to the in -depth study of the Arabic text , I managed to gather a list of scientific signs in the Qu'ran, after which I realized that the Qu'ran contains no refutable ayahs, nor did I see scientific ayahs in the Qu'ran which contradict with the recently discovered facts. In the same subjective and unbiased way of research, I scrutinized the Old Testament and Holy Scriptures. Concerning the Old Testament, I needed not go further after I read the Exodus and found no harmony between its texts and the decided scientific givens in our age. Concerning the Holy Scriptures, one can easily read a text in Matthew Gospel which is in stark contrast with that in Luca, and that the latter presents us with matters which does not absolutely go with the modern science as to Man's life on earth"
Dr. Maurice Bucaille also said, "Anyone who reads the Qu'ran for the first time sees a book which abounds with accurate and easy –to- understand scientific subjects. While one fails to find any contradiction or errors in the Qu'ran, the current Torah abounds with fatal scientist errors. This prompts us to say that if the author of this Qu'ran was a human, then how did he write about facts which never belonged to his age!?"

His book The Bible, The Qu'ran and Science, The Holy Scriptures Examined In The Light Of Modern Knowledge was such a marvelous piece of writing that, in the year 1988, the French Academy awarded him its prize in history.

Sri Lankan Muslims in the racist paradigm

By Izeth Hussain

It is questionable whether there are today any purely internal problems, serious internal problems, without any external dimension to them at all. It is true that governments frequently try to explain away internal problems, for which they alone are responsible, by alleging foreign interference. It is true also that there is the human propensity to indulge in conspiracy theories. In certain situations of stress people can become paranoid and imagine that sinister foreign forces are at work behind practically every serious problem. While all that is true, it is also true that in today’s highly interdependent world foreign interference takes place on a scale never before known in human history. A very convincing illustration of the case stated above is provided by the Arab Spring. When it began in Libya a couple of years ago, we tended to think of it mainly or even exclusively in terms of the problem of democracy. It seemed that at long last the sole surviving bastion against democracy – the Arab world – was being breached, and that democracy would come to hold sway over the entire Arab world, though with many hiccups along the way. At the same time we were uneasily aware that American imperialism would welcome democracy only to the extent that the democratic regimes were favorable to the US. Since then several other factors have come into play. Saudi Arabia will not accept democracy in certain parts of the Arab world, and can be expected to abort democracy wherever possible by encouraging fundamentalists. Above all, the Sunni-Shia schism has become a major factor in the Arab world. Instead of going into excessive detail I will merely cite the example of Syria to show the importance of the external dimension in what ought to be a purely internal problem. A fairly smooth transition to democracy in Syria could have been arranged by ensuring that the formerly privileged Alawite minority would not be subjected to genocidal massacre after a democratic regime is established. That would have been conceivable if the Syrian problem were approached as a purely internal one. But several powerful countries believe that they have legitimate stakes in what goes on in Syria: on one side there are Iran, Russia, China, and on the other there are the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Europe. The Syrian people have to bear the consequences. It is not always easy to establish foreign interference, but it is not difficult at all to establish the external dimension in what might appear to be purely internal problems. I will now make some observations with this perspective in mind on our halal problem and the anti-Muslim hate campaign,The external dimension of the halal problem is constituted by the meetings of the UN Human Rights Council that are taking place in Geneva right now. The halal problem does not figure on the UNHRC agenda. We Sri Lankan Muslims are not so stupid as to want to internationalize our problem – though that may become inevitable at a later stage. But we can be certain, all the same, that anti-Muslim action in Sri Lanka is there, very much there, in the minds of the Ambassadors who are gathered in Geneva, and that it will be a determinant, perhaps an important determinant, in shaping the votes on the anti-Sri Lanka Resolution that is being moved by the US. We tend to think in Sri Lanka about international developments that are unfavorable to us as resulting from the diabolical machinations of the diabolical LTTE. In doing that we are assuming that the Western powers are so stupid that they are easily taken in by the LTTE. But does that ring true? It seems to me that if they are that stupid they would not be where they are today – at the top of the world. One cannot help wondering whether, perchance, it is we and not they who are stupid. Anyway, I am certain on one point: the major determinant behind the policy of Western Governments on Sri Lanka is not the LTTE but the Western Ambassadors who are presently working in Sri Lanka. We can safely presume that none of them owe their exalted positions to political patronage, that all of them have behind them many years of proven capacity particularly in the field of political analysis, and that every one of them has reported in detail and analysed responsibly the halal problem and the anti-Muslim hate campaign. It is not difficult to guess the trend of their analyses and their recommendations. It would be more or less along the following lines. The SL Tamils and the SL Muslims are both minorities but they are fundamentally distinct because the former can claim a homeland while the latter can’t. That is a fundamental distinction because the claim to a homeland can serve as the basis for a separatist claim. Any claim to separatism by the SL Muslims cannot therefore be taken seriously at all, and understandably they have never made that claim. Furthermore, whenever there has been controversy between the Sinhalese and the Tamils the Muslims have always taken the Sinhalese side against the Tamils, and they have done so instantly, unconditionally, and wholeheartedly. It is worth mentioning that during the July ’83 holocaust against the Tamils a top Muslim politician organized thugs in a part of Colombo to make a grand Muslim contribution to the holocaust. It is worth mentioning also that at this time last year some members of the All Ceylon Jamiath-ul Ulema were in Geneva canvassing Muslim votes for the Sri Lankan side. This year the ACJU is in the dock. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is difficult to imagine a more loyal minority than the Muslims. They have in fact been servile to the Sinhalese power elite. And yet there has been a protracted hate campaign against the Muslims, with nineteen websites going at it, and without the Government taking the slightest notice of it. There have been attacks on mosques and Muslim business establishments, with the police playing the role of passive spectators or taking not much more than perfunctory action. There have been videos showing monks breaking the law and the police placidly looking on, but the Government has refused to take any action in such cases. It is true that around the time of the National Day on February 4 there were Governmental statements – including one by the President himself – acknowledging and deploring racism among the Sinhalese. That certainly was a significant step forward, but the requisite counter-action did not follow. Instead the halal problem was allowed to become critical. The present writer believes that in the annals of race relations there is nothing to parallel the halal problem in Sri Lanka: it is almost certainly unique in its sheer quasi-insane irrationality. Some food items are forbidden to Muslims in the Koran. For thousand four hundred years there were no problems among Muslims about eschewing forbidden food items. But now there is a problem because there is a vast array of synthetic food items which could use forbidden components, and hence there is a need for halal certification. The ACJU started issuing such certificates to Muslims. Non-Muslims who mainly wanted to tap the huge halal market abroad also wanted halal certificates, and the ACJU obliged. It appears that the ACJU had no legal warrant for issuing halal certificates, and for charging money for them. The most important point that has to be borne in mind is that the ACJU did not, and could not have compelled non-Muslims to buy halal certificates. There was nothing in all that that could not have been sorted out by the Government without any difficulty. The fact that halal certification became so huge a problem shows that racist idiocy has been allowed to go too far in Sri Lanka. We can be certain that foreign Ambassadors in Colombo have been reporting to their Foreign Offices more or less along the lines indicated above, and we can be certain also that the reports will impact on the thinking on how to vote on the US Resolution in Geneva. The notion will be formed – or will be strengthened having been already formed – that the Sinhalese include in their ranks some of the worst racists in the world, and that the Government allows them much latitude. There does not seem to be much of a hiatus in Sri Lanka between the centre occupied by the Government and what is sometimes called the lunatic fringe. Two conclusions can follow. One is that the notion that our troops deliberately killed Tamil civilians on a massive scale becomes more credible, strengthening the case for a strong anti-SL Resolution. The other possible conclusion is this: if the friendly and innocuous Muslim minority can be treated in this way, it becomes almost impossible to believe that the potentially militant Tamil minority will ever get fair and equal treatment, and the case becomes much stronger for a solution based on a very wide measure of devolution. One question cannot be avoided. Were the Bodu Bala Sena and the JHU unaware of what was going on in Geneva, and that the anti-halal campaign could have very adverse consequences there? Common sense should have dictated that the campaign be postponed until the conclusion of the UNHRC meeting. Some who are over-fond of conspiracy theories would say that they are secretly serving the purposes of the US and of India. Others may say that they have been manipulated by the CIA and RAW without being aware of it. I cannot subscribe to such notions. I have the strong conviction that the valid explanation for the horrendous mistiming of the anti-halal campaign is to be found in the irrationality that goes with racism. The usual paradigm of racism does not include a recognition of the fact that racism and irrationality go together.

Izethhussain@gmail.com

The Saudi Arabization of Islam

By Sazzad Hussain

Countercurrents.org

Rampant communalization and polarization of the society in western Assam , particularly in Dhubri district has been on rise since the continued and renewed violence in BTAD areas creating concerns amongst the people in this multi-cultural, multi-ethnic state. With these disturbing developments there are elements of communalizing the foreigner's issue of Assam , the pan-Indian communalism and the phenomenon called the global Islamist fundamentalism. Among other destructive features, the Islamist fundamentalist has one very distinctive characteristic—the denial of modern nation-state identity of Muslims to form a uniformed ‘Islamic' identity at the cost of local tradition and cultural practices. This so-called ‘Islamic identity' has been harming the Muslims belonging to different cultures and cultural groups across the globe. This uniform identity phenomenon of the Muslims has been a very handy tool for the forces of communalism and divisive forces in India . And this has also been applied in the recent BTAD disturbances and over the foreigner's issue in Assam . This effort by Islamists to form a uniform identity of Muslims is called the Saudi Arabization of Islam.

Though Islam had its genesis in Arabian Peninsula, it was the Persians, Turks and Kurds—all non-Arabs, that extended its spread and development resulting in a vast political territory stretching from the Iberian peninsula to the Hindukush and Gangetic valley. In India , Islam entered after three hundred years of the demise of the Prophet, after being enriched for two hundred years in the most civilized and culturally sophisticated land called Persia . 

Therefore Islam in Central Asia and Indian sub-continent was the symbol of modern and cultured sophisticated lifestyle till the nineteenth century when the entire landscape was shaken forever by the onset of the European colonialism. To Assam , Islam came as a finished product from the great Indian tradition of cultural assimilation and pluralism. It was further diversified by the Sufi saints like Ghyasuddin Awliya and Azaan Fakir, who mingled it with Assamese culture, making it completely merged with local customs and traditions. The Indian and Assamese Islam, coming from the culturally rich Persian-Turkic backgrounds, was the symbol of diversity and tolerance. Unfortunately, this twelve century old Islamic tradition has now been denied by a mere six decade old intolerant, orthodox Islamist ideology—the Wahhabism.

Wahhabism or Salafism was introduced by a late nineteenth century Arab dates grower named Abdul ibn Wahhab who set certain rules consisting of rigid religious practices, dehumanization of women, promoting sectarianism in the name of puritanical Islam. His doctrine was followed by a sectarian Bedouin leader Abdul Aziz al-Saud to consolidate his position and with the British help, formed Saudi Arabia in 1932 by defeating all regional rulers of the Arabian Peninsula . The discovery of oil in 1934 made Saudi Arabia to gain prominence among the western colonial powers and with the British-US oil companies, corporate world and arms producers, it emerged as a powerful country. After taking up of the custody of the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina from the Ottoman appointed local rulers, Saudi king proclaimed to form an absolute monarchy in the name of Allah by misinterpreting some verses of Holy Quran. It is the only country in the world to be named after a royal family (al-Saud) and does not have any constitution, parliament, opposition party, media freedom, women's rights and minority rights. Its exchequer is the personal bank account of the king. The official religion of this oil rich kingdom is Wahhabism or Salafi Islam. When the pan Arab nationalism of Gamal Abdel Nasser swept Egypt , Syria , Iraq , Libya , Algeria and Yemen bring socialism and modernism in the 1960s, it was the Saudi regime and other oil rich gulf monarchies which panicked at that public awareness. 

Since then Saudi Arab has been exporting this Wahhabism to outside world to serve the global dominance of the US . The Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan-al-Muslimeen) in Egypt was the outcome of this Saudi export of Wahhabism. From 1979 onwards, Saudi Arabia began arming and funding Afghan Mujahedeen with Pakistan and US to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan . Muslims, homogenized in the ‘uniformed Islamist' indoctrination around the world were called to serve the Jihadi cause in Afghanistan and thus came Osama bin Laden. After the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1989, this Jihad found new territories in Chechnya , Kashmir , Bosnia , Somalia , and the Philippines etc. Presently these forces have created havoc to civilized life in Afghanistan and Pakistan and with the US help threatening the last secular Arab bastions of Libya and Syria .

India has been exposed to Islamist terrorism over the Kashmir issue and since the Babri Masjid destruction. However this terrorism has not yet bears the marks of Saudi Wahhabism. But in the cultural world the damage has already been done in diluting the identity of Indian Muslims. Saudi elements have been penetrating into Indian Muslim society through charitable networks. As a result there are signs of Wahhabism making its presence everywhere in the public space of Indian Muslims. The lifestyle prescribed for Muslims by Wahhabism is nothing but the practices of Bedouins—polygamy, subjugation of women, intolerance, violence etc. In India , this Bedouin customs have been preached to the puritanical form of Islam. This has made the deterioration of the status of Indian Muslim women and the increase of the cosmetic changeover.

In Assam , this phenomenon has been disturbingly gaining the momentum. These days the Muslims of Assam are not identified as Assamese Muslims or Muslim of East Bengali descent. Instead they are merely homogenized as ‘Muslims'—a political generalization, thanks to Wahhabism, catering the divisive agendas of all. The use of Burqa and Hijab are alarmingly rising among the Muslim women in Assam . The ankle length Thaub , a Bedouin male dress and the red and white chequered headgear Kaffaiah are now in fashion for many Mollahs and Maulvis and Madrassa students in Assam . It has reached to such an extent that this red-white or green white chequered Kaffaiah is now replacing the Phoolam Gamocha , the symbol of Assamese culture, as the “Muslim Gamocha” in our public life. Any public representative—the ministers, MLAs, bureaucrats attending any Muslim function, is felicitated by this Kaffaiah in Assam presently. On this year's Idd uz Zoha day also Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi was also felicitated with such a green-white Kaffaiah as he attended the prayers in a mosque in Hatigaon, Guwahati. Last year state Minister Dr. Nazrul Islam, ex-minister Noor Jamal Sarkar and PCCI President Bhubaneswar Kalita were also seen donned with such Kaffaiahs in a public meeting organized to see the Haj pilgrims off. Earlier AGP leaders were also seen in same dresses on similar occasions.

The main objective of the expansionist US designs is to destroy the local and national identity of the exploited people so that much could be sucked up by taking advantage of their collective unconsciousness and ignorance. Saudi Arabia has been partnering the US in spreading this message across the world in the last half a century. As a result Muslims in Afghanistan , Pakistan and Indian Muslims in Mumbai, Hyderabad , Kolkata have transformed into a homogenized entity, losing their thousand years old cultural identities. The same has been tried in troubled torn Assam to make Muslims further alienated and denationalized.

(The writer is a freelancer based in Assam , e-mail:sazzad.hussain2@gmail.com)