I first came into contact with the work of Muhammad Mohar Ali (rahimahullah), the father of Abu Muntasir (of
JIMAS), when I read about Orientalist claims about the Prophet (sall Allahu ‘aleyhi wa sallam) and Islam. He had written a two volume book in reply to some of the claims by the classic Orientalists like Margoliouth and Muir regarding the Seerah of the Prophet (sall Allahu ‘aleyhi wa sallam).
It is availible online:
The Biography of the Prophet and the Orientalists - Volume 1 -Muhammad Mohar Ali. [PDF]
The Biography of the Prophet and the Orientalists - Volume 2 - Muhammad Mohar Ali. [PDF]
Here is a brief biography of the sheikh:
Born in Khulna in Bengal, he was a scholar of Seerah and Hadith who served as a lecturer of Islamic History at the Islamic Universities of Madinah and Riyadh for two decades before moving to England.
Unassuming and always able to make time for others, he was known for being a practical person who used to do carpentry and help his family and the local community. Shaykh Mohar Ali made several important contributions in the fields of Islamic history and the spread of Islam outside the Arab world.
His work provided an incisive new dimension to the way Muslims view contemporary issues and their historical contexts. In particular, he distinguished himself with his clear exposition of Orientalism and missionary activity, making Quranic Arabic more accessible to English speakers, and his four-volume classic titled
A History of the Muslims of Bengal (1985), regarded as one of the most reliable sources on the effects of Islam on the political and cultural life of the region. Other important works he has authored include:
The Quran and the Orientalists (2004);
Pre-Islamic Arabia and its Socio-Religious Condition (2002);
A Word for Word Meaning of the Quran (2003);
Sirat Al-Nabi and the Orientalists (1997);
The Bengali Reaction to Christian Missionary Activities, 1833-1857 (1965).
He has written several other books and received the
King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies in 2000 for his book about the history of the Muslims of Bengal.
This is from an
article from a few years ago about the prize:
One scholar in and of this community is Muhammed Mohar Ali, who studies the flow of ideas and the intellectual history of Islam. Born in Khulna, Bangladesh, he taught at Riyadh’s Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ud University and at Madinah’s Islamic University for two decades. Now he lives with his family in Essex, England where he pursues independent studies of a caliber that earned him the 2000 KFIP for Islamic studies, awarded this year for work on the spread and impact of Islam outside the Arab world.
“I was helping my wife in the kitchen when there was a telephone call. She answered and the caller told her it was a fax. When she saw the fax creep out of the machine she called out the good news to me,” Mohar Ali recalls. When the news reached the local press, he says, “our neighbors were just as surprised as we were.” His son Ma’aruf explains that “my dad was always laying brick and doing carpentry around the house. [The neighbors] thought he was a craftsman, and some had even asked him to do work for them.
The unassuming, articulate handyman-professor had authored a four-volume work titled
A History of the Muslims of Bengal, published in English in 1985 and 1988. It is regarded as one of the most reliable sources on Islam’s effects on the political and cultural life of the region, which encompasses today’s Bangladesh and West Bengal in India.
There is also an audio recording from a lecture of his availible online:
Orientalist claims against the Prophet, Part 1
Orientalist claims against the Prophet, Part 2
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