DUBAI: A quest to fulfill his grandfather’s dream inspired Kyrgyz national AkparAli Abdullah to memorize the Qur’an. Abdullah’s grandfather grew up in the Soviet-ruled Kyrgyzstan where atheism was the official policy and religious activities were banned.
So despite an intense desire to teach the Qur’an to his family he had no means to do so. Before Soviet rule, Kyrgyzstan had a flourishing Islamic civilization, as well as a large population of adherents to tribal, indigenous pre-Islamic beliefs and a Russian Orthodox minority. The onset of communism saw banishment of religion, strongly affecting Muslims who saw their scholars banned and mosques and religious schools closed. Even the Arabic language was banned and its speakers killed.
This was very painful to Abdullah’s family since traditionally they were scholars of religion and had a long lineage of service to Islam. So after the fall of communism Abdullah’s grandfather urged his son and grandchildren to travel to Egypt to study Islam at Al-Azhar University.
“This was in 1995 and I was a young child of four,” he said. “My father enrolled in university to study Islamic sciences. Two years later I started to memorize the Qur’an at Al-Azhar,” he said.
The 17-year-old was in Dubai recently taking part in the International Holy Qur’an Award.
Abdullah, who speaks fluent Arabic, said that it took him three years to memorize the whole Qur’an. “It was a momentous occasion for my family and we all gathered together to call my grandfather. It was the first time that I heard my grandfather cry from joy. He was thanking Allah Almighty for the blessing of having a hafiz (one who memorized the Qur’an) amongst his progeny,” he said.
In Islam, the reward for memorizing the Qur’an is great as long as it is done with a genuine spirit of spreading the word and not simply to earn the reward. And Abudullah clearly has a desire to do more than simply memorize a book; he wants to return to his home country to spread the word. “Alhamdulillah, the situation has improved now (in Kyrgyzstan) and Muslims can practice their religion freely. However, a lot of work is still needed to educate people about their religion as a lot of them are Muslims in name but not practice.”
Indeed, today Kyrgyzstan has a secular constitution that ostensibly forbids the injection of ideology or religion into the conduct of state business. This has led to the revival of Islam as the Muslim majority is no longer living in the repressive atheist ideology of the former Soviet-controlled country.
(This freedom has also allowed Russian Orthodox and indigenous animists the right to practice their beliefs without state scrutiny, but as a predominantly Muslim country the new freedoms have benefited the Muslims the most.)
Abdullah said he was upbeat about the future of Islam in Kyrgyzstan, saying that more Islamic institutions and centers to spread religious teachings were opening by the day.
He added that preachers from Pakistan have a strong presence in his country and are hard at work calling the Kyrgyz masses back to Islam.
“Alhamdulillah, my grandfather’s wish has been fulfilled and his grandchildren now have the freedom to practice Islam. Now it is the duty of our generation to spread the word about the beauty of our great religion,” he said.
