2011م - 1444هـ


A Note on the Translation

Of all the damned dwellers of Dante's

Inferno

, a particularly unfortunate group

comes in for a lot of stick. Its maimed members keep going forward, back and sideways

at one and the same time thereby tearing themselves ap

art.

Bilingual people, I have often thought, are no less an unhappy lot. Condemned to

lead a liminal life, ceaselessly shuttling between one

orde ordinum

/culture/language

and another, we have often inflicted upon ourselves the same sado

-masochist

sufferi

ngs of Dante's damned.

Above all else perhaps we are pained and outraged that each culture is busy

erecting its own segregation walls, impervious to all the revolutions underway in

technology, information and telecommunication. Fortress Europe today is far more

Eurocentric and

xenophobic than it was fifty years ago. And the gloating, globalized,

globalizing

United States leaves the rest of the world speechless, increasingly looking

back in anger at

the

happy

days of American isolationism. At least we were

spared the

self

-righteous rhetoric of ever burgeoning hordes of neolibs, neocons and crusading

Zionized

Christians. Indeed, with the level of western brutality to other cultures

reaching an all-

time high, many of us in Iraq, in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Somalia,

would like to be slaughtered in silence, thank you very much. We ache for the good old

days

when we were massacred with barely the crack of a knuckle

- the civilized English

way!

Faced with rampant Islamophobia and systematic Arab bashing, whi

ch have come

to replace anti-

Semitism in most western capitals, the Arab and Islamic world is also

cultivating its own claustrophobia. Every now and then we let out the odd defensive

backlash, born of a chronic siege mentality. Fiery speeches and sweeping mass

demonstrations flash on world TV screens every time a certain nonentity says

something somewhere against what we hold dear. The same ominously angry, hairy,

sub-













The author said in his introduction, The study itself falls into four parts: Chapter One: An Introduction, Chapter Two: Aspects of Mercy for Human Beings in the Character of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh Before the Divine Call, Chapter Three: Introducing the Prophet Muhammad pbuh , Chapter Four: Aspects of Mercy for Human Beings in the Character of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh After the Divine Call.