Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf is a publisher and distributor of Sunni Islamic literature based in Lahore, Pakistan.
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Specialization
Sh. Muhammad Ashraf publishes solely Sunni Islamic religious work and was associated with the Darul Uloom Deoband madrasah and the movement that arose there, the Deobandi.
It focuses on English and Urdu language translations and the original Arabic text of important classical Sunni religious literature. They have published many works on fiqh, along with the Qur'an and Qur'anic exegesis (tafsir), translations of the six canonical hadith collections (in order of authenticity: Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Sunan al-Nasa'i, Sunan Abu Dawood, Jami al-Tirmidhi and Sunan Ibn Majah) of Sunni Islam, and several other primary (i.e. Sunan al-Darimi, Musnad of Imam Ahmad and Muwatta of Imam Malik, taken together with the other six to become the nine major collections of Sunni ahadith) and secondary (i.e. Mishkat al-Masabih) collections, biographies and histories of Muhammad, Messenger of Islam, along with the same of the rise and growth of early Islam, the Islamic Golden Age, and the Rashidun caliphs and other Sahaba and notable figures in early Islam.
Translations
Its translation of the collection of hadith known as Sahih Muslim, translated by Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, commissioned by Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, is considered the authoritative English-language translation, evidenced by its inclusion in the University of Southern California Muslim Students Association.
It is currently the only publisher which has in print James Robson's translation of the Mishkat al-Masabih. It also is the sole publisher and the commissioner of the English translation of Sunan Abu Dawood by Ahmad Hassan, again considered the authoritative translation due to its inclusion in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts.
Sh. Muhammad Ashraf was the original publisher of the Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation of the Koran, The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary, famous for its copious missionary and apologetic footnotes (over 1200 pages), which for a long time has been the standard for use amongst English-speaking Muslims. An edited version of this Yusuf Ali translation was also subsidised for a brief period by the Saudi government.