8.4 /10 1 Votes
Publication date 1982 LC Class BP135 .S94 1983 Country United States of America | 4.2/5 Goodreads Dewey Decimal 297.1/4306 Originally published 1982 Publisher Arvind Ghosh OCLC 11630468 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Language English (banned), Hindi (banned) ISBN 0-682-49948-X 1591020174 Similar Ram Swarup books, Islam books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Understanding Islam through Hadis is a book by Ram Swarup, first published in the United States in 1982. It was eventually banned in India.
The book is a study, based on the English translation by Abdul Hamid Siddiqi, of the Sahih Muslim, the second most important collection of Hadiths. Ram Swarup claims in the foreword that "we have quoted extensively and faithfully from it."
The ban
In 1983, a reprint of the book by Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup's long-time friend and collaborator, sold out quickly. In 1987, Goel printed another edition of the book and tried to publish a Hindi translation which he had commissioned. The details are not known with certainty but, apparently on the basis of a complaint lodged with the police, all copies of the Hindi translation were seized from the printer's shop and Goel was arrested. He recounted the situation:
Goel was bailed out after 18 hours in police custody, but the impounded copies of the Hindi translation were never returned to him. Later, public furore ensued after a claim in the Jamaat-e-Islami weekly Radiance that the book was offensive to Muslims. Finally, in 1990 the Hindi translation of the book was officially banned. In March 1991 the English original was also banned. The criminal case against Goel for printing the book was dismissed after some years on 5 May 1997, but the book still remained banned.