Amin Ahsan Islahi

Amin Ahsan Islahi was a Pakistani Muslim scholar best known for his Urdu exegesis of the Quran, Tadabbur-i-Quran "Pondering on the Quran", which he based on Hamiduddin Farahi's (1863 – 1930), idea of thematic and structural coherence in the Qur'an. He was born in 1904 in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, British India. He studied at Jamia Nizamia Rizvia in Lahore and became a Hafiz-e-Quran and Sheikh-ul-Hadith. He was a disciple of Farahi and an expert on Islamic law. He also taught the Quran and Arabic literature at various institutions. He resigned from his government job in 1941 and devoted himself to the study and teaching of the Quran. He founded the Daira-i-Hamidiyyah, a small institute to disseminate the Quranic thought of Farahi, and edited a monthly journal Al-Islah, in which he translated many portions of Farahi's treatises written in Arabic. He was also a founding member of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious party led by Abul A'la Maududi, but left it in 1958 due to ideological differences. He then moved to Karachi and became the imam and lecturer of Memon Masjid. He also founded the Gulzar-e-Habib Trust and the Okarvi Academy Al-Aalami to promote his religious and educational activities. He wrote several books and pamphlets on Islamic issues, but his magnum opus was his ten-volume commentary of the Quran, Tadabbur-i-Quran, which he completed in 1980. He received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz award from the government of Pakistan in 1985 for his services to Islam. He died of natural causes in Lahore on December 15, 1997.