The 60 Million Blessed Women Men - Al-Hamdulillah!

[Dr. Shabbir]

Dear friends, AA

The following is submitted with sincere gratitude to Allah and in all humility to Him and His servants. A great friend had requested yesterday to furnish this info on the forum.

Al-Hamdulillah, about 60 million Muslim men and women have rejected the Number Two, Ajami, Hadithi, Counterfeit Islam or N2I through our humble efforts under (the old name) WWW.GALAXYDASTAK.COM and GALAXY PUBLICATIONS since 1989.

I think, the new names, WWW.OURBEACON.COM and OUR BEACON were adopted only in 2005.

1989 proved to be a blessed year for us and our noble mission. That is the year when our lovely daughter, Aisha, was born and co-incidentally I started writing the weekly Urdu column DASTAK (Knock at the door) at the request of the Journalism icon, Majeed Nizami Saheb, publisher and chief editor of (NAWA-E-WAQT GROUP OF PUBLICATIONS) Lahore, Pakistan. My best friend and wife, Farida, simultaneously began writing her weekly AHAT (Footsteps). Both columns entail interesting literature including history, humor, current events, poetic sweeteners, sociology, general knowledge, Q & A - and above all - THE QUR'ANIC THOUGHT all at one time. Al-Hamdulillah, they have been immensely popular around the globe with ten newspapers publishing them. (Late) Zameer Jaafri Saheb and many other critics have called DASTAK and AHAT the best syndicated Urdu columns ever.

1989 was much before I had touched a computer. In the same year at the behest of ISLAMIC INFORMATION FOUNDATION, Canada, we produced a beautiful album consisting of 16 Urdu audio cassettes exclusively on children's and youngsters' questions and their answers on Islam (ISLAM IN FOCUS). More than 10,000 of those albums have sold until now by IIF and people love them. One hundred percent of the funds directly go to the Islamic Information Foundation since we had given the copyrights to IIF in order to help the Foundation's noble mission.

The figure of 60 million Muslims turning to the Qur'an is an approximation which is very well-founded.

The figure is primarily based on the number of our 40 Urdu and English books and their reprints SOLD and/or distributed around the world. Add to this most of these books translated and sold/distributed in up to 11 languages.

Let us also remember the vast number of websites globally that carry Ourbeacon books. Many websites provide links to OURBEACON.COM.

Additional approximation comes from the emails, phones and letters we receive from those who have read the books and agree with our humble efforts. Incidentally, there is about the same number, 60 million people, who read and love our weekly Urdu columns in 10 newspapers around the world. Many of these readers overlap the first figure. I think, we are fairly accurate and we must show our gratitude to the Almighty and His sincere servants.

Where are those 60 million people? Please understand that 60 million people make only about 5% of the Ummah and they are scattered. Hence, they are not yet very visible to all. However, more and more are becoming visible in many parts of the world. As the numbers grow, In-Sha-Allah, they will become quite visible everywhere.

RABBANA TAQABBAL MINNA (Our Lord! Please accept from us our labor.)

A life-long student,
Shabbir Ahmed, M.D.