Ibrahim Saeed
Encyclopedia
Sanmarga
Sanmarga also known as Sanmarga Weekly is a weekly Kannada magazine published from Mangalore. A Mangalorean intellectual, Ibrahim Saeed is the founder editor of Sanmarga Weekly who founded the weekly in 1979....
, a Kannada weekly published from Mangalore
Mangalore
Mangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...
. Ibrahim Saeed was a senior journalist and had served Sanmarga for three decades as editor until he was given the office of state president of Jamat-e-Isalmi Hind, Karnataka
Karnataka
Karnataka , the land of the Kannadigas, is a state in South West India. It was created on 1 November 1956, with the passing of the States Reorganisation Act and this day is annually celebrated as Karnataka Rajyotsava...
and Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
division. He was also a chief of Da’wah wing of Jamat-e-Islami for its Karnataka unit. Saeed was born and educated in Mangalore.
Ibrahim Saeed launched Sanmarga weekly in 1979 after quitting his job in a nationalized bank.
After returning from his second Hajj
Hajj
The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...
pilgrimage to Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
, he handed over the responsibility of presidency of Jamat-e-Islami which he could serve for a term of 4 years from 2003 to 2006. For a decade he rendered his services as a member of national representative body of Jamat-e-Islami Hind in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
. Saeed was one of founders of Shanthi Prakashana and later he became chairman of this publishing house.
Scholar and orator
Ibrahim Saeed is known to the people of Karnataka state not merely as a journalist but also as a thinker, an intellectual and a scholar. He was a captivating orator and had traveled widely in Karnataka giving lectures on various topics such as communal harmony, character building and moral values, significance of democracy in India and so forth. Da’wah is another field he had taken up to his heart during his lifetime and had composed several Da’wah related books. Plenty of his Kannada and UrduUrdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
speeches have come out in form of audio cassettes as well. He did voice recording for the first ever Kannada translation of the Qur’an in electronic format. Saeed is a multi linguist with profound knowledge of Kannada, Urdu and English. He has studied Arabic and Malayalam languages privately. He used to hold his weekly Qur'an discourse sessions in Kannada and also in Beary bashe
Beary bashe
Beary bashe is a dialect mainly spoken by the Muslim communities of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts of Karnataka known as Bearys and a small number of Hindus in the District of Kasargod in Kerala state....
, a dialect used by the Indian Beary
Beary
The Beary is a small Muslim community concentrated mostly in coastal South Kanara , in the district of Karnataka, a south Indian state. It is an ethnic society, having its own unique traditions and distinct cultural identity...
community live alongside coastal Karnataka.
Contribution to communal harmony
Ibrahim Saeed had firmly believed that most of the mistrust between followers of Islam and other religions spring from the lack of knowledge about each other’s faith. He not only had been a student of comparative religions but strived to remove the mistrust and bring the people of various religions closer through his translations, writings and speeches. His Kannada booklet Komu Sauharda mattu Charitrya Nirmaana is a highly appreciated work in this regard.Saeed is the founder coordinator of an influential organization of Mangalore – Association for Communal Harmony and Moral Uplift - a model organization that includes prominent personalities from all major faiths to work together for the cause of humanity.
Literary life
Saeed was a prolific writer, has significantly contributed to Kannada literature by writing at least 22 books on various topics. Apart from that he has translated some 25 books from UrduUrdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
into Kannada language. His most famous booklet on communal harmony has been a tool in promoting harmony amongst the people of different faiths living together, often distributed free of cost on various occasions. Another celebrated work Tappu kalpanegalu reprinted 9 times in a very short time span and made him famous in the neighboring states of Karnataka when this book was translated into English, Marathi
Marathi language
Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...
and Tamil language
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
s. He had also rendered services as chairman of Shanti Prakashana, a publishing company based in Mangalore city.
His work Mahakavi Iqbalara kavanagalu is a humble attempt to transform thoughts and philosophy of Allama Iqbal into Kannada language which he had started to pen down in his popular weekly, Sanmarga
Sanmarga
Sanmarga also known as Sanmarga Weekly is a weekly Kannada magazine published from Mangalore. A Mangalorean intellectual, Ibrahim Saeed is the founder editor of Sanmarga Weekly who founded the weekly in 1979....
. Later Shanti Prakashana, of which he was chairman, could bring out in book form. This is the first major work in Kannada as regard to Sir Allama Iqbal’s poetry or philosophy is concerned.
Ibrahim Saeed also served in translation board of Divya Qur’an and Qur’an Vyakhyana. Former is a translation and latter is commentary (Tafsir
Tafsir
Tafseer is the Arabic word for exegesis or commentary, usually of the Qur'an. Ta'wīl is a subset of tafsir and refers to esoteric or mystical interpretation. An author of tafsir is a mufassir .- Etymology :...
) work of the Qur’an in Kannada. Qur’an Vyakhyana is an abridged version of Towards Understanding the Qur'an
Towards Understanding the Qur'an
Towards Understanding the Qur'an is the English rendering of Syed Abul Ala Maududi's famous Urdu Tafsir or commentary of Qur'an -- Tafhim al-Qur'an....
, the world renowned Qur’an exegesis of modern times. He has enormously contributed to bring out Kannada Translation of Qur'an in audio cassettes and later in CD form.
Pravadi Jeevana Sandesha is another major literary achievement of Ibrahim Saeed in simple intelligible Kannada language. It is comprehensive but short and authentic biography of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
with proper citations and reference sources. Undoubtedly this work is a valuable little gift of Saeed to forty million Kannada speaking population of Karnataka.
Ibrahim Saeed was a columnist in Prajavani
Prajavani
Prajavani is a leading Kannada-language newspaper in the Indian state of Karnataka. It is a sister publication of the Deccan Herald. , it had a circulation of 364,000, making it the second-largest-circulation newspaper in Karnataka , and the largest-circulation Kannada-language newspaper in the...
, the largest published Kannada daily of Karnataka. In Prajavani he wrote under nom de plume Sanmargi...
Death
Ibrahim Saeed breathed his last at the age of 62, in the wee hours of morning on Sunday, May 27, 2007 at Unity Health Complex, a private healthcare centre in Mangalore. He was admitted to the hospital only the previous night. Ibrahim Saeed has 4 sons and 4 daughters. He was intellectually productive till the end of his life.Funeral
Funeral was attended by a large number of people in the city of Mangalore. Chief minister of Karnataka state H. D. Kumaraswamy, former chief minister Dharam Singh have visited Saeed’s house in Kankanady. State opposition leader Mallikarjun KhargeMallikarjun Kharge
Mallikarjun Kharge, is an Indian politician and currently the Union Minister of Labour and Employment of the Republic of India. He is a member of the 15th Lok Sabha of India...
, former central minister C. K. Jaffer Sharief, former ministers B.A. Moidin, Tanveer Saith, Zamir Ahmed Khan, Roshan Beig and many other eminent personalities from different walks of life have also paid their tribute.
Saeed was laid to rest in the central grave yard of Zeenat Bakhsh Juma Masjid after Asr prayer on 28.05.2007 in Bunder area of Mangalore city. His elder son Ameen Ahsan, a unit president of JIH at Uppinangady and a businessman, led Salat al-Janazah at Zeenat Baksh Juma Masjid
Historic Mosques of India
There are a number of mosques in India which has historical importance. Cheraman mosque is believed to be the first ever mosque built in India in 629 AD. It is built in Methala Village of Kodungalloor taluk in southern state Kerala....
.
In absentia funeral prayers have held in Qatar, Riyadh and other places in Middle Eastern countries.
Condolence meeting
Dakshina KannadaDakshina Kannada
- Geography :The district geography consists of sea shore in the west and Western Ghats in the east. The major rivers are Netravathi, Kumaradhara, Phalguni, Shambhavi, Nandini or Pavanje and Payaswini which all join Arabian sea. Vast areas of evergreen forests which once covered this district, have...
district’s Kannada Sahitya Parishad, Dharma Samanvaya Mangalooru and Jamat-e-Islami had jointly held a condolence meet in Town hall of Mangalore. Dignitaries like John Fernandes, Mugavalli Keshava Dharani, Tufail Mohammed, Shahanaz M., B.A Moidin, Pattabhirama Somayaji Pradeep Kumar Kalkura, Umer U.H., Mohammed Kunhi, Hamid Hussain, Mohammed Haneef Goltamajalu, Dr. Mohammed Ismail, and other eminents have made condolatory remarks in the gathering. Condolence meetings were held in other places as well. In Kuwait the meeting was held in Al Kharafi Hall of IPC. Hassan Yusuf, Khwaja Muinuddin, Sharafuddin B.S. and Dr. Ahmed Sajjad shared their views.