Author – Labib Mahfuj Chisty
I also want the day to come when there will be gatherings of Sama-Qawali, poetry readings in mosques. Literature will be studied, Rabindranath’s love and worship songs will be performed, Nazrul’s Shyama-Sangeet will be heard in those gatherings. I really want every mosque to have a rich library. A collection of Keats, Shelley, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton, Whitman, Gorky, Gibran, Marquez.
On one side there will be the call to prayer, in the other corner people will read Darwin, Hawkings or philosophy-cosmology. Reading the lives and works of Newton, Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo will be mandatory for everyone who comes to the mosque. Along with Farabi, Arabi, Khayyam, Kindi, Kant, Hegel, Locke, Russell’s philosophies will be discussed there. All religious scholars will come to the mosque without any hesitation, there will be a lively celebration of self-religion.
I really want, the walls of every mosque will be adorned with pictures of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Nazrul, Rumi, Lalonde. Instead of a flock of confined beings, the mosques will be inhabited by wise people.
I also want, the mosques will actually be the center of religion. They will be the incubators of ideals and progress. The scoundrels will take leave from the mosques. The mosques will be for the wise.
I really want, I will also spend a thousand nights in the mosques, enchanted.
Date of writing – 19/02/2020
Author – Labib Mahfuj Chisty