True dat, he is awesome!!! It’s not only that he has so much knowledge, but it’s like he has a gift of conveying knowledge in a way that’s easy to listen to and understand. Easy going, good sense of humor. And he was a former atheist. To go from that state to one of immense knowledge and dedication is astounding. MashaAllah.
To my knowledge, no. He’s a Pakistani, Punjabi. Grew up in Saudi, maybe even Pak…can’t remember now. Moved to New York…was atheist during adolescence/college period. Does run a school that teaches Arabic and Quran.
Muq Bhai, NAK was born in and raised in Germany for the first 8-9 years of his life (interestingly he’s fluent in German but didn’t know any Urdu) His family then moved back to Pakistan for one year and then to Saudi for the next 6 years or so (which is when he learned to speak Urdu!) and then to America/NYC. He’s now based out of Dallas where he’s the founder of Bayyinah.
It seems that his work on Tafsir is still in progress. I was searching for a new writer ( new means young one from current era) and last week when I visited an Islamic books dealer and asked for some new writers, he could not tell the names except Maududi, Abdul Kalam, Shafi OkaRwi.
Are there any versions of Gita available in simple and easy to understand English? Besides Ramayan and Mahabharata, there are Upanishad. Did you get a chance to go through them as well. I would like to go through these books, if available in easy to understand language.
Yes, he’s more of a speaker/lecturer/teacher then a writer I believe. I haven’t looked into his writing as much but as a scholar and orator he’s mashallah one of the best of our time.
Aaze, I watched an interview of his on The Deen Show where the host introduced him as a former atheist. I don’t recall him making a clarification that he wasn’t exactly an atheist in that segment…or maybe he did it elsewhere. Maybe you’re right because it seems he just was very far removed from religion and just not interested.
I read that Geeta is basically a dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna. There was also a dialogue between Maa Kunti Rani and Krishna which also forms a book like Geeta. The writer didn’t mention the name of book. Do you what is the name of that book?
I tried to google and found out that besides Bhagvata Geeta, there is this ‘Bhagvata Purana’, which probably deal with the dialogue between Maa Kunti Rani and Krishna.
I also found about the dialogue between Karna and Kunti and there is some poem by Tagore on it.
Acha. Thanks! I logged back to say - the dialogue must have been just before Mahabharat - the great war. Krishna went to Kunti to get her to approach Karna to change sides. That Karna was her son