Bangla Bhasai Islami Sahitya Charchai Sheikh Abdur Rahim (1859¬1931) Er Abadan/ বাংলা ভাষায় ইসলামী সাহিত্য চর্চায় শেখ আবদুর রহিম (১৮৫৯-১৯৩১) এর অবদান

Abstract

Bengal was the first province of India which had fallen into the hands of the British colonialists. They ruled Bengal for a period of one hundred and ninety years. The impact of the British rule on Bengal was discernible. This led to considerable politico­economic changes across Bengal, which, in turn, precipitated much socio­cultural transformation in that region. Following the establishment of the British rule in India in general and Bengal in particular, the European Christian missionaries also came to that region for preaching their religion. They made it their mission to attack Islam and its Prophet both verbally and in their writings. Influenced by the intensification of missionary activities, many Muslims started to convert to Christianity in various places of Bengal. This was particularly true of poor Muslim families who were unhappy with their social and economic condition, who felt that ‘Conversion to Christianity’ would help them to improve their circumstances. The proselytizing activities of the missionaries prompted a good number of the Muslim scholars and reformers like Munshi Meherullah and Munshi Zamiruddin to emerge in the later part of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century in order to challenge the missionaries. They played an important role in countering Christian missionary activities in Bengal. Their success against the missionaries not only raised awareness and understanding of Islam in the Muslim society of Bengal, it also inspired a new generation of Muslim scholars, writers and journalists to emerge, who in turn, became champions of Islamic thought, scholarship and journalism. Sheikh Abdur Rahim (1859­1931) of Basirhat was one such person, who by the way of his character and his personality became a leading Muslim scholar, writer and journalist of his time. He devoted his whole life for the service of Islam and Muslims in Bengal. To promote the principles and values of Islam and to defend Islam and its Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (SM) in the Bengal, he wrote a good number of articles, books and edited journals and periodicals, which were widely circulated in the Muslim community. The paper is an attempt to briefly analyze the works of Sheikh Abdur Rahim in Bengali on different branches of Islamic knowledge.