Halqa-e-Shaheen
Research in the light of the Qur'an, facing the questions of our age.
Halqa-e-Shaheen is a research circle under Anjuman Khuddam-ul-Qur'an's Motivational & Development Programme. Our work is to understand properly what the modern world is actually asking, and to prepare a serious scholarly answer to it in the light of the Qur'an.
That work is not done by speaking. It is done by reading and writing. So everything about how this circle is organised is built around study, research and authorship: weekly reading sessions, seven subject circles, and a written report every month.
We intend to establish a working system that helps — drawing from the Qur'an Academy and the Ruju' ila al-Qur'an course in particular, and from further places and platforms in general — to find people who, after a period of training, can play some effective part in clearing the way for the real work that the renaissance of Islam requires.
The stated purpose of the Motivational & Development Programme
Why this work
What Dr. Israr Ahmad called the real work was to present Islam to the modern person at the standard by which scholarly argument is actually conducted today. Two things are needed for that: understanding modern thought down to its roots, and holding one's own tradition firmly enough to answer from it.
Halqa-e-Shaheen exists for both halves of that task.
How the work is organised
The research is divided into seven circles. Each has its own field and a convenor responsible for it. The intention is that every member goes deep in one field, and that the seven together cover the whole map.
Each circle's boundaries are written down: what falls inside it, what does not, and which circle owns what does not. This is so that two members do not spend their effort separately on the same ground.
The work runs like this:
- Weekly session Every circle sits regularly. How often is set by the نظام العمل, the charter, not by each circle for itself.
- Reading circle Study shared across the whole bench. Its standing text is Iqbal's The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam.
- Monthly report Every circle writes up its month — what was done, and what was not.
- Writing The output is written work: papers, frameworks and books. Reading is preparation for it, not the destination.