The calligrapher from Pakistan

It was indeed a pleasure to read the story of Shafeeq uz Zaman, the calligrapher of the Prophet’s Mosque in Arab News on July 26. The amazing aspect of his story is that his mother tongue is Urdu and not Arabic. He is from Pakistan. Despite the language barrier, it was sheer hard work and persistence of Shafeeq that made him the best in this field. He was honored by being appointed as the chief calligrapher of the mosque of the Prophet (peace be upon him).
According to the interview, Shafeeq uz Zaman used to make signboards using text from the Holy Qur’an for a company on the streets of Karachi, Pakistan. One day his work was noticed by a visiting Saudi, who immediately offered him a job in his company. He worked for many years in a private company in Riyadh. However, Allah Almighty had other plans for him.
In 1990 the holy mosque’s construction company Dallah announced a worldwide calligraphy competition. The competition was held because most of the original work on the domes of the mosque had worn off. Nearly 400 pieces of work were showcased in the calligraphy competition. Shafeeq uz Zaman was declared the winner. According to him, “even the judges thought the winner would be a Turk or an Egyptian and were shocked to learn that he was from Pakistan.” The great calligrapher terms his victory in the competition as a great blessing from Almighty Allah.
To his credit is the calligraphy on all the 177 domes of the Prophet’s Mosque. He did his splendid work in many big mosques of Pakistan as well. He has thousands of students in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan.
I would like to congratulate Arab News for highlighting the excellent achievements of a humble, down-to-earth champion, in your paper. This process of publishing the achievements of true champions with humble backgrounds, should continue. — Babar Mumtaz, by e-mail


Licensing lawyers
This is with reference to the report "Lawyers want their rights protected," (July 21). It is only right that like any other profession, only the persons licensed by the Bar or the Ministry of Justice be allowed to practice to ensure that the clients are represented properly in the courts and they get correct legal advice on the relevant issues. Besides, as the practice by the licensed lawyers is governed by the advocacy law, the issues related to confidentiality and conflict of interest could be addressed in a proper manner and there is a fair amount of protection for clients.
However, given the continual increase in the demand for professional legal service mostly by corporates, both local and foreign, it is important that more and more lawyers be licensed by easing up the procedures, requirements and the timeframe. One of the fastest methods to grant advocacy license could be encouraging the law firms and other professional centers to conduct intensive legal training workshops on different areas of law and practice ethics and accepting the credits earned by law graduates and trainees through these workshops.   Though the figure of 1,267 related to licensed lawyers in the Kingdom is correct, the guess work suggesting the presence of over one million unlicensed legal practitioners is certainly far-fetched and cannot be true.  — Safi H. Jannaty, Dammam


West’s ‘international community’
The international community is a phrase we frequently hear, mostly used by the West when it wants to stress a point for or against a certain issue. I pondered to find out in reality which are these countries that make up the so called international community. Alas, it is a block of just 31 countries: The US, EU countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. There are 194 UN member countries and this total of 31 countries amount to a mere 15.9 percent of the total membership.
They represent a total population of only 860 million people out of the world population of 7 billion, which is just 12.3 percent! It is amazing to note how the West could totally ignore the rest 87.7 percent of the world population when it talks about its own interpretation of international community. In the meantime, a single country like India or China can easily outnumber the total population of the so-called international community of the West. So, when you hear the next time that the West is talking about world community you know the number of countries that form this and the population it represents. — S.H. Moulana, Riyadh