Awards

Islam Awareness Week is awarded the:
The Muslim News - Al-Biruni Award for Excellence in community relations

Background to the Award

On March 27th 2006, London's Grosvenor House Hotel was the venue for The Muslim News Awards 2006, where Islam Awareness Week was the winner of the Al-Biruni Award for Excellence in community relations.  It was accepted by project's national coordinator on behalf of and dedicated to the hundreds of volunteers who take part in the campaign every year.

When the Uzbek astronomer Abu Rayhan al-Biruni Muhammad ibn Ahmed was born in 973 CE, the world of Islam extended from Spain to India. But the religion was in danger of losing an integral part of its identity: respect for the beliefs of others.

For ten years in India, as chief advisor and astronomer to Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna, al-Biruni was in a prime position to see not only the movements of the stars but also the rise of attitudes that stood in the way of tolerance. From a position of eminence and renown - he produced in Arabic the most comprehensive text of Islamic astronomy and discussed centuries ahead of others the concept of the earth rotating around its axis - al-Biruni challenged some of the acts of intolerance and carnage carried out in the name of Islam. In particular, he decried the sultan's attacks on the fine arts and culture of the Hindus.

A prolific poet, philosopher, historian and mathematician in his own right, al-Biruni also searched tirelessly for that elusive discipline: mutual understanding. He absorbed and paid due recognition to the scientific and cultural developments made by people of other cultures, to this end he was a keen student of Sanskrit and Hindu astronomy. Al-Biruni's call to promote the common good, has lost none of its resonance - to this day, the Persians, Arabs and Indians jointly avow that he was one of their own.