The title of your journal suggests that you are working for a Muslim revival. However, I would like to know more about the type of work you are doing and the chances of success it has. I would hate to join people who have little chances of success.

Yes, the team of ‘Renaissance’ is working for a Muslim revival. Our diagnosis is that this revival cannot be achieved unless the ailment of intellectual stagnation so rampant among Muslim scholars is done away with. By this stagnation we mean absence of research and original thinking on religious issues.

Today, unfortunately, the prohibition against directly deliberating and interpreting from the sources of Islam has become no less than the prohibition against liquor. We, however, think that unless competent Muslim scholars are produced who have the ability to break the shackles of this intellectual stagnation very little can be done for the revival of the Muslims. These scholars should be groomed in a manner that they can face the challenge of the modern era. It is because of a paucity of such scholars that in the last few centuries the Muslim world has undergone a sharp decline in its individual as well as its collective affairs. All over the globe, Muslims seem to have lost their identity. They appear to be dispossessed of the real spirit of Islam, and have been stripped of the position of supremacy they once held in the comity of nations. Though they have with them the last and final word of the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth, yet it no longer plays a vibrant role in their lives.

At ‘Renaissance’, our basic objective is to promote and patronize the work of scholars who have taken up the daunting task of carrying out original research within the ambit of the Qur’ān and Sunnah. We consider our endeavour to be a humble service to cause of truth.

As to the last part of your question, I can only say that we consider ourselves victors even if vanquished  -- for to us success lies not in achieving the goal but in sincerely striving to achieve it.