One man’s trash is another’s treasure

KARACHI: While the State Bank of Pakistan might be regretting that it tossed a bag full of yellowed, ancient religious books away, the Anjuman Tahafuz Muqaddas Auraq (ATMA) is definitely happy over its newly-acquired treasures.

The State Bank allegedly handed over bags full of discarded items to their contracted junk dealers, the Siddique Brothers, a couple of days ago. However, when one of the company’s employees found that one of these bags contained religious books, he decided not to risk God’s wrath, and took the books to the ATMA godown in Khori Garden.

He did not bother with the procedures involved, said the ATMA staff, which requires getting a token and waiting to have the books checked out before they were accepted by the organisation.

Although State Bank officials earlier said that the bag must have fallen off during a routine transfer, on Tuesday one of their officials went to ATMA’s office and asked to take back the books. When the manager of the ATMA, Haji Muhammad Qasim, requested to be allowed to keep these books, the official yielded. So now, ancient books from the State Bank’s library have been added to the increasingly impressive collection of ATMA.

The books include works which are around 100 to 150 years old. Some of them have three to four volumes and many are from outside Pakistan, including from Turkey and Egypt.

The scripts also included Imam Malik Qazi Bezawi’s Tafseerul Qazi Bezawi.

According to Qasim, the books are not unusable and neither is their condition so bad that they should be discarded.

History of ATMA

The organisation was founded in 1986. It has asked people to bring in religious books that they want to discard. ATMA collects these books and preserves them. If the text is too worn out, the organisation puts them together in sacks and hands them over to the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) or the PNSC. The KPT and the PNSC then take these sacks out to deep sea in their ships and deposit the holy scripture in the waters.

Every week, 30 to 35 tons of religious documents are deposited into the deep waters of the sea several miles away from the shore.

Qasim said that the organisation does not work on charity nor does it ask for any fees from people. Anyone can just drop off texts and scriptures at the organisation’s office or godown. “We don’t want anything from people, not even thanks. This is just for God,” said Qasim.

“Our aim is to take these books and get them to their final destination safely,” he added.

The books are categorised and then put away. The ATMA plans to build a library for their collection of books. So far, they have thousands of holy scriptures, of which around 600 are treasured and valuable. The organisation also sends and gives away the collected copies of the Quran, Hadith and other religious books, to anyone who requests them. They have sent countless texts to different people and institutions, such as madrassas, across the country. According to Qasim, they have also sent holy books to India, Afghanistan, Africa and Sri Lanka.

The organisation does not charge any money to give these books away other than shipment and transfer costs. “There is no money in our business,” Qasim told The Express Tribune.

In 2005, ATMA was handed several containers of religious scriptures that had been seized by Port Qasim customs while the Karachi customs gave them several books they seized in 2009.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 30^th, 2010.