شفیق الرحمن قدوائی
شفیق الرحمن مرحوم اگر چہ شہرت و ناموری کے عام معیار سے کو ئی بڑے آدمی نہ تھے مگر اپنے ایثار و قربانی، اخلاق وکردار، اخلاص و عمل اور خاموش اور بے لوث خدمات کے لحاظ سے بہت سے بڑے بڑے لیڈروں پر فائق تھے، جامعہ ملیہ کے لئے تو انھوں نے اپنی زندگی وقف کردی تھی اور سرد و گرم دور میں بھی اس سے جدا نہ ہو ئے، اور یہ کہنا غلط نہ ہوگا کہ جامعہ انہی کی محنت و جانفشانی کی بدولت زندہ رہ گیا، ظاہر وباطن دونوں میں مسلمان اور اپنے اوصاف کی بنا پر ہر جماعت میں مقبول تھے، کا نگریس اور حکومت دونوں کے سنجیدہ طبقہ میں ان کا بڑا وقار و وزن اور اخلاقی اثر تھا، مگر وہ اتنے بے لوث تھے کہ کبھی اس اثر سے فائدہ اٹھانے کی کوشش نہیں کی، ان کو بنیادی تعلیم کا عملی تجربہ تھا، اس کے وہ ماہر تھے، اس لئے یو این او کی جانب سے اس کام کے لئے انڈونیشیا بھیجے گئے تھے، ابھی وہ وہیں تھے کہ گذشتہ الیکشن میں کانگریس نے ان کو دہلی اسمبلی کے لئے مقرر ہو ئے، مگر اس سے بھی ان کا فائدہ اٹھانے کا موقع نہ مل سکا، تھوڑے ہی دنوں کے بعد بیمار پڑگئے، اور چند مہینے بیمار رہ کر ۳؍ اپریل کو انتقال کیا، انتقال کے وقت کل ۵۳ سال کی عمر تھی جو سیاست کی دنیا میں عین شباب کی عمرہے، مسلمانوں میں اب ایسے مخلص اور باعمل آدمی مشکل سے پیدا ہوں گے، اﷲ تعالیٰ اس پیکر اخلاص کو اپنی رحمت و مغفرت سے سرفراز فرمائے۔ (شاہ معین الدین ندوی، اپریل ۱۹۵۳ء)
Different religious, political and social leaders tried their best to establish peace and prosperity in the society in different phases of the human history. An influential effort out of these efforts is that of the Prophet (r) Muḥammad. The Prophet (r) faced a pluralistic society of different faiths and religions in Madīnah. So, to make a better relationship and establish peace between the Muslims and the other communities of Madīnah, an agreement, which is called Mīthāq al-Madīnah, was made. Mīthāq al-Madīnah was not only a deed, but it presents all those principles and regulations, which were mandatory for peace building in a state or society. The excellent aspect of this charter is that the recipients of this charter were not the Muslims only, but a pluralistic society of different faiths. These communities were bound to establish peace with an agreement. This charter is an excellent model of peace, prosperity, freedom and human rights. According to this charter, all the parties were free with their religious beliefs and social interests. It was also the constitution of Madīnah. The renowned Muslim scholars are unanimously agreed that it was the first written constitution of the world. This agreement provides all other communities of Madīnah (the Jews, the Christians, and the polytheists) equal rights and freedom. Consequently, the charter of Madīnah can become a base for enduring peace and peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic world for the sake of the welfare of the human beings.
In our English language writing classes errors are regarded as undesirable, a sign of failure either on the part of the students partly due to carelessness, lack of motivation and intelligence or on the part of teachers due to their inability to teach or explain sufficiently. Our examination system, which is accuracy based, seems to be influential in developing this attitude among teachers, consequently resulting in severe reaction against the errors made by their students. Students are also embarrassed when their copies are returned by their teachers with a lot of red marks. In this situation the question as to how to use errors and error correction for the improvement of ESL (English as second language) students convinced me to conduct a study in this area. The study focuses on trying out ways of error correction without impeding learning to write The sample of the study consisted of a group of six girls chosen from class V111 of a government school. My place in this study was of an inside researcher as I have already been associated with this school as English language teacher. I acted as teacher and researcher during this study. Fieldwork was spread over seven weeks for which data were collected using semi-structured interviews of teachers and students, analysis of students' homework and class work copies, observation and reflective journals of teachers and students. A process- oriented pedagogy was adopted to conduct the study because it has possibilities for error correction. Students were required to write multiple drafts of the writing papers. Techniques used to correct these drafts have included self, peer and teacher correction. The effects of teacher's and peer feedback and correction were analysed to draw some conclusions about not only the extent to which the revision has responded to the feedback in next draft but also to examine its effect in subsequent drafts. Major findings of the study reveal that teachers' negative views and beliefs about errors (whatever may be the causes) influence their practice of correcting students' errors. They prefer to correct each and every deviation, do not allow students to experiment with the language and consider themselves the only source of error correction. Generally, feedback is confined to some vague words (Good, Poor, Learn spelling etc.). Furthermore, findings of this study throw light on the possible sources of errors made by the students, the significance of teachers' feedback on students writing and