The Rights of Women in Islam by Asghar Ali Engineer

In 2004 due to criticism of the Dawoodi Bohra religious establishment he was expelled. He was unanimously elected as General Secretary of The Central Board of Dawoodi Bohra Community in its first conference in Udaipur in 1977. In 1972, Engineer took voluntary retirement in order to devote himself to the Bohra reform movement in the wake of a revolt in Udaipur.

He penned his article in the Times of India under the name Asghar Ali Engineer –the name stayed.' Going by this trend, Asghar Ali SK chose his professional name and not his village name which would have been Mandsaurwala. It is common in India especially among Parsis (Zoroastrians) and Bohra Muslims to have a family name based on one’s occupation (Bandukwala or one who deals in guns, Mithaiwala or one who deals in sweets, Vakil or lawyer, Contractor,) or on the village name (Sidpurwala, Partapurwala). His friend Zoeb Ansari suggested that he could take his professional name. 'He felt that the name Asghar Ali SK, did not sound good. In 1965, he began publishing newspaper articles under the name of 'Asghar Ali Engineer.' A reviewer explains that He graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Vikram University in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, and served for 20 years as an engineer in the Bombay Municipal Corporation. He was trained in Qur'anic tafsir (commentary), tawil (hidden meaning of Qur'an), fiqh (jurisprudence) and hadith (Prophet's sayings), and learned the Arabic language. Asghar Ali Sheikh Kurban (sometimes rendered as Asghar Ali SK) was born 10 March 1939 in Salumbar, Rajasthan, the son of a Bohra priest, Shaikh Qurban Hussain.

The Rights of Women in Islam by Asghar Ali Engineer