"A History of Arakan: Past and Present, by Dr. Mohammad Yunus, President of the Rohingya Solidarity Organisation (RSO), Arakan, is a a welcome addition to the present stock of our knowledge about the history of Arakan and her interrelation with neighbouring lands of Burma and Bengal. It deals mainly with the advent of Islam in Arakan about 800 C.E. and the eventual growth of Muslim community through thick and thin into a major Rohingya community of the country. One can say unhasitatingly that for the first time Dr. Yunus has been able to offer, even if in a skeleton form, a connected and continuous history of the Rohingya community of Arakan from the earliest down to the present time. He has explored an enormously wide field in digging up a great variety of new materials drawn from an impressive number of references. Specially commendable in this work is the forging of all the material under his command towards a new direction of studying the history of the Rohingya Muslim community in the perspective of the impact of Islamic civilization on Southeast Asia, not merely considering it as a part of the national or political history of Burma or Myanmar..."