Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Great writers don’t invite us to themselves; they invite us to the holiness accessible to all. “I'm crazy about Chekhov. I never knew anybody that wasn't,” said Woody Allen, US filmmaker. Chekhov died at age 44 fighting tuberculosis with rare dignity and fortitude.  Great writers are missionaries of Spirit/Life and thus welcome in every land as they don’t invite us to themselves, to airy abstractions, to utopias, to ideologies that come and go. They invite us to the holiness accessible to all and sundry, to common or shared joys and beauty. With them we don’t feel intimidated but a certain fellowship of spirit. The way we need personal/family doctors and Masters we also need writers. West, a Christian and teacher of religion at Harvard, wrote about the agnostic Chekhov: “I find the incomparable works of Anton Chekhov— the best singular body by a modern artist— to be the wisest and deepest interpretations of what human beings confront in their daily struggles. . . . I find

Rival Truths or Points of View in Religions and Sects To the less informed the conflicting claims of religions and sects of religions or philosophy and religion appear as real battles over conflicting truths. The situation has been captured thus by Mark Twain: “Man is the Religious Animal. . . . He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.” Umberto Eco has pointed out that we should fear “those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” Could it be the case that apparently or obviously conflicting claims are not conflicts between rival saving truth claims but mostly political conflicts or reflect our situatedness and it is indeed impossible to avoid presup

Reading Ionesco on the Meaning of Life. Once we approached the elders, priests, pirs/gurus and theologians to illuminate dark or difficult questions. Now people turn to writers/poets. Although it is the case that our most trusted guides – the fraternity of prophets and sages – are united in espousing the only Tradition we have as far as the ethics and metaphysics grounding saving truths are concerned – writers are sought to explicate essential saving truths by modern man amidst confusion of tongues. Amongst such writers certain especially stand out by virtue of their influence and remarkable presentation of certain saving truths that many have found helpful in illuminating difficult questions including that of our ultimate destiny.       Although there are many who have not heard the anguish and pleas of major modern and postmodern prophets, the disturbing ground report is that we are living in difficult, dark and complex times where weather continues to be foggy and stormy and we f