Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Here is where thinking is needed as against unthinking ideology of development that has brought irredeemable evils along with it. Do we ever ask why God-chosen-Mecca happens to be such a “desolate” hilly landscape and why stay in Arafat and Mina under the naked sky is such a challenging and liberating one? Why should one of the greatest scenes – the storm scene – in arguably the greatest play King Lear that unfolds Lear’s redemption be about encounter with nothingness and disowning civilization’s artificialities?  Why is that mountains are treasured symbols of spirit and mountaineering a mantra/ wazeefa and pastoralism/sheep-goat rearing in mountains treasured spiritual experiment/experience? Why do religious and spiritual traditions propose periodical retreats for their adherents? Why we should opt for culture over civilization is we are forced to choose only one? Art and religion – the manifestations of what is called culture – are treasured means of giving meaning to lives  agai

Reading Hannah Arendt on Violence, Democracy, Fundamentalism and Party Politics What explains the farce that has been politics wedded to violence – from dozens of recent conflicts/wars to Muslim revivalist politics and its brutal suppression by secularist/neo-colonialist forces of which the latest illustration is shocking treatment met to Muhammad Mursi? Lack of thinking or uncritical mindset that believes in violence as power or force to effect one’s desired outcome. Belief in violence as a means springs basically from weakness, argued Hannah Arendt who also summed up what we need to keep in mind to help ourselves in a world that construes politics in terms of power calculus: “…every human being is a thinking being and can reflect as well as I do and can therefore judge for himself, if he wants to.” “And to think always means to think critically. And to think critically is always to be hostile. Every thought actually undermines whatever there is of rigid rules, general convictions