Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Is Kashmir University coming of age? Amidst almost all the bad news about Kashmir from September 2014 till date, we have now one good news that should be celebrated by every Kashmiri. It is opening up of Philosophy, Anthropology and Archeology departments in Kashmir University, thanks to the efforts of Vice Chancellor, Dean Academics (who has especially been keen to see Philosophy department and thus has earned, as his innings is ending, life time achievement award in the eyes of posterity), Academic Council and the State. This is an effort towards Kashmir’s self discovery. There have been reasons to deplore academic environment of Kashmir University due to absence of watchdog called critical reason that Philosophy institutionalizes forcing more bright students to contemplate choosing other universities outside the State and now, one important disqualification, has been overcome. Humanities have especially been in bad shape due to exile of the Queen called Philosophy. One can now ho...

Reading Rashid Nazki’s Siriyyat Religions have had a bad press for some reasons for last few centuries. It is perceived by critics of religions that they intimidate, they require belief without or even against evidence, build their case on fear or hope while despising intelligence, are ever on war with healthy instincts, side with the oppressors, make people sleep or daydream, require following so many laws that most fail to observe and cause unnecessary guilt, censure freedom of thought in the name of blasphemy laws, tell incredible stories if taken only literally, are vulnerable to violent, misogynist, fundamentalist readings and divide people. There is a famous essay “Why I am not a Christian?” by Russell and less famous (notorious) book Why I am not a Muslim? by Ibn Warraq (both to be read along with rejoinders from Warren Rachele and Pervez Manzoor respectively). A few other equivalents against other religious positions have also been published. We find on internet proliferating...

A solution that once came to their rescue could be tried today as well. It is heeding the best minds who know both tradition and modernity intimately. Should we teach or not teach evolution to children in schools? Should traditional philosophy and some exposure to modern philosophy be allowed/encouraged or discouraged in our schools? Should all major schools of ilm-ul-kalam be taught along with the cutting edge debates on a host of issues we hardly imagine as part of public discourse? Should the meaning of Islamic art or art in general form integral part of curriculum for all? Should traditional Muslim view of Caliphate/Imamate, modern political Islam, democracy, new interpretations from new approaches to religions, social and natural sciences that avoid mentioning or taking sides on God as their methodological principle, world religions including archaic wisdom traditions and dozens of theological and philosophical schools that have developed in the history of Islamicate world be ...

Reading Jamal Khawja on Islam in the Liberal World Long back, Ulema in India including Kashmir had been approached to articulate and defend their understanding of Islam in philosophical idiom in order to facilitate dialogue between religions and with academicians. The questions asked included: what constituted reality  for them and how one knows it. It is another matter that the tersely formulated questionnaire was greeted with silence in Kashmir.  The idea was spearheaded, among others, by Prof. Jamal Khawja as Director of a project Philosophical Dialogue between Ulema and Modern Scholars sponsored  by Indian Council for Philosophical Research, New Delhi. Khwaja is one of the very few significant living Muslim philosophers India has produced. His Quest for Islam , Authenticity and Islamic Liberalism , Islam and Modernity and Living the Quran in Our Times constitute sustained meditations on the hard problem of being an authentic human being and authentic Muslim in ...

Kashmir’s architecture recalled the glory of God and both dignity and humility of man. The question of our attitude towards the Sacred is a question of life and death and if doesn’t figure anywhere with the seriousness it deserves in our dwellings or city planning, it is a choice of which all those who are thereby affected need to be informed about. How little do architects, not to speak of masons and carpenters and people that work for know about the significance of Symbolism and other largely forgotten aspects of traditional art of architecture say colours, directions, dimensions, is known to us all. Architecture is today mostly engineering and hardly art form. Ours is the ugliest age in history and our sense of beauty so impoverished, as those like AKC who are better qualified to talk about our standards of beauty would say. Costs of forgetting God while building houses       Traditionally, houses are to be built at the Centre of the world or s...

The quest for wisdom never ends; every experience, every great artist/philosopher has something to teach us. Teach us to care and not to care/ Teach us to sit still.  (Eliot) The purpose of life is to seek happiness, declare Chinese and many other sages from the world, including those from the Muslim world. And fortunately, all of us can find happiness: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” And it depends upon our choice: “No man is happy who does not think himself so.” Tolstoy reported that he found the happiest people among Russian peasants. To master the art and science of happiness one needs to understand a few points noted especially by Stoic philosophers. And one can finish reading the masterpieces of Stoic philosophy – The Art of Living by Epictetus and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in a day or two. And reflecting on gems there is enough insurance for life against all that may make us unhappy. Let us measure ...

Reading Benazir’s Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West There are some important books that Muslim world should have taken better note of. They have something important to say though certain things might be objected to on both religious and philosophical grounds. Some selections from them deserve serious consideration. Such works include works of almost all the authors approvingly quoted in the last chapter of Benazir Bhutto’s Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West . The problems that Benazir highlights are indeed noteworthy. She notes, for instance, that “now almost half the world’s Muslims are illiterate. The combined GDP of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is about the same as that of France, a single European country. More books are translated annually from other languages into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic over the past one hundred years. The 15 million citizens of tiny Greece buy more books annually than do al...