Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Amin Kamil, the poet, the novelist, the researcher, the critic, the organizer, is no more. Yesterday ended a colourful and significant chapter in Kashmir’s cultural history. Gone is a special chapter in the literary history – the great decades long battle of ideas, of perceptions, of sensibilities between giants of Kashmiri literature – Rahi and Kamil intellectual duo is now history.  Without judging in ideological terms, and press for   adbi   fatwas, at least on aesthetic plane, we could enjoy proceedings of literary exchange between “rival” schools of Kashmiri literature. As a student of philosophy and literary criticism, I would draw attention to a couple of points on this day when we are shocked by the absence of a grand man of letters. Our current tragedy – political and cultural – is partly attributable to our amnesia and disowning our best writers. Most of the elderly writers we ignore and leave them to die suffering is a bitter sense of ingratitude from our side. Since how

Khoanaen Nawa is the best to read non-Muslim poets on Karbala Aaj tak roti hae teray gam mei her mahfil Hussain Iss mein koi shak nahi to hae jehan ka dil Hussain ( Maenk ) There are only two categories of people in the world: those who know they love Hussain(a.s) and those who don’t know though they too, deep in their being, stand witness to the glory that Hussain(r.a) is. And one can club all great thinkers, artists, poets, saints with the first camp. (None can claim to be indifferent to the tragedy of Karbala). One can almost set the love of the Prophet (SAW) and, by implication, love of Hussain(R.A), as a criterion of distinguishing believers from disbelievers.     “Ham haen haediri,” “ham haen hussaini” is indeed a universal slogan and Hussain(a.s) as a symbol of protest “against real suffering” and as a “sigh of the oppressed, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions” (seeing how Yazids seem to triumph everywhere one recalls Marx’s point about reli

We have seen many explanations being proposed from Friday pulpits to streets to   Majlis-e- Toubas (gathering for repentance). We have seen sharply divergent views. Victims and those who have been spared may not share explanations. Ibn Arabi, the Shaykh-i-Akbar, provides one of the most profound analysis of the issue of evil. He is the most consistent metaphysician in Islam who has dealt with the issue of evil vis-à-vis God. For him, at the risk of oversimplification, there is: No such thing as evil; what we call evil is only evil from our perspective, the perspective of a finite desiring interested self. What is evil to a cat is not so for a dog and in turn what is evil to a dog will be good to dog’s predator. What is good for a patient may not be so for a doctor. What was loss to shopkeepers became a gain for those who afford only Sunday market. While some lost jobs, masons, carpenters and all kinds of unskilled labours got jobs after the flood. So whose good and whose evil? Div

All life is prayer for those who really know the secret of prayer One of the greatest tragedies of modernity is that we have forgotten how to live because we have forgotten how to pray.  We don’t know how to understand seemingly disproportional sawab vs. gunah calculus mentioned in traditions regarding offering or missing a prayer.  So much is our ignorance of what prayer is or how it defines human state ( the argument so forcefully put forth in Prayer Fashions Man: Frithjof Schuon on the Spiritual Life)  that we know only the binary of farz vs. qarz  while discoursing on prayer. Post-flood there were reports that azan was given at 12 p.m and  more people began to offer nimaz out of fear of God. If people knew how to go to mosques they would forget the need to gossip in market place or cafes or intoxication of taverns.   With Ghalib’s “Maloom hae sawaabi taaet-o-zuhd/Per tabiiyet idhr nahi jati” and the sentiment “Ham mawwahid haen hamara kaesh hae tarki rasoon” shared by m

A question among questions, after the floods, is how we respond to suffering at the personal level after we have debated how it was caused. Let there be no doubt that suffering is somehow caused, or invited, by people, and God lets sins punish us (rather than punish us Himself as a revengeful being), especially when these are sins against fellow-beings or the environment ( huqooq-ul-ibaad  or  muamlaat ) . What we need now is motivation to rehabilitate, to fight depression, to stop regretting what couldn’t be avoided. Let us note that suffering can help nations be reborn. It can act as a providential mechanism for infusing a new spirit in us. In fact, there are signs that we are getting spiritually primed. The disaster brought our compassion to the fore; friendship and relationships have not died; we are a community, not merely a society; our religious and social organizations and activism are our great asset; and so many other qualities. We have seen how the hearts of Kashmiris anyw

Only man laughs in the whole animal world because only he is subject to sorrow, says Nietzsche One unsung heroic virtue that has helped us to fight is the Kashmiri’s sense of humour. If fortune laughs on us, why can’t we laugh in turn on it? Some deaths in floods occurred because of heart attack or fright or we can say lack of sense of humour. Creation itself is ultimately nothing but God’s play and we are advised to play our part in a drama staged by God. No jokes! Creation (and destruction as well) is a joke ( for  a consciousness that witnesses rather than judges) that can be enjoyed best as a play of God, or divine joke and that explains rather than contradicts the Quranic statement that all things are created in truth. It is all God’s play and our job here on earth is to dance on understanding the motiveless process of creation and joy that wells up from depths of heart for no reason. Shakespeare said that all life is a stage and let us play the part as flood victims in the dr

Houses to show off and not to live in – this sums up the essence of ‘modern’ Kashmiri architecture.  Houses for others, for puffing up our social egos, are against divine logic and invite disasters. It is inconceivable to claim nationhood, a regional identity, a religion, a culture and forget indigenous architecture. What constitutes traditional architecture, Islamic architecture, Kashmiri architecture is almost unknown to modern Kashmiris. And we build houses and other buildings – the State builds – in total ignorance of time-honoured cultural and technical considerations. If for no other sin, we deserved drowning for this sin of ignoring or rejecting Divine Principles that architecture needs to embody. It is a moment to wake up, to hold collective repentance, and turn to timeless wisdom in designing our living space, our houses, our government establishments. The spiritual, psychological and health costs of the architecture we employ today are enormous and we are too callous even t

Floods were invited, and future floods can be more devastating. If we know what caused and precipitated floods, why can’t we take care now? But the question is whether we have the vision and the will to make the difference and avoid future disasters? Experts agree that the floods were caused by the following factors: Unplanned urbanization Encroaching agricultural and low lying/marshy lands Blocking normal routes and not maintaining flood channels Squeezing the space of water bodies It has been observed that during the floods, waters have roughly retaken their original space or reclaimed rights lost to land. Now it needs no rocket science to see the solution in following measures that will restore the original state. We see technological solutions being proposed. We submit this theory, that project, to undo the damage we have already done. We dredge, build new flood channels, and other such solutions are currently being debated. What is not being discussed is the moral proble