Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reading Kierkegaard, Buber, and Heschel on prayer as listening and seeing why God can’t refuse to grant prayers of sages. It is often suspected or believed that the stars are silent and man encounters a deaf sky. Man’s attempt to talk to the stars has, however, been the most indefatigable. Beyond the stars, man has been more desperate about news from the other side of grave while newer philosophies and exoteric theologies have claimed that man is imprisoned in the world while the other world is far off and we need to die before we can enjoy colours or smells of Paradise. Man’s attempt has been to seek freedom against the iron walls of life of bondage. This attempt to talk to the stars and beyond and to the other side of grave and break free from the prison of self/world/mechanism is called prayer. Prayer is an adventure to the most distant or hidden or most sublime heights we can imagine and it achieves the deepest longing of all of us for union, for meeting, for talking to the Belo

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

The Master on Life and Afterlife. Ghalib is a sad angel, Who from the intoxication of nearness Has brought divine revelation In the form of his ghazals. (Yusuf Hussain’s translation. Other translations here are from the same work Persian Ghazals of Ghalib )       Indeed Ghalib has bought a “revelation” that has been such a healing and joy and a fount of beauty. One must be thankful for the privilege of being born in a land and with a language of Ghalib. Ghalib’s Islam as an “Answer” to Difficult Questions Every Muslim in the subcontinent who can read poetry but is disturbed over routine disharmonies or complains about this or that issue in life would be required to answer one question on the Day of Judgment: Have you read Ghalib? Ghalib “answers” all our complaints we might conceive or imagine against Fate or providence or people or God. Since God created Ghalib, He has been largely relieved of entertaining many a question on wonder, love, beauty, betrayal, poverty, faith and inf

Zargar masterfully handled language and sounds too profane at places and deconstructs romantic-mystic, revelation-intuition or scriptural-experiential binaries. All great poets and mystics and philosophers have one thing in common: rejection of Mullaism identifiable with dry, empty, legalistic, judgmental dualistic mode of thought and action. One might loosely identify it with zahir parasti (worship of form/letter) that has been associated with a class of jurists and those scholars who don’t pay attention to esoteric or mystical/symbolist dimension of scripture. In the Muslim world Mullaism has donned political guise. The term Mulla has lost its honorific connotations from quite some time though this degeneration in its traditional status has been especially exacerbated in modern age. Newer movements and trends in philosophical, theological, and socio-economic spheres have all contributed to delegitimizing Mullaism as an ideology that once had a significant say in public spaces. Ne

Angels greet all of us though we are often absent to return the same. The best or most influential minds happen to transcend simplistic construction and politicized framing of the tussle between the two. Key mutual misgivings need to be addressed.       If religions seem to divide mankind, mythologies, artistic/mystical/wisdom traditions and metaphysics underlying them that secular thinking better engage unite. Famous new atheists like Dawkins and Harris don’t fail to register their love for certain images of the Sacred. In fact Harris proposed something like Unitarian advaitic spirituality for secular worshippers. Worship we must anyway. Russell’s “Free Man’s Worship” or Spinoza’s intellectual love of God or Heidegger’s paean to Being or Derrida’s commitment to Justice and Levinas’s to the Other all succeed to preserve an essential aspect of spiritual life. It was Whitehead who noted that “the essence of education is it be religious.” Buddha didn’t propose anything that fights s

Dialogue between Religious and Secular Sensibilities and Questioning Religionist-Liberal Divide From India to Turkey to Egypt religion has helped political parties win power. Religion is one of the key factors influencing outcome of elections in many officially secular states. Religion is driving number of big industries and priests/religious leaders continue to be king makers or influence much of power relations. Despite all this ours is characterized as a secular age and we have no choice of travelling backwards in time or imaging an isolated place in future where secularism hasn’t encroached. Let us note extent of secularization one has to engage with to remain. Influence of Secular Critiques of Religion We are all, willy nilly, secular in certain sense, in certain areas. Design of our cities, homes, roads, certain profanation of sacred spaces, worldwide domination of secularism in political constitutions, text books, academia, certain secularization of dress etc. are all with