Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Understanding neo-orthodoxy ans modernity of Imam Anwar Shah Kashmiri; a peep into the lectures of Imam Kashmiri. One reason for loving the fact of being a Kashmiri and within Kashmir North Kashmir is it has produced Imam Anwar Shah Kashmiri. If one were given only one hour in life to meet the most important Kashmiri in the twentieth century, one would, arguably, choose to meet Shah Saheb. Our misfortune is that there are few, if any, in Kashmir today who are competent enough to comprehend and critically engage with a lot of things that Anwar Shah wrote including his notes on time, eschatology and ontology. He has been Kashmir’s greatest contribution to Islamic intellectualism. He suffered bitterly during his life time at the hands of lesser mortals and today he is suffering from oblivion. His legacy has been partly continued in Pakistan where some of his earlier students went after partition. He respectfully disagreed with almost all the great names of the past on certain issues – fr...

Whom one reads indicates what one is. We are born with a love for perfection and it is against human dignity to settle for mediocrity and not to pursue the best – the most beautiful. Ihsan – doing everything in a style – is the universally acknowledged human prerogative. Let us ask today how we apply this  in approaching religion and literature. Thanks to modern education there are now many people who want to understand and create the best to satisfy their intellectual and creative yearnings but few are ready to pass through the ordeal of mastering the required sciences. This doesn’t necessarily mean  formal learning but requires what the Quran calls tafakkur – thinking. And what is called thinking? It is philosophers like Ibn Sina and Heidegger who are needed to explain it. The Quran's charge against most humans is they don’t think. Do we care to know what is called thinking? Who can claim access to required disciplining of attention?       Whom ...