Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Iqbal thought that the West is a development of Islam. Willy nilly, we live in the Eupropeanized world – our political institutions, our education, our economy, our sciences, our technology and our largely secularized post-theological world in which metaphysics as traditionally understood has been displaced from the centre stage – all testify to it. In Heideggerian terms one could say that modern man’s relation to Being is marked by encounter with Europe, its science and technology. In this technologized world, the world seen as a resource, God withdraws. Man is forced to live in a world where faith as it traditionally used to be is not available. In Iqbalian terms it might be rendered as a long night of waiting for God since the world has its own uses for destinies to be shaped( “Kare jehan daraz hae ab mera intizar ker” ).       We are in the world indelibly marked by colonial legacy and are paying for the choices we have made. We have adopted colonizer’s d...

Ideal and Reality of Kashmir’s Azadi Love is more otherworldly than this worldly phenomenon. It is a currency recognized by poets, thinkers, saints and  lovers, especially youth. Worldly wise people, politicians, traders etc. hardly count it. To live under its sacred ambience calls for nothing short of metanoai of which only few individuals are capable and not larger communities. Man lives for it and by it but more as a vision, as a noble dream, as a distant horizon of his imagination and an object of contemplation  that pulls one higher and higher. It owes its terrible beauty to the freedom it evokes. It postulates a Republic that is not necessarily this worldly state. With Eric Voegelin who has been described as modern Plato, we need to note that Plato’s Republic was written as “a dramatic dialogue about human existence in society and  history and not a policy paper for reform or an ideological tract calling for apocalyptic revolution.” Its heart is the vision o...

And politicians are not trained to consider the affairs of the heart, the logic of the impossible. The heart of Kashmir problem is incurable and apparently inconsolable, and thus tragic – but gracefully redemptively tragic –  love affair with Azadi. This is like the love of the impossible in the sense loving God is impossible for John Caputo. And politicians are not trained to consider the affairs of the heart, the logic of the impossible. Many great political battles in history had some association with love affairs or pursuit of great beauty all of which are parasitic on the idea of transcendence which grounds the notion of freedom. Kashmir issue is better understood in this light. Let  me  explain.       Since Kashmir’s heart yearns for a home/beloved that it feels isn’t in sight in present dispensation though its head might advise it to resign to status quo or opt for this or that particular ideological or pragmatic solution for fulfilling...

Abstract Colonialism is ingrained in modern Western metaphysical project. The Western worldview which may be characterized as rationalist, masculine or androcentric, subject centred or egoistic, logical, dualist, outward looking or extrovert, aggressive scientific capitalist secularist humanistic and individualistic creates an environment, a worldview that is congenial to colonialist enterprise. It is logical corollary of certain of its philosophical assumptions. Perennialist traditionalist perspective provides a trenchant critique of colonialism and its background ideological framework of Western modernity.   The traditional grounds for legitimating colonialist enterprise are forcefully critiqued.   Everything for which the colonialist West stands for is rejected in favour of the marginalized voice of the traditional cultures and civilizations.   Perennialists provide alternative cognitive and epistemic universe of their own to replace modernist colonialist episte...