Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Camus on the Choice Between Politics and Morality In these testing times as chaos reigns and people talk about conscience in politics one recalls Albert Camus, one of the towering writers of the 20th century and revered as “moral conscience of his age,”  whose hero said in The Plague ( a novel about pestilence in Oran that one especially recalls living in plagued Kashmir and one can perhaps identify some major  elements and characters  in it and the problem it engages with around us without much difficulty) : “I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.” Elsewhere he remarks: “I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.”       Those who truly see God acting in history and our lives agree with Camus’ statement “Do not wait ...

I propose a few measures that appear to me best solutions to some nagging problems we all suffer from. Treating Professional Hazards We have many State appointed bakers, operating with tax money of the poor, who spoil over 80% precious cakes after months of toil and throw them to the dogs. Or many State sponsored car manufacturing units that throw into the sea over 80% of its finished products as they either don’t find roads for them or necessary oil to grease them. Professional colleges are, for the majority of students, animal farms where students are not made into productive beings but fattened for slaughter but their meet, unfortunately, is unacceptable to the public and they die like abandoned horses and old cows slow painful deaths thanks to frustration, ostracization and drudgery of applying and preparing for interviews for all kinds of posts. Therefore it is proposed that after completing degree of professional colleges, 80% of graduates should be hanged in a public ceremon...

Hardy’s Jude the Obscure shows how fate make the hero fall through sexual misconduct. Complaints against fate are legion. Not just ordinary people but poets and philosophers have been voicing them. Hardy’s Jude the Obscure shows how fate make the hero fall through sexual misconduct. Cioron, arguably after Schopnhaur the most uncompromising pessimist philosopher, is all rage against the joke that man’s fate seem to be. Kahlil Gibran asks why we aren’t consulted either at birth or at death.  Man has been sentenced (taking this life as a sentence) for sins he doesn’t know, both Kafka and Beckett seek to show in their literary works. Maugham  also portrays man’ bondage to desire and sin and huge costs of resisting it. For modern man God’s ways are simply beyond comprehension. He is hard put to discern any trace of wisdom in His actions.  Camus’ The Plague and Dostoevsky’s Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov put his case with apparently unimpeachable logic.  From Soph...