Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Who can vow that he has seen ten people he knows intimately and none had significant behavioural problems. Swift’s idea in his satirical masterpiece A Modest Proposal which proposed that the poor Irish may consider easing their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich people was to shock people out of complacency and insensitivity towards issues that they pass by. I think in Kashmir it is impossible to shock people perhaps for the reasons karwan kae dil sae ehsas-i- ziyaan jata raha . Or is it because we have converted life into an object of art? Or we are Nietzschean Zarathustras not vulnerable to pity and sons of the soil of saints who are said to be “beyond good and evil" ?  Humane Slaughter of New Generation “Papa, would you please slaughter me?” a five year old child asked.   “Why?” asked the shocked father. “Then I will join God and willn’t have to go the school.”   I heard this dialogue few days back and can assert that something simila...

Yes, converting life into a work of art is the secret. There is a heaven here and a heaven there, and there is some difference between the two. If we fail to cultivate the former, we fail to win the later. How seriously do we take God’s invitation to visit heaven or to create/cultivate a space called heaven? This can be known by the quality of lives we live. Very few people live life as if heaven is its constant horizon and depth dimension and thus “reserve” their seats in otherworldly heaven. All education and religion consist in learning how to experience this world as heaven. Our A grades may mean F grades in life’s examination. Our examination centres are pits of hell thanks to vices of competition and memorization of trivialities or information we hardly need in life. Heaven requires cultivating Imagination and Art that we have exiled. Our fragmented pleasure seeking, greedy, haughty, mean, depressed, complaining, lobbying, cursing – in short alienated lives in hell of our own...

How primordial and universal faith’s claim is and how crucial and fundamental its invitation – and how we are all summoned to respond, willingly or unwillingly, to the call and can’t afford indifference – is seen in a deeper penetration into the meaning of Shahadah or Witnessing. One becomes Muslim by uttering shahadah . The dictum that “by living one religion fully one lives all religions” may be illustrated by noting the deeper meanings of the act of   shahadah .   But first, a few remarks on what witnessing means for metaphysicians and mystics:       The point to note is that we can’t give witness of what we don’t know or have not verified for ourselves in some sense. If we haven’t known God or Unity, how can we be asked to provide witness of the same? A clue to the answer is provided by metaphysicians-Sufis who point to the fact that one of God’s names is   Shahid .   It is really God who witnesses His Own Glory and Beauty or Himself...

What is freedom of expression? Freedom to argue, to persuade, to demonstrate, to plead for one’s convictions or ideas. It is not freedom to curse, to mock, to deface, to hurt, to kill. No civilization accepts this latter view of freedom. Another point is, what is freedom? Is it license to follow our desires or passions or it results from understanding and following the rational view? In other words, is it slavery of body and psyche or freedom of spirit?  I don’t think one needs further discussion on this point. My point today is little mystical and metaphysical understanding of the phenomenon of prophecy, especially the Prophet of Islam (SAW). Once we consider this,   one can pity the ignorance of those who seek to slander both freedom and truth in the name of spurious notions of them. A world not sharing the faith of a Muslim can't understand the deeper philosophy that grounds this faith and if it does it, it will understand why Muslims love the Prophet (SAW) above everythi...