Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Unlike Holderlin and Rilke, Iqbal is still awaiting his Heidegger, who could appropriate and present him for the post-Nietzschean world audience. Unlike Heidegger, he has received little attention from great philosophers and theologians of the world. Even the Muslim world has been largely ignoring him or just packaging his complex and enormously fecund and subtle mystical and metaphysical insights into some neat and clear formulations. Due attention to his existential and metaphysical thought has been overshadowed by overemphasis on his political thought. He has so far been written off by major histories of philosophy into margins of modern Muslim thought through his vast output was addressed to modern man as such and not to the Muslims only.       Under his unique literary genius and combining all traditionally-recognized approaches to the Ultimate – poetry, philosophy, religion and mysticism – has immense power to speak to an age marred by various crises that fundam...

IQBAL’S APPROPRIATION OF EVOLUTION IN ISLAM: A CRITIQUE IQBAL REVIEW (Issue: APR-2007)  Pages 167 to 185 http://iqbalcyberlibrary.net//pdf/IRE-APR-2007.pdf EXISTENCE OF EVIL, THEODICY AND SUFISM IQBAL REVIEW (Issue: APR-OCT-2009) Pages 54 to 97 http://iqbalcyberlibrary.net//pdf/IRE-APR-OCT-2009.pdf MUSLIM MODERNISM, IQBAL, AND DEMYTHOLOGIZATION: A PERENNIALIST PERSPECTIVE IQBAL REVIEW (Issue: APR-OCT-2010) Pages 93 to 125 http://iqbalcyberlibrary.net//pdf/IRE-APR-OCT-2010.pdf IQBAL‘S CONCEPT OF EGO IN THE LIGHT OF TRADITIONAL METAPHYSICS AND SUFISM IQBAL REVIEW (Issue: APR-OCT-2011) Pages 86 to 120 http://iqbalcyberlibrary.net//pdf/IRE-APR-OCT-2011.pdf THE FORGOTTEN TREASURE OF IQBAL’S RECONSTRUCTION A Joint Paper with Dr. Ibtasam Thakur IQBAL REVIEW (Issue: APR-OCT-2012) Pages 127 to 142 http://iqbalcyberlibrary.net//pdf/IRE-APR-OCT-2012.pdf

حقیقت عظمٰی جاننے اور اس سے رابطے کے لئے انسان کے پاس چار طریقے رہے ہیں مذہب،فلسفہ، تصوّف(سرّیت)اور شاعری۔سریت یا تصوف کو سرے سے رد کرناانسان کے ایک حس کو معطل کرنا ہے۔ ان چاروں دبستانوں کو اپنی اپنی حد اختیار میں رکھ کر انکو حقیقت کے کامل عرفان کا ذریعہ بنانا انسانکی کامل تشفگی کا ضامن ہے۔ یہ سب ایک دوسرے کی تعبیر و تفہیم میں مدد دے سکتے ہیں۔مذہب کے ڈانڈے فلسفہ و سریت سے اور تینوں شاعری کے ہمنوا بن جاتے ہیں۔ اقبال دنیا کی ان چند بڑی ہستیوں میں شامل ہیں جو ا ن سب طریقوں سے اعتنا رکھتے ہیں اور یہ انکی عالمگیر مقبولیت کی ایک وجہ ہے۔آج ہم انکیے تصوّف کی جہت کے مطالعہ کے سلسلے میں چند اہم نکتے زیرِبحث لاتے ہیں۔       دوسرے اہم علوم جنمیں فقہ، حدیث اور فلسفہ و سائنس کی بہت سی جہات اور انکی ترقی شامل ہیں کی طرح تصوّف کے برگ و با ربھی عرب سے باہر ہی ظاہر ہوے۔تصوّف عجم میں پھلا پھولا۔تصوّف ہمیشہ سے دین کا حسن یا اسکی تکمیل یا اسکی اخلاقی و روحانی جہات کی بازیافت کے طور اسلام کا جزو لا ینفک یا مقصود گردانا گیا ہے۔اس کے لےٗ احسان کی اصطلاح مستعمل تھی۔ اکابرِ صوفیا...

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...

Unless deep thinking is done on the issue we would continue to have much heat and little light in debates on Islamic law. Instead of saying what does Islam say we should ask what do Muslim jurists say on this or that point say Caliphate/Islamic State, rights of religious/sexual minorities/women, freedom of belief/disbelief, triple talaq, qurbani, permissibility of music, compatibility of modern banking with Islam, dress code and grooming/hair code. To claim that Islam says this or that, is, generally speaking, impossible. We can only strive to know (to make best approximations) what Islam says/God really means/intends on questions usually asked – on other questions that are more foundational we usually don’t need to ask and do largely know  what Islam says as we know what our fitrah demands or what aqli saleem requires or  what conscience allows. And jurists differ in their conclusions on almost all these questions. They don’t differ in matters of worship to significant ex...