Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

We hail Shaikhul Alam as our patron saint, as Alamdar but there are huge academic debates that have generated much heat and little light. There are some who contest the term Shaikhul Alam and favour Nund Rishi. There are others who spend much energy on proving Lalla’s Saivist or Islamic credentials. There is huge confusion on what is authentic text of our Sheikh. There are editions of Shaikh’s poetry that reflect compiler’s ideological orientation. There are debates that seem to be never ending because wrongly framed on Arabic/Persian/Sanskrit origin of Reshiyyat. Some have an agenda of projecting Lalla as the saint of Kashmir while for some it is debatable if she existed at all. There is much loose talk and conceptual confusion in the use of such terms as mysticism, Sufism and Reshiyyat in writings on Shaikhul Alam and his legacy or Kashmiri’s spiritual landscape. I propose to turn to scholars of perennialist school to clarify key terms and accordingly explicate the convergence and ...

It is not usually recognized that Islamic spirit is utterly incompatible with present day consumerist culture sponsored by free market capitalist economy. It is not a serious matter of debate in theorists of Islamic banking what to finance and why to finance. Any financing enterprise that calls itself Islamic must make very clear its often undefined policy regarding extent of compatibility between Islam and the very question of business, manufacturing commodities as dictated by market demand fulfilling often unethical desires of people, warrantability of current currency models that use fiat money and assume dollar’s sovereignty, artificial or manipulated inflationary pressures and the very question of market in a unipoloar world manipulated by big bosses. The question is how ethical or Islamic is capitalism sponsored modern individualism that fuels demand for separate houses even at the cost of agricultural or other productive enterprises, need of private transport at huge environmen...