Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

What do we owe to victims? Everything, Levinas would say. Today many flood victims are crying for help and few are left to care or speak for them. Who can say that we care as we should?  Our tradition records that those who could and didn’t care would be thrown into a similar situation and tasted want and lack. The first question is: Are we in any way responsible or guilty for miseries of flood victims? Yes, argue Dostovesky and Levinas. What do we owe to victims? Everything, Levinas would say. Nothing breaks one’s back more than reading Levinas as he shows how little we really care about God in the Other, in neighbours, in strangers. He shows that we can’t even claim to be beginners in the science and practice of ethics. For him, philosophy is ethics and this is where ancient philosophers and world religions meet – philosophy is fundamentally a practice of virtue and not ratiocination or speculation and that explains the notion of prophets as teachers of wisdom ( hikmah ). We ...

A question among questions, after the floods, is how we respond to suffering at the personal level after we have debated how it was caused. Let there be no doubt that suffering is somehow caused, or invited, by people, and God lets sins punish us (rather than punish us Himself as a revengeful being), especially when these are sins against fellow-beings or the environment ( huqooq-ul-ibaad  or  muamlaat ) . What we need now is motivation to rehabilitate, to fight depression, to stop regretting what couldn’t be avoided. Let us note that suffering can help nations be reborn. It can act as a providential mechanism for infusing a new spirit in us. In fact, there are signs that we are getting spiritually primed. The disaster brought our compassion to the fore; friendship and relationships have not died; we are a community, not merely a society; our religious and social organizations and activism are our great asset; and so many other qualities. We have seen how the ...

Only man laughs in the whole animal world because only he is subject to sorrow, says Nietzsche One unsung heroic virtue that has helped us to fight is the Kashmiri’s sense of humour. If fortune laughs on us, why can’t we laugh in turn on it? Some deaths in floods occurred because of heart attack or fright or we can say lack of sense of humour. Creation itself is ultimately nothing but God’s play and we are advised to play our part in a drama staged by God. No jokes! Creation (and destruction as well) is a joke ( for  a consciousness that witnesses rather than judges) that can be enjoyed best as a play of God, or divine joke and that explains rather than contradicts the Quranic statement that all things are created in truth. It is all God’s play and our job here on earth is to dance on understanding the motiveless process of creation and joy that wells up from depths of heart for no reason. Shakespeare said that all life is a stage and let us play the part as flood victims in th...

Houses to show off and not to live in – this sums up the essence of ‘modern’ Kashmiri architecture.  Houses for others, for puffing up our social egos, are against divine logic and invite disasters. It is inconceivable to claim nationhood, a regional identity, a religion, a culture and forget indigenous architecture. What constitutes traditional architecture, Islamic architecture, Kashmiri architecture is almost unknown to modern Kashmiris. And we build houses and other buildings – the State builds – in total ignorance of time-honoured cultural and technical considerations. If for no other sin, we deserved drowning for this sin of ignoring or rejecting Divine Principles that architecture needs to embody. It is a moment to wake up, to hold collective repentance, and turn to timeless wisdom in designing our living space, our houses, our government establishments. The spiritual, psychological and health costs of the architecture we employ today are enormous and we are too ...

Floods were invited, and future floods can be more devastating. If we know what caused and precipitated floods, why can’t we take care now? But the question is whether we have the vision and the will to make the difference and avoid future disasters? Experts agree that the floods were caused by the following factors: Unplanned urbanization Encroaching agricultural and low lying/marshy lands Blocking normal routes and not maintaining flood channels Squeezing the space of water bodies It has been observed that during the floods, waters have roughly retaken their original space or reclaimed rights lost to land. Now it needs no rocket science to see the solution in following measures that will restore the original state. We see technological solutions being proposed. We submit this theory, that project, to undo the damage we have already done. We dredge, build new flood channels, and other such solutions are currently being debated. What is not being discussed is the moral pr...

All this is not in anyway absolving those who are guilty of massive planning blunders in designing our urbanizatioin, housing, roads, and flood control measures It can never be asserted that a given suffering has been imposed because of victim’s sins. The Biblical account of the Book of Job clearly states that even righteous people can suffer and suffering could well be a trial or result of laws that constitute the world defined in terms of disequilibrium. The thesis that all suffering is   necessarily because of sin is refuted by the existence of suffering of innocent children. Flood washed away children as well. However it is to be noted that evils that befall us are in a sense invited or deserved because God attributes goodness to Himself and evil to our   nafs. The current flood can be in principle attributed to such collective sins as destruction of environment, love of vanity, wrong planning etc. and the widespread perception that it was targeted operation of floo...