Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reading Bedil in Postmodern Times The most important problem today is how to find meaning in life. Failure is find meaning helps explain reckless addiction to drugs and drinking oneself to death, quiet despair, much of unwarranted violence and bitterness in relationships, irritability of almost everyone you meet, frenzied misadventures such as reckless driving, especially the youth driving bikes and Arab men driving cars too fast for life to enjoy the feast. Since most people live as if God/the Sacred has virtually no place in their lives and they have failed in the task of self creation – a problem that tormented Nietzsche – how will life become a sacrament again is the question. Anxiety to plainly – definitively – interpret, fix and impose meanings of canonical texts by ideologues/fundamentalists is a problematic reaction to the problem. Where is our refuge then?       Postmodern thinkers living under the shadow of Nietzsche generally agree with the stateme...

Nothing makes sense except in the light of love. Love is central to answering all the three ultimately important questions: “(1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What may I hope?”       What is the most basic term in light of which every other term in the scripture of life or religion needs to be understood? It is love/metaphysic of love. In order to understand what religion means, one needs to master the hermeneutic of love. What constitutes the Royal Road to God and Religion’s most basic demand? Surrender of ego/self will before the non-self/God. And this transcendence of ego is an opening of love. God as Wudood can’t fail to attract/love us and we can’t resist the Irresistible Subduer ( al-Qahar ) – who is not willing to be subdued by love? Man can resist it only at the cost of hell which is choosing self exile from the Beloved. There is really only Heaven – God/Pure Consciousness as Joy/Bliss – here and now  but most men, most of the times...

The quest for wisdom never ends; every experience, every great artist/philosopher has something to teach us. Teach us to care and not to care/ Teach us to sit still.  (Eliot) The purpose of life is to seek happiness, declare Chinese and many other sages from the world, including those from the Muslim world. And fortunately, all of us can find happiness: “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.” And it depends upon our choice: “No man is happy who does not think himself so.” Tolstoy reported that he found the happiest people among Russian peasants. To master the art and science of happiness one needs to understand a few points noted especially by Stoic philosophers. And one can finish reading the masterpieces of Stoic philosophy – The Art of Living by Epictetus and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius in a day or two. And reflecting on gems there is enough insurance for life against all that may make us unhappy. Let us measure ...

There are enough arguments to convince the best minds regarding the plausibility of immortality from a philosophical and not just religious viewpoint Whitehead has referred to basic insights or initial intuitions or feelings of mankind calling for explanations or justifications. Our desire for immortality is one of these initial intuitions, or persistent dreams, or impulses. If we begin with this fundamental impulse of the human spirit, the question is not disputing their “truth” on this or that so-called scientific ground or explaining it away but how to express it. Believers and non-believers needn’t dispute the matter taking all or none position but may better have a dialogue regarding how far we have succeeded in defining or understanding it correctly.       Taking affairs of life in a playful spirit – but not our assigned or chosen roles in that play – is taking Heaven seriously. Often, believers believe in Heaven but hardly mind it and it is so-called n...

Reading Iqbal on the Beloved Prophet (SAW) Who was Iqbal? The best description is by his son that he is a lover of the Prophet (SAW). The rest is a corollary or an exemplification. And who is the Prophet he loved? Ideal pole of man, the Meaning of everything, the Alpha and the Omega of all human endeavours. “Since Muslims love you, you should let beard grow” a Molvi advised Iqbal. He replied, somewhat humorously, “You have shaved it from inside and displayed from outside and I have shaved it from outside but let it grow inside.”  One reason for his failure to go to Hajj, opines Mr Ghulam Beigh Neerang – and one feels agreeing – could be providential as he couldn’t afford to see the Prophet’s place and still live. Iqbal was seen to be occupying splendid place in the hierarchy of Prophet’s beloved by a Kashmiri who didn’t know him and he rushed to Lahore to inform him. He refused a job that required his wife to be part of the parties he had to attend. Asked if you have had deed...

Peep deep into the heart of Kashmiris and see the image of the beloved being worshipped. No guesses.     Lovers choose to die and don’t listen to pleas for abandoning “infatuation” or juvenile romantic fantasies. Death dance they indulge is a perceived by them – and by many great tragedians – as a ritual of healing. Souls are healed and what happens to the bodies and other this-worldly businesses is not important in their view. And there are at least bouts of such “infatuation”  if not fully involved love affair in almost every Kashmiri. And occasionally this passion asserts and burns everything on its way. And that is precisely what is happening post-Burhan. Peep deep into the heart of Kashmiris and see the image of the beloved being worshipped. No guesses. All these unmistakably point to a diagnosis of affliction of love. And it doesn’t matter what the object of love is or how rational it is or what possibility of consummation of such a relationship is. For them Tols...

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...

Science will die when it fails to wonder. Socrates was declared the wisest Greek because he knew it is all Mystery and he knows nothing. Islam declared regarding the First Principle or Godhead – the Essence, the Truth or Zaat - that none knows it and we better acknowledge our bewilderment. Sufi’s journey ends in bewilderment – and therefore it never ends because one can’t cease experiencing revelations of Being, of which Heidegger, echoing mystics, talks. Love never ceases to entice, to devastate egos, to lead to greater and higher joys. Science will die when it fails to wonder or concludes it knows anything in all its depths and nuances. An artist keeps seeking more and more perfect embodiment of Infinite Beauty he elusively perceives or worships. Who can claim he knows infinite subtlety of dance of subatomic particles culminating in you and me who ask questions, zillions of possible neural connections, beauty and softness of moss on hard, dark rocks, healing power and otherwor...

Wisdom of Prophet Muhammad, Peace be Upon Him, according to Ibn Arabi Is it possible to discover a point of view that comprehends the truth in all points of view? Is it possible to state one’s “worldview” or vision that could resist any conceivable criticism or deconstruction? To these questions there is a positive answer. And that is a vision that unconditionally submits to Truth or totality of all truths, a vision of radical innocence that is open to all experience, a humility to qualify all one’s assertions or claims of access regarding anything including such ideals as Beauty, Truth, Justice and Goodness or revelations of Being or pursuit of Perfection and thus not claim absoluteness for any immanent thing or idea. And one who embodies the great Station that is not a particular station or ideological viewpoint and thus embraces the reality or truth of all stations,  is Muhammad (SAW). This is how “the Greatest Master” – as he is called by a vast majority of Ulama and Sai...