Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Badri Raina is Kashmir’s contribution to Marxist discourse in India. A vast majority of people are not capable of thinking – or don’t care to think – and don’t distinguish between opinion and truth. (If you doubt, visit facebook and see how illogical, uninformed, prejudiced comments don it). The question is why so many brilliant and gifted minds, especially in the modern world, have been alienated from religion and have, in order to maintain loyalty to critical reason, taken other refuges than what we would call the refuge of religion? Isn’t it strange that religions should be convicted in the court of reason when their ultimate principle (Logos/Truth/Good/Buddhi/ Aql) grounds reason and its deepest motivations that secular humanism has championed? I don’t intend to attempt to clarify this issue but ask a somewhat related question – is it the religion of the masses or priests or saints and philosophers that fails the test of common sense and critical rationality – while reading one...

Here systematic explication of postmodernism is not possible so a few points will be made though I risk certain oversimplification. It must be borne in mind that there are divergent interpretations of and approaches to understand postmodernism. Muslims are required to appreciate the spirit of the times and recognize the signs of the Lord in change, in history, in new unfolding events.  A   Mujaddid   or reviver of religion is born after every 100 years to help cope up with the new challenges. Today we try to appreciate the challenge from postmodern thought currents are posing and opportunities they are providing for exploitation on our part. First it is to be noted that ours is, willy-nilly, the postmodern age. Living in a globalised world, a multicultural world we might suffer cultural shock or pathologically reaction to the cultural or religious other. Salafi-Sufi polarisation or Shia Sunni skirmishes that have intensified recently for reasons we know can be better un...

Kashmir has a mystical heritage and identity. And it has politically been transformed by socialistic vision of Marxists and Sheikh Abdullah. However, Marxism and mysticism have been mutually suspicious and that has hampered tackling the questions of both politics and religion. So we ask today why is religion perceived as an enemy of a socialist or communist state? It is replied that because it is “the opium of the peoples.” It lulls workers to sleep. It is thus anti-revolutionary. It is complicit with capitalism. It too exploits in the name of God when it extracts wealth from gullible masses. It creates false substitutes like the goods of the otherworld so that people don’t take the problems of this world very seriously. It encourages detachment that conflicts with the spirit of active involvement needed for changing the order of the world. It reconciles people to present ills by attributing them to fate or karma . It says resist not evil and believes that change of heart in the capi...

Without reading Marx one is illiterate in modern thought Like it or not, Marx tops the list of the most influential thinkers of the modern age. He has helped shape, or influence, not only politics, but economics, literature and literary criticism, philosophy, liberation theology and almost every important stream of humanities. Nothing makes sense in the capitalist world except in light of Marx. Without reading Marx one is illiterate in modern thought. Name any philosopher or writer or political personality with whom one day (Ist May), every year, is identified across the world?  Reading Marx helps explain the world we live in and partly help fighting injustice in it. All those who curse money power or rat race for competition and hanker for guaranteed employment, free education and healthcare, more leisure, holidays, pensions, social welfare schemes,  all kinds of insurances against exigencies, and have reasons to complain about banks and other capitalist institutions, and k...

It is asserted by some Marxist critics of religion that Marxism and Mysticism should not be compared. Mysticism is ahistorical and it is concerned only with the individual salvation and it ignores injustice and oppression in the world. All these assertions don’t bear close scrutiny. To have a historical sense implies to be concerned with the present reality, to be concerned with transforming it, to be aware of material or temporal factors affecting our present reality. Mysticism has deep historical sense in all these senses. Prophets have originated civilizations and mystics have embellished it, beautified it, developed it. All great thinkers, with few exceptions, in all traditional civilizations have been either mystics or influenced significantly by mysticism. Most of great revolutionaries in history have mystical training or orientation. Great traditional art and architecture has been moulded by mystical impulse. Great literature in traditional civilizations is essentially mystic...