Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Dedicated to those who struggle to believe and silently face the trial of doubt and disbelief. “Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.”(Levinas) “Conscience is God. He is even the atheism of the atheist.” (Gandhi) There is a problem of declining faith all over the world that has of late increasingly made itself felt in our State as well. I know many young students struggling to believe but fail to find satisfactory solution to the moral and intellectual questions that popular view of belief in God received from culture seems to raise.  I know anxious parents watching their children slip into disbelief and losing respect for what they have considered holy or sacred. I know of silent atheism of many bright people who chose not to talk about it. There are a large number of thinking people including apparently very religious ones suffering from certain doubt regarding some or the other vital issue conn...

Modern historiography is based on very different presuppositions or world-view as compared to traditional/medieval historiography. They are almost incomparable. Modern man is predisposed to believe in the autonomy of Nature and refuses on principle to see it as a symbol of something else, as ayat of God, as demanding an explanation in terms of hierarchy of existence, as having anything to do with teleology and he thus refuses to acknowledge any metaphysical significance of the universe. Even many modern theologians concede this. The medieval world view is condemned for its credulity towards the notions of miracles, fairies, djinns, spirits, magic, angels etc. Modern rationalism rejects suprasensible and suprarational phenomena on a priori grounds. Premodern man could not write history objectively according to these modernist rationalist historians because he believed in miracles, “myths” and “legends” connected with supernatural happenings or performances of saints or miracle workers...