Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Religionists may lack intellectuality and scientists may lack, and abuse intelligence. It is said that once an atheist and a theist debated the question of belief in God and after they finished, the atheist became a theist and the theist an atheist – showing pointlessness of usual debates on God. Buddha when asked about God responded by silence and is also by making seemingly opposite statements depending upon the questioner’s obsession with theism or atheism. To an atheist he said that only God meaning non-self/Absolute/pure Being really is and you are nothing and to the other one that there is no God as he imagined. The Bible says that only a fool denies God and the Quran implies  that there is no possibility of entertaining doubt regarding God. How are we to understand heated debate on God between atheistic/agnostic scientists and believers of world religions including Islam? How come we can assert people like Russell, Hawking, Dawkins are fools if they deny God? How come we c...

Man has been made a slave instead of true worshipper and he has lost self confidence. There is something terribly wrong with religions as ordinarily understood and practiced, and appropriated for political ends. There is a truckload of guilt associated with non-issues, a fear psychosis promoted in the name of God understood as cosmic policeman, exploitation and oppression against women, minorities and religious other in their name. Many an unfounded superstition and distrust of reason and science has also been associated with religions. Man has been made a slave instead of true worshipper and he has lost self confidence. People have been divided, hated, killed is its name. It is no wonder that modern man who is deeply religious has found it difficult to concede what has been sold in the name of religion. Failing to find deeply fulfilling rational, moral and spiritual theory and practice of religion, he seems to have chosen agnosticism or atheism or some sort of heresy. The choice now...

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...

How primordial and universal faith’s claim is and how crucial and fundamental its invitation – and how we are all summoned to respond, willingly or unwillingly, to the call and can’t afford indifference – is seen in a deeper penetration into the meaning of Shahadah or Witnessing. One becomes Muslim by uttering shahadah . The dictum that “by living one religion fully one lives all religions” may be illustrated by noting the deeper meanings of the act of   shahadah .   But first, a few remarks on what witnessing means for metaphysicians and mystics:       The point to note is that we can’t give witness of what we don’t know or have not verified for ourselves in some sense. If we haven’t known God or Unity, how can we be asked to provide witness of the same? A clue to the answer is provided by metaphysicians-Sufis who point to the fact that one of God’s names is   Shahid .   It is really God who witnesses His Own Glory and Beauty or Himself...

Some writers (including most writers of popular fiction and tele-serials that bombard us) merely distract and entertain, some provide a certain delight as well and some useful instruction, but some destroy our ordinary consciousness and bring us face to face with something truly terrible or grand or too important to be ignored. They ask questions from us and subject us to a trial of conscience. For them “writing is a prayer,” and (their books) are considered classics. Kafka belongs to this group. We need to be jolted out of the complacent and cozy distracting entertainment and daydreaming we indulge in in newspapers, cheap serials or most popular films. Let us read Kafka straightaway.       First, one of his parables on the inaccessibility of Law/Justice/God/Meaning of which modern man complains. “He called on God, but received no answer” is a common complaint today. Most of us, at least occasionally, have felt abandoned and heard no answers from God to our...

Why is today so much confusion about religion? Why anxiety to prove one’s sect or school the best? Why declare others somehow inferior, misguided? What is misguidance, anyway? Why use this as a whip to beat whatever we don’t like? Let me assert that the essence of religion, which saves, is simple to comprehend and universally known and agreed upon by the best minds of every tradition that what we need is to start action or following the well-known Way. No books, no complicated commentaries, no elaborate polemical theses are needed to be consulted before one convinces oneself regarding this essential point. What is this essence of religion, mysticism, traditional philosophies? The following famous passage of Ibn Arabi is particularly detailed and important expression of this essential point. In this passage is summed up essential Ibn Arabî (I would claim, essential Rumi, essential Ghazzali, essential Ibn Taymiyyah, essential Sheikh-ul-Alam, essential Iqbal) and the central message o...

Wonder that lies at the heart of philosophy is understandable as Mystery It can be safely asserted that more than 99% people are blind – blind to the mystery and grandeur of things, heedless of the signs of God that all things in virgin nature are. We see things but not God’ signs or the Mystery that vivifies soul because they partake of the Mystery called God.   What is the food of the human soul? There are various answers but what is common to all of them is Mystery. In fact mystery is the reverberation of Infinity in all beauty. Wonder that lies at the heart of philosophy is understandable as Mystery. Fundamentalism is wrong because it seeks to claim possession of this Mystery. So is rationalism that wants to explain everything and demystify the world. Against the both, saints and poets have always stood for profound awe and opening to Mystery all around us. In fact the keynote of Islam as of other religions is respect and acknowledgment for Mystery.   Let us ask what d...