Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

The saint breaks the shell of the cocoon called ego to make the birth of Man possible. The most compelling proof of  the Divine that impresses even the atheists is the presence of a saint. Albert Camus, the atheist, described Simone Weil, a saintly figure for secular times, “the only great Spirit of our times” and visited her shrine – her room – before going to take Nobel Prize. Eyes that have not seen God or what, in human form, reminds us of God (saint) have not seen anything. The irresistible Ramana, one of the greatest sages in recent history, has said “The true birth is only the birth in the Self.” Saints alone are truly born and the rest are still struggling to be born against the hard cocoons of ego. “There is only one misery . . . not to be saints” as Léon Bloy said. And “What the Church is sent apostolically to do is to make saints, i.e., to make humans completely human.” If “The meaning of life is to become a saint” we must strive to imitate saints. Indeed, for the Se...

Reading Muslim Philosophers on Religious Sectarianism and Pluralism Better philosophers don’t ideally seek to convert but illuminate a problem for us to consider. We can take or not take their take on an issue but we can’t afford to be old selves after reading them. Encountering such philosophers is like encountering spiritual Masters who indelibly mark us. They open up our eyes and one begins to see another world. One learns to appreciate the other, the other point of view or other paths to truth. One learns negative capability (the capacity to be in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without anxiety to foreclose or jump to conclude or exclude other possibilities) that made, as noted by Keats, Shakespeare great.       Amongst contemporary Muslim philosophers, Abdul Karim Soroush is such an amiable and forceful presence that one can’t avoid falling in love with the man or at least his style. He is amongst the very few important intellectuals who has been forma...

Reading Jamal Khawja on Islam in the Liberal World Long back, Ulema in India including Kashmir had been approached to articulate and defend their understanding of Islam in philosophical idiom in order to facilitate dialogue between religions and with academicians. The questions asked included: what constituted reality  for them and how one knows it. It is another matter that the tersely formulated questionnaire was greeted with silence in Kashmir.  The idea was spearheaded, among others, by Prof. Jamal Khawja as Director of a project Philosophical Dialogue between Ulema and Modern Scholars sponsored  by Indian Council for Philosophical Research, New Delhi. Khwaja is one of the very few significant living Muslim philosophers India has produced. His Quest for Islam , Authenticity and Islamic Liberalism , Islam and Modernity and Living the Quran in Our Times constitute sustained meditations on the hard problem of being an authentic human being and authentic Muslim in ...

Recalling Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter on J & K PSC Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do. (Potter Stewart) When I heard some have been accused and counter-accused of moral failure and failure of wits for both appearing and not appearing in the PSC exam on 6th Feb, I recalled Hawtthorne’s great novel The scarlet Letter ’s heroine Hester Prynne, a young woman, who is found guilty of adultery and a crowd gathers to witness punishment. She is sentenced to wear a scarlet "A" ("A" standing for adulteress) on her dress to shame her. She refuses to lose her dignity on the scaffold. When demanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses. “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers—stern and wild ones—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”   Here is brewing up a similar story that might grow into a tale of shame and despair for hundreds or thousands of innocent pe...

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...

  He misreads history, religions, philosophies, cultures and almost everything current. Often we get an impression that God is like a constituency seat for which different sects keep fighting through all democratic and non-democratic means. It needs numbers and therefore aggressive campaigns to harness the support of voters (potential converts). Pulpit is used as space for election campaign. And unfortunately there are no last dates when campaign ends. The questions that are forced on us through ceaseless campaigns:  To which sect do we offer our vote? And whether NOTA might be  a better choice for one who is really in search of God? Aren’t the masses generally used or betrayed and thus their welfare become a casualty in any election campaign in this part of the world? Isn’t it the case the soul’s welfare or God is casualty in this campaign for God? Before we argue how pervasive is the AIDS of sectarianism that is destroying the immune system of Muslim community and wh...

Reading The God Delusion as Delusions about Being. Richard Dawkins is the new prophet of atheism and a great missionary of evolutionary science. He is feared by most of popular preachers whom he deconstructs in debates. He combines wit and iconoclastic zeal with brilliant oratory to popularize evolution and atheism. However his popularity owes something to simplistic generalizations about religion that attract popular imagination. In places brilliant critique of abuses of religion and shallow doctrinaire exotericism ( Zaahir Parasti ) and credulity of a significant faction of believing camp, is combined with ideas and constructions  that are  both misleading and shallow. Since Dawkins is now a presence and his work a new Bible for some critics of religion and atheists, we need to engage with him to understand both modern man’s alienation from religion that he understands little and misreads much if we assume that it is saints and sages and philosophers of religions that ...