Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

  It is time to weep for Hussain(AS). If we can’t, we need to ask God for helping us. “Tears are a gift. When we don’t know or don’t remember how to shed them, we can pray for the gift of tears. We don’t know the script. We know the Giver.” It is time to know Hussain(A.S) suffered for each one of us, for all those who are denied justice. It is time to see how suffering is a gift and thank God for it. Let us unfold all these points on the day when the noblest family on earth was massacred for the noblest ideals that ennoble and redeem life.      To be human is to suffer, to grieve and to weep. It is to suffer for the sake of that which is dearer than life, to grieve for that which ideal which humans, our predecessors or we have failed to be loyal to. It is to weep for what overcomes us and undo all resistance on our part to the decimating embrace of God/Spirit.       God made us humans and not angels. Not to weep in the name of some spiritual or my...

If you want to immortalize a community oppress it brutally as its memory would later unite it. When God was distributing  special gifts to communities few could match Kashmiris in felicity of choice and fastidious taste. Kashmiris demanded and were granted the best of lands where heaven found its own reflection, the best of minds and hands and the hearts that have delighted, influenced and enriched the whole world. It was especially fastidious about the cuisine and developing a refinement of stomach for the same. Kashmir settled for nothing less than its own scriptures and wrote its own versions of great epics including the celestial song Gita as well. A whole new school of philosophy that is brand Kashmir it cultivated and gifted to the world. It invented new science of art/drama and its appreciation as well. It couldn’t accept any rule from outsiders on intellectual, artistic or spiritual planes. All these gifts, however, meant that it  had to excel in the virtue of pati...

Choosing between Diverse Options in Fiqh. Is our fate in the otherworld linked to following particular juristic school in a given case? Is animal sacrifice ( qurbani ) mandatory for every individual who can afford it ( sahibi Istita'at )? Is the popular understanding of qurbani (especially Hanafi one) based on certain reading of prophetic traditions uncontested in Islamic tradition?  No is the answer to all these questions. Let us explore why. And our inquiry would be relevant to other important issues that often divide us, declare us guilty or cause us to take positions that we are not sure, at some level, we should be identifying with.       It seems that more careful attention to underlying motivations or rationale of what is called Islamic law (more appropriately, human understanding of Revealed Law, Fiqh) would help all Muslims, irrespective of theological or juristic affiliations including reformists/modernists and their traditionalist critics, to...