Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Reorienting certain debates on the meaning and constructions of Islam today. Sectarianism in Muslims is mostly a product of ignorance and vested interests. How far it is a product of ignorance is documented by Shahab Ahmed in his What is Islam , one of  the really great works on Islam that is destined to be influential and help reorient certain debates on the meaning and constructions of Islam today. First a few remarks on the author and the book.       Shahab Ahmad knew 15 languages including the most important classical languages in which Islamic tradition is expressed. He is extremely careful with regard to sources he quotes and usually deals with original sources and classical authorities to build his arguments. There is little by way of his own interpretation and much by way of letting authorities and little noticed scholars speak in their own words. He asks questions after piling huge mass of facts and marginalized scholars. Let us read him, as he r...

Revisiting Plato and Al-Farabi today Witnessing calls for violence, God’s Rule, juxtaposition/confounding of political and religious slogans, use of Islam for and against particular ideological thought current, one wonders how to understand and differentiate what is truly divine and what is sold as divine. So much counterfeit currency might be in the market that we need a touchstone to judge. Let us explore if we have this touchstone with the help of Plato, “second Master” Al-Farabi and “modern Plato” Voegelin.       Plato argued for orienting man and his communal institutions toward God/the Good and need for true constitution we can call divine or revealed constitution and dangers of those constitutions in which one part dominates against others and society is no longer an integrated whole governed by Justice that is God, although one can always see its ideal character in the sense that it will only be approximated and never fully the case. as Derrida woul...

Invitation to God or to a Sect? It is often asked how can we decide about competing claims of authenticity or true Islam presented in mosques, in schools, in media, in books on religion? One strategy is frank dialogue amongst the best representatives of different positions so that lay people or anyone with common sense could get some idea. However this doesn’t happen in practice because sectarian people are more interested in power than truth, in dictating than listening, in debating than discussing, in winning people to their camp than to God. And they don’t know how to sort out or articulate, politely, their disagreements. We, therefore, try another strategy and that is attempt to go to the deepest depths possible in our search and properly formulate issues that divide us. So we keep first things first and talk about the First Principles and approach it in ontological and existential terms that constitute, by consensus amongst all those who care to think and care about experienci...

Historically it is the impact of poets, mystics and philosophers in Muslim cultures that has provided an antidote to sectarianism. Given the pandemic of sectarianism, how do we immunize ourselves against the deadly flu? Especially since we refuse the  imposed secularization as vaccination drive that was adopted by the West; that generates serious allergic response and throws away the baby of religion with the bathwater of sectarianism. Historically it is the impact of poets, mystics and philosophers  in Muslim cultures that has provided an antidote to sectarianism sponsored by Mullacracy and sectarian politicians. Let us see how deep rooted sectarian consciousness is in history.       For various reasons we have had divergent sectarian interpretations that have been fighting one another and thanks to changing political equations, fortunes of certain sects would change.  Earliest civil wars in Islam were fought in the name of sectarianism though...

  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...

Ibn Arabi and Iqbal are the two Masters that fashioned Prof. Amin Andrabi In Kashmir we have today very few intellectuals and scholars who have enviable record on spiritual, intellectual and ethical terms, very few whom we can’t accuse of being vain or pretentious, very few who were loved by almost all their distinguished contemporaries in the State if not many outside the state as well. But we had at least one in recent past – Prof. M Amin Andrabi whom it would have been a pleasure and treat to meet. A distinguished Iqbal scholar “completely decolonized mind”  widely read in disciplines that interested Iqbal including perennialist school, an activist, “cynosure of desire” and “a great human being” is how he has been described by some contributors to volume of selected writings and tributes pertaining to Prof. Andrabi compiled by Dr Taskina and Mir Zaman. He authored little, edited much and one can’t but admire his scholarly editorial prefaces and comments on various publicatio...

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...

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...

All ideologies are exclusive and could lead to violently excluding the right to disagree. Islam is not an ideology but fundamentalism is. Fundamentalism doesn’t know, as Wahidudin Khan often emphasizes, that we live in a different world, that we no longer understand the language of legalism that uses fatwas instead of communicative dialogue, that sectarianism is against both spiritual humanism and basic ethos of a globalized world. All ideologies are exclusive and could lead to violently excluding the right to disagree. Islam is not an ideology but fundamentalism is. It is vain to appropriate such terms as fundamentalism  (see this in some popular preachers) and give it an Islamic dress as implying firm belief in fundamentals of religion. Historically literalism has been both exclusive and violent. In the history of Islam exclusivist ideological battles have given us some heinous wars and killings and we can trace them to Kharjite mind set if not even farther in the past. And ...

Engagement with the great questions - of death, of meaning of life, of self and its destiny - are what constitute the important themes of great philosophers. And all great thinkers have provided almost similar answers though emphasized different points, or in their own ways. And these largely agree with the answers provided by prophets and saints across cultures. It is sad to note that so few religiously oriented people and scholars take note of this point, and have been suspicious of philosophy. Philosophers help to understand grammar of theology or scripture better and are best antidote to sectarianism and ideological battle fought in the name of religion. Both religious and secularist fundamentalisms are best tackled by philosophers. I know lay critics of philosophy who think we don’t need it as the Prophet is the greatest philosopher, so why go elsewhere. My answer is: all genuine philosophy is illumined by the prophetic lamp and what is not or what contradicts it is not what trad...