Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

The basic problem I attempt to deal with is clarifying some aspects of debate on implementation of Islam in secular states, in light of key insights from Tradition (the Way of Salaf i Saliheen ). For Islam the sacred-secular binary is ultimately transcended as is the division between West and East, ancient and modern ( “Daleeli kem nazri qisayi qadeem-o-jadeed "). Islam appropriates all that is grand and noble and valuable ( “Al-hikmatu zaalat-ul mumin” ) in any thought current.       I argue that we need to engage with modern political thought currents in light of traditional understanding of politics as grounded in metaphysics/ Ad-Deen , and if some key motivations and insights from secular thinkers like Marx can be shown to concur with it, we shouldn’t fight shy of it. Since our dialogue is with secular Marxist or liberal democratic or other forms of modern political thought, one has to explore if we can talk in their idiom without distorting traditional und...

All states today are both religious and secular and none is purely religious or secular. God has not been dethroned. Today we seek to engage with Shah-i-Hamdan’s socio-political thought considering the fact that if he visited us today he would hardly recognize it, as the world has witnessed several frame shift mutations. He would be compelled to edit not only the sections invoking medieval knowledge of some sciences( that have been corrected thanks to progress of natural sciences) but also, in all probability, partly, some sections treating sociopolitical issues. Today the institution of kings he assumes or addresses is almost gone for good and there have already developed institutions that restrain rulers. He wound find much of his job done thanks to modernity that has made rulers accountable to theoretically independent judiciary. He would find neither slaves nor slave owners, neither feudal lords nor the land in the sense he had seen as primary wealth. He would encounter the mo...

Trying to Understand Shah-i-Hamdan (RA) in the Liberal Democratic World. “Political Islam” and Muslim religious nationalism have been with us for quite some time achieving very little in political terms but continuing to be seen as an aspiration of majority of Muslims. Although these are essentially modern phenomena and ideologically complicit with otherwise tabo modernist ideological notions, influential medieval scholars are roped in to buttress the cases. How convincing are the arguments and how effective or relevant today needs to be seen. Mir Syed Ali Hamdani, also called Amir-i-Kabir, is one of the great but neglected Muslim political theologians who needs to be better known and carefully studied to help us develop contemporary Muslim political theology. A perusal of his writings, especially his Zakhiratul Malook and Letters that constitute key sources for exploring his political theology, today in the post-secular (and for many post-theological) world while taking note of...