Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

One of the most knotty questions asked by all and sundry is why innocents suffer. This constitutes the most influential argument for disbelief in God. For those who believe in God or His good governance this calls for a response. And countless theologians have struggled to answer. One of the most difficult formulations of this problem – two children of the same father one dying before the age of maturity and one becoming quite old and leading a sinful life earning him hell and the later asking God why didn’t He cause him death with his brother so that he too would have escaped punishment – we find in the story of split between Mu’tazilites and Ash’arities . Much influential modern formulations of it are in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazarov through Ivan and in The Plague by Camus through Dr Rieux. In the days of coronavirus, the latter especially appears striking. The best response from a religious and metaphysical point of view is in the writings of Frithjof Schuon Shaykh Isa Nu...

Admittedly difficult questions but the answers are not difficult to comprehend in principle. How come good is seemingly defeated, justice undone, and the strong have the day; and the poor common people suffer like dogs? Or there is a meaning in all this and one can see some ground to avoid despair? If the oppressed fail in political terms, how do they find will to go on, to suffer with dignity (“Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”) and not lose heart? These are admittedly difficult questions but the answers are not difficult to comprehend in principle. Marxist and other fundamentally secular answers aren’t convincing beyond a point where we need to marshal spiritual resources to keep fighting. In fact we seem to know the answers and we can rest assured that “all is well.” And Ghazzali wasn’t far from the mark when he said this is the best possible world and none of the ills it has in store for us are gratuitous. One possible answer we all can appreciate and...

Ibn Arabi matters because he is amongst the thinkers or sages whose meditations on key questions, we all face, are arguably amongst the most comprehensive and profound. In physical, moral, spiritual and intellectual distress one seeks relevant healers and one doesn’t ask about the colour or race of the doctor. I find everyone, regardless of creed or IQ in some distress crying for help that Ibn Arabi can offer. The distress over any issue – personal, familial, religious, metaphysical – is overcome by turning to understanding/meaning of the issues in terms that one can’t but testify. If one is in distress over some family issue or has been hurt from someone’s bad words or divorce or is suffering an existential crisis or regretting the course of events on which one had no control or asks why people go astray or why good people suffer or why people die in religions they were born into and arguably earn damnation for choices they hardly make, consider what Ibn Arabi has to say. Ibn Arab...

Reading Simone Weil to illuminate certain nagging questions on the meaning of Karbala. There are some profound questions that Karbala raises that haven’t been satisfactorily addressed by Muslim scholars dominating the pulpit, or better known scholars of seminaries although Muslim poets and sages have to an extent engaged with them. As such certain inadequately theorized notions have been persisting making us oblivious of deeper issues. Depending on one’s background or prejudices, one finds certain elements or stories in transmitted accounts either unbelievable or lacking historical credence or incongruous. How come, for instance, Imam Hussain’s camp should beg for water? How come he was seeking safe exit or embraced death after he had no other option? What about attempts to exonerate Yazid or even mildly reprimand Hussain or downplaying meta-historical or mythic or cosmic significance of Karbala or asking what was God doing when little children who had not sinned against either Yaz...

Recalling Pablo Neruda and Mehmoud Darwish in Khayal’s Kashmir When all appears dark in Kashmir and you have nowhere to look to for light and one stares at immense futility and tragic waste, what remains there to goad us on, to keep hoping and dreaming? It is faith for some but poetry for all including those who don’t know how to pray. Today we ask Mehmoud Darwish and Pablo Neruda about this sacred and prophetic mission of poets and then read few verses from our own G. N. Khayal’s new book of resistance poetry Shabnum Ka Aatesh Qada .       Poets are those saintly alchemists who transmute our saddest thoughts and pains into songs that console, uplift and illuminate. As Neruda says, “give me all the pain of everyone, I'm going to turn it into hope.” Powerless against the sting of death as we earthly creatures are, what do we do when even life seems to sting and one envies dead in their graves? Neruda answers that “at least love should save us from life.” ...

Life as experienced in all its hues is what books seek to discuss. Life with all its weal and woe is the book which we need to learn to correctly read. Nature, the Quran-i-takweeni , is the book of books. Life as experienced in all its hues is what books seek to discuss. Now some lessons are so crucial for us mortals that God bypasses the need of earthly teachers or ink and pen to teach us. God sometimes needs to directly speak to each one of us and he does speak in many ways including suffering. We have suffered; all of us may have stories to tell that can rip apart hearts and minds. But do we know how to read the symbolic message of all kinds of sufferings that are inflicted on us or invited by us. (In one sense all suffering is invited, invited by our own souls for their progress. Even our time of birth and death are chosen by that higher principle in us). Experiences of suffering are like events of a dream which need to be interpreted. Suffering is not only to be endured bu...