Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Seeing the World as an Image of Paradise An artist sees the world and that is all. And life’s worries are dissolved in this encounter. An artist has no self as a great poet has said. He is only seeing. And that seeing is its own reward. An artist knows the secret that there is no secret or special knowledge vouchsafed to him but life itself has opened up to make prying into special or secret corridors uninteresting. Life is ever too interesting an affair to warrant slip into any distraction. Defamiliarizing the world the artist enchants it. Since the privileging of rational or scientific modes of encountering the world artists had to explain their position and in fact to protest against enormous impoverishment of the world. A world without mystery is a dead world or inhuman mechanical world. It is a world where magic, myth, mystery, miracles, grace, freedom and superabundant joy of creativity are banned or suspect. And man doesn’t live by bread alone. An artist lives in a different ...

Why do genuine poets or writers write? Because they are commanded to write and all they know is to obey. “Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.” E. E. Cummings “Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.” Samuel Beckett Indeed, to be is to write, to proclaim to the Muse Labbayka (Here, I am). It is, more primordially, to speak and to speak in the original or true sense is to sing poetry. We know ten commandment starting with love of God and love of neighbor. But few know that both of these commandments may be best embodied in the work of poets. (“Poetry is not a discipline of knowledge but perfume or distilled essence of all disciplines of knowledge.”) Why do genuine poets or writers write? Because they are commanded to write and all they know is to obey. No questions. No turning back on the Muse. As Samuel Beckett said: ““There is nothing to express, nothing with which to express...

There are enough arguments to convince the best minds regarding the plausibility of immortality from a philosophical and not just religious viewpoint Whitehead has referred to basic insights or initial intuitions or feelings of mankind calling for explanations or justifications. Our desire for immortality is one of these initial intuitions, or persistent dreams, or impulses. If we begin with this fundamental impulse of the human spirit, the question is not disputing their “truth” on this or that so-called scientific ground or explaining it away but how to express it. Believers and non-believers needn’t dispute the matter taking all or none position but may better have a dialogue regarding how far we have succeeded in defining or understanding it correctly.       Taking affairs of life in a playful spirit – but not our assigned or chosen roles in that play – is taking Heaven seriously. Often, believers believe in Heaven but hardly mind it and it is so-called n...

Religionists may lack intellectuality and scientists may lack, and abuse intelligence. It is said that once an atheist and a theist debated the question of belief in God and after they finished, the atheist became a theist and the theist an atheist – showing pointlessness of usual debates on God. Buddha when asked about God responded by silence and is also by making seemingly opposite statements depending upon the questioner’s obsession with theism or atheism. To an atheist he said that only God meaning non-self/Absolute/pure Being really is and you are nothing and to the other one that there is no God as he imagined. The Bible says that only a fool denies God and the Quran implies  that there is no possibility of entertaining doubt regarding God. How are we to understand heated debate on God between atheistic/agnostic scientists and believers of world religions including Islam? How come we can assert people like Russell, Hawking, Dawkins are fools if they deny God? How come we c...

Yes, converting life into a work of art is the secret. There is a heaven here and a heaven there, and there is some difference between the two. If we fail to cultivate the former, we fail to win the later. How seriously do we take God’s invitation to visit heaven or to create/cultivate a space called heaven? This can be known by the quality of lives we live. Very few people live life as if heaven is its constant horizon and depth dimension and thus “reserve” their seats in otherworldly heaven. All education and religion consist in learning how to experience this world as heaven. Our A grades may mean F grades in life’s examination. Our examination centres are pits of hell thanks to vices of competition and memorization of trivialities or information we hardly need in life. Heaven requires cultivating Imagination and Art that we have exiled. Our fragmented pleasure seeking, greedy, haughty, mean, depressed, complaining, lobbying, cursing – in short alienated lives in hell of our own...

Consciously or unconsciously we keep adoring beauty It is told that  once Ananda, the beloved disciple of the Buddha, saluted his master and said: “Half of the holy life, O master, is friendship with the beautiful, association with the beautiful, communion with the beautiful”.“Say not so, Ananda, say not so!” the master replied.“It is not half the holy life; it is the whole of the holy life.” (SAMYUTTA NIKAYA) Why is there a universal “weakness” for the most useless thing called beauty? ( Laotze had spoken of beauty as “the usefulness of the useless,”  and Kant as “Purposiveness without purpose.” ) Because beauty is from the otherworld. Plato meant the same when he said “beauty is the splendour of the Truth.” When women saw beautiful Joseph they exclaimed he is an angel. See beautiful girl and one exclaims a houri from heaven. Indeed beauty is from the otherworld and its existence is one of the most powerful proofs for the existence of God. Ghalib’s answer to his ow...

Looking at the practice of Hijab in the light of modern alternative interpretations. Regarding the issue of veil I have been puzzled by a few questions. Here it goes: Why it evokes strong responses for and against, to the extent that Muslim society is polarized on this Shouldn’t a woman ask herself why a man arrogates to himself the right to advocate for veil, speak in the name of God, and use persuasion or coercion to keep a woman in line with his conception of her body? Why there have hardly been any influential women exegetes, or women fuqaha in our tradition? Have women chosen silence or been silenced? Is the right question today whether women should be veiled or not, or it is of identifying and fighting every symbol of gender injustice imposed in the name of religion? Why particular form of dress becomes an issue impacting sometime sacred relationships like marriage or choice of mate? Today I propose to look at certain influential modernist Muslim interpretations to ...