Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

With the world gone to dogs where millions are condemned to back breaking labour for mere subsistence wages, millions denied jobs, millions inducted in Army for “defence” against constructed or imagined communities/neighbours or in Police for “law and order” purposes   defending unjust law against the poor “criminal” and weaker neighbor or poor “voter,” millions dying hungry or because of malnutrition or preventable diseases, the poor majority can’t afford quality food, health care, education and personal transport, genuine democracy is missing almost everywhere, inflation taken as given, banks allowed to serve as the agents of the moneyed class primarily, it is high time all progressive forces join hands to defeat the monster of Capitalism. But Capitalism has succeeded in making Marxism and religion pit against each other. Marxism must understand religion better to see into the game and better fight the exploiters. Why should religion be considered enemy of the working class? W...

There is a need for creating larger space for A.K. Coomaraswamy in philosophy departments in India   (and elsewhere as well by implication) in graduation,   post-graduation and post-Masters degree courses. Arguments are listed point wise. ·          Because he is arguably the most learned interpreters of arts as enshrining metaphysics in Indian tradition and thus connecting culture to philosophy. ·          His social philosophy is provocative challenge of the paradigm with which modern Indian social theory operates and meets at many places with Gandhian social philosophy. ·          He has developed an interpretation of Vedanta that rereads and puts in a new framework Platonic tradition in philosophy, challenging much of sterotype thinking on the issue of Orientalist vs. Occidental (especially traditional Christian Occidental) debate in philosophy. ·  ...

Encyclopedic scholar, mystical philosopher, mystic, theologian, “the Seal of the Muhammeden   Saints,” Ibn ‘Arabî, known as the "Greatest Master," is the most influential Sufi-metaphysician and the greatest exponent of Divine Love in the history of Islam. His works are arguably the deepest and densest explorations of varied dimensions of the Islamic Tradition. Though an exponent of mystical unveiling he appropriates the religion of reason of Late Antiquity and builds one of the most imposing “systems” of thought, at once rational, mystical and religious directed towards attaining the supreme aim of eudaimonia, sa'âda which has been the prerogative of traditional philosophies, religions and wisdom traditions of the world. He is, self avowedly, the heir of the prophetic and mystical wisdom of countless generations and indeed it appears that God hid nothing from him and he is undoubtedly unrivalled in unpacking multidimensional meanings and significance of Islamic tradi...

Ibn ‘Arabî   repeatedly claims that he is not applying any external ideological paradigm or scheme of interpretation on the sources of Islamic tradition but only reflecting or meditating on them and internalizing deeper meanings implicit in them. He is not selectively reading them or forcing a certain interpretation on them in order to substantiate or legitimize independently conceived philosophical position such as monism or pantheism. From a traditionalist perspective there is no need to wrangle over interpretations, no point in debating the truth or attempting to find the absolute, final interpretation. The chaos we find in modern criticism on the issue of meaning and correct reading of a text doesn’t arise at all in Ibn ‘Arabî ’s view. As long as one approaches a text as an object and seeks for any hidden or final meaning and tries to establish his own standpoint on that basis one may not get anywhere. Meaning is experienced or revealed to a traveler on the path. One only ne...

Ibn ‘Arabî   belongs to the ancient, universal, timeless School of Love . The vision of love as the path to Truth or the Truth itself is presented in these famous lines from his TarjumanuI Ashwaq :  I follow the Way of Love,            and where Love's caravan takes its path,            there is my religion, my faith. God created out of love and love is the cause of every movement, every longing, every endeavour in the universe. Akbarian Sufi doctrine put in the language of love states that "there is but One Reality: Love or Sheer Being, which manifests Itself in two forms, the lover and the Beloved." One quote from the Tanazzulât al-mawsiliyya will suffice to show importance of love for him “All praise to God who made love ( al-hawâ ) a sanctuary towards which the hearts of all men whose spiritual education is complete make their way and a ka'ba around which the secrets of the chests of men of spiritual refi...

Modern man has been in hell without knowing it and has gloriously misunderstood traditional religious view of it. Bertrand Russell, one of the most respected modern thinkers, rejected theological conception of hell in very strong terms. James Joyce, one of the most important writers of the twentieth century parodied theological conception of eternal hell in his famous autobiographical novel. Most modern writers, philosophers and even theologians, not to speak of ordinary mortals, have faced great difficulties in comprehending religious notion of hell. I think we need to approach the conception of hell from mystical perspective to understand it. In Islam it was Ibn Arabi who provided very comprehensive Sufi view of hell.   Imagine that you were living in a certain place for years and then decided to move to some other place. The new occupant of your house suddenly discovered a huge treasure buried   in your compound and you lost the huge fortune. The pain of loss and regret ...

Ibn ‘Arabî ’s world affirming spirituality is ideally ecocentric. For Ibn ‘Arabî  God is the all-pervading Environment ( al-Muhit ). His world-view is Realiy-centric or God-centric and thus transcends anthropocentrism and his notion of anthropos is not what humanism means by it but imago die , a microcosmos, a mirror of the Real and an isthmus between the two worlds – a truly ecocentric conception. This idea of one absolute and all-encompassing existence or unity extends to the whole universe. Everything has a right over us. The fundamental term wujud which means that awareness and consciousness lends itself to environmentalist appropriation. It also allies him with Whitehead’s panpsychism. For Ibn ‘Arabî  no universe is thinkable without the omnipresence of life and awareness. We share with Nature, the world of non-self the same Self, the Self of Compassion – an expression of Ibn ‘Arabî  that resonates with Buddhist expression. It implies we are can’t exploit it o...