Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Camus’ The Plague can be symbolically read as Kashmir’s story, including the story of its Education sector. In order to solve countless problems in communication that cause divorces, end friendships and alliances, breed enmity and hostility between those who are otherwise co-workers or share ultimate goal, one needs to remember a few things that are defended by the greatest of thinkers and upheld by world religions and saints: “No man is wilfully bad.” Those who seem to be indeed bad don’t really know how they are injuring the soul by evil actions. If they indeed knew – one’s degrees or post doesn’t help here – they would not do evil. Hate the sin and not the sinner. Judge not.     Ignorance is the root cause of vice. Knowledge is virtue. We need to listen to the other, then true dialogue could ensue. Our perceived enemies are Heaven sent, embodying God’s jalali attributes. In fact it is our Spirit who projects them for its own growth. They are friends in disguis...

Celebrating Writers’ Spaces in Kashmir Why is the world today suffering spiritual-moral crisis, reeling under countless conflicts and devastated by huge avoidable suffering at all planes?       The best answer to this can be sought in great writers. However part of the current tragedy is that the best writers/critics are either not heard or not known or not coming forth to make their intervention. One important reason for scarcity of better writers today in Kashmir is that, collectively, we have ignored nurturing those spaces that fashion writers or sharpen critical sense. Now, to some extent, we have been able open up some spaces. Today let us pay attention to one such space that has been active for quite some time in Kashmir. J & K Fiction Writers Guild is an open space in Summer capital of the State where every Saturday afternoon, an open group of writers, critics and people from all walks of life interested in literature, meet, read and critically a...

The question of time is the vital question of life and death for Muslims, as Iqbal noted. Time is terribly real. So is history. The question of time is the vital question of life and death for Muslims, as Iqbal noted. Semitic traditions have been especially concerned with linearity of time and exigencies of history. On this fateful moment in history when the “clash” of civilizations has been brought up, how do we approach the vital question? What is the meaning of history if we find it a “huge slaughterhouse” of people and find the will to power ruling the roost? How is it possible to say goodbye to another fateful year that precipitated the debate on meaning of Muslim understanding of history and allied conceptions of Islamic State and Khilafah that, self avowedly, seek to redirect history with a value based  paradigm. The problem of evil especially presents itself with all its horror today as we recall groans and sighs and tears from violence and alienation that seems to hav...

Wisdom of Prophet Muhammad, Peace be Upon Him, according to Ibn Arabi Is it possible to discover a point of view that comprehends the truth in all points of view? Is it possible to state one’s “worldview” or vision that could resist any conceivable criticism or deconstruction? To these questions there is a positive answer. And that is a vision that unconditionally submits to Truth or totality of all truths, a vision of radical innocence that is open to all experience, a humility to qualify all one’s assertions or claims of access regarding anything including such ideals as Beauty, Truth, Justice and Goodness or revelations of Being or pursuit of Perfection and thus not claim absoluteness for any immanent thing or idea. And one who embodies the great Station that is not a particular station or ideological viewpoint and thus embraces the reality or truth of all stations,  is Muhammad (SAW). This is how “the Greatest Master” – as he is called by a vast majority of Ulama and Sai...

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...

Muslims and Christians face almost similar challenge of making God’s word intelligible in a world that has been decisively impacted by Marx, Darwin and Freud. One of the greatest tragedies that have befallen the Muslim world is forgetting its great heritage in human and divine sciences crippling them in the face of modern challenges that require a philosophical idiom to comprehend and respond. Muslims have hardly learnt from Christian and Jewish counterparts. Great names in Judeo-Christian thought in the modern world are mostly philosophers or theologians who take full cognizance of the challenge from secularizing thought currents. It is a Christian philosopher who has written one of the most celebrated texts on secular age titled A Secular Age . It is such brilliant Jewish philosophers as Buber, Heschel and Levinas who have presented some of the most compelling ethico-mystical visions for the modern world. It is Paul Tillich, a Protestant philosopher, who has given us one of the ...

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...