Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Who can vow that he has seen ten people he knows intimately and none had significant behavioural problems. Swift’s idea in his satirical masterpiece A Modest Proposal which proposed that the poor Irish may consider easing their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich people was to shock people out of complacency and insensitivity towards issues that they pass by. I think in Kashmir it is impossible to shock people perhaps for the reasons karwan kae dil sae ehsas-i- ziyaan jata raha . Or is it because we have converted life into an object of art? Or we are Nietzschean Zarathustras not vulnerable to pity and sons of the soil of saints who are said to be “beyond good and evil" ?  Humane Slaughter of New Generation “Papa, would you please slaughter me?” a five year old child asked.   “Why?” asked the shocked father. “Then I will join God and willn’t have to go the school.”   I heard this dialogue few days back and can assert that something simila...

I propose a few measures that appear to me best solutions to some nagging problems we all suffer from. Treating Professional Hazards We have many State appointed bakers, operating with tax money of the poor, who spoil over 80% precious cakes after months of toil and throw them to the dogs. Or many State sponsored car manufacturing units that throw into the sea over 80% of its finished products as they either don’t find roads for them or necessary oil to grease them. Professional colleges are, for the majority of students, animal farms where students are not made into productive beings but fattened for slaughter but their meet, unfortunately, is unacceptable to the public and they die like abandoned horses and old cows slow painful deaths thanks to frustration, ostracization and drudgery of applying and preparing for interviews for all kinds of posts. Therefore it is proposed that after completing degree of professional colleges, 80% of graduates should be hanged in a public ceremon...

Today we discuss how taking art seriously means we are taking life seriously. How do we lesser mortals who are no saints find God in a world where traditional Gurus or Sufi Shaykhs are either hard to come across or there is an instinctive distrust in them? How do those who have fought hard to get back their lost religious faith keep living? How do we, regardless of our religious or philosophical positions, find some convergent point to launch our  boat in turbulent waters? God in his infinite graciousness has made ample arrangements of our return to our homeland, Heaven or Himself. One powerful and universally accessible mechanism is art. Today we discuss how taking art seriously means we are taking life seriously and this helps us in reaching our ultimate destination in the embrace of God.        Art is a form of faith that is available to even a secular man and it is through art that religious impulse survives in the deserts of modernity. Artists...

Invitation to God or to a Sect? It is often asked how can we decide about competing claims of authenticity or true Islam presented in mosques, in schools, in media, in books on religion? One strategy is frank dialogue amongst the best representatives of different positions so that lay people or anyone with common sense could get some idea. However this doesn’t happen in practice because sectarian people are more interested in power than truth, in dictating than listening, in debating than discussing, in winning people to their camp than to God. And they don’t know how to sort out or articulate, politely, their disagreements. We, therefore, try another strategy and that is attempt to go to the deepest depths possible in our search and properly formulate issues that divide us. So we keep first things first and talk about the First Principles and approach it in ontological and existential terms that constitute, by consensus amongst all those who care to think and care about experienci...

Historically it is the impact of poets, mystics and philosophers in Muslim cultures that has provided an antidote to sectarianism. Given the pandemic of sectarianism, how do we immunize ourselves against the deadly flu? Especially since we refuse the  imposed secularization as vaccination drive that was adopted by the West; that generates serious allergic response and throws away the baby of religion with the bathwater of sectarianism. Historically it is the impact of poets, mystics and philosophers  in Muslim cultures that has provided an antidote to sectarianism sponsored by Mullacracy and sectarian politicians. Let us see how deep rooted sectarian consciousness is in history.       For various reasons we have had divergent sectarian interpretations that have been fighting one another and thanks to changing political equations, fortunes of certain sects would change.  Earliest civil wars in Islam were fought in the name of sectarianism though...

  He misreads history, religions, philosophies, cultures and almost everything current. Often we get an impression that God is like a constituency seat for which different sects keep fighting through all democratic and non-democratic means. It needs numbers and therefore aggressive campaigns to harness the support of voters (potential converts). Pulpit is used as space for election campaign. And unfortunately there are no last dates when campaign ends. The questions that are forced on us through ceaseless campaigns:  To which sect do we offer our vote? And whether NOTA might be  a better choice for one who is really in search of God? Aren’t the masses generally used or betrayed and thus their welfare become a casualty in any election campaign in this part of the world? Isn’t it the case the soul’s welfare or God is casualty in this campaign for God? Before we argue how pervasive is the AIDS of sectarianism that is destroying the immune system of Muslim community and wh...

To oppose or not to oppose Darwin. Religion that can’t withstand scrutiny of unbiased reason and experience must go and we should welcome Dawkins and other critics of religion from Marx to Freud to Russell  and their modern disciples for sifting the ideological, superstitious and other problematic elements that have been associated with religion by lesser minds and professionals of vested interest – Mullacracy. For those who reduce religion to an insurance deal whose premium is paid here or those who worship words and don’t taste God and those who invoke God to throttle free inquiry – who have deep down anxiety to silence philosophers, scientists, mystics and even children asking awkward questions regarding higher things they imagine at their own level, modernity has made things difficult. Religion has to offer arguments too strong to resist any criticism and must have enough humility to acknowledge that it doesn’t deal with the truth pure and simple but filtered, tailored truth...