Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Our underperforming and ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of our political ills. Kashmir has failed to integrate with India and it has not failed to long for Pakistan or independence. It has ridiculously bad performance in human development and other important indices. Its underperforming or ill directed economy may be seen both as a cause and symptom of its political ills. It has been weakness for rice that has been, both in symbolic and literal senses, at the centre stage of fight for Kashmir’s political future. Now Kashmir is a disaster in terms of management of natural resources (a huge fraction of them were never even considered for tapping and have been locked for reasons not difficult to fathom), unprecedented employment crisis (too many casual jobs implying casual attitude to future, most of important sectors like agriculture and livestock unorganized, mostly alienation in jobs  and we have mostly jobs that drain us further in the long run implying

Reading Attar’s The Conference of the Birds If one is troubled by the question/crisis of faith, obsessive ritualism, difficulties in understanding the meaning of destiny and evil, guilt and hell, and if one is struggling with religious and secularist fundamentalisms and scores of questions that reason and modernity have raised regarding religion and meaning of life, consider reading Faridudin Attar. Every word of him if one could. Or at least The Conference of the Birds and its superb appropriation by Moore and Corlett in a slim volume Islamic Space that introduces the meaning of Islamic tradition for modern audience in a lucid captivating and arguably irrefutable style. For Attar, as for mystics in general, the question is not of belief/disbelief in some Beyond/God but of exploring the problem of the ego and its resistance to be dissolved by Love. The only doctrine Sufism “teaches” is detachment from/transcendence of all beliefs or positions including the one (ego/I) who seeks be

Reading Whitehead on Philosophy and Religion To be given human state and fail to gratefully acknowledge those who have been its greatest explorers in different domains is both a moral and intellectual failure. There have been towering minds who have left behind a legacy of great insights regarding almost every important thing that concerns us and if we don’t visit their palaces of wisdom, we lose our claim to be lovers of wisdom or hikmah . The opposite of philosopher (etymologically lover of wisdom) is not a prophet or saint or theologian but misosopher (hater of wisdom) and we have no choice to avoid philosophy but are unavoidably either good or bad philosophers. Much of Sunni Muslim world’s tragedy is that it fears philosophers and is guilty of slander ( bohtan ) and unfounded opinions ( zann ) about them. It assumes philosophy is threat to religion or philosophers don’t know religion in its proper manner. What a decline from the past practice when it was perceived as an ally a

The booklet we have today with us is a compilation of prayers beginning with Rabbana (O! Lord) taught by God in the Quran. The very fact of our existence is a prayer and compels us to pray. I am: therefore I pray; sum ergo oro.   (Frithjof Schuon in Understanding Islam ) Certain people do something remarkable and deserve the gratitude of whole people. One amongst them, in Kashmir, is Abdur Rahman Kondu who: Compiled Al-Anwar at a time when little was published about Kashmir’s greatest son, Imam Anwar Shah Kashmiri – arguably recent history’s greatest Muhaddith, one of the greatest teachers in the Madrasa framework and one of the first rate Sufi metaphysicians. Has built a remarkable library that distinguishes itself from other big personal/institutional libraries in the State in many respects and is worth visiting by every lover of Islamic intellectual tradition. Lives by and off books. He can write or compile best sellers such as Rabbana (so far sold thousands of copies