Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

The noble souls who are dismayed by seeing how evil or untruth seemingly flourishes in the world, Kierkegaard thus consoles: “In this world, Truth walks in meekness and humiliation. It does not have a place to lay its head, and it must be thankful if one will give it a cup of water.” It has been a singular misfortune of modern Kashmiris that they have been nurtured on philosophy and culture deficient diet contributing to manifold ills besides criminal betrayal of our cultural heritage. Although our institutions and scholars had given us translations of some important literary texts, we have, largely nothing to show when it comes to philosophy for which Kashmir had been originally famous. Major modern figures in philosophy have been virtually unknown for Urdu and Kashmiri speaking people in our State as no institution/scholar had dared to translate even secondary or introductory texts.       Now, it is indeed a news (that Saifi family divulged recently) that we shall soon be greeted wi

Why we need to read Moses Maimonides, the Great Jewish Philosopher Is it possible to remain a committed believer and completely rational scientist or philosopher at the same time? Yes, argued Moses Maimonides. This is the answer Muslims seek and if denied it leads to either fanaticism or chilling disbelief. Maimonides’ many writings including The Guide to the Perplexed are indispensable readings for those interested in larger questions of reconciling faith and science, religion and mysticism, religion and philosophy and such issues as defense of Sharia/Divine Law and Ijtihad understood as an endeavour to keep Law relevant for all times.       It has been pointed out that Maimonides symbolizes “a confluence of four cultures: Graeco-Roman, Arab, Jewish, and Western” that he is “first and foremost as an Arab thinker.”  And “if you didn't know he was Jewish, you might easily make the mistake of saying that a Muslim was writing.” A popular Jewish expression of the Middle Ages declare

Nothing makes sense except in the light of love. Love is central to answering all the three ultimately important questions: “(1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What may I hope?”       What is the most basic term in light of which every other term in the scripture of life or religion needs to be understood? It is love/metaphysic of love. In order to understand what religion means, one needs to master the hermeneutic of love. What constitutes the Royal Road to God and Religion’s most basic demand? Surrender of ego/self will before the non-self/God. And this transcendence of ego is an opening of love. God as Wudood can’t fail to attract/love us and we can’t resist the Irresistible Subduer ( al-Qahar ) – who is not willing to be subdued by love? Man can resist it only at the cost of hell which is choosing self exile from the Beloved. There is really only Heaven – God/Pure Consciousness as Joy/Bliss – here and now  but most men, most of the times refuse to be here and now an

What makes us and sustains us as humans is our need and capacity to dream, to tell stories and live in mythic space and time. One needs certain level of culture literacy to qualify as a human and, in our troubled  times,  it is poets/writers, especially of short story and novel that have been vouchsafed the task of keeping the most important question of any living culture – the question of the Being/Sacred – alive.  What makes us and sustains us as humans is our need and capacity to dream, to  tell stories and live in mythic space and time. As we find in Dostovesky: “But how could you live and have no story to tell?” And what is the key archetypal story – story of stories – that we find in all cultures? It is of Adam and Eve’s exile from and return to paradise, of frantic human effort to be, to mean, to escape the hell that life ordinarily is and be born again through love/gnosis. Dostovesky’s answer to the question “What is hell?” is  that it is “the suffering of being unable to lov