Adil Najam
To me, the 23rd of March is a day to reflect on the message of Mohammad Iqbal, just like the 14th of August is to ponder on the legacy of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
We, as Pakistanis, have not really been kind to the legacy of either man. We turned both into idols. And once we convinced ourselves that these were ‘supermen’ we conveniently absolved ourselves of the responsibility to learn from – let alone emulate – either. We are fond of celebrating but incapable of incorporating either the actions of Mr. Jinnah nor the thoughts of Mohammad Iqbal.
After all, once we turned Mr. Jinnah into the ‘Quaid-i-Azam’ and conferred near-divine status on him it became all too easy to say that we, mere mortals, could not be expected to act in the way – or even on the principles – that he did. His blemishes were to be denied, not just because we hold him in reverence but also because to acknowledge them is to accept that maybe ordinary – even flawed – human beings can stil have principles worth following. We have done the same to Iqbal. Because his the ‘the’ Allama, he is to be put on a pedestal. His work read with respect and honor; to be savored, but not really to be understood. Certainly not to be questioned, and absolutely not to be allowed to influence that we do. After all, he is an Allama; and we are not.
The Allama-ization of Iqbal, just like the Quaid-i-Azam-ization of Jinnah has been a disservice to both. For ultimately it has turned these two giants into mere statues; the iconography of the ‘Allama’ and the ‘Quaid’ have enabled us to turn them into dieties of reverence while at the same time distancing ourselves – if not outright disowning – the thought of the first and the actions of the later.
We at ATP have been rather remiss in not paying enough tribute to Mohammad Iqbal. This is a mistake I have been wanting to rectify. Today, the eve of Pakistan Day is a good time to begin doing so. The events and the idea behind the 23rd of March owes more to Iqbal than anyone else. And as a first offering of tribute to Iqbal I offer you this wonderful video. I found it on YouTube:
I do not really know who produced it although for some reason the voice sounds familiar. The selection of poetry as well as the pictures are excellent. Indeed, I wou urge you to focus on both. The pictures are not the ones you usually see of him and many of them evoke a humanness that is lost in many of our ‘official’ portraits on the man. But also focus on the ideas. This is a work less known that, say, Shikwa and Jawab i Shikwa, but it has ideas that are so contemporary that he may as well have been talking about the events of last week. For example:
anpay watan meiN houN kay ghareeb-ud-diyar houN
Darta houN daikh daikh kay iss dasht-o-dar ko meiN
Dear Alavi sb.
I think the revivalist rigidity is merely a pendulum swing. I like to believe that Pakistan shall one day achieve its manifest destiny as a beacon of light ushering in an intellectual and cultural renaissance – the first of its kind in the Muslim world.
Dear Hamdani: So we could say that the Western Civilization was built on the tenets of Greek & Roman mythology and governance, plus moral codes of Old & New Testaments. This is the point of view of many scholars in the West. On the point of Iqbal wanting to replicate that model. I concur with you. I hate to use the term mulla, but Shaikh Ji got us where He wanted us to be i.e. Backward and Regressive. Now we are waiting for the second Renaissance except it is long coming. Thanks for sharing you thoughts.
Dear Alavi sb.
Judaeo-Christian morality simply refers to the fact that Bible itself consists of Old Testament (of the Jews) and the New Testament (of the Christians). All Christian morality is in fact Judaeo-Christian.
Lets not forget that the Judaeo-Christian morality and Greco-Roman heritage had a meeting point in Constantine… kind of like Turkic-Mongol heritage had a definitive meeting point with Islamic civilisation after the fall of Baghdad in 1253…
Untill atleast the late 18th century, English courts ruled that Christianity and Biblical precepts were part of the Common law… thus Common law has borrowed largely from Biblical morality (Old Testament + New Testament) for almost 8 centuries.
Iqbal, being a barrister like Jinnah, was an astute observe of history and wanted this model replicated- except with Islamic morality as the basis of secular law. While this may be a superfluous exercise… one can certainly see that this idea is very different from the idea of having rigid interpretation of codified Islamic law exclusively for Muslims and a different law for Non-muslims… that is the case in some matters today in Pakistan.
“modern European nation-states derive their secular laws from Judeo-Christian morality … which is the bedrock of Western Civilisation.”
Hamadani, this is for the lawyer and the scholar in you:
Is it true that ‘Judeo-Christian morality’ is the bedrock of the Western Civilization? Wasn’t Western Civilization built on Greco-Roman philosophy and Christianity developed in Eastern Europe as an off shoot of that. After all the concepts of democracy and nation state predate Christianity and the Christian concept of ‘father-god’ is derived from greco-roman mythology. Also the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ is only a resent construct of American politics. In biblical terms, Christians thought of historical Jewry as immoral and corrupt. Hence the terms sodomy, lesbianism and so forth and so on. In Christian concept the morality is that of Christ and not of Jews. There is no such thing as ‘Judeo-christian’ unless you are running for a political office in America.
As far as I have understood Allama Iqbal… he wanted this state not on an exclusive principle but rather a modern democratic state that would make laws derving inspiration from Islamic ethics and civics… just like modern European nation states derive their secular laws from judaeo-christian morality … which is the bedrock of western civilisation.
It is an irony that instead of creating an inclusive pluralistic state based on Iqbalian principles of dynamism and progress … we’ve chosen to create an exclusivist theocracy which takes religion to be something rigid and frozen.