God, You created the night, I made the lamp
You created the earth, I made earthen pot out of it
It is me who created the mirror out of stone
It is me who made elixir out of poison
Today Pakistan celebrates Allama Iqbal’s birth anniversary with the usual lip-service. The key messages of Iqbal seem to have been lost in the maze of officialdom. This is further exacerbated by the hijacking of Islam and politics by vested interests, not to mention the recent events that have shook us all. Iqbal opposed exploitation, Mullahism, emphasised the principle of movement in Islamic thought; and highlighted “Ijtehad†(re-interpretation) of Islamic teachings through a modern parliamentary framework. Alas, all of that is nearly forgotten.
For instance he was clear about the layers of exploitation:
The world does not like tricks and
Of science and wit nor, their contests
This age does not like ancient thoughts,
From core of hearts their show detests.O wise economist, the books you write
Are quite devoid of useful aim:
They have twisted lines with orders strange
No warmth for labour, though they claim.The idol houses of the West,
Their schools and churches wide
The ravage caused for, greed of wealth
Their wily wit attempts to hide
The questions that Iqbal raises in his poetry are universal and deal with the larger issues of Man’s relationship with God and the Universe. This is why his poetry does not address any particular group, but the entire Muslim Ummah. He has inspired Muslims with the realization of life and urged them for self-reform and self-actualization by searching for their khudi or self.
After centuries of stagnation, Iqbal was a voice for reformation within Islam. Shah Walliullah had tried to open the debate but Iqbal represented the twentieth century consciousness of modern Muslims. Iqbal is therefore known across the Muslim world, widely read and quoted. Pity that in the homeland that he dreamt of talking of ijtehad threatens many a fatwa mongers. In Zarb-e-Kalim, he sings:
Your prayer cannot change the Order of the Universe,
But it is possible that praying will alter your being;
If there is a revolution in your inner Self
It will not be strange, then, if the whole world changes too
In the famous series of lectures – The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam – Iqbal held:
“….but since things have changed and the world of Islam is to-day confronted and affected by new forces set free by the extraordinary development of human thought in all its directions, I see no reason why this attitude (finality of legal schools) should be maintained any longer. Did the founders of our schools ever claim finality for their reasoning and interpretations? Never. …The teaching of the Qur’an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessor, should be permitted to solve its own problems.â€
Maulana Rumi and Iqbal communicated a shared message: de’dan day’gar amuz, shan’idan day’gar amuz (learn to see and think in a new way). As Suroosh Irfani writes eloquently, this
“message sums up an outlook of life as a forward assimilative movement, even as one remains rooted in an Islamic heritage. Indeed, the message arose in a historical context when old certainties were crumbling and the new were struggling to be born: Rumi lived at a time when the Muslim world was traumatised by Mongol invasions, while Iqbal’s was a time of awakening of the colonised masses that eventually led to the independence of India and Pakistan.â€
What Pakistan appears today is not the dream that Iqbal articulated for a separate homeland for Muslims of India. The extremists waving their flags on government buildings and propagating a version of Islam that Iqbal resisted, while the peaceful activists are behind bars. I digress: The vision of the Quaid for a modern, democratic Pakistan where rule of law was to prevail has also been undermined. Somehow, I have been thinking of Habib Jalib – wish he was alive today – here are a few verses by him from a poem entitled Youm-i-Iqbal:
Log uthte hain jab tere ghareebon ko jagane
Sab shehar ke zardar pahunch jaate hain thane
Kehte hain yeh daulat hamein bakhshi hai khuda ne
Farsudah bahane wahi afsaane purane
Ai shair-e mashriq! Yehi jhute yehi bad zaat
Peete hain laoo banda-e mazdoor ka din raat
When we arise to wake the poor, the have nots
A beeline to the police station they make, these wealthy sots
They say that God this wealth to them allots
Oh these trite excuses, oh these dusty plots
Night and day the working men’s blood they suck, o poet of the East
These congenital liars, with the vileness of a beast
(Translated by fowpe sharma and Urdu transliteration by Hasan Abdullah)
It is time to reclaim Iqbal and save him from the clutches of forces that have been attempting to maintain the status quo; and promote obscurantism. His vision starts from the self and then reaches for the society and the Universe.
References:
1. A Reader’s Words
2. Allama Iqbal dot com
3. Farzana Hassan
4. Revolutionary Democracy
5. Title Photo by Abro
Related ATP Post: Owning Mohammad Iqbal
These are difficult times especially for those who have already lived through Zia ul Haq’s time…deeply disturbing. And Sir, you have managed to explain the dilemma very accurately… we are missing the key instrument in any revolution… Strong, influential, honest leadership. The ‘walwala’, ‘the josh’ that was the motivation behind many a revolutions in the history of the world, that is still the essence of poetry of some of the greatest names of the sub-continent like Iqbal and Faiz among many others… that magic is missing. We are protesting for the sake of expressing ourselves not to break the chains of captivity. We come out in small groups and get arrested or beaten and that is the beginning and the end of the saga that was the protest. We publicize our protest before hand so that the police know where to show up. In the time of Zia ul Haq, the protests were arranged quietly but the protest itself may not have been quiet though. We are not united in actions, we all have aligned ourselves with small groups but the magic that we heard about as children regarding the Pakistan movement or the incredible power that was promised to the people by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto… ahh those speeches and that energy that the crowd brought to the congregation of the working class people. The need of the hour is for one leader to bring us all together so that we are not lost and we protest together, hand in hand, following someone who we actually believe, not those who have already let us down in the past, whom we found to be working for their personal gain. As stated in the beginning, these are troubled times …
I apologize if it seems like I am pointing fingers, I am simply sharing my observation.
God Bless us all
iqbal didnt like western democracy, was against the capitalist society, seemed close to socialist ideas, but was definitely a MUSLIM, but then Islam’s economic system is closed to the Capitalist form rather than socialism. He was against MULLAISM (as you wrote), so it means he didnt want this country to be a THEOCRATIC state.
So what kind of system he wanted to have in this country????
Its like he was confused on this issue too as he was about the division of India, he was in favour of united india, didnt endorse Sir syed’s TWO NATIONS THEORY in his early political career until he had a LEGENDARY VISION.
wish he had lived a bit more longer to have another VISION about the form of government for his proposed state, he would definitely have enlightened his friend Jinnah about it.
Thing that was concluded by Al beruni in his book KITAB-ul-hind back in 1o20AD, by Sir Syed in 19th century, it took him all his life to comprehend i.e Hindu and muslims are different nations in all aspects.
In ‘Kitab-ul-Hind’ he wrote, “In all manners and usage they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs. They declare us to be the devil’s breed, and our doings as the very opposite of all that is good and proper”. Al-Biruni, to many, is the real founder of the two-nation theory in South Asia.
Iqbal was like Dr. Frankenstein who created a monster and didnt know how to deal with it and we call Iqbal A VISIONARY, huh!
correction
machiavelli!
raza:
your lament is misplaced!
The key messages of Iqbal seem to have been lost in the maze of officialdom.
i agree the message IS lost…but come to think of it we seem to have excelled at losing messages
we have (seemingly) lost the message of Allah, his prophet (saw), his companions, hussain………iqbal comes way down this list just before jinnah’s aug 11 speech to the CA.
pardon me for being cynical…but there is only one person whose message we have learned and re learned – hazrat nachiavelli rehmatullahalaiheh
Well, remembering Iqbal in the times of crisis is bit relieving as Iqbal always raises hopes and show some light at the end of tunnel. No doubt that Iqbal has discussed the idea of dynamic ijtihad in the context of modern nation state and ancillary to this debate he has also highlighted the role of parliament in Ijtihad and reconstruction. But, we all know by this Iqbal never meant a rubber stamped Parliament which readily endorses every attempt to humiliate human respect and dignity and by that I mean