The Republic of Rumi

Questions for comparative study of religions

2012-01-27T00:01:00.022+05:00

Zoroaster (also called Zarathustra),
the founder of Zoroastrianism

Excerpt from 'Islam as a Moral and Political Ideal', a paper delivered by Iqbal in April 1909 at the anniversary of Anjuman Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore.

To begin with, we have to recognise that every great religious system starts with certain proposition concerning the nature of man and the universe. The psychological implication of Buddhism, for instance, is the central fact of pain as a dominating element in the constitution of the universe. Man, regarded as an individuality, is helpless against the forces of pain, according to the teachings of Buddhism. There is an indissoluble relation between pain and the individual consciousness which, as such, is nothing but a constant possibility of pain. Freedom from pain means freedom from individuality. Starting from the fact of pain, Buddhism is quite consistent in placing before man the ideal of self-destruction. Of the two terms of this relation, pain and the sense of personality, one (i.e., pain) is ultimate; the other is a delusion from which it is possible to emancipate ourselves by ceasing to act on those lines of activity, which have a tendency to intensify the sense of personality. Salvation, then, according to Buddhism, is inaction; renunciation of self and unworldliness are the principal virtues. Similarly, Christianity as a religious system, is based on the fact of sin. The world is regarded as evil and the taint of sin is regarded as hereditary to man, who, as an individuality, is insufficient and stands in need of some supernatural personality to intervene between him and his Creator. Christianity, unlike Buddhism, regards human personality as something real, but agrees with Buddhism in holding that man, as a force against sin, is insufficient. There is, however, a subtle difference in the agreement. We can, according to Christianity, get rid of sin by depending upon a Redeemer; we can free ourselves from pain, according to Buddhism, by letting this insufficient force dissipate or lose itself in the universal energy of nature. Both agree in the fact of insufficiency and both agree in holding that this insufficiency is an evil, but while the one makes up the deficiency by bringing in the force of a redeeming personality, the other prescribes its gradual reduction until it is annihilated altogether. Again, Zoroastrianism looks upon nature as a scene of endless struggle between the powers of evil and the powers of good, and recognises in man the power to choose any course of action he likes. The universe, according to Zoroastrianism, is partly evil, partly good; man is neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but a combination of the two principles-light and darkness continually fighting against each other for universal supremacy. We see then that the fundamental pre-suppositions, with regard to the nature of the universe and man, in Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, respectively, are the following:

There is pain in nature and man regarded as an individual is evil (Buddhism).
There is sin in nature and the taint of sin is fatal to man (Christianity).
There is struggle in nature; man is a mixture of the struggling forces and is free to range himself on the side of the powers of good, which will eventually prevail (Zoroastrianism).

The question now is, what is the Muslim view of the universe and man? What is the central idea in Islam, which determines the structure of the entire system?

Demystifying Islam

2012-01-20T00:01:00.001+05:00

I propose to look at Islam from the standpoint of the critical student. But I may state at the outset that I shall avoid the use of expressions current in popular Revelation Theology; since my method is essentially scientific and consequently necessitates the use of terms which can be interpreted in the light of every-day human experience. For instance, when I say that the religion of a people is the sum-total of their life-experience finding a definite expression through the medium of a great personality, I am only translating the fact of Revelation into the language of science. Similarly, inter-action between individual and universal energy is only another expression for the feeling of prayer, which ought to be so described for purposes of scientific accuracy. It is because I want to approach my subject from a thoroughly human standpoint, and not because I doubt the fact of Divine Revelation as the final basis of all religion, that I prefer to employ expressions of a more scientific content. Islam is, moreover, the youngest of all religions, the last creation of humanity. Its founder stands out clear before us; he is truly a personage of history and lends himself freely even to the most searching criticism. Ingenious legend has weaved no screens round his figure; he is born in the broad day-light of history; we can thoroughly understand the inner spring of his actions; we can subject his mind to a keen psychological analysis. Let us then, for the time being, eliminate the supernatural element and try to understand the structure of Islam as we find it.

Excerpt from 'Islam as a Moral and Political Ideal', a paper delivered by Iqbal in April 1909 at the anniversary of Anjuman Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore.

Political freedom: an Islamic ideal

2012-01-13T00:01:00.018+05:00

Greek lithograph celebrating the Young Turk revolt in 1908
and the re-introduction of a constitutional regime in the Ottoman Empire

This is the final part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 were presented earlier.

In modern times - thanks to the influence of Western political ideas – Muslim countries have exhibited signs of political life. England has vitalised Egypt; Persia has received a constitution from the Shah, and the Young Turkish Party too have been struggling, scheming and plotting to achieve their object. But it is absolutely necessary for these political reformers to make a thorough study of Islamic constitutional principles, and not to shock the naturally suspicious conservatism of their people by appearing as prophets of a new culture. They would certainly impress them more if they could show that their seemingly borrowed ideal of political freedom is really the ideal of Islam, and is as such the rightful demand of free Muslim conscience.

Election: a fundamental Quranic principle

2012-01-06T00:01:00.004+05:00

Illustration by Tabassum Khalid.
Courtesy: Iqbal Academy Pakistan

This is the seventh part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 were presented earlier.

Such are, briefly, the main lines of Political Thought in Islam. It is clear that the fundamental principle laid down in the Quran is the principle of election; the details or rather the translation of this principle into a workable scheme of Government is left to be determined by other considerations. Unfortunately, however, the idea of election did not develop on strictly democratic lines, and the Muslim conquerors consequently failed to do anything for the political improvement of Asia. The form of election was certainly maintained in Baghdad and Spain, but no regular political institutions could grow to vitalise the people at large. It seems to me that there were principally two reasons for this want of political activity in Muslim countries:

In the first place the idea of election was not at all suited to the genius of the Persians and the Mongols - the two principal races which accepted Islam as their religion. Dozy tells us that the Persians were even determined to worship the Caliph as a divinity, and on being told that worship belonged to God alone they attempted to rebel against the Caliph who would not be the centre of religious emotion.
The life of early Muslims was a life of conquest. Their whole energy was devoted to political expansion which tends to concentrate political power in fewer hands, and thus serves as an unconscious handmaid of despotism. Democracy does not seem to be quite willing to get on with Empire - a lesson which the modern English Imperialist might well take to heart.

To be concluded next Friday

Khawarij Political Theory

2012-01-05T00:01:00.005+05:00

The palace of the Sultan of Oman in Old Muscat. The dynasty
is supposed to belong to the Khawarijite sect.

This is the sixth part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 were presented earlier.

3. The Khawarij Republicanism

I shall be very brief in my account of the Khawarij, since the history of their opinions is yet to be worked out. The first Muslims who were so called were the notorious 12,000 who revolted against Ali after they had fought under him at the battle of Siffin. They were offended at his submitting the decision of his right to the Caliphate to the arbitration of men when, in their opinion, it ought to have been submitted to the law of God - the Qur’an.

“The nation,” they said to Ali, “calls us to the book of God; you call us to the sword”. Shahrastani divides them into twenty-four sects, differing slightly from one another in legal and constitutional opinion, e.g., that the ignorance of the law is a valid excuse; that the adulterer should not be stoned, for the Quran nowhere mentions this punishment; that the hiding of one’s religious opinions is illegal; that the Caliph should not be called the Commander of the faithful, that there is nothing illegal in having two or more Caliphs in one and the same time. In East Africa and Mazab-South Algeria-they still maintain the simplicity of their republican ideal. Broadly speaking, the Khawarij can be divided into three classes:

Those who hold that there must be an elected Caliph but it is not necessary that he should belong to a particular family or tribe. A woman or even slave could be elected as Caliph provided he or she is a good Muslim ruler. Whenever they found themselves in power, they purposely elected their Caliph from among the socially lowest members of their community.
Those who hold that there is no need of a Caliph, the Muslim congregation can govern themselves.
Those who do not believe in Government at all - the anarchists of Islam. To them Caliph Ali is reported to have said: “You do not believe any Government, but there must be some Government, good or bad”.

To be continued tomorrow

Shiah Political Theory

2012-01-04T00:01:00.015+05:00

The parliament at Tehran, established as a result of
the peaceful constitutional revolution in 1906

This is the fifth part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 were presented earlier.

II. The Shi'ah View

According to the Shi‘ah view the State is of divine origin, and the Caliph or, as they call Imam, governs by divine right. This view arose among an obscure Arabian sect known as the Saba’ites whose founder Abdullah ibn Saba was a Jew of Sana in Yemen. In the time of Uthman he became a convert to Islam, and finally settled in Egypt where he preached his doctrine. This doctrine harmonised with the pre-Islamic habits of political thought in Persia, and soon found a permanent home in that country. The Imam, according to the Persians, is not elected (the Shi‘ahs of Oman, however, adopted the elective principle and held that the Imam might be deposed) but appointed by God. He is the re-incarnation of Universal Reason, he is endowed with all perfections, his wisdom is superhuman and his decisions are absolute and final. The first Imam, Ali, was appointed by Muhammad; Ali’s direct descendants are his divinely ordained successors. The world is never without a living Imam whether visible or invisible. The 12th Imam, according to the Shi‘ahs, suddenly disappeared near Kufa, but he will come again and fill the world with peace and prosperity. In the meantime, he communicates his will, from time to time, through certain favoured individuals - called Gates - who hold mysterious intercourse with him. Now this doctrine of the absence of the Imam has a very important political aspect which few students of Islam have fully appreciated. Whether the Imam really disappeared or not, I do not know, but it is obvious that the dogma is a clever way of separating the Church and the State. The absent Imam, as I have pointed out above, is absolute authority on all matters; the present executive authorities are, therefore, only guardians of the estate which really belongs to the Imam, who, as such, inherits the property of deceased inter-states in case they leave no heirs. It will therefore be seen that the authority of the Shah of Persia is limited by the authority of the Mullas-the representatives of the absent Imam. As a mere guardian of the estate he is subject to the religious authority of the Mullas-though, as the chief executive authority, he is free to adopt any measure for the good of the estate. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Mullas took an active part in the recent constitutional reform in Persia.

To be continued tomorrow

Sunni Political Theory

2012-01-03T00:01:00.065+05:00

Mustansariya University (Baghdad),
a surviving reminder of the grandeur of
the Abbasid Dynasty.

This is the fourth part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1, 2 and 3 were presented earlier.

I shall now describe the three great political theories to which I have alluded above. I shall first take up the Sunni view [i.e. Elective Monarchy].

1. Elective Monarchy

A . The Caliph and the People

During the days of the early Caliphate things were extremely simple. The Caliphs were like private individuals, sometimes doing the work of an ordinary constable. In obedience to the Quranic verse-“and consult them in all matters” –they always consulted the more influential companions of the Prophet, in judicial and executive matters, but no formal ministers existed to assist the Caliph in his administrative work. It was not until the time of the House of Abbas that the Caliphate became the subject of scientific treatment. In my description of the Sunni view I shall mainly follow Al-Mawardy, the earliest Muslim constitutional lawyer who flourished during the reign of the Abbasi Caliph Al-Qadir. Al-Mawardy divides the whole Muslim community into two classes-(1) the electors, (2) the candidates for election. The qualifications absolutely necessary for a candidate are thus enumerated by him:

Spotless character.
Freedom from physical and mental infirmity. (The predecessor of the present Sultan of Turkey was deposed under this condition.)
Necessary legal and theological knowledge in order to be able to decide various cases. This is true in theory; in practice the power of the Caliph, especially in later times, was divided.
Insight necessary for a ruler.
Courage to defend the empire.
Relationship with the family of the Quraish. This qualification is not regarded as indispensable by modern Sunni lawyers, on the ground that the prophet never nominated any person as his successor.
Full age (Al-Ghazzali). (It was on this ground that the chief judge refused to elect Al-Muqtadir).
Male sex (Al-Baidawi). This is denied by the Khawarij who hold that woman can be elected as Caliph.

If the candidate satisfies these conditions, the representatives of all influential families, doctors of law, high officials of the state and commanders of the army, meet together and nominate him to the Caliphate. The whole assembly then proceeds to the mosque where the nomination is duly confirmed by the people. In distant places representatives of the elected Caliph are permitted to receive homage on behalf of the Caliph. In the matter of election the people of the capital, however, have no precedence over other people though, in practice, they have a certain amount of precedence, since they are naturally the first to hear of Caliph’s death. After the election, the Caliph usually makes a speech, promising to rule according to the law of Islam. Most of these speeches are preserved. It will be seen that the principle of representation is, to a certain extent, permitted in practical politics; in the law of property, however, it is expressly denied. For instance, if B dies in the lifetime of his father, A and his brother C, leaving issue, the whole property of A goes to C. The children of B have no claim; they cannot represent their father, or “stand in his shoes”.

From a legal standpoint, the Caliph does not occupy any privileged position. In theory, he is like other members of the Commonwealth. He can be directly sued in an ordinary law court. The second Caliph was once accused of appropriating a larger share in the spoils of war, and he had to clear his conduct before the people, by production of evidence according to the law of Islam. In his judicial capacity he is open to the criticism of every Muslim. Omar I was severely reprimanded by an old woman who pointed out to him that his interpretation of a certain Quranic verse was absolutely wrong. The Caliph listened to her argument, and decided the case according to her views.

The Caliph may indicate his successor who may be his son; but the nomination is invalid until confirmed by the people. Out of the fourteen Caliphs of the House of Umayyah only four succeeded in securing their sons as their successors. The Caliph cannot secure the election of his successor during his own lifetime. Ibn Athir tells us that Abdul Malik-the Umayya Caliph-endeavoured to do so, but Ibn Musayyib, the great Mekkan lawyer, strongly protested against the Caliph’s behaviour. The Abbasi Caliph Hadi, however, succeeded in securing the election of his son Ja‘far, but after his death the majority declared for Harun. In such a case, when the people declare for another Caliph, the one previously elected, must, on penalty of death, immediately renounce his right in public.

If the Caliph does not rule according to the law of Islam, or suffers from physical or mental infirmity, the Caliphate is forfeited. Usually one influential Muhammadan stands up in the mosque after the prayer and speaks to the congregation giving reasons for the proposed deposition. He declares deposition to be in the interest of Islam, and ends his speech by throwing away his finger-ring with the remark-“I reject the Caliph as I throw away this ring”. The people then signify their assent in various ways, and the deposition is complete.

The question whether two or more rival Caliphates can exist simultaneously is discussed by Muslim lawyers. Ibn Jama holds that only one Caliphate is possible. Ibn Khaldun holds that there is nothing illegal in the co-existence of two or more Caliphates, provided they are in different countries. Ibn Khaldun’s view is certainly contrary to the old Arabian idea, yet in so far as the Muslim Commonwealth is governed by an impersonal authority, i.e., law, his position seems to me to be quite a tenable one. Moreover, as a matter of fact, two rival Caliphates have existed in Islam for a long time.

Just as a candidate for the Caliphate must have certain qualifications, so, according to Al-Mawardy, the elector also must be qualified. He must possess:

Good reputation as an honest man.
Necessary knowledge of State affairs.
Necessary insight and judgement.

In theory all Muslims, men and women, possess the right of election. There is no property qualification. In practice, however, women and slaves did not exercise this right. Some of the early lawyers seem to have recognised the danger of mass-elections as they endeavour to show that the right of election resides only in the tribe of the prophet. Whether the seculsion of women grew up in order to make women incapable of exercising a right, which in theory could not be denied to them, I cannot say.

The elector has the right to demand the deposition of the Caliph, or the dismissal of his officials if he can show that their conduct is not in accordance with the law of Islam. He can, on the subject, address the Muslim congregation in the mosque after the prayer. The mosque, it must be remembered, is the Muslim Forum, and the institution of daily prayer is closely connected with the political life of Muslim communities. Apart from its spiritual and social functions, the institution is meant to serve as a ready means of constant criticism on the state. If, however, the elector does not intend to address the congregation, he can issue a injudicial inquiry concerning the conduct of any State official, or any other matter which affects the community as a whole. The judicial inquiry as a rule, does not mention the name of any individual. I quote an illustration in order to give an idea of this procedure:

“In the name of God, most Merciful and Clement, What is the opinion of the doctors of law, the guides of the people, on the encouragement of the Zimmis, and on the assistance we can demand from them, whether as clerks to the Amirs entrusted with the administration of the country, or as collectors of taxes? Explain the above by solid proofs, establish the orthodox belief by sound arguments, and give your reasons. God will reward you.”

Such judicial inquiries are issued by the State as well, and when the lawyers give conflicting decisions, the majority prevails. Forced election is quite illegal. Ibn Jama, an Egyptian lawyer, however, holds that forced election is legal in times of political unrest. This opportunist view has no support in the law of Islam; though, undoubtedly, it is based on historical facts. Tartushi, a Spanish lawyer, would probably hold the same view, for he says: “Forty years of tyranny are better than one hour of anarchy.”

Let us now consider the relation between the elected and the elector. Al-Mawardy defines this relation as “Aqd”-binding together, contract. The State, therefore, is a contractual organism, and implies rights and duties. He does not mean, like Rousseau, to explain the origin of society by an original social contract; he holds that the actual fact of election is a contract in consequence of which the Caliph has to do certain duties, e.g., to defend the religion, to enforce the law of Islam, to levy customs and taxes according to the law of Islam, to pay annual salaries and properly to direct the State treasury. If he fulfils these conditions, the people have mainly two duties in relation to him, viz., to obey him, and to assist him in his work. Apart from this contract, however, Muslim lawyers have also enumerated certain cases in which obedience to the Caliph is not necessary.

The origin of the State then, according to Al-Mawardy, is not force, but free consent of individuals who unite to form a brotherhood, based upon legal equality, in order that each member of the brotherhood may work out the potentialities of his individuality under the law of Islam. Government, with him, is an artificial arrangement, and is divine only in the sense that the law of Islambelieved to have been revealeddemands peace and security.

B. Ministers and other Officials

The Caliph, after his election, appoints the principal officials of the State, or confirms those previously in office. The following are the principal State officials with their duties defined by the law:

The Wazir - The Prime Minister - either with limited or unlimited powers. The Wazir with unlimited powers must possess the same qualifications as the Caliph, except that, according to Al-Mawardy, he need not necessarily belong to the Quraish tribe. He must be thoroughly educated especially in Mathematics, History, and Art of speaking. He can perform all the functions of the Caliph, except that he cannot nominate the Caliph’s successor. He can, without previous sanction of the Caliph, appoint officers of the various departments of the State. The Wazir with limited powers cannot do so. The dismissal of the Wazir with unlimited powers means the dismissal of all officials appointed by him; while the dismissal of the Wazir with limited powers does not lead to the dismissal of the officials appointed by him. More than one Wazir with unlimited powers cannot be appointed. The Governors of various provinces can appoint their own Wazirs. A non-Muhammadan may be appointed Wazir with limited powers. The Shi‘ah dynasty of the Obaidies appointed a Jew to this position. An Egyptian poet expresses his sentiments as follows: “The Jews of our time have reached the goal of their ambition - Theirs is all honour, theirs is all gold-O people of Egypt I advise you to become Jews; God himself has become a Jew.”
The Governors - Next to the Wazir the most important executive officers of the State were governors of various provinces. They were appointed by the Caliph with limited or unlimited powers. The governor with unlimited powers could appoint sub-governors to adjoining smaller provinces. For instance, the sub-governor of Sicily was appointed by the Governor of Spain and that of Scind by the Governor of Bassora. This was really an attempt to create self-governing Muslim colonies. The officer in charge was, so to speak, a miniature caliph of his province; he appointed his own Wazir, Chief Judge and other state officers. Where special commander of the provincial army was not appointed, the Governor, ex-officio, acted as the commander. This, however, was an error, since the governors became gradually powerful and frequently asserted their independence. But in his capacity of the commander, the governor had no right to raise the salaries of his soldiers except in very special circumstances. It was his duty to send all the money to the central treasury after defraying the necessary State expenses. If the provincial income fell short of the expenses, he could claim a contribution from the central treasury. If he is appointed by the Caliph, the death of the latter is not followed by his dismissal, but if he is appointed by the Wazir, the death of the Wazir means the dismissal of all governors appointed by him, provided they are not newly confirmed in their respective posts. The governor with limited powers was a purely executive officer. He had nothing to do with judicial matter, and in criminal matters too his authority was very much limited. Muslim lawyers, however, recognise a third kind of governorship, i.e., by usurpation. But the usurper must fulfil certain conditions before his claim is legally justified.
Commanders of Armies - Here too the distinction of limited and unlimited powers is made, and the duties of commanders, subordinate officers, and soldiers are clearly defined.
The Chief Judge - The Chief Judge could be appointed by the Caliph or the Wazir. According to Abu Hanifa in some cases, and according to Abu Ja‘far Tabariy, a non-Muslim, can be appointed to administer the law of his co-religionists. The Chief Judge, as representative of the Law of Islam, can depose the Caliph-he can kill his own creator. His death means the dismissal of his staff; but the death of the sovereign is not followed by the dismissal of the judges appointed by him. During the interregnum a judge can be elected by the people of a town, but not during the sovereign’s lifetime.
President of the Highest Court of Appeal and general control - The object of this institution was to hear appeals and to exercise a general supervision over all the departments of the State. Abdul Malik-the Umayyah Caliph and the founder of this court, personally acted as the president, though more difficult cases he transferred to Qazi Abu Idris. In later times, the president was appointed by the Caliph. During the reign of the Abbasi Caliph Al-Muqtadir, his mother was appointed President, and she used to hear appeals, on Fridays surrounded by Judges, priests and other notables. In one respect, the President of this court differed from the Chief Judge. He was not bound by the letter of the law like the Qazi; his decisions were based on general principles of natural justice, so that the President was something like the keeper of the Caliph’s conscience. He was assisted by a council of judges and lawyers whose duty was to discuss every aspect of the case before the President announced his decision. The importance of this institution may be judged from the fact that it was among the few Muslim institutions which the Normans retained after their conquest of Sicily in the 11th century.

To be continued tomorrow

Two political principles of Islam

2011-12-30T00:01:00.031+05:00

Above: a woman casts vote in the elections in Iran, 2010

This is the third part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). Parts 1 and 2 were presented earlier.

Before, however, I proceed to describe these theories [Sunni, Shia and Khwarij theories of Muslim politics], I want to draw attention to the following two points:

1. That the Muslim Commonwealth is based on the absolute equality of all Muslims in the eye of the law. There is no privileged class, no priesthood, no caste system. In his latter days the Prophet once ascended the pulpit and said to the people: "Muslims! If I have struck any one of you, here is my back that he may strike me. If anyone has been wronged by me let him return injury for injury. If I have taken anybody's goods, all that I have is at his disposal". A man arose and claimed a debt of three dirhams (about three shillings). "I would rather", said the Prophet, "have this shame in this world than in the next." And he paid him on the spot.

The law of Islam does not recognise the apparently natural differences of race, nor the historical differences of nationality. The political ideal of Islam consists in the creation of a people born of a free fusion of all races and nationalities. Nationality, with Islam, is not the highest limit of political development; for the general principles of the law of Islam rest on human nature, not on the peculiarities of a particular people. The inner cohesion of such a nation would consist not in ethnic or geographic unity, not in the unity of language or social tradition, but in the unity of the religious and political ideal; or, in the psychological fact of "like-mindedness," as St. Paul would say. The membership of this nation, consequently, would not be determined by birth, marriage, domicile or naturalisation. It would be determined by a public declaration of "like-mindedness" and would terminate when the individual has ceased to be like-minded with others. The ideal territory for such a nation would be the whole earth. The Arabs, like the Greeks and the Romans, endeavoured to create such a nation or the world-state by conquest, but failed to actualise their ideal. The realisation of this ideal, however, is not impossible; for the ideal nation does already exist in germ. The life of modern political communities finds expression, to a great extent, in common institutions, Law and Government; and the various sociological circles, so to speak, are continually expanding to touch one another. Further, it is not incompatible with the sovereignty of individual States, since its structure will be determined, not by physical force, but by the spiritual force of a common ideal.

2. That according to the law of Islam there is no distinction between the Church and the State. The State with us is not a combination of religious and secular authority, but it is unity in which no such distinction exists. The Caliph is not necessarily the high priest of Islam; he is not the representative of God on earth. He is fallible like other men, and is subject, like every Muslim, to the impersonal authority of the same law. The Prophet himself is not regarded as absolutely infallible by many Muhammadan theologians (e.g. Abu Ishaq, Tabari). In fact, the idea of personal authority is quite contrary to the spirit of Islam. The Prophet of Arabia succeeded in commanding the absolute submission of an entire people; yet no man has depreciated his own authority more than he. "I am," he says, "a man like you; like you my forgiveness also depends on the mercy of God." Once in a moment of spiritual exaltation, he is reported to have said to one of his companions, "Go and tell the people - he who says there is only one God will enter the paradise", studiously omitting the second half of the Muslim creed - "And Muhammad is his prophet". The ethical importance of this attitude is great. The whole system of Islamic ethics is based on the idea of individuality; anything, which tends to repress the healthy development of individuality, is quite inconsistent with the spirit of Islamic law and ethics. A Muslim is free to do anything he likes, provided he does not violate the law. The general principles of this law are believed to have been revealed, the details, in order to cover the relatively secular cases, are left to the interpretation of professional lawyers. It is, therefore, true to say that the entire fabric of Islamic law, actually administered, is really judge-made law, so that the lawyer performs the legislative function in the Muslim constitution. If, however, an absolutely new case arises which is not provided for in the law of Islam, the will of the whole Muslim community becomes a further source of law. But I do not know whether a general council of the whole Muslim community was ever held for this purpose.

To be continued on Tuesday

BOLTON KING: A History of Italian Unity

2011-12-28T00:01:00.029+05:00

King Emanuel II of Italy meets
the politician and military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi

My object in writing this book has been a twofold one. First, I have endeavoured to give a trustworthy account of a chapter of modern history which has been most inadequately dealt with both at home and abroad. Outside a few limited studies, there is hardly an English or even a French writer who has treated the Italian history of the century with much pretence to accuracy or research; and bulky as is the material published in Italy, Italian historians have not been successful in weaving the material into any very well-proportioned or readable whole. My second aim has been to make the re-birth of a noble and friendly nation better understood in a country which knows little really of Italy. The Englishman's knowledge of the Italian Revolution is summed, it has been said, in the belief that it had something to do with Garibaldi and a red shirt A leading London newspaper recently urged the Italians in all seriousness to take some steps in the direction of Cavour's Free Church, forgetting that this was done a quarter of a century ago; and many a lecture on their recent troubles would have been spoilt by a rudimentary knowledge of their history of the last forty years. The tie, that united so closely the English and Italians of the last generation, seems slackening, and it needs more mutual knowledge to cement the sympathy again.

Excerpt from the preface of A History of Italian Unity: being a political history of Italy from 1814 to 1871 by Bolton King, M.A., published in 1899 (Both Volume 1 and Volume 2 are available online). Iqbal mentioned this book in 1928 in an article about the Pushto poet Khus-hal Khan Khattak: "The day is not far off when some Afghan historian will tell us the story of the unity of his race much in the same way as Bolton King has told the story of the unity of Italy."

Quaid-i-Azam’s Concept of Islamic State

2011-12-27T08:22:00.000+05:00

The following is my article published in the special supplement of Dawn, December 25, 2011. It may have appeared with a different title in the newspaper (I still haven't seen the print edition, since I am out of country).

In her explosive book, Secular Jinnah: Munir’s Big Hoax Exposed (2005), historian Saleena Karim wrote: “There has been a long-running debate in the Indo-Pak region on whether Jinnah simply sought independence for the Muslims and wanted a secular state, or whether he sought an Islamic State. To outsiders it seems very strange that there is any debate at all on such a fundamental detail in the history of Partition… However, a closer look at the debate reveals the real issue in question. It is not Jinnah’s objective; it is Islam.”

The long-standing debate may therefore be seen as a blinker that has been preventing us from asking the more important question: what did Quaid-i-Azam mean by an “Islamic state”? The question cannot be avoided because, after all, he did promise on so many occasions that Pakistan was going to be an Islamic state.

There are many interpretations of Islam but they may be divided into two basic categories. In the first category are those interpretations where the masses are considered to be the final arbiters. In other words, since there is no Church in Islam, the functional authority is assigned to the consensus of the Muslim community.

This was the basic ideal upheld by Muslim reformers who exercised the greatest influence on the masses between 1863 and 1953: Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Jamaluddin Afghani, Maulana Shibli Numani, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar and Allama Iqbal (just to name a few). The names given to this strand of Islam by its leaders themselves was “Muslim nationalism” and “Muslim Renaissance.”

At least in South Asia, one of the most interesting features of this “Muslim nationalism” was how it gradually brought on its platform even those sects of Islam which habitually defer to the authority of a present or absent Imam – the Ismailis and Shias. As suggested by the present writer in the article ‘Think Long-Term’, published in Dawn in 2010, this development was marked most prominently by the birth of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca in 1906.

The second category of interpretations of Islam may include those interpretations where the authority of an expert is regarded as essentially superior to the consensus of the Muslim community, and those who disagree with the expert are relegated to an inferior status within the Muslim community, or may even get expelled. Depending on whom you ask, this authority may be ascribed to a religious scholar, a mystic, a ruler or now even some Western university!

Historically, this was the position of those who were opposed to Muslim nationalism: the Congress leadership of the British India, the secularists in Pakistan, and all those religious movements which did not join the Muslims’ struggle for Pakistan during the 1940s.

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah obviously belonged to the first category: he believed that Islam was to be interpreted by the whole community and not by any other authority. The campaign slogan of his followers in the elections of 1945-46 in the British India, “Muslim hai to Muslim League mien aa” (“Join Muslim League if you are Muslim”) was as much a cry of defiance against the mullah as it was a rejoinder to the Indian nationalist. The undeniable implication (which has unfortunately been denied since then) was that the masses did not have to prove their faith to any cleric. Instead, the cleric had to earn his status by first submitting to the consensus of the community.

The religious scholars who opposed this proposition apparently believed that Islam could be served better if Muslims were persuaded to become more rigid in following the personal law of Islam in a secular Indian state.

Out of selfish motives or misguided sincerity, these ulema and reformers perceived an opportunity of becoming “caliphs” once the Muslim state got established, and especially when its founder passed away in September 1948. This may explain why the right-wing political parties in Pakistan promise to turn Pakistan into “an Islamic state” but fail to propose any practical measures except rigorous implementation of personal laws developed by theologians of a bygone era. One can clearly see that this is essentially the same agenda that was originally devised for being followed in the secular United India.

In Pakistan, perhaps the earliest attempt to give recognition to this alternate concept of “Islamic state” inside the parliament was inadvertently made by the opposition leader Sris Chandra Chattopadhya in March 1949. In order to reject the Objectives Resolution, he denied that the elected assembly in Pakistan could have the right to interpret Islam (although a precedent for this had been established in the Muslim world and approved by Allama Iqbal more than twenty years ago). Instead, Chattopadhya quoted a passage from a book by Maulana Maududi and insisted that it should be accepted as the definitive description of “Islamic state”. The idea was vehemently opposed by Sirdar Abdur Rab Nishtar but the argument of Chattopadhya was picked up a few years later by the now-infamous Justice Munir in the famous Munir Report (with the additional attribution of a fabricated quote to Jinnah).

Since then, the right-wing parties in Pakistan have been engaged in a quarrel with the secularists over whether or not Pakistan should be an “Islamic state”, but mutual differences notwithstanding, both factions agree that only the mullah has got the right to tell what an “Islamic state” is.

Therefore, the question we need to ask now is: How did Jinnah perceive an Islamic state when he repeatedly asserted, before the birth of Pakistan and afterwards, that Pakistan was going to be an Islamic state?

The answer cannot be missed. Obviously, an Islamic state according to him was fully compatible with what he stated in the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947: “Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”

This is an Islamic state, then, according to Quaid-i-Azam. Let’s stop calling it secularism, because Quaid-i-Azam never uttered that word and “Islamic state” could not have possibly meant anything else to him. Let’s now start asking whether we should have an Islamic state as perceived by the Quaid, and who should have the authority to decide that?

Fundamental principle of Muslim constitutional theory

2011-12-23T00:01:00.002+05:00

This is the second part of Iqbal's paper 'Political Thought in Islam' (1908). The first part was presented at this blog last Friday.

Abu Bakr, the Prophet's father-in-law and one of his chief companions, therefore, in consequence of the danger of internal disruption, was rather hurriedly and irregularly elected. He then rose and addressed the people thus:

"Oh people! Now I am ruler over you, albeit not the best amongst you. If I do well, support me; if ill, then set me right. Follow the true wherein is faithfulness, eschew the false wherein is treachery. The weaker amongst you shall be as the stronger; with me, until, that I shall have redressed his wrong and the stronger shall be as the weaker until, if the Lord will, I shall have taken from him that which he hath wrested. Leave not off to fight in the ways of the Lord; whosoever leaveth off, him verily shall the Lord abase. Obey me as I obey the Lord and his Prophet, wherein I disobey, obey me not."

Omar, however, afterwards held that the hurried election of Abu Bakr, though very happy in its consequences and justified by the need of the time, should not form a precedent in Islam; for, as he is reported to have said (Dozy I, p.121), an election which is only a partial expression of the people's will is null and void. It was, therefore, early understood that political sovereignty de facto resides in the people; and that the electorate by their free act of unanimous choice embody it in a determinate personality in which the collective will is, so to speak, individualised, without investing this concrete seat of power with any privilege in the eye of the law except legal control over the individual wills of which it is an expression. The idea of universal agreement is, in fact, the fundamental principle of Muslim constitutional theory. "What the Muslim community considers good", says the Prophet, "God also considers good". It is probably on the authority of this saying of the Prophet that Al-Ash'ari developed his political dogma - "That error is impossible in the united deliberations of the whole community". After the death of Abu Bakr, Omar, who acted as Chief Judge during his predecessor's Caliphate, was universally elected by the people. In 644 A.D. he was mortally wounded by a Persian slave, and committed his trust, before he died to seven electors - one of them being his own son - to nominate his successor, with the condition that their choice must be unanimous, and that none of them must stand as a candidate for the Caliphate. It will be seen, from Omar's exclusion of his own son from the candidature how remote was the idea of hereditary monarchy from the Arabian political consciousness. The choice of this council, however, fell upon one of the councillors, Uthman, who was consequently nominated, and the nomination afterwards confirmed by the people. The caliphate of Uthman is really the source of the three great religio-political parties with their respective political theories, which each party, finding itself in power, attempted to realise in one or other of the provinces of the Arab Empire.

[To be continued next Friday]

If Christ Came to Chicago!

2011-12-21T00:00:00.048+05:00

W.T. Stead (1849-1912)

"The lesson to be learned from Mr. Stead's book is that the great evils from which humanity is suffering today, are evils that can be handled only by religious sentiments; that the handling of those evils has been in the great part surrendered to the State; that the State has itself been delivered over to corrupt political machines; that such machines are not only unwilling, but unable, to deal with those evils; and that nothing but a religious awakening of the citizens to their public duties can save countless millions from misery and the State itself from degradation."

This excerpt from an American review of the book was quoted by Iqbal in his article 'Islam and Ahmadism' (1936). The complete title the book by William T. Stead was If Christ Came to Chicago! - a plea for the union of all who love in the service of all who suffer. It was first published in Chicago in 1894 and was an instant hit: 70000 copies were ordered before the first copy even came out of the press. The author died 28 years later while travelling on Titanic: after helping several women and children get into lifeboats he was last seen sitting in the 1st Class Smoking Room reading a book. Further: see the W.T. Resource Site

Political Thought in Islam (Part 1)

2011-12-16T00:01:00.000+05:00

'Political Thought in Islam' was the first paper of Iqbal to be published after the completion of his doctoral thesis. As such it can be treated as the manifesto which provided the basis for all subsequent work of Iqbal was built. It was first published in 1908 in the Sociological Review, London, and reproduced by the Hindustan Review, Allahabad, in its issues for December, 1910 and January, 1911. It was later translated into Urdu as "Khilafat-i-Islamia" and published in the early 1920s. It has been included in various anthologies of Iqbal's prose works, especially The Writings, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal edited by Latif Ahmad Sherwani and The Discourses of Iqbal edited by Shahid Husain Razzaqi. It shall be serialized at this blog in eight instalments. Here is the first.

Pre-Islamic Arabia was divided into various tribes continually at war with one another. Each tribe had its own chief, its own god and its own poet, whose tribal patriotism manifested itself chiefly in the glorification of the virtues of his own tribe. Though these primitive social groups recognised, to a certain extent, their kinship with one another, yet it was mainly the authority of Muhammad and the cosmopolitan character of his teaching, which shattered the aristocratic ideals of individual tribes, and welded the dwellers of tents into one common ever-expanding nationality. For our purpose, however, it is necessary to notice, at the outset, the features of the Arabian system of tribal succession, and the procedure followed by the members of the tribe on the death of their chief.

When the Chief or Shaikh of an Arab tribe died all the elders of the tribe met together, and, sitting in a circle, discussed the matter of succession. Any member of the tribe could hold the chieftainship if he were unanimously elected by the elders and heads of great families. The idea of hereditary monarchy, as von Kremer has pointed out, was quite foreign to the Arab mind, though the principle of seniority, which, since Ahmad I, has received legal recognition in the constitution of modern Turkey, did certainly influence the election. When the tribe was equally divided between two leaders, the rival sections separated from each other until one of the candidates relinquished his claim; otherwise the sword was appealed to. The Chief thus elected could be deposed by the tribe if his conduct necessitated deposition. With the expansion of the Arab conquest, and the consequent enlargement of mental outlook, this primitive custom gradually developed into a Political Theory carefully constructed, as we shall see, by the constitutional lawyers of Islam through reflective criticism on the revelations of political experience.

True to this custom, the Prophet of Arabia left no instructions with regard to the matter of his succession. There is a tradition that the old Amir, son of Tufail, came to the Prophet and said, "If I embrace Islam what would my rank be? Willst thou give me the command after thee?" "It does not belong to me", said the Prophet, "to dispose of the command after me."

To be continued next Friday.

The lion and you

2011-12-15T00:01:00.009+05:00

The following is my re-telling of a parable from the second volume of the Masnavi of Maulana Rumi.

Think of Jesus whom God gave the gift of reviving the dead, and know it that your soul can also bring back those who have departed from the world. Once upon a time, you will come across a carcass rotting in the wilderness, and you may ask your soul to revive it.

“O God, what’s the matter with this person!” Your soul will say about you. “This person is worse than a corpse, but doesn’t want to be revived and is so much concerned about the corpse of a stranger!”

Well, this is how destiny works: you choose it. Therefore, please do not be too pleased with this story just yet: my wisdom might be the very corpse which you are trying to resurrect at the cost of your own!

Yes, your soul will revive that carcass, which will turn out to be that of a ferocious lion. It will kill you on the spot but it will not eat you.

“Why did you do this?” Your soul may ask the lion, and the lion will reply: “This is a punishment for those who irritate their souls with their foolishness.”

“Why didn’t you eat this prey?” Your soul may ask, and the lion will reply: “I wouldn’t have died in the first place if there were any more food in my destiny.”

My dear child, the lion who will kill even when he isn’t going to eat the prey will be a mere reflection of yourself if you go around acquiring knowledge which you do not need. The Sufi’s book is not composed of ink and letters: it is not but a heart white as snow. The scholar’s possession is pen-marks. What is the Sufi’s possession? Foot-marks!

KEYSERLING: Peshawar

2011-12-14T00:01:00.186+05:00

"And to think that here...
lay the very centre of Buddhistic culture!"

Peshawar

a chapter from

The Travel Diary of a Philosopher (1925)
by Count Hermann Keyserling.
The author was quoted by Iqbal in 1925.
See bottom of this post for details.

I have really strayed beyond India. Leafless trees, the cold, clear air of winter - broad, dusty high roads on which men wander about, whose physical type is familiar to me. Curious: between Afghanistan and Russia there lies a whole world. Every district of Central Asia is inhabited by different tribes, possessing differing histories and cultures, with different customs and manners; and yet to-day one psychic atmosphere is spread from the Khyber Pass to the Ural Mountains. In this atmosphere all significance disappears. In Peshawar murders take place daily,and gaily coloured Indian shawls are for sale what does it matter? Everything might just as well not happen at all, or happen differently. The meaning of life here is not changed by one event more or less, by one event of this or of another kind. The camels march one behind the other in long, endless rows. Century follows century in one long, unending sequence. Millions of similar people die rhythmically one after another, sometimes violently, sometimes naturally, all with the stereotyped expression of a shrug of the shoulders.

I am seized by that infinite melancholy for which only the Russians possess the right word: Urrynie. I want nothing, lack nothing, I have no demonstrable reason for it, I am just melancholy. My soul is hollowed out, as it were. This Asia knows no vibrations of a mental kind. The rays which I radiate myself disappear in endless space, but I lack the inner power to arrest them. The result is a feeling of emptiness which makes me profoundly miserable. And then, alien, brutal forces enter into me the thoughts and desires which may dwell in the wild hearts of Afghan cattle-thieves. I can hardly resist them, so suddenly do they assail me. And then I recognise in horror that they are not at all as alien to my inner self as I had thought: in me too there is somewhere, deep down, a crude Central Asiatic, and I curse the air which has let him be wakened from his slumber.

Yet this world contains possibilities for unique greatness. When the storm is let loose over the desert, whole mountains of sand are piled up which roll on like waves. Such storm forces have several times been embodied in men. They were beings without souls or sense, without inward aim or feeling for values; they hardly possessed any human consciousness. But on the other hand, the elemental force of the desert storm was in them. Like grains of sand they drove nations before them, burying cultures under mountains of sand. But if these did not remain, then everything was once more as if nothing had happened, as if their invasion had been an evil dream. These conquerors represent intrinsically non-spiritual powers. But greatness, yes, superhuman greatness, cannot be denied to Attila and Jenghiz Khan.

And to think that here, and not even at such an immeasurable distance of time, lay the very centre of Buddhistic culture! That the Valley of Kabul was the holy land of Mahayana doctrine, longed for by every searcher from the land of the five streams to the Japanese sea, the scene of the blending of the Hellenic and Indian spirits in art, culture and religion, to which all the later developments of the Far East can originally be traced! Central Asia was, for thousands of years, the source of all spiritual influences on earth. But as the waters dried up and the gardens withered to the dust of the desert, the spirit vanished irretrievably from this parched atmosphere, and the extremest forms of barbarism became the heir to the extreme of culture. - My thoughts wander back to my geological days and the way in which I then regarded the world; in the Alps, I beheld the ocean, liquid lava in basalt, and life itself in the rigidity of stone. The archaeologist beholds Central Asia with a similar vision. But, it seems to me, both overlook the really significant factor. This is the change in itself. Anyone who has ever been a farmer knows what 'history' means: one year of culture more or less represents cosmically an absolute entity; it cannot be taken away nor retrieved; such time is real before eternity. For such time creates change. Where growth is guided by conscious volition, development takes place; everything progresses, marches onward, further and further, and no end is in sight. If, for any reason, volition fails, all events change their being. Development diverges, branches off, or even ceases, and the casual takes the place of the rational. Thus the desert follows upon the garden, the wilderness upon culture, lack of all spirit upon spirit, eternal death upon brief life. What folly to believe in a Providence which guides life on earth from outside! Life could, of course, progress in accordance with a high purpose, no principle is opposed to such a course; we men will perhaps one day bring about such a state of affairs. But what happens on earth seems a matter of complete indifference to God. Spirit yesterday, none to-day, to-morrow perhaps spirit again; sometimes garden, sometimes desert, sometimes the primeval forest, sometimes the sea: I dare say He delights in aimless change, as the tired Maharajah delights in the Nautch, so that eternity should not become too tedious for Him.

None the less, it is stimulating to live for a while among such wild fellows as the Afridis. They are magnificent - like beasts of prey in their primitiveness, their instinctive irresponsibility. The Government does not like to see people going unprotected and without a guide through the bazaars: suddenly one of these gentlemen might dig a dagger between one's ribs, the Government would have to interfere, which, in its wisdom it prefers not to do, because murdering means nothing worse to them than the polite expression of a differing opinion does among us. Could I bear the Afridi a grudge who sought my life? Hardly. At any rate, no more than a tiger. And as I wend my way through the narrow streets, I look out whether I cannot spy the beginnings of a quarrel. These men must look magnificent when fighting. As long as peace reigns, the best in them is asleep, in the same way in which the best sleeps in the Spanish fighting bull while he chews the cud.

All at once I must laugh: the Afridis are the very embodiment of that ideal of supermen to which a fair proportion of our young poets cling! Great men who are cruel because they must be so, who fulfil their destiny although it ruins them whose passion knows no limit who are never led astray by reasonable considerations: yes, indeed, the description befits them. It is droll to think to what manifestations the need for hero-worship leads over-civilised townsmen. Undoubtedly originality is necessary: but is it not possible to conceive a higher kind than that of the animals? It is hardly conceivable that the Athenians who surrounded Plato looked up to Achilles and Diogenes as ideals; it needed the modern decadents to lower the ideal of humanity so much to the animal level; even Nietzsche, the gentle pastor's son, never intended anything of this sort, no matter what he may have said. But to-day we have really reached the stage at which originality and primitiveness in the animal sense appear identified. I am quite prepared, and why not, to honour the candour of the cow; only, I stipulate that she shall not write; this form of expression is only suited to cultured human beings. I refuse in the same way to honour savages as heroes. The Afridis are really the supermen worshipped by our modern literary youth. It amuses me to examine them from this point of view. Formerly it used to be said: he who controls himself is strong. To-day: he who must let himself go. Of course, to anyone who has no passion at all, its mere existence implies an ideal. But it is not true that all modern men are emasculated; only those who write are for the most part in this state, the canaille ecrivante, cabalante el comwlsionnaire of Voltaire, the most unreal people of all, and to-day, it is more fatal than ever that they have so much power. The ideal of the emaciated, the impotent, the weakling, drives healthy individuals into barbarism. Literary cows are magnified, savage churls are honoured as heroes: thus more and more cows begin to write, and more and more men capable of culture become savage. How good it would be for the young men of to-day to imbibe a little Indian wisdom ! To learn that it is a sign of weakness and not of strength if a man has to be cruel, if he succumbs to his fate, if he is not master of his passion, if he is impervious to the considerations of reason, and that not only the superman of the newest, but also the tragic hero of the classical pattern, embodies a barbaric condition! No doubt the modern condition of humanity is not worth much; but the ideal which we should strive after lies in the direction of transfusing life with spirit, not with animality. Not only the cow, but God also, is natural, and we should simulate the latter, not the former. All the more so as we are already much nearer to Him. As I regard these Afridis, I realise very clearly how far their nature is removed from ours. Perhaps it is due to this change of perspective, as opposed to the conditions of antiquity, that the animal seems to us above everything worthy of reverence, just as God seemed to the ancients. . . .

Hermann Alexander Graf Keyserling
(1880–1946)

The excerpt is from the chapter 'Peshawar' in The Travel Diary of a Philosopher by Count Hermann Keyserling (published in 1925 and available in English translation online: Volume One and Volume Two).

In his 1925 essay 'Self in the Light of Relativity', Iqbal quoted an excerpt from this book: "The impulse which drives me into the wide world is precisely the same as that which drives so many into monastries - the desire for self-realization... I want to let the climate of the Tropics, the Indian modes of consciousness, the Chinese code of life, and many other factors which I cannot envisage in advance, to work their spell on me, one after the other, and then watch what will become of me." Iqbal regarded this view of self-realization as one-sided: "The intellectual self is only one aspect of the activity of our total self."

About the author, the official website of the School of Wisdom founded by him tells us: "Count Keyserling is the first Western thinker to conceive of and promote a planetary culture, beyond nationalism and cultural ethnocentrism, based on recognition of the equal value and validity of non-western cultures and philosophies. He founded the School of Wisdom in Darmstadt, Germany in 1920, based on the original Schools of Wisdom which prospered over two thousand years ago in Northern India under Buddhist rule. Unlike other spiritual leaders of the day, he did not set himself up as a guru, or establish any kind of personality cult. Instead, he encouraged the equal participation of many others." (This last proposition has been questioned in the light of the private assertions of Rabindranath Tagore, one of the chief beneficiaries of the Count's generosity; for instance. see the paper by Martin Kämpchen in Asiatic).

ISKANDER MIRZA: The Message of Iqbal

2011-12-11T00:01:00.006+05:00

An International Islamic Colloquium was held at Lahore in December 1957. The inaugural address delivered by President Major-General Iskander Mirza on the 30th is being reproduced here from Iskander Mirza Speaks (1997), a compilation by Ahmad Salim. President Mirza may have been a bad ruler who manipulated power towards personal ends, but ironically, the more enlightened intellectuals haven't usually bothered to give us a better summary of the relevance of Iqbal's message for a common person.

International Islamic Colloquium

I consider this a very momentous occasion when eminent thinkers and scholars from all over the world are assembled here to pool their knowledge and thought in an attempt to rediscover the spirit of Islam in the context of modern life. I extend a most cordial welcome to all those who have traveled long distance to honor us with their presence today. I hope they will find their brief stay in this historic city of Lahore pleasant and fruitful.

Perhaps I cannot do better than begin by a quotation from our great philosopher-poet, Iqbal, who was one of the most enlightened thinkers to interpret Islam in terms of modern knowledge. “The Prophet of Islam,” wrote Iqbal, “seems to stand between the ancient and the modern world. In so far as the source of his revelation is concerned, he belongs to the ancient world; in so far as the spirit of his revelation is concerned, he belongs to the modern world.”

I have quoted this statement as it contains the essence of a fundamental truth. The fact that Islam is capable of belonging to the modern world makes it possible to recognize that it is a living and dynamic force.

Throughout its chequered history of about 1,400 years, Islam has been one of the most cherished, and at the same time, one of the most misunderstood faiths. The source of this conflict is that Islam is not the name of a personal or inner experience alone. It also seeks to govern and direct the everyday life of not only individuals but of the entire human race regardless of the elements of time, place, color or social status.

It is in its application to practical life in its totality that Islam is apt to become the subject of conflicts and controversies. It is the task not of theologians alone but also of jurists, humanists, educationists and administrators to brush off the cobwebs of these confusions and controversies and reach the real core of what the spirit of Islam implies.

It is an irony of history that, while rejecting the institutions of organized priesthood, Islam has often fallen into the hands of priests. In the term “priest”, I do not include the great saints, mystics, traditionalists, thinkers and other men of piety who form a distinct class by themselves. On the contrary, the organized priesthood in Islam is made up of half-baked and ill-educated Mullahs who for centuries have monopolized the pulpit. On one hand, the Mullah has woven into Islam a crazy network of fantasy and fanaticism. On the other, he has often tried to use it as an elastic cloak for political power and expediencies. The result in both cases is chaotic.

Inside the mosques, the Mullah has made Islam into a fairy-tale immersed in strange superstitions and opposed to all forces of progress. And outside the mosque, he has often made it a pliant handmaid of power politics. If I may presume to say so, Islam was not born to be a captive in the four walls of mosques and castles. It is a fallacy to make it subservient to the imperfections of transient values and expediencies. Islam is too dynamic and too eternal to be imprisoned in the requirements of a passing age. As the intellect of man develops into new dimensions with the discoveries of new avenues of knowledge and science, his understanding of life and religion is bound to grow in similar proportions. What is really changeable and flexible is the human intelligence and not the basic propositions of Islam. Just as there is no finality in human thought, there can be no dead-end in the understanding and application of a dynamic faith.

In any given period of time, therefore it should be our endeavor to focus on Islam the searchlight of new knowledge and thought so that the scholar in his study, the scientist in his laboratory, the tiller of soil in his corn field and the little school girl in her classroom may all be able to understand and derive guidance from their faith in accordance with the spirit of their times.

The disturbed and fast-changing times in which we are destined to live offer a unique setting in which the Islamic principles of universality, fraternity, integrity, mercy, cooperation and goodwill should be brought to light in relation with the affairs of men and nations. The race between the conflicting ideologies of today is bound to end in atomic smoke unless their materialistic frenzy is mellowed by the intercession of spiritual outlook. Islam provides a practical forum for experimenting with the universal peace without weakness and universal freedom without license.

I have no doubt that the deliberations of this august assembly will prove a landmark in the study and appreciation of a most powerful and dynamic movement in the history of mankind.

While wishing you the best of luck in your high deliberations I beg your indulgence to strike a note of caution at this stage. As you know, religion is not a matter of head alone; it also lies deep in the recesses of heart. Faith is the outward symbol of an intense emotion, and emotion as we all know is blind and sensitive. It is our duty to respect it. So, whatever the depth of analytical logic and rational scrutiny, it is desirable that care should always be taken to ensure that the sanctity of fundamental verities is not violated and the tender emotions of simple faith are not hurt. Tolerance is always good. Sometimes it is even a necessity. But where religious susceptibilities are concerned, tolerance is a great virtue and is enjoined by the Quran.

Modern Spain in Muslim Consciousness

2011-12-09T00:01:00.009+05:00

1933: Iqbal in the grand mosque
of Cordoba

The following statement was issued by Allama Iqbal on 26th February 1933, after visiting Spain during his trip to Europe. It is included in Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal by Latif Ahmad Sherwani (ed), published by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. "The conference in Geneva" mentioned here was apparently the European Muslim Congress, eventually held in 1935 after being postponed twice.

This is the time when Iqbal was writing his landmark Urdu poem, 'The Mosque of Cordoba'. It can be a rewarding experience to read the first and last paragraphs of the statement in the light of the following verses from that poem:
دیکھ چُکا المنی شورشِ اصلاحِ دیں
جس نے نہ چھوڑے کہیں عہدِ کہن کے نشاں
حرفِ غلط بن گئی عصمتِ پیرِ کنشت
اور ہوئی فکر کی کشتیِ نازک رواں
روحِ مسلماں میں ہے آج وہی اضطراب
رازِ خدائی ہے یہ کہہ نہیں سکتی زباں

After visiting different European countries and seeing the general moral chaos of the modern world, I am convinced that the great opportunity for Islam as a faith has come. Millions upon millions of men and women in Europe are anxious to know what Islam and its cultural ideals are. The sooner the younger generation of Muslims realises this fact, the better. European Muslims have already realised it. They are holding a conference in Geneva in August next, the object of the proposed conference being purely social and cultural. I hope the Muslims of Asia and Africa will generously respond to the promoters of the conference.

I visited Cordova, Granada, Seville, Toledo and Madrid and besides seeing the historic mosque at Cordova, and the Alhambra in Granada, I visited the ruins of Madinatuz Zehra, the famous palace built on a mountain by Abdur Rehman for his wife Zehra, where excavations are still going on. It was there that the first demonstration of a flying machine was given in the twelfth century by a Muslim inventor. I had the privilege of meeting, among others, the Education Minister of the Spanish Government, an exceedingly courteous gentleman with a breadth of vision hardly to be expected in a country like Spain, and Professor Asin, the well-known author of Divine Comedy and Islam. Under the directions of the Education Minister the department of Arabic in the University of Granada is being greatly expanded. The head of this department is a disciple of Professor Asin.

The Spaniards living in the south of the country are proud of their Moorish origin and of the great monuments of Islamic culture which are to be found there. A new consciousness is steadily growing in the country and will further expand with the development of education. The movement of reform started by Luther has not yet exhausted itself. It is still working quietly in different European countries and the hold of priesthood, especially in Spain, is gradually loosening.

DU PREL: The Philosophy of Mysticism

2011-12-07T00:01:00.004+05:00

It is not always the business of philosophy to split hairs, and to devise subtle problems. The weightiest problems are just those which are hidden by their every-day character, or behind unwarranted presuppositions, of which we are unconscious, only because we are continually making them.

Such a problem it is which I would suggest in the following work—the questions whether our Ego is wholly embraced in self-consciousness. The affirmative answer to this question, the most proximate and constant of human problems, is evidently a mere presumption, and not less so because carried on through our whole life. Moreover, this presumption is not only logically unjustified, but is also – as will be shown – erroneous. Analysis of the dream-life leads to a negative answer to the question propounded; it shows that self-consciousness falls short of its object, that the Ego exceeds the self-consciousness.

If, however, we are more than that of which our self-consciousness informs us, and indeed not in the sense of a pantheistic dissolution, but with preservation of individuality, then it is evident that the question of the soul has been falsely stated. Instead of succession of the here and the beyond, we have their simultaneity, that is, the simultaneity of two Persons of our Subject.

[Excerpt from Carl Freiherr du Prel, The Philosophy of Mysticism (1889). The work was mentioned by Iqbal in his paper 'The Doctrine of Absolute Unity' (1900).]

Democracy in the modern Muslim world

2011-12-02T00:01:00.000+05:00

Democracy, then, is the most important aspect of Islam regarded as a political ideal. It must however be confessed that the Muslims, with their ideal of individual freedom, could do nothing for the political improvement of Asia. Their democracy lasted only thirty years and disappeared with their political expansion. Though the principle of election was not quite original in Asia (since the ancient Parthian Government was based on the same principle), yet somehow or other it was not suited to the nations of Asia in the early days of Islam. It was, however, reserved for a Western nation politically to vitalise the countries of Asia. Democracy has been the great mission of England in modern times and English statesmen have boldly carried this principle to countries which have been, for centuries, groaning under the most atrocious forms of despotism.

(Excerpt from 'Islam As A Moral and Political Ideal', paper read by Iqbal at the anniversary celebrations of Anjuman Himayat-i-Islam in 1909. First published in The Observer, Lahore, April 1909; included in Writings, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal compiled by Latif Ahmad Sherwani and published by Iqbal Academy Pakistan)

MUSIC VIDEO: Kabhi Aye Haqeeqat-e-Muntazar

2011-12-01T00:01:00.000+05:00

Presented by:

"IQBAL's Youth Corner(IYC)"

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=145942286642

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1653501739987&saved#!/pages/IQB...

WHITEHEAD: Religion in the Making

2011-11-30T00:01:00.001+05:00

Science (at least as a temporary methodological device) can rest upon a naive faith; religion is the longing for justification. When religion ceases to seek for penetration, for clarity, it is sinking back into its lower forms. The ages of faith are the ages of rationalism.

The excerpt is from Religion in the Making (1926) by Alfred North Whitehead. It was quoted by Iqbal in the first lecture of The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930-34).

Liaquat Ali Khan: Iqbal's Pakistan

2011-11-27T00:01:00.001+05:00

The greatest evils of the modern world have been perpetrated in the name of nation and race, nations which are made by geographical boundaries and races which are made by the accident of the birth. In such a world Islam has a very great contribution to make, and I feel that if the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent are able to establish an independent State they will be helping humanity to build a better and happier world order.

As Iqbal has pointed out, the Quran repeatedly lays emphasis on the history and Nature, these should be subjects of the deepest and most abiding interest for Muslims. We should study the history of peoples and nations to derive lessons for ourselves for the future and we should also build up an army of men and women engaged in the study and conquest of Nature.

Science has a most vital connection with the Islamic Movement; the Prophet said that ‘The pursuit of knowledge is the duty of every man and woman, among Muslims,’ and again, ‘Seek ye knowledge even if you have to go as far as China for it.’ And the most vital part of knowledge is knowledge of Nature which gives man power over her.

It is true that the detailed picture of the State which we Muslims seek to establish in the sub-continent is still to be drawn out but what I have said above is enough to show the direction in which our efforts should lie and the type of training that is essential for our people if we are to succeed in reaching our goal.

(Convocation Address delivered by Liaquat Ali Khan at Aligarh Muslim University, February 16, 1947)

Negative forces in the Muslim world

2011-11-25T00:01:00.013+05:00

The ideas presented here by Iqbal
were also repeated by him
in Urdu verses addressed to
contemporary Muslims:
باقی نہ رہی تیری وہ آئینہ ضمیری
اے کشتہءسلطانی و مُلائی و پیری

It may, however, be asked what exactly was the objective of these great Muslims [Syed Ahmad Khan in India, Syed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani in Afghanistan and Mufti Alam Jan in Russia]. The answer is that they found the world of Islam ruled by three main forces and they concentrated their whole energy on creating a revolt against these forces.
Mullaism: The ulema have always been a source of great strength to Islam. But during the course of centuries, especially since the destruction of Baghdad, they became extremely conservative and would not allow any freedom of Ijtihad i.e. the forming of independent judgment in matters of law. The Wahabi movement which was a source of inspiration to the nineteenth-century Muslim reformers was really a revolt against this rigidity of the Ulema. Thus the first objective of the nineteenth-century Muslim reformers was a fresh orientation of the faith and a freedom to reinterpret the law in the light of advancing experience.
Mysticism: The masses of Islam were swayed by the kind of mysticism which blinked actualities, enervated the people and kept them steeped in all kinds of superstition. From its high state as a force of spiritual education mysticism had fallen down to a mere means of exploiting the ignorance and the credulity of the people. It gradually and invisibly unnerved the will of Islam and softened it to the extent of seeking relief from the rigorous discipline of the law of Islam. The nineteenth-century reformers rose in revolt against this mysticism and called Muslims to the broad daylight of the modern world. Not that they were materialists. Their mission was to open the eyes of the Muslims to the spirit of Islam which aimed at the conquest of matter and not flight from it.
Muslim Kings: The gaze of Muslim Kings was solely fixed on their own dynastic interests and, so long as these were protected, did not hesitate to sell their countries to the highest bidder. To prepare the masses of Muslims for a revolt against such a state of things in the world of Islam was the special mission of Syed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani.
(Excerpt from 'Islam and Ahmadism', an article by Iqbal published in January 1936; included in Writings, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal compiled by Latif Ahmad Sherwani and published by Iqbal Academy Pakistan)

A Portrait of the Artist as Waheed Murad

2011-11-23T05:31:00.010+05:00

“And he sets his mind to unknown arts”

[From the mailing list of Saleena Karim, author of Secular Jinnah and Pakistan (2010), Monday, November 21, 2011. The article attached with the mail is being copied after it.]

Hello Folks,

This week marks the 28th death anniversary of Pakistani actor/filmmaker Waheed Murad. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his work, Waheed Murad is one of Pakistan's biggest ever screen legends. The title character in one of his best known films, Armaan, was the inspiration behind Iqbal Academy's recent TV film, 'Iqbal', which I mentioned to you all a few months ago, and which is available on YouTube.

So why, you may ask, am I mentioning Waheed Murad here? What has he to do with Jinnah, Iqbal, or the story of Pakistan? Perhaps more than you think. Iqbal Academy researcher Khurram Ali Shafique has been collecting material on the filmmaker for a number of years. He has found some interesting links between Murad and Iqbal (personal and intellectual) and has done some presentations exploring what Murad has to offer as an artist. The attached article written by Mr Shafique is sure to intrigue you, and is a good introduction for anyone who doesn't know about Murad.

In the meantime, the links take you to a series of short articles, including clips from his movies that have been used in Mr Shafique's presentations.
Know Thyself (Opening Clip)
The World of Consensus Literature (a hymn about the Unity of God = unity of humankind)
Bezar Sahib (elitist literature)
The Last Song (Mysteries of Time)
The Wind-Up
Comments are welcome, and in fact encouraged.
Take Care Folks,
Saleena
------------------------------------
Saleena Karim,
author of Secular Jinnah

A Portrait of the Artist as Waheed Murad
By Khurram Ali Shafique

Nukta Art Mag, Karachi; 2010

“And he sets his mind to unknown arts”. Ovid wrote it in Latin, James Joyce cited it as epigram of his famous novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-16), and I am using the English translation for describing Waheed Murad (1938-1983).

Ulysses by James Joyce inspired
Waheed Murad while he was studying
English literature. Research into the
"stream of consciousness" led him
to other works by Joyce and
works by Henry James, Virgina Woolf
and William Faulkner

Given the nature of its content, a good way of beginning the present article would be to remind the reader about Joyce’s novel and the stream of consciousness technique used there, and then to show how Waheed translated the literary technique to cinema, with a different purpose, in Ishara (1969), a movie written, produced and directed by him.

Hence I am now on the Wikipedia page about the novel. The link to Spark Notes gives me that handy definition which I needed for sharing with readers, “stream of consciousness, a stylistic form in which written prose seeks to represent the characters’ stream of inner thoughts and perceptions rather than render these characters from an objective, external perspective.” Precisely, but Waheed replaced “written prose” with movie and sought to represent a combined “stream of inner thoughts and perceptions” of two characters: he and the viewer. The film begins with the subjective camera moving into a street and a voiceover welcomes the viewer. Thus it gets established that what you see is what passes through the stream of your “inner thoughts and perceptions” while you watch the movie. This also makes you the main character in the story, which now becomes a story about your exploration of a new world, and the world is the movie you have entered.

A second character is introduced almost simultaneously. It is the welcoming voice, “Mera naam Amir hai…” (“My name is Amir…”). The voice tells you that it lives in that street, and soon you are taken to the room where Amir is painting pictures. The voice belongs to him, which is Waheed himself in the role of an aspiring painter who has a good taste but is also passionate about feedback from the uninitiated. Out of the three little children from the neighborhood who watch him making the picture, the first child likes it, the second doesn’t and the third dislikes. Now it may become clear that the street in the opening shot represented the world of cinema, the room is the mind of Waheed Murad and pictures are metaphor for movies (in Urdu, both were called “tasveer”). Three little children are the entire range of feedback you may offer about the “picture” (read “movie”) that is being made in front of you: like it, don’t like it or dislike it but your feedback is essentially immature right now because you are new to this world and are yet to understand its ways, just like those children (be any of them or all of them, they are your alter egos).

Bildungsroman means "formation novel".
Wilhelm Miester by Goethe (above) is a famous
example. Ishara, written and directed
by Waheed Murad is also a film about the
coming of age: it traces the psychological and
moral growth of the viewer
in the act of engaging with the film.

I would have liked to write here what happens in the story but Wikipedia has distracted me with the term bildungsroman. “The bildungsroman (German: "formation novel") is a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood,” says Wikipedia. “The birth of the bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Goethe’s The Apprenticeship of Wilhelm Meister in 1795-96.” However, a famous earlier example is the Arabic romance Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, named by its 11th century writer Ibn Tufail after a Persian story by Bu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna) of a century before. Ibn Sina’s story was about an old sage instructing the young reader about mysteries of the universe – active intellect informing the rational human soul. Ibn Tufail told a story about an abandoned child growing up to maturity through inquiry and reasoning.

Ishara is a coming of age story but it is the viewer who grows up: you enter the world of the artist as if newly born into another world, you see yourself as one (or all) of three little children and then you see the artist falling in love with Aliya, a college student. It is not impossible for the viewers to identify themselves with Aliya at this point: in real life, it was the name of the filmmaker’s infant daughter, born around this time. Iqbal used the name of his son, Javid, to represent posterity. Waheed used the name of his daughter as a metaphor for the next generation, as he instructed them about mysteries just like the old sage of Avicenna’s story, transforming them from the children of the first scene to the college student of the main story.

The instruction is offered, and the story told, through “stream of inner thoughts and perceptions” that typically passes through the imagination of a viewer while watching a movie of mainstream cinema, especially Indo-Pakistan. Destiny intervenes and the aspiring artist gets noticed by a woman who is young, rich and single. Reshma falls in love but Amir’s heart and soul belong to Aliya. Hence Reshma probably represents the artist’s contemporaries who help him gain recognition but the artist remains committed to generations that shall come later (“I am the Voice of the Poet of Tomorrow,” said Iqbal. “Turning away from my contemporaries, I have a word to share with the new generation”). The posterity shall return the artist’s love but may have its own issues to sort out first: Aliya is under obligation to marry Ishrat, the son of her aunt and guardian. Of course, destiny intervenes again in the end and things get sorted out as they should be – but what is that?

The theory of art presented in Ishara (1969)
by Waheed Murad is distinctively from
Allama Iqbal (above).

In presenting Ishara, Waheed relied exclusively on stock items of mainstream cinema but he managed to make some pertinent statements. Foremost among these was his theory of art. In A Portrait, Joyce’s protagonist had famously viewed family, nation and religion as constraints an artist must avoid for growing wings. Around the very same time, in 1915, Iqbal offered a different view of art in ‘Secrets of the Self’ (Asrar-i-Khudi), where family, nation and religion worked as catalysts for the artist. In Ishara, the artist belongs distinctively to this school of thought.

His first song is a hymn in praise of the Almighty, by Whose grace destiny has smiled on all who share the artist’s world. While singing and dancing (with abundant allusions to well-known moves of Waheed from his other movies), he pulls together the entire range of society from burqa-clad women to girls in teddy shalwars, and from the roadside worker to men in evening suites. Bringing them together in pairs from three successive generations of children, youth and seniors, he makes them dance in a circle around him while he revolves, not very unlike a whirling dervish, in the centre. Gradually he moves out but the circle keeps revolving even then (“Nations are born in the hearts of the poets,” says Iqbal. “They prosper and die in the hands of politicians”).

This is a portrait of the artist as a force that binds together diverse schools and classes in ecstasy and joy. The poetics of this artist is summarized in his advice to friend and neighbor Bezar, the penniless but proud maestro of classical music. “Times have moved on,” says Amir. “People shall keep running away from you unless you sing to the tune of Time. There is nothing wrong with your music but very few people can understand this type of music. In my humble opinion, keep pace with Time, and truly there is none like you in the whole world.”

Bezar happens to be an epitome of the Joyce-like artist who seeks isolation. Amir’s advice leads him into a fantasy where he sees himself on the stage of a night club, singing a pop song and performing like Fred Astair (and parodying Shammi Kapoor), while all the musicians of the orchestra are his own clones (played by the same actor). He feels irritated when they go on praising him senselessly (“Wah bhai wah wah, wah bhai wah wah…”) but gets upset again when they stop that. In the end we are shown that even the high-brow audience, including women, are Bezar himself in so many roles.

How different is the inner world of this artist from what we saw of the Waheed-Amir school of thought! In this comparison, differences between high and popular, classical or pop, or traditional and modern forms of art become secondary. The real criterion is how an artist connects with the people, and whether or not they have a place in the artist’s inner world (the elitist journal where Joyce’s novel was first published was called, quite appropriately, The Egoist).

Destiny appears to be a significant motif
in Waheed Murad's Ishara

Needless to say, names are symbolic. The name Amir comes from the same root as the Arabic words for culture and civilization, architecture and society. Moreover, it was the surname of Qais (the legendary lover better known as Majnun). Aliya literally means the Exalted, and as the real-life name of the filmmaker’s infant daughter it symbolizes the posterity. Bezar means “Fed Up”, Reshma has connotations of silk while Ishrat means luxury. In choosing Amir instead of Ishrat, destiny has preferred culture and civilization over luxury for Aliya but her guardian, despite being a well-wisher, is in conflict with the youth’s destiny.

A cliché in most other mainstream films, destiny becomes a powerful motif in Ishara and is dramatized in full bloom in the final fantasy of the artist. In the beginning we had entered a black and white movie but in the very last reel, when the artist realizes that he cannot be united with Aliya and goes into fantasy, the film turns into color: while the mind of the artist was presented in black and white, his imagination is shown in color – imagination is so much more colorful and possibly also more important. A troupe of mysterious dancers leads Amir into a park. Standing on a lower plane, he finds himself in the presence of Aliya who stands on a higher plane. A chorus of eight dancers accompanies each of them, bringing the total number of people on each sphere to nine, which is identical with the number of stairs between the two planes. “My love, do not be sad,” says Amir as he begins the song. “You stand on one side, I on the other and the insensitive Time between us.” Ascending the nine steps, he moves over to the other plane but the mysterious dancers drag Aliya away and out of the park. The gate closes on Amir, leaving him trapped inside.

After this grand vision of destiny, Amir returns from fantasy and back into his real world where things get sorted out miraculously: Ishrat has learnt the truth and now he dramatically unites the lovers, who fly off to Islamabad, never to be parted again. This is how things ought to be resolved where destiny itself is in the leading strings but there might be a catch. Although the artist has come out of his fantasy, the film never returns to black and white, and ends in color. So, is the happy ending occurring in real or is it part of the fantasy too? Can it be a current which, although unknown to us, is always flowing beneath our “stream of inner thoughts and perceptions”?

An interactive presentation of selected clipsfrom Ishara
can be followed at my other blog

These questions draw diverse answers whenever I raise them in my workshops and presentations. Recently, I posted five clips from the movie on my blog, Khurramsdesk.blogspot.com, and the following comments may give the reader an idea about how viewers approach the unusual wind-up of this movie:

“The opening sequence was an artist's vision for consensus which realizes in this closing sequence as here everyone seems to be helping the artist in realizing his dreams. Those who once were seen singing and dancing to their own tunes are now seen helping others. Consensus has taken place and the artist's vision for a better tomorrow has dawned.”
“The film which started with black and white has ended with color. With the color of his soul, Amir – the artist – succeeded in painting his outer world in colors. No one is sad and everyone, including Ishrat and Reshma, supports Amir in achieving his desire as similar to the starting of the film. A society which makes its decision with consensus achieves its desire and its goal.”
“The symmetry – complete with rich colors and light, morning and night, and then the dramatic blacks – the moonlight whites and shadows – all provide a grand design. This backdrop provides a mirror sometimes and other times a frame for Amir's reflective and pre-occupied moments. Against this design he moves alone and then back in touch (slowly) with others and the crowd. This design shows others’ movements away and toward him and his away and toward them.”

Waheed Murad (1938-1983)

It may be a good idea to provide some relevant biographical information about Waheed Murad before ending this article. His grandfather was Zahoor Ilahi Murad, a lawyer from Sialkot and also an acquaintance of Iqbal according to the oral tradition in the Murad family. Zahoor’s son, Nisar Murad, was born in Sialkot in 1915, the same year when Joyce finished serializing A Portrait and Iqbal published ‘Secrets of the Self’. Nisar shifted to Karachi and was twenty-three when his only child was born on October 2, 1938. This was Waheed Murad.

Waheed started his schooling in the prestigious Lawrence College, Ghora Gali (Murree), where he lived in a hostel. His parents missed him too much, called him back after Grade 2 and got him admission in Mary Colasso School, one of the best in Karachi. He was only nine when Pakistan came into being, Karachi became the capital and Waheed saw his father celebrating the newfound independence by changing the name of his film distribution company to Pakistan Films. New friends arrived at school. One of them was Javid Ali Khan, a nephew once-removed of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. Another was Pervez Malik, the son of an army officer. At the end of the schooling, Waheed and Pervez wanted to acquire a Masters in filmmaking from California but Waheed’s parents didn’t want to part with their only child for such a long period. They gave him the money but asked him to acquire the learning by producing his own films in Karachi rather than going abroad. Film Arts was the name the young man chose for his new production house, and the name could have told something about the idea behind it.

This hands-on experience had to be backed up with a Masters in English Literature from Karachi University, where Waheed also won a prize in some elocution competition that would have remained insignificant if the prize was not Ulysses, the sequel to A Portrait by James Joyce. The “stylistic form in which written prose seeks to represent the characters’ stream of inner thoughts and perceptions” fired his imagination and he tried to familiarize himself with as many masters of the stream of consciousness as he could – especially Henry James, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. Soon, he started dreaming about making a mainstream Pakistani film utilizing the stream of consciousness technique. The idea must have sounded bizarre, absurd and practically impossible at first.

Ishara was released on February 14, 1969. It was written, produced and directed by Waheed Murad. Dialogue and lyrics were by Masroor Anwar (who later wrote the famous national song ‘Sohni Dharti’) and music by Sohail Rana. Playback singers were Mala, Mehdi Hassan, Naseem Begum, Ahmed Rushdi, Waheed Murad and Deeba (the last two were not credited). Actors included Waheed Murad (as Amir), Deeba (as Aliya), Rozina (as Reshma), Lehri (as Bezar) and Talat Hussain (in his debut role as Ishrat). The movie ran for a little over 25 cumulative weeks (Silver Jubilee), which was considered to be not very well-received in those days.

Khurram Ali Shafique is the author of Iqbal: an Illustrated Biography (2006), which won the Presidential Iqbal Award. His official website is The Republic of Rumi and email is KhurramsOffice@yahoo.com.

Syed Jamaluddin Afghani

2011-11-18T00:01:00.002+05:00

Syed Jamaluddin Afghani
(sometimes also known as 'Asadabadi')
1838-1897

Maulana Syed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani was a man of a different stamp. Strange are the ways of Providence. One of the most advanced Muslims of our time, both in religious thought and action, was born in Afghanistan! A perfect master of nearly all the Muslim languages of the world and endowed with the most winning eloquence, his restless soul migrated from one Muslim country to another influencing some of the most prominent men in Persia, Egypt and Turkey. Some of the greatest theologians of our time, such as Mufti Muhammad ‘Abduhu, and some of the men of the younger generation who later became political leaders, such as Zaghlul Pasha of Egypt, were his disciples. He wrote little, spoke much and thereby transformed into miniature Jamalud-Dins all those who came into contact with him. He never claimed to be a prophet or a renewer; yet no man in our time has stirred the soul of Islam more deeply than he! His spirit is still working in the world of Islam and nobody knows where it will end.

(Excerpt from 'Islam and Ahmadism', an article by Iqbal published in January 1936; included in Writings, Speeches and Statements of Iqbal compiled by Latif Ahmad Sherwani and published by Iqbal Academy Pakistan)

MUSIC: Iqbal's Translation of Browning ("Chamak Teri Ayan")

2011-11-17T00:01:00.000+05:00

From TauseefQAU's Channel at Youtube:
Singer: Tarannum Naz
This is translation of Robert Browning's Saul (Number XVII), which starts like this:

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh,
In the soul and the cloud.

It is perfect Urdu translation by Iqbal; lyrics are here:

چمک تیری عیاں بجلی میں

چمک تیری عیاں بجلی میں ، آتش میں ، شرارے میں
جھلک تیری ہویدا چاند میں ،سورج میں ، تارے میں
بلندی آسمانوں میں ، زمینوں میں تری پستی
روانی بحر میں ، افتادگی تیری کنارے میں
شریعت کیوں گریباں گیر ہو ذوق تکلم کی
چھپا جاتا ہوں اپنے دل کا مطلب استعارے میں
جو ہے بیدار انساں میں وہ گہری نیند سوتا ہے
شجر میں ، پھول میں ، حیواں میں ، پتھر میں ، ستارے میں
مجھے پھونکا ہے سوز قطرۂ اشک محبت نے
غضب کی آگ تھی پانی کے چھوٹے سے شرارے میں
نہیں جنس ثواب آخرت کی آرزو مجھ کو
وہ سوداگر ہوں ، میں نے نفع دیکھا ہے خسارے میں
سکوں نا آشنا رہنا اسے سامان ہستی ہے
تڑپ کس دل کی یا رب چھپ کے آ بیٹھی ہے پارے میں
صدائے لن ترانی سن کے اے اقبال میں چپ ہوں
تقاضوں کی کہاں طاقت ہے مجھ فرقت کے مارے میں

GIBBON: Toleration

2011-11-16T00:01:00.019+05:00

There is the toleration of the philosopher to whom all religions are equally true; of the historian to whom all are equally false; and of the politician to whom all are equally useful. There is the toleration of the man who tolerates other modes of thought and behaviour because he has himself grown absolutely indifferent to all modes of thought and behaviour. There is the toleration of the weak man who, on account of sheer weakness, must pocket all kinds of insults heaped on things or persons that he holds dear.

Edward Gibbon is best known for his multi-volume book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published from 1776 to 1788). I have not been able to check his writings for tracing this excerpt but it was quoted by Iqbal with attribution to Gibbon in 'Islam and Ahmedism', an article published in January 1936.

UMRAO SINGH SHER GIL: The Value of Iqbal’s work

2011-11-13T08:25:00.000+05:00

Photograph of Iqbal taken by
Umrao Singh Sher Gil
in Paris in 1933
has become iconic since then

The following is a foreword written by Umrao Singh Sher Gil for A Voice from the East (1922) by Sir Zulfiqar Ali Khan. Umrao Singh also translated Iqbal’s Urdu poems for the volume. A close friend of Iqbal, he was also the father of the renowned Indian painter Amrita Sher Gil.

Foreword

Sir Zulfiqar Ali Khan has tried in this paper to throw some light on the springs of Iqbal's genius as a poet and a thinker, who through his powerful expression draws the attention of the world to those constructive principles which underlie religion – Islam in this case particularly. To try to fathom the depths of genius is a profitable task for the individual, but as hopeless as fathoming nature. Unlike the platitudes of the common mind it does not yield to anyone, but presents a vista of vision which unfolds with the progress of the race. The poet writes not for the past or even for the present, but for the coming age, and therein lies the possibility of his partial or fuller achievement. We skim the surface of the deep and take our fill.

To speak of the real value of Iqbal’s poetry would be to scandalize the current notions. To do this with some restraint of enthusiasm is difficult but necessary. So far as his aesthetic value is concerned, for those who are endowed with some redefined feeling for the charm for real beauty and harmony of words which have at the same time something to convey, touch with Iqbal’s verse can be likened to one thing only, the feeling of sublimated and purified love. It is akin to reading the highest masters of Persian verse. Besides, his verse contains the concentrated mass of thought which characterizes other masters of Persian verse who do not possess the aesthetic charm developed to that degree was we find for example in Hafiz. He combines idea with beauty of expression which one hardly finds in his precursors who represent either one or other quality in its excellence but who lack necessarily that something modern which preeminently belongs to him.

As to the constructive idea which he has tried to represent in his longer Persian poems, it is an attempt, and a very legitimate one, to prevent the premature broadening of the mystic sense of religious feeling which leads to seeming toleration but hides indifference towards duty, and neutralizes and destroys the function of religion by trying to pour into unworthy vessels the elixir of experience which they cannot possibly contain. Men talk and profess things which they do not understand, and thus misinterpret, leading to chaos and decay and absence of that strength which characterizes real faith and belief based on living experience, and thus help the disintegration of the social organism which religious feeling alone can hold together and help forward to progress. In this, his work is akin to that which the Bhagwad Gita essayed to accomplish for Brahmanism, and which consisted in the application of the religio-philosophical idea to the maintenance and progress of human society from which it had been divorced and the neglect of which resulted in its disintegration. What looks like a narrowing tendency in these later poems is nothing but an attempt at wedding together of these two and bringing about a union between them. The poet had seen long ago the chaos which materialism has engendered in Europe and the world, but which at first seemed to be the forerunner of progress. He aims at eliminating the weakness of undefined mysticism on the one hand and the still worse disintegrating tendency of materialism on the other. Read in this sense, as it seems to me these poems are meant, they are of universal application, though apparently addressed merely to the Islamic world.

Another famous photograph of Iqbal
taken by Umrao Singh Sher Gil
in Paris in 1933

While reading one of these poems with the poet, I have been struck with the wealth and terseness of constructive ideas which escape one in a cursory reading due to the association of the words with their older significance. He is enriching the content of idea in the words which his poetical genius has so appropriately selected for their phonetic harmony, in a manner which reveals the truly creative nature of his work. The future ages will read more sense into these words and expressions as we find in other languages which have not remained stationary, and the future generations will understand them better than we do now. In this consists the value of his work as a man who has ploughed up the soil of race ideas in their language, adding fresher significance to words, as we find in the works of F. W. Bain who has enriched the content of word and phrase in English language by adding to them the significance of classic India which they hitherto lacked. With the same grace and absence of awkwardness Iqbal has been handling the Persian and Urdu tongues.

The word-harmony and beauty of Hafiz is wedded to the wealth and terseness of a Rumi, which had a happy combination in Saadi, but this is more for the fact of its modernism. And yet Saadi does not touch Hafiz aesthetically, which Iqbal seems surely to do in the ode; and though in the more serious style of the longer poems the aesthetic level cannot be naturally kept up to his odes, in Iqbal you find a Rumi soaring above the halting and laboured style of the latter in which beauty does not keep pace with ideas, and where a certain amount of word-padding is to be found which one so happily misses in Iqbal. This is a thing which no translation can show in the case of Iqbal or any real poet – while the translations from the mediocre poets will sometimes sound better than the original – for, as has become a truism, only a poet can translate a poet, and that is hardly ever necessary.

Often at the house of my friend Sir Zulfiqar have I seen Iqbal enveloped in that blue haze which has become the accompaniment of the genial and magnetic atmosphere thrilling with subtle poetic vibrations which require no stretch of imagination to feel. Converse at such times has ceased through the touch of that spirit which precedes his song. There must be some dull spirits who would remain unaffected, but I find it hard to imagine any existing at such times. The pure and sparkling ambrosia of the gods flows and is demanded again and again, and one feels a wish to share it with other kindred spirits. Partly from these impulses and partly from a desire to light up, though momentarily, an edifice which seldom sees unconventional lights, arose the impulse to write this paper in the breast of my friend, and it may be hoped that though some windows may be closed still, this glow might get in through different chinks, “and steal in through another way,” as Hafiz says. The other day I found one of his verses inscribed in a most unexpected place, and no mean street wall too. I could not help smiling at the ways of life, and I hope I have not smiled for the last time in this matter. All credit to my friend. In the present instance the labor has been strenuous and prolonged, though no burden, I am sure. “The inebriate camel carries lightly,” as Saadi says, and still more so on the way to Hijaz, as in this instance. And this to my mind symbolizes the work, with its poetical wine and the direction to which the caravan happens to be moving.

Umrao Singh Sher Gil

Simla: 15 May 1922

Umrao Singh (left) with Iqbal (right) in Paris, 1933

(Pictures are from my book Iqbal: an Illustrated Biography (2006) and have been reproduced here with the courtesy of Iqbal Academy Pakistan)

ATHANAEUM: Review of Iqbal's PhD Thesis

2011-11-13T00:01:00.002+05:00

The Development of Metaphysics in Persia was the thesis on which Iqbal obtained a B.A. degree from the University of Cambridge in March 1907. On recommendations from his English teachers, it was then submitted with modifications to the University of Munich for PhD, which was acquired in June next year. Around the same time, it got published by Luzac & Co., London. The following review appeared in the British literary journal Athenaeum in November 1908.

The Development of Metaphysics in Persia by Shaikh Muhammad Iqbal. (Luzac & Co.)

This little volume is the work of an Indian scholar who has studied philosophy at Cambridge and Munich, and holds degrees from both these universities. Not only has he read widely and with evident grasp of the subject, but he is also familiar with, and has learnt to employ, European methods of criticism which generally make no profound impression, even on the most gifted Oriental minds. Consequently he has produced a really valuable resume of the history of Persian metaphysics, inevitably sketchy and incomplete, but sound in principle, and trustworthy as far as it goes. In this field the labourers are so few that every one must rely, to a large extent, on his own researches. The materials have to be collected from numberless manuscripts preserved in the great libraries of Europe, and it is only after long and tiresome research that any attempt can be made to reconstruct. To review the work in detail is impossible, on account of the enormous range of speculation which it covers—from Zoroaster and Mani to modern Babism. Naturally there are points to which exception might be taken. In discussing the origin of Sufism the writer claims to have treated the subject in a more scientific manner than previous investigations:—

“They seem completely to have ignored the principle that the full significance of a phenomenon in the intellectual evolution of a people can only be comprehended in the light of those pre-existing intellectual, political, and social conditions which alone make its existence inevitable. Von Kremer and Dozy derive Persian Sufism from the Indian Vedanta; Merx and Mr. Nicholson derive it from Neo-Platonism, while Prof. Browne once regarded it as Aryan reaction against an unemotional Semitic religion. It appears to me, however, that these theories have been worked out under the influence of a notion of causation which is essentially false. That a fixed quantity A is the cause of or produces another fixed quantity B is a proposition which, though convenient for scientific purpose, is apt to damage all inquiry, in so far as it leads us completely to ignore the innumerable conditions lying at the back of a phenomenon.”

We are sure that the scholars mentioned in this passage recognize, as unreservedly as Shaikh Iqbal himself, that Sufism, like all great spiritual and intellectual movements, was ultimately the result of a certain environment, the nature of which is well known to every student of Islam. Their reasons for not laying stress on this fact are obvious enough. The conditions of which the Shaikh speaks enable us to explain the appearance of mysticism in Islam towards the end of the eighth century A.D., but that is all. We cannot hope, by examining these general conditions, to learn how it came to pass that the mystical tendency assumed a particular form, or how the special doctrines which we find in early Sufism arose. No wonder, then, that European Orientalists should have preferred a more fruitful line of inquiry, which has demonstrated the influences of other religions in moulding the development of Sufism. Those who derive it from Neo-Platonism do no more than assert that the early Sufis actually drew their leading ideas from that source; but had these Sufis been ignorant of Greek philosophy, they might still have produced a mysticism of the same type. To suppose that Sufism was created by foreign influence is an absurdity so palpable that its refutation, even in the most scientific manner, hardly constitutes a claim to originality. We have dwelt upon the author’s treatment of this question because it illustrates the one weak spot in his admirable survey. He is rather deficient on the historical side, and is apt to forget that a theory will carry greater conviction if it comes to close quarters with all the relevant facts.

The present work, however, is mainly concerned with elucidating the various systems of Persian thought and their relations to each other. Any one at all versed in the subject will perceive the appalling difficulty of the author’s task when he undertook to give a coherent account in less than two hundred pages of the subtle and complex problems which have formed, during thousands of years, the favourite pabulum of a race that has always been distinguished by its passion for metaphysical speculation. Moreover, for a great part of his journey the traveller finds himself on virgin soil, which he must explore and delineate as well as he can without the help of guides. Shaikh Iqbal deserves high praise for what he has accomplished. The immediate result of his labour is considerable, and he has laid a solid foundation for further research. The most notable sections of the volume are perhaps those which describe the Hikmat al-Ishraq, or “Philosophy of Illumination,” expounded by Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi, the famous Sufi thinker who was put to death as a heretic by order of Malik al-Zahir, a son of Saladin; and the Insan al-Kamil, or “Perfect Man,” of al-Jili, whose system in some points curiously anticipates the views of Hegel and Schleiermacher.

We have found a few misspellings of Oriental names, and also one or two statements which we are inclined to question; but there can be no doubt as to the competence of the author’s scholarship and the importance of his work. We hope that this first book (which is dedicated, by the way, to Prof. T. W. Arnold) may soon be followed by a more extensive treatise by the same hand.

Athenaeum, No. 4229, November 14, 1908, pp.601-2

"40 years of tyranny are better than an hour of anarchy"

2011-11-11T00:01:00.004+05:00

This is an excerpt from 'Islam as a Moral and Political Ideal', lecture delivered by Iqbal at the anniversary of Anjuman Himayat-i-Islam, Lahore, in April 1909.

The truth is that Islam is essentially a religion of peace. All forms of political and social disturbance are condemned by the Quran in the most uncompromising terms. I quote a few verses from the Quran:

“Eat and drink from what God has given you and run not on the face of the earth in the matter of rebels.”
“And disturb not the peace of the earth after it has been reformed; this is good for you if you are believers.”
“And do good to others as God has done good to thee, and seek not the violation of peace in the earth, for God does not love those who break the peace. That is the home in the next world which we build for those who do not mean rebellion and disturbance in the earth, and the end is for those who fear God.”
“Those who rebelled in cities and enhanced disorder in them, God visited them with His whip of punishment.”

One sees from these verses how severely all forms of political and social disorder are denounced by the Quran. But the Quran is not satisfied with mere denunciation of the evil of fesad. It goes to the very root of this evil. We know that both in ancient and modern times, secret meetings have been a constant source of political and social unrest. Here is what the Quran says about such conferences: “O believers, if you converse secretly that is to say, hold secret conference, converse not for purpose of sin and rebellion”. The ideal of Islam is to secure social peace at any cost. All methods of violent change in society are condemned in the most unmistakable language. Tartushi - a Muslim lawyer of Spain - is quite true to the spirit of Islam when he says: “Forty years of tyranny are better than one hour of anarchy”.

“Listen to him and obey him, even if a negro slave is appointed to rule over you." Muslim mentions another important tradition of the Prophet on the authority of Arfaja, who says: “I heard the Prophet of God say, when you have agreed to follow one man then if another man comes forward intending to break your stick (weaken your strength) or to make you disperse in disunion, kill him”.

Those among us who make it their business to differ from the general body of Musalmans in political views ought to read this tradition carefully, and if they have any respect for the words of the Prophet, it is their duty to dissuade themselves from this mean traffic in political opinion which, though perhaps it brings a little personal gain to them, is exceedingly harmful to the interests of the community. My object, in citing these verses and traditions is to educate political opinion on strictly Islamic lines.

MUSIC: Ya Rab Dil-e-Muslim Ko

2011-11-10T00:01:00.000+05:00

Fareeda Khanum Sings Du'a-E-Allama Iqbal Along With Amanat Ali Khan

Quaid-i-Azam's message on Iqbal Day

2011-11-09T00:01:00.004+05:00

To the cherished memory of our National Poet Iqbal, I pay my homage on this day, which is being celebrated in commemoration of that great poet, sage, philosopher and thinker, and I pray to God Almighty that his soul may rest in eternal peace. Amen!

Though he is not amongst us, his verse, immortal as it is, is always there to guide us and to inspire us. His poetry, besides being beautiful in form and sweet in language, presents to us a picture of the mind and heart of this great poet, and we find how deeply he was devoted to the teachings of Islam. He was a true and faithful follower of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him), a Muslim first and a Muslim last. He was the interpreter and voice of Islam.

Iqbal was not merely a preacher and philosopher. He stood for courage and action, perseverance and self-reliance, and above all faith in God and devotion to Islam. In his person were combined the idealism of the poet and the realism of the man who takes a practical view of things. Faith in God and unceasing and untiring action is the essence of his message. And in this he emerges truly Islam. He had an unflinching faith in Islamic principles, and success in life meant to him the realization of one's "self", and to achieve this end the only means was to follow the teachings of Islam. His message to himanity is action and realization of one's self.

Although a great poet and philosopher he was no less a practical politician. With his firm conviction and faith in the ideals of Islam, he was one of the few who originally thought over the feasibility of carving out of India such an Islamic state in the North-West and North-East Zones which are historical homelands of Muslims.

I wholeheartedly associate myself with the celebrations of this "Iqbal Day", and pray that we may live up to the ideals preached by our National Poet so that we may be able to achieve and give a practical shape to these ideals in our sovereign state of Pakistan when established.

Originally appeared in The Dawn, December 11, 1944. Cited in Pakistan As Visualized by Iqbal and Jinah by Prof. Dr. G. H. Zulfiqar

Read more statements of Quaid-i-Azam about Allama Iqbal at the main website.

Marghdeen Learning Centre

2011-11-07T05:15:00.002+05:00

Marghdeen Learning Centre has been established online for offering certificate courses in Iqbal Studies under patronage of Iqbal Academy Pakistan, which also issues certificates for the courses. The courses are promoted internationally by DISNA (Dr. Iqbal Society of North America) and in Pakistan by Topline Publishers.

The idea behind the main website of Marghdeen Learning Centre is that it should be an ideal starting point for those interested in Iqbal Studies: make it your home page for a few days, and you are likely to end up learning something about Iqbal and about the world from his perspective, without much effort.

http://marghdeen.blogspot.com/

Take a look, and let us know what you think about it.

E. M. Forster on Iqbal's 'Asrar-i-Khudi'

2011-11-06T00:01:00.072+05:00

The following is a review by the famous English novelist E. M. Forster of Secrets of the Self (A. R. Nicholson’s translation of Iqbal’s ‘Asrar-i-Khudi’). The review was first published in December 1920 in the literary magazine Athanaeum and later reprinted in The Sword and the Sceptre (1977) by Riffat Hasan (ed.). It suffers from serious chronological errors (for instance, the poem ‘A New Temple’ was written in 1904 and not in 1916 as asserted by Forster) and Iqbal’s own comment was: “The view of the writer in the Athenaeum [E. M. Forster] is largely affected by some mistakes of fact for which, however, the writer does not seem to be responsible. But I am sure if he had known some of the dates of the publication of my Urdu poems referred to in his review, he would have certainly taken a totally different view of the growth of my literary activity. Nor does he rightly understand my idea of the Perfect Man which he confounds with the German thinker's Superman. I wrote on the Sufi doctrine of the Perfect Man more than twenty years ago, long before I had read or heard anything of Nietzsche. This was then published in the Indian Antiquary, and later in 1908 formed part of my Persian Metaphysics.” (Letter to R. A. Nicholson, January 24, 1921).

By E. M. Forster

It is significant of Empire that we should wait so long for a translation from Iqbal, the writer who has been for the last ten years such a tremendous name among our fellow citizens, the Muslims of India. They respond to him as do Hindus to Tagore, and with greater propriety, for Tagore was little noticed outside Bengal until he went to Europe and gained the Nobel Prize, whereas Iqbal has won his vast kingdom without help from the West. Lahore, Delhi, Aligarh, Lucknow, Bhopal, Hyderabad regard him as a profound thinker and a sublime poet. Will London confirm their verdict? This question cannot be answered until it has been asked, and it has not yet been asked. Mr. Nicholson’s welcome and excellent little book only touches a corner of the subject. When will he, or some other Oriental linguist, gives us the material for a critical judgment? Meanwhile the following remarks may be of some slight help.

Poets in India cannot be spared form politics. Would that they could! but there is no hope in the present circumstances; one could as easily part Dante from Florence. As for the politics, they are triangular. There are two chief communities—Hindu and Muslim—and a ruling class of Englishmen. Owing to their common subjection and common Orientalism, the two communities sometimes draw together and oppose the English; owing to their different religions and to racial and social differences, they sometimes fly asunder. The English view these oscillations with cynicism, but they spring from instincts, deep if contradictory, that exist in every Indian heart. Shall the Indian look to the land he lives in, and try to make it a nation? Or shall he look to his own particular past—to Makkah if he be a Muslim, to the Vedas or Upanishads if Hindu and find in that his inspiration for the future? Heaven forbid that we should assist him in his choice; either goal seems barren if we may deduce form the history of Europe. But the choice itself is living, not to be sneered at, and we can see him hesitating over it even before the English came, advancing towards national unity under Akbar, retiring into religious diversities under Aurangzeb. Poets unless they belong to the school of roses and nightingales (gul and bulbul) cannot abstain from this choice; but since they decide by emotion rather than arithmetic, their attitude is often unstable and vexes the politicians. Iqbal is a case in point. Born in the Punjab, where the feeling between Muslim and Hindu is especially high, he came out at first on the religious rather than the nationalist side. Like his predecessor Hali, he wrote for his community. One of his early poems, ‘A Complaint,’ is addressed to God, and sets forth the great deeds of Muslims, their sufferings, their miserable recompense (“God, we have done all this for you, and for our reward the infidels have houris while if lightning falls from Heaven, it is upon us”). The poem was regarded as daring and had an immense success. In due course, ‘A Reply to the Complaint’ appeared, in which God defends himself by not unfamiliar arguments, retorting that the Muslims are to blame for their own misfortunes, owing to their lethargy and formalism. Both poems breathe the spirit of Aligarh, the great Anglo-Mohammedan College, which was founded to regenerate not India but Islam. ‘A Muslim Song’ begins ‘We are all Muslims, the whole world is our country: China, Arabia and Hindustan are ours,’ and then addresses such lost or ruined cities as Cordova and Baghdad. Iqbal had, however, Hindu friends, who were distressed at the path he was taking and remonstrated. He changed, the other side of his aspirations came to the front (“We are all Indians, our country is Hindustan, we are its bulbuls, it is our garden” very popular among students). This was followed, in 1916, by ‘A New Temple,’ in which the same idea is expressed with greater art. Weary of the narrowness of Muslim divines, the poet calls to the Brahmin priest to turn from his narrowness, and to join him in building a temple more lofty than any the world has yet seen, the Temple of India. The glory of the Courtyard from Makkah shall inhabit that temple; the image in its shrine shall be gold, shall be inscribed Hindustan, shall wear both the Brahmin thread and the Muslim rosary, and the Muezzin shall call worshippers to prayer upon a horn. A national anthem. Some of the poet’s admirers are pleased with ‘A New Temple,’ others displeased, and there is much discussion as to how he will evolve. If an outsider may venture an opinion, he will not evolve but revolve. He has felt, with great sensitiveness, the alternatives that Destiny is now offering to India, and one would expect him to continue hesitating between them, as in the past.

The above poems, like most of Iqbal’s work, are in Urdu, the language in which Anglo-Indians shout to their servants, and which they do not suspect of any other function. But he has also written in Persian, and this brings us to an interesting point. A cultivated Indian writer has more than one language lying ready to his pen, and he will select that which is appropriate to his subject-matter, and even to the state of his mind. If a Muslim is conciliating Hindus, he will certainly write in Urdu, which is becoming their common speech and which furthermore contains a Sanskrit element, within limits variable. The Hindu will, conversely, write in Hindi, which resembles Urdu, though not in script, in vocabulary. But if the poet feels religious rather than nationalist, if he sings not of a new India but of the glorious past of his community, then a more antique and concentrated medium may attract him; if a Muslim he may turn to Persian or even Arabic, if a Hindu to Sanskrit. Thus The Secrets of the Self, the Persian poem under review, though published between ‘Our Hindustan’ and ‘A New Temple,’ is totally opposed to them in spirit. It is addressed to Muslims only, is philosophic, separatist; on its literary side it depends upon classical Persia; and though there are non-Muslim elements in it they do not come from Hindustan: no, from a very different quarter.

For Iqbal completed his education in Europe; he had degrees from Cambridge and Munich, and keeps in touch with Western philosophy. And like other of his contemporaries he has been influenced by Nietzsche; he tries to find, in that rather shaky ideal of the Superman, a guide through the intricacy of conduct. His couplets urge us to be hard and live dangerously; tigers, not sheep; we are to beware of those sheep who, fearing our claws, come forward with the doctrine of vegetarianism. In an amusing fable he sets forth the consequences:

The fodder blunted their teethAnd put out the awful flashings of their eye…Their souls died and their bodies became tombs.Bodily strength diminished while spiritual fear increased.The wakeful tiger was lulled to slumber by the sheep’s charm:He called his decline Moral Culture.

We are to shun culture. And though Love is indeed good, it has nothing to do with Mercy, Love is appropriation. It is stealing as opposed to begging. It is the enrichment of the Self. If we seek love in this way, a new type will be born, a champion will come forth from this dust.

Appear, O rider of Destiny!

Appear, O light of the dark realm of Chances!…

Mankind are the cornfield and thou the harvest,

The leaves are scattered by Autumn’s fury:

Oh, do thou pass over our gardens as the Spring!

Receive form our downcast brows

The homage of little children and of young men and old.

When thou art there, we will lift up our heads,

Content to suffer the burning fire of this world!

As a guide to conduct, Nietzsche is at a discount in Europe. The drawback of being a Superman is that your neighbours observe your efforts, and try to be Supermen too, as Germany now realizes. But this is no place to criticize Nietzschean doctrine. The significance of Iqbal is not that he holds it, but that he manages to connect it with the Quran. Two modifications, and only two, have to be made: he condemns the Nietzsche who is an aristocrat, and an atheist; his Superman is permitted to spring from any class of society, and is obliged to believe in God. No further difficulty occurs. There is a text in the Quran which says: “Lo, I will appoint a vicegerent upon earth,” and another text relating that the vicegerency was offered to Man after Heaven and the Angels refused it. Legalists quote these texts in support of the Caliphate; Iqbal in support of his Superman. It is our duty to imitate the divine attributes, and to pass through Obedience and Self-Control to His vicegerency.

God’s vicegerent is as the soul of the universe,His being is the shadow of the Greatest Name.He knows the mysteries of part and whole,He executes the command of Allah in the world.

But likeness to God does not mean union with Him. On the contrary. The Hindus are wrong: so are the Sufis, so even is Iqbal’s own master, the great poet Jalaluddin Rumi. The nearer the Superman approaches god the fuller he grows his own individuality. The desire to merge, to renounce the Self, is a sign of decay, and the doctrine has been evolved by subject races as an anodyne.

It may be remarked in passing that Iqbal by no means turns the Pantheistic position; he says that the Self ought not to seek union with God, but he is not clear as to whether it might succeed if it did try; the spectre of Hinduism still haunts him. But this again is a side issue. What is so interesting is the connection that he has effected between Nietzsche and the Quran. It is not an arbitrary or fantastic connection; make Nietzsche believe in God, and a bridge can be thrown. Most Indians, when they turn to the Philosophy of the West, do not know what will be useful to them. Iqbal sure has an eye.

In another poem, The Mysteries of Selflessness, he treats of Islam as an ideal society, a Catholic Church, in which the Believer can lose himself and touch a life greater than his own. How is the Superman to fit in here? It will be interesting to see, and perhaps Mr. Nicholson will give us a translation. But The Mysteries of Selflessness is likewise in Persian, and what we really need is a translation of the Urdu poems, for it is on them that the poet’s reputation rests. That reputation is unchallenged, although purists at Delhi complain of his provincialisms and party leaders regret that he will not come properly to heel. One thinks of him as a sensitive and shifting personality, in whom is possibly the divine fire, as a nightingale vexed by political watchwords which he cannot ignore because of the realities that lie behind them. Neither India nor Islam is at present a garden, and the voice of Iqbal rings clearer when his conscience is lulled and his own true country—though it be a but a mirage—beckons across the arid sands where Muslim and Hindus and Englishman manoeuvre.

My song is of another world than theirs;This bell calls other travellers to take the road.
How many a poet after his deathOpened our eyes when his own be closed,And journeyed forth again form nothingnessWhen roses blossomed o’er the earth of his grace.

Abraham as a pioneer of world literature

2011-11-04T00:01:00.000+05:00

Cenotaph of the tomb of Hazrat Ibrahim
(aliha as salam)

This is a special post celebrating the Islamic month of Zil Hajj. In the Muslim world, this time of the year is connected with the memory of Abraham, or Hazrat Ibrahim (alaih as salam).

Iqbal has summarized the spiritual history of the ancient world through seven visions in the first chapter of Javid Nama (1932). Just after introducing the oldest religion Hinduism, and before moving on to later religions such as Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, he presents the mythical figure of Sarosh as the angel who inspires music and poetry. A possible interpretation is that the acquisition of aesthetics and verbal arts (symbolized by Sarosh) occurred sometime before the appearance of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism, and was an important landmark in the spiritual development of humanity. Looking for a reference in the Quran to some historical personality who lived around this time and could be regarded as a trendsetter in verbal arts, our most likely choice is Hazrat Ibrahim (alaih as salam).

MUSIC VIDEO: Khudi ka sirr-i-nihan

2011-11-03T12:01:00.001+05:00

From the Youtube Channel Punjaban48:

Shaukat Ali is one of the best and verstile singer in pakistan. He is the only one folk singer in the history of Paksitan who sang GAZHALS, FOLK, KALAM-I-IQBAL, SUFI KALAM, PLAYBACK SONGS, did comparing, acting and wrote two books of poetry. He is a real legend of Pakistan."

WILL DURANT: Knowledge and the common person

2011-11-02T00:01:00.000+05:00

For, if knowledge became too great for communication, it would degenerate into scholasticism, and the weak acceptance of authority; mankind would slip into a new age of faith, worshiping at a respectful distance its new priests; and civilization, which had hoped to raise itself upon education disseminated far and wide, would be left precariously based upon a technical erudition that had become the monopoly of an esoteric class monastically isolated from the world by the high birth rate of terminology.

The quotation is from the preface to the 1933-edition of The Story of Philosophy (1926) by Will Durant. The picture is from the website of Will Durant Foundation, which is a good place for finding out more about the American philosopher.

Durant was quoted by Iqbal (not the excerpt given here) in the article 'Islam and Ahmedism' published in January 1936 in reply to a series by Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru.

What is the Republic of Rumi?

2011-10-31T05:38:00.000+05:00

The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality (2007) was a book in which I attempted a new approach to Iqbal Studies. Since then, I have realized that the idea can be developed further.

In short, it means two things:

The message of Iqbal is relevant today. It can be helpful in finding solutions which can be acceptable to the masses and not just the experts - quite possibly in many cultures of the world.
Iqbal's message is a reinterpretation of the message of Rumi for our times.

The promise

What will be gained? The benefits can be at the national level as well as international.

At the national level, a society which adopts the ideals presented by Iqbal may discover "Marghdeen", the ideal world proposed by Iqbal where no one is needy or destitute, where knowledge is not used for exploitation and where a unity exists between spirit and matter. Iqbal presented this ideal world in his epic Javid Nama (1932), and from a careful study it may be realized that this is not just another utopia. It is achievable, provided that we are willing to reconsider some of our perceptions about things:

جہانِ تازہ کی افکارِ تازہ سے ہے نمود

کہ سنگ و خِشت سے ہوتے نہیں جہاں پیدا

Internationally, the message of Iqbal holds the promise of peace and harmony with better understanding between the masses and the educated elite, and between societies in the world. In Iqbal's own words:

The object of my Persian poems is not to make out a case for Islam; my aim is simply to discover a universal social reconstruction, and in this endeavor, I find it philosophically impossible to ignore a social system which exists with the express object of doing away with all the distinctions of caste, rank and race; and which, while keeping a watchful eye on the affairs of this world, fosters a spirit of un-worldliness so absolutely essential to man in his relations with his neighbors. This is what Europe lacks and this is what she can still learn from us.

(In my book, I tried to imagine this “universal social reconstruction” through an allegory, ‘A Parable Never Told’).

Iqbal Studies

A better understanding of the work of Iqbal is the way to begin. Marghdeen Learning Centre (MLC) has been added with the support of Iqbal Academy Pakistan.

An online certificate course, ‘Introduction to Iqbal Studies’, is offered four times a year at MLC. The course is certified by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. It is promoted internationally by Dr. Iqbal Society of North America (DISNA) and in Pakistan by Topline Publishers.

A new syllabus

I am convinced that the complete scope of Iqbal Studies can be realized only if we readjust our understanding of five areas to the vision of Iqbal. These areas are history, literature, political science, religion and science (together) and education.

Hence, the next step may be the development of a new syllabus in which various subjects are approached with the help of the guidance provided by Iqbal.

It might be more desirable to start introducing this new syllabus through informal and non-formal education. Marghdeen Learning Centre has also started offering courses in some of these areas. Self-Development through Iqbal is a certified course which offers a new introduction to literature with special focus on Javid Nama but also includes sections on Nezami, Attar, Rumi, Shakespeare and Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai. Another course, History According to Iqbal, is likely to be offered in January 2012.

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Ideological Foundation for Democracy In Islam

2011-10-30T08:00:00.039+05:00

By A. R. Cornelius, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Pakistan.

This paper was read as inaugural address at the Iqbal Day session organized by the Central Iqbal Committee, Lahore, on April 21, 1964.

At the very outset I must make an apology. It is for my apparent inadequacy to fulfill the function which I have undertaken today. Iqbal is par excellence the poet of Pakistan and his published works are clearly such as require for their full understanding a thorough grounding in Muslim scriptures and traditions and acquaintance with the classical allusions of the literature of the Muslim countries. I do not possess such a grounding and I regret it. I would therefore seek your indulgence should you find that I speak superficially or that I am guilty of error in my discourse. I am aware of the great extent to which the poet's work has been read and absorbed by a majority of the literate people of Pakistan. But it was a high honour that was offered to me, and a great trust that was displayed, when I was asked to speak to this learned body at their annual celebration of Iqbal Day and I felt quite unable to decline the invitation. What I have to say I say in all sincerity and to the best of my ability, and I would like to add that I offer my thoughts, as I do my homage, to the poet, in the capacity of a humble citizen of Pakistan. What I shall say has nothing to do with my official position. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right and on a rare occasion such as the present even a person holding an official judicial position may invoke it, with of course the necessary limitations.

To savour to the full the quality of a poet such as Iqbal, it is clearly necessary that one should have an appreciation and acceptance from the heart of the dogma and the ethic of Islam. How then can I, a Christian, attempt to speak of him? It would be of course wholly inappropriate for me merely to repeat what I have read concerning him. It would not be in keeping with the occasion, but there is a factor which has in my case brought about a partial capacity for understanding the meaning and purport of much that the poet thought and wrote. I refer to the fact of my having been bound by oath to serve and protect the interests of the State of Pakistan from its very foundation. It was founded as a Muslim State, and repeatedly, the constitutional objective has been solemnly expressed that principles of democracy, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam were to be the guiding light of the new State. The words [of] a Constitution have an overpowering effect upon any person who is pledged to work it in letter and in spirit. I have even enjoyed the privilege of being required to interpret the Constitution from time to time. Such an experience cannot fail to rouse an ambition to be of use in fulfilling the requirements of the Constitution which one serves, and thus inevitably one becomes animated by the spirit which has been breathed into it. I am therefore not wholly without qualification to place before you my appreciation of the poet's message in certain aspects, such as are relevant in our present circumstances.

If Iqbal's poetry had anything of the romantic, it was the romance of history. All the references to great events in the history of Islam were loaded with purpose. It was a purpose that was truly revolutionary. At the period when his mind had been filled with knowledge gained at home and abroad in the best academies, and his thought was mature, events had begun to arise which tended to disturb the minds of Muslim subjects of the British Crown, who had till then been living in happy subjection through a long period of peaceful foreign rule.

That rule was paternalistic in its impact upon the subjects, but was nevertheless highly charged with politics, and was consequently extremely sensitive to all factors of importance and unimportance, in weighing the claims of rival communities.

Iqbal found that his people were living under the weight of a two-tiered subordination. Lack of population strength and of importance in the fields of education, commerce and industry had led to this community of erstwhile rulers being depressed below the majority community under a top layer of foreign rule. Moreover, the prospect of self-rule on the lines of British democracy, namely, the rule of majorities, had been held out at a remarkably early date, although the transfer of power even at subordinate official level was timed at a snail’s pace.

The scheme of education was designed to produce clerks rather than administrators among the people of the country. As in the army, so on the civil side, the purpose until very late in the day was to keep the officer class almost wholly free from infiltration by Indians. A settled and inbred feeling of subjection was thereby successfully fostered in the entire population. It could be maintained so long as general contentment by [sic. be] ensured by tried methods of personal rule through trained and competent administrators.

The poet's purpose was revolutionary in this sense that this double subordination was to be overcome not by the Fabian methods of gradualness which the foreign rulers were offering, for that would be to perpetuate the depression of their state.

His appeal was to a long-buried self-respect and pride, still smoldering under the ashes of a lost empire. His answer to the question what was to happen when the threatened rule by the majority overcame the country was a direct appeal to the spark of religious fervor, that he knew still burnt in the heart of each individual member of his community.

In words of gentle persuasion and high inspiration, coloured by reference to the gigantic achievements of their forbears, in the fields of military conquest, of administration, in the arts, in the realms of pure thought, his voice reached ears which had long waited for such encouragement.

The appeal was not only to the literary or the intellectual classes. He was aware of the power of poetry over the emotions of Muslim peoples at all levels, and he set about providing the music which would stir their blood and steel their courage against the struggle which was already upon them, though for the most part they were unaware of it.

Practically all that he wrote carried this urgent appeal to superhuman efforts in order to avert the present danger of perpetual subordination, if not extinction. The glories of the past were recounted, some not much more than a century ago, and held out as proof that there were prizes which they could win. Prizes, rather, that were the birthright for a chosen people to whom the Almighty had been pleased in the past to grant the power of high achievement.

Strength of mind and will, pride in the possession of a personality in which servility was obnoxious, and a fire to live for and to serve the Divine purpose – these were the simple requirements. Theirs to realize that they were units in the march of history. The long period of inaction and ineptitude brought on by political subjection was at an end. They were now on the march again. Divine Providence had so ordained it and had blessed them with every quality needed to achieve their destiny. They must march together as their forebears had marched before, in the way of Almighty God, and success would be theirs. It is as if in each willing and consenting ear the poet were whispering: “Be a hero!” The range of knowledge of events in Muslim history which he displayed, and his command of the language of religious inspiration was such that no believer who read his works could doubt that Iqbal was saying to him, in the words of another poet:

Everyman,

I will go with thee

And be thy guide,

In thy most need

To go by thy side.

It became incumbent upon him, who was raising such thoughts in vast numbers of his fellow Muslims, to provide the conditions under which the qualities which he was invoking could find scope for their display, and the way towards which he was guiding them could find extension.

Subjection and servility were intolerable. Only from free people could there be expectation of full and free exercise of the powers that were to be let loose when his dream came to be realised.

Reading his works one does not get the impression that he realized how soon that fulfillment was to come. Had he been aware that as early as 1947, there would be partition of the territories of the old India, providing areas in which Muslims would move as free citizens in a Muslim State, I have no doubt that the poet would have included here and there among his writings, indications of the practical problems with which they would be faced when the dream of freedom reached the dawn of realization.

Schooled as he was in true concepts of political philosophy, he would have realized that freedom and the extension of rights must necessarily be accompanied by an enormous intensification of responsibilities. He would be aware that his people had been living as communities under foreign rule for a century and a half, and that the intention was to hand them over to the political control of a handful of people, distinguished in their several ways, but as yet insufficiently trained in the art of political organization of a free people. A people, moreover, whom he had encouraged to think of themselves, each in his place as a Divinely grouped band of heroes.

But he died before the consummation came. To each one of us, a counted number of moments has been allotted by the Divine power, in which to fulfill his life's work. Iqbal had lived his moments at an exalted height of literary and philosophical endeavour. The intensity of the thought shining out of his pages is proof enough that he wasted not a moment of his allotted time. But inevitably that time ran out. His wisdom was not available when it was most needed to guide his liberated people in the path of self-rule.

I propose with your leave to present to you certain aspects of the problems of independent existence as a free State, upon which the sage would undoubtedly have spoken had he been among us.

At a number of places in his writings you will find the poet complaining of the immobility of religious and political thought in Islam over the preceding 500 years. Yet, he was a firm believer in the eternal and universal quality of the basic principles of Islam such as would enable their adaptation to all changes in human conditions as they came to be.

He urged his readers that the time had come, as he put it, to "re-evaluate our intellectual inheritance." Emphasizing the force of the integrating principle of Tauhid in Islam, the poet had much to say on the subject of Ijtehad, which I may perhaps translate as the capacity to take an initiative in the region of fundamental law. He was not a believer in the claim of finality set up by certain schools of law which had ceased to be active some centuries earlier, and we find him welcoming the liberal movement while, at the same time, indicating the danger of disintegration which attends too much liberalism.

In one or two places, where the poet speaks of things that are to be, he declares himself in favour of the republican form of Government. He speaks of such a form of Government as being "not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but it has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam."

Elsewhere he said: "The growth of the republican spirit and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in the Muslim lands constitutes a great step in time." It would indeed be a very long step, for it seems that political theory among the thinkers of the Muslim world had not advanced since the days of Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Rushd.

On the organisational side, the theory had always involved the concentration of power in a single hand, conceived as an absolute monarchy, operating through a body of persons like-minded with the monarch, known as the asabiyeh.

Philosophical speculation was concerned with questions relating to the succession to the office of the chief executive, and eventually a stage was reached where, after a long insistence upon legitimacy according to the accepted mode, it was finally agreed that even a usurper must be tolerated provided that he does not violate the Shariah and works for the integrity and betterment of the community. A well-conceived theory was developed of the rise and fall of dynasties in four generations.

The political ethic of the present day will certainly not accept a life of four generations for any Government that is established.

The current view is that a Government is of the people by the people and for the people, and it must last so long as the people remain one. A people or a nation is constituted by geographical, historical, economic and last but not least, religious forces of integration, and having a right to admission to the comity of nations, and therefore, the protection of all other nations it expects to form a permanent institution. The forces of disintegration in a nation so constituted must lie far deeper in the general human character and in the nature of their organisation, than the mere dissolution of an asabiyeh or failure of governing capacity in a single family. Today, it is necessary to build the foundations at the level of common humanity, and to build them for all time.

Iqbal in his inclination towards liberalism and his preference for republican Government indicates beyond doubt that his thought was not confined to the rise and fall of dynasties. But it does not seem to me that his thinking had reached the stage of devising practical steps for the inculcation and introduction of the democratic ethic among members of his community.

The processes by which among the peoples of the West it had become a settled and unshakeable belief that Government was always to be of the people, by the people and for the people had somehow passed the Muslim peoples by. Royal heads had rolled in Europe under the sword of the common people in more countries than one. The divine right of kings had been thereby laid low and kings were thereafter only to be tolerated in proportion to their utility. In a great shedding of blood, the French nation was baptised into the doctrine of liberty, equality and fraternity. By a practical demonstration the people had taken power into their own hands, the processes by which in country after country that power was entrusted by them to a chosen leader to be exercised under the watchful eyes of the representatives of the people, for the security and well being of the people, had been set on foot.

In the light of after knowledge, these world-shaking events proved to be steps in the march of humanity towards a goal, but undoubtedly at the time when they occurred, they appeared to all as a vast calamity. No such calamity appears to have fallen on any royal head among the Muslim nations. To be sure not all of them died natural deaths, but they never died at the hands of any who were not their equals, or otherwise than in a dynastic disturbance.

Therefore, the poet must have been well aware of the need to provide his choice of the republican form of Government with a respectable heredity, a kind of ideological lineage, drawn from the fundamental principals of Islam.

In India, a gradual process of drawing the people into their councils had been carried on by the foreign rulers for a great number of years, and the country had been schooled, in a secular manner, into a settled belief in the excellence of British-style democracy.

When the poet selected the republican form of Government, I cannot conceive that he was thinking in terms of a democracy of the British type, since there are radical differences between those two forms. It seems unquestionable that his belief, if not his intention was, that the whole matter would have to be thought out de novo.

And so situated would not his first thought have been to carry conviction to the individuals in whom he had lit the spark of heroic and faithful endeavour for the realization of the Divine Will? He must provide for them a rational basis for believing that the selected type of Government, in which power was to be derived from the people, was in its essence dictated by the principals of Islam.

He held that to regard religion and the State in a Muslim country as two sides of the same coin was to place them too far apart, for they were in fact completely one. No doubt need be felt that had he survived to see the realization of the dream of vigorous independence which he had conceived for them through his poetry, it would be his duty also to ensure that they exercised the rights and duties of democratic citizens in the spirit of their own faith. For, if the machinery were imposed upon them from without as a kind of foreign system, then its franchises and facilities would be found only too apt for unscrupulous employment.

All over the world today we see that when a balance of rights and duties of citizenship has been imposed upon a country from without, under foreign rule, even while that rule subsists, but much more so when it is withdrawn, the first casualty is that of scruple.

Politics in the worst sense steps into the scene, and the unrestrained pursuit of personal advantage becomes the order of the day.

But it is certain that Iqbal with his great belief in the integrative and corrective effect of Islam in relation to human institutions and the human character would have been at pains to provide, as I have said, a true religious and ideological foundation for the democracy which was to come.

I suggest that that is a task which his followers and disciples may well consider to be of the first priority for themselves. Their leader and teacher had sought to create a positive character in his community, which in the way of religion was to be productive of great achievements when the day of freedom came. It is theirs to fill the need which clearly arises now that the democratic process has been accepted on all hands, to support and equip these processes with ideological derivation from the ancient and eternal principles.

Already in Iqbal's time, Muslim countries had commenced to convert to democracy, and the process is not to be halted. What is necessary is to fill the gap of five centuries, and to provide the citizens, upon whom the burden falls of operating the Government through the democratic process, with a firm foundation of belief that in doings they are doing no more than following the highest dictates of their religion.

The time is propitious for the commencement of such an effort. An earnest thinker may even feel that the state of our country demands that such an effort should be made.

Under a leader of unbounded courage and devotion, the machinery of democracy, according to the ethic transmitted to us through administrative processes by our past foreign rulers, has been revised. The new processes are in actual operation, as a channel for expression of the people’s will in the political form.

Would Iqbal have been content that the philosophical basis should be, as it is in the secular West, one of mere political obligation? Political obligation, in that sense, undoubtedly has a high and noble ancestry. It rests on principles of citizenship, derived from the practice of the Greek city-states, which received their first statements in the dim past at the hands of the most famous philosophers, of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. The interplay of rights and duties as between the citizen and the State, and as between citizen and citizen has in the course of two and a half millenniums received considerations and clarification from the greatest minds of each succeeding age.

In a country here and country there, you may find that politics is still practiced in that clear and purifying light. But it is no exaggeration to say that the ethic has been almost universally eroded. Putting it in the fewest words, politics is most generally practiced as the short road to material advancement for the practitioner. Opportunity lies at the feet of those in a democracy who succeed in gaining representative status … and they are human after all. There is regrettably little hope of survival of conscience where the sanctions of democracy are limited to western-style political obligation.

A thinker of blinding perspicacity and utter honesty, such as Iqbal undoubtedly was, could not have remained unmoved by the conditions. He had worked to create a fervour of energy and vigour, in the apprehension of personal and communal obligation, which had nothing to do with merely material things. Every appeal by him to the individual was an appeal to brave endeavour, towards rising to the height of his personality in the light of God, for re-establishment of the institutions of Islam, among which the State occupies the highest place.

Would he not then, having declared in favour of a republic, concern himself with the provision of a true foundation, for the relationship of State with citizen and citizen with citizen? There would be no alternative for him but to displace political obligation by the religio-political obligation, that is, to make every act in the democratic process, which he knew was inevitable, an act supported by religious conscience.

He was pre-eminently qualified to perform this difficult task, difficult because it involved victory over man's baser passions and material desires, such as the pursuit of politics is universally known to arouse.

It may interest some to learn that in the West, there has in recent years been raised, among thinkers, the question – is democracy a religion, or perhaps a quasi-religion? Quite naturally, it has not been raised by the politicians. It is among the most able protagonists of religion that this strange surmise has pricked the cells of understanding. Again quite naturally, their answer has been a very strong and positive "no.” It is said dogmatically that religion in each country has a "precisely defined form," it is “pluralistically structured,” etc. But are these answers really adequate? Is not a great part of the religious field of activity concerned with human conduct? Is it that religion has been free of historical processes by which the appeal to terror as the sanction for human conduct was replaced by the technique of threats and promises, and finally by the concept of the rule of law?

The rewards and punishments of religion are no doubt carried over to the after-life, but does it in any way diminish the claim of democracy, enforced by the rule of law, that it provides for such rewards and punishments on earth as well? Does the honest pursuit of democracy involve no act of faith? Is democracy without its martyrs – can the death of Socrates ever be forgotten?

The modern technique of formulation of fundamental rights – what is it but a new set of commandments to regulate behavior between citizen and citizen, as well as, of course, by the State towards the citizen? Superficially these rights are regarded as merely protective of the citizen against the power of the State. But it does not need any very careful reading or profound consideration of the words in which they are set out, to convince the right-minded citizen that each of these restraints applies to him as well.

And, are the protagonists of the theory of total separation between religion and democracy aware that a great many matters which are formulated as fundamental rights in various Constitutions have been made the subject of careful examination and precise pronouncement in some of the highest of religious edicts? I refer only to the two famous Encyclicals, the first by Pope Leo XIII going by the name Rerum Novarum, and the second by the late Pope John XXIII entitled Pacem in Terris. The curious will find in these notable documents much in direct parallel with the fundamental rights with which they are familiar.

But, it will be said that democracy may furnish compensation on earth – what has it to offer in the after life? That is indeed an interesting question, and one might ask: supposing that a people have been true to all the requirements of conscience, and have faithfully followed the law and the Constitution under which they live, what is to be their reward? The rewards of politics they all know, namely, leadership and pre-eminence among their fellowmen, but not all of them can rise to that shining height.

Must the common fate then be to cherish virtue as its own reward? Must the noblest prospect remain that of being a well-behaved army under a leader of its own choice? Is the denial of the ego to be the aim and end of all the effort applied to its development? Perhaps one day, it will be found that such a prospect is lacking in inspiration for the ideal democratic citizen.

It is only in the Communistic ethic that I find something of a promise to a people who have been faithful to their kind of democracy that their faith and effort will be rewarded, by something better than merely being contained in a communal unit, organized and operated by someone else.

The Communists conceive of the State as a coercive instrument which firstly eliminates its opponents mostly by processes of re-training in the arts of labour and common living, and then acts to fill them with a consciousness of their civic obligation. All the agencies are supposed to operate in the final goal of equalitarianism among all the citizens, and this end, it is said, is to be achieved by the creation in the interim period of a ruling class with a mission to reform the whole people.

It may sound strange that one class is created for suppression of all classes, but it is when the classes finally disappear that the reward is visualized. It is, that when perfection in the elimination of classes is reached, the State will itself disappear. It is said that the final disappearance of the State will come when the producers arrive at the controls of industry and true administration of affairs replaces personal rule. That prospect is so conditioned that is never likely to become proximate in any real sense, but nevertheless it is an attempt at formulation of a goal for righteous ambition, as conceived by the Communist, an end which does differ from the means.

How would the sage have reacted to these ideas? If I attempt an answer, it is in all reverence. I suggest his answer would be that democracy in Islam can never be merely secular, but is essentially an exercise in the organization of the people in accordance with the fundamental beliefs of their faith. That by itself will furnish the necessary incentive to the people to be true to the dictates of the Constitution and the laws under which they live, in the hope of an eternal reward.

Speaking for myself, I would wish that such might indeed be the case in all democracies.

I was never privileged to know the poet, but to live in Lahore is by itself to live in communion with him and under the spell of his thought. His name will live forever. May his message spread and bear fruit among those to whom he handed over the torch to be carried for the good of their fellowmen!

The Third International Theory

2011-10-29T15:51:00.019+05:00

Which of the 5 leaders highlighted in the photograph made the following statement?

“Instead of falling prey to their false propaganda of peace, the colored races of the world should unite against the [Western] people whose eyes have lost the light of humanity due to the darkness of their hearts. Now they have created two camps for their survival [i.e. the capitalist and the socialist]; but both pursue the common goal of exploiting the colored races. The two camps appear to be having conflicting ideologies and they seem to be at each others’ throats, but this is a mere illusion. Talk about universal brotherhood goes on, but at the same time, the Red Indians are denied equal rights. The third camp which I am envisioning will comprise of the colored races alone.”

The picture shows the founders of OIC in Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, during the second Islamic Summit Conference held in 1974. Identified by red circles, they are (from left to right): Yasser Arafat, Anwar Sadat, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Gaddafi and King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

The picture is circulating on the Internet these days with a suggestion that all these leaders got assassinated by the USA. It was emailed to me by a friend who wanted my opinion.

The answer will be posted at this blog on Tuesday, November 1. Don't forget to come back and check!

How far Marghdeen?

2011-10-28T08:00:00.027+05:00

The faith which you represent recognises the worth of the individual, and disciplines him to give away his all to the service of God and man. Its possibilities are not yet exhausted. It can still create a new world where the social rank of man is not determined by his caste or colour, or the amount of dividend he earns, but by the kind of life he lives; where the poor tax the rich, where human society is founded not on the equality of stomachs but on the equality of spirits, where an Untouchable can marry the daughter of a king, where private ownership is a trust and where capital cannot be allowed to accumulate so as to dominate the real producer of wealth. This superb idealism of your faith, however, needs emancipation from the medieval fancies of theologians and legists. Spiritually we are living in a prison-house of thoughts and emotions which during the course of centuries we have woven round ourselves. (Allama Iqbal, Presidential Address to the All-India Muslim Conference, Lahore, March 21, 1932)

MUSIC VIDEO: Gulzar-e-Hast-o-Bood

2011-10-27T00:01:00.000+05:00

Urdu ghazal from the first part of Baang-i-Dara (The Call of the Marching Bell; 1924), the third book of poetry by Allama Iqbal

Singer: Nashanas (Afghanistan). Produced by Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV). Brought to you by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. (www.allamaiqbal.com)

گلزار ہست و بود نہ بيگانہ وار ديکھ
ہے ديکھنے کي چيز اسے بار بار ديکھ
آيا ہے تو جہاں ميں مثال شرار ديکھ
دم دے نہ جائے ہستي ناپائدار ديکھ
مانا کہ تيري ديد کے قابل نہيں ہوں ميں
تو ميرا شوق ديکھ، مرا انتظار ديکھ
کھولي ہيں ذوق ديد نے آنکھيں تري اگر
ہر رہ گزر ميں نقش کف پائے يار ديکھ

Dual nationality of Pakistani parliamentarians

2011-10-25T08:00:00.049+05:00

"A man can be loyal only to one country; a man can owe allegiance only to one State and anyone who tries to pose that he owes allegiance to more than one State is either deceiving himself or thinks that he can deceive others. And, therefore, Sir, to my mind, this is a very important condition that anyone who is to be a Member of this Constituent Assembly must owe allegiance to Pakistan and Pakistan alone." (Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Karachi, May 18, 1948).

Once again there is a debate in Pakistan about whether a person can hold dual nationality and still be a member of the country's parliament. Incidentally, the issue was settled quite conclusively in the days of the first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan (1947-1951). A bill was passed against this practice.

The words quoted above were spoken by the founding Prime Minister on that occasion. Perhaps deliberately forgotten by many, they are somehow resonating now.

Parliamentarian Raza Hayat Hiraj, while introducing a similar bill in the National Assembly, said in April this year, "Those who take oath of loyalty to another country cannot safeguard the interests of Pakistan."

A recent article by journalist Khawar Ghumman's is also reminiscent of Liaquat's forgotten quote. The article 'Dual standards on dual nationality' in Dawn, October 21,begins with the question: "Would you trust somebody who has an exit plan to run your country?"

MUSIC VIDEO: Yeh Gunbad-e-Meenai

2011-10-24T18:00:00.003+05:00

Selection from Urdu poem 'Lala-i-Sehra' from Baal-i-Jibreel (1935; Gabriel's Wing) by Allama Iqbal.

Singer: Mehdi Hassan Produced by Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV). Brought to you by Iqbal Academy Pakistan (www.allamaiqbal.com)

Note: The following text corresponds to the selection rendered in the video. Visit www.allamaiqbal.com for complete text of the poem.

يہ گنبد مينائي ، يہ عالم تنہائي
مجھ کو تو ڈراتي ہے اس دشت کي پہنائي

بھٹکا ہوا راہي ميں ، بھٹکا ہوا راہي تو
منزل ہے کہاں تيري اے لالہء صحرائي

تو شاخ سے کيوں پھوٹا ، ميں شاخ سے کيوں ٹوٹا
اک جذبہء پيدائي ، اک لذت يکتائي

ہے گرمي آدم سے ہنگامہء عالم گرم
سورج بھي تماشائي ، تارے بھي تماشائي

Gaddafi: a Pakistani perspective

2011-10-22T03:08:00.007+05:00

Old times: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Gaddafi
in the early 1970s

Growing up in Pakistan in the 1970s, I first heard the name of Gaddafi (called "Qazzafi" in Pakistan) with reference to his impassioned speech at the Islamic Summit Conference held in 1974 in Lahore. It was said that he stole the show with his blunt speech in favor of Pakistan's nuclear programme.

He became a personal friend of our prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who renamed the National Stadium Lahore as "Gaddafi Stadium". Wikipedia describes it as "the largest field cricket stadium in world with the capacity of 60,000 spectators". Ironically now, even if he gets buried in an unmarked grave as announced by the new regime in Libya, Gaddafi may still leave his name on the largest field cricket stadium of the world.

The warmth between "Colonel Qazzafi" and an average Pakistani was probably lost after the execution of Bhutto in 1979. Information about the Libyan leader's involvement in international terrorism and his high-handedness at home, which had apparently been toned down by the media during the Bhutto regime, was now allowed to become more widespread in Pakistan.

Things changed again in 1988 when the Bhutto family returned to power. Benazir's stints as Prime Minister were short (from 1988 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1996), but the kind of intelligentsia which came to rise with her stayed in place for a long time. Some of them were intellectuals who would denounce General Zia as oppressive dictator from one corner of their mouths and hail Colonel "Qazzafi" as liberator of the oppressed and a true friend of the people from the other.

It was usually said that the younger lot in the Bhutto family, such as Benazir and her siblings, affectionately called him "Uncle Qazzafi".

However, Gaddafi's stardom was over at least for the people of Pakistan. He faded out of the headlines once again in the 1990s; and made a comeback only in the 21st Century as the new ally of the West - the reformed warlord who was now eager to play his role in world peace, of course, with assistance from the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The rest, we may say, is not history but current affairs (no pun intended with any reference to the previous sentence). So, no need to go over it here, since this post has been written mainly for the benefit of the younger generation, many of whom may not have known this subjective side of the Pakistani part of the story.

One lesson to be learnt from all the information which is coming our way with regards to the events in Africa and the Middle East is that at least we should give due credit to our history. Since 1947, we have had our share of military rulers and civilian dictators, and some of them may have aspired to stay in power for forty years, or to set up dynastic rule. However, hats off to the people of Pakistan, such a thing has never actually happened here. Let's remember this, so that it doesn't happen here even in the future.

Above: Speech (in English) by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
in honour of Gaddafi and the Libyan delegation
at PM Guest House, Pakistan, on
February 26, 1974;
Below: Gaddafi's speech (in Arabic) in Pakistan,
February 22 (in 3 parts)

Shah Waliullah

2011-08-22T00:01:00.001+05:00

Shah Waliullah (1702-1762) was among those personalities whose appearance on the scene of history in the early 18th Century marked the beginning of a new life in the Muslim East: an innate impulse in the society that was thwarted by the onslaught of European colonialism, perhaps only temporarily, and is now gradually becoming more visible again.

In ‘The Principle of Movement in Islam’, the sixth lecture in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930/1934), Iqbal offers his perception of Waliullah’s role in the genesis of modern Muslim thought in the following words:

The prophetic method of teaching, according to Shah Waliullah, is that, generally speaking, the law revealed by a prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent. The prophet who aims at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different principles for different peoples, nor leaves them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one particular people, and to use them as a nucleus for the building up of a universal Shariah. In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the social life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habits of the people immediately before him. The Shariah values (Ahkam) resulting from this application (e.g. rules relating to penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations.

From Rashid Minhas, with love

2011-08-20T23:38:00.001+05:00

P.A.F. Academy
Risalpur
29/10/69

Dear Ratti Jimmy,

I’ve been thinking for a long time about this letter for you. It’s finally today that I got down to writing it. By the way it’s your turn also by the merit system.

I’m doing fine out here. Maybe you’re interested in what I’m doing here. Life is fast but because of the routine, happy! Settled in a way that is. Studies are there mainly of all sorts of things about aircraft – the fuel systems, communications, navigation, aerodynamics, engines, and all sorts of other systems.

We also do a bit of procedures – what you do when you get lost without radio and such like things. Besides that we have GIT (ground combat training). We learn all about guns, fire them and so on (ground guns only: light weapons like rifles, light machine guns, sten, pistol, grenade). We’ve done the M-I and the Bren (LMG). It’s real fun at the range – real noisy too! The chatter of the automatics and the steady song of the rifles make it sound like doomsday! It’s just like the movies – the firing I mean; the sound is surely a lot more (usually we stuff our ears with cotton). Of course we’ve had our share of sore shoulders (the rifles kick!) The LMG of course does not kick, it just sort of vibrates.

Then there’s gliding – for sport. It’s fun though you hardly ever go up above 1000! I’ve done a take off and tried my hand at landing too but the thing just doesn’t go straight! (If there’s even a slight breeze it carries the thing with it!) So that’s all I’m doing here – next time insha Allah I’ll be learning to fly T-6G’s (Harvards to you). Maybe then you’ll hear more nice stories.

So much for that. Now let me know what you are doing? Studies, the usual bore? But cheer up! They’ll soon be over, honestly, I’m telling you – you won’t know it and the day will be there when you are free. You’ll be surprised by it, I can assure you.

At this stage maybe I should pore out my lecture to you as an elder brother – at least I’m supposed to, it’s only that I’ve no lecture for you but just a piece of advice more as a friend than as an elder brother.
I don’t ask you to do anything for me, for yourself or for anybody for that matter, for I can’t ask you – It’s your life, your wish, your will, your mind, your world. I am sure you know best and you do your best for the best for your aims. Believe me, when I say that I have the fullest confidence in you, I know you both better than anybody else – at least I can claim too! And I can also say with the fullest confidence that you are both, fortunately or unfortunately, bright characters. I know for certain that you are not kids for all your actions you have reasons – as all grown ups have. You like to play cricket because you want to become cricketers – that’s that! You don’t like to go to parties – You must be having your reasons (I had mine too!) but then I wasn’t confident as you and hardly ever refused. They seem stupid and meaningless, don’t they? People behave in a silly manner or so it seems. You feel out of place and stupid as well! They are simply suffocating! But now I like to go to parties. Why? You know as well as I do!

So as I was saying you must have a reason for everything – you do have, isn’t it? Nothing in this world is meaningless, if we just stop and think about it. I’m sure you know that already and I’m sure you never let things pass. Only fools do that. It follows from all this that everything, every person, belief, action has a reason, isn’t it? But then there are so many things we never think about – we never bother because we think we are too busy, don’t you think so? Have you ever thought of why you go to school? Why do we have education at all? Why do the astronauts go into space? Land on moon? Millions of dollars spent on a trip which at first sight seems to be just a good ride, isn’t it? Just think, millions of dollars! I still think it’s not a waste, there’s an excellent reason for it! Imagine people working, and working, for humanity to progress – why? Why can’t we be like animals? You must be knowing already that it is just because man wants to know the truth, the truth about himself, about the world, about everything. This is what they call the eternal quest for truth or truth through knowledge.

Of course religion gives it all to you in a concise form but it does not stop you from finding out for yourself and strengthening your belief. That is how it must be with you. You must find out the truth yourself. Satisfy your self. The books just give you the thing how it happens. People can just advise you. How? And Why? You must answer yourself. Think it out. It’s just like geometry, your reasoning, use it! Try to find for yourself what happens around you and why? Wake up! (That’s what the drill instructor says!) Whatever appeals to you, think over it and come to your own conclusions about it. You have every right to.

Similarly with other things. Do you know why the car runs? Or why the plane flies? How the astronaut reaches the moon? Find out! So many delicious secrets to be known by you, so many worlds to conquer – all yours! How does your body work? Why doesn’t the roof come down? Where does the picture come from in the TV? What makes a fast bowler’s ball “swing” and a spinner’s “turn”? Why is the ball red in cricket and white in hockey? Why do they have cinemascope screen on the oval? Why they call a cricket field an oval?

Then you must also ask questions about yourself to yourself. What will happen? What am I to do? What is “good,” what is “bad”? And then you’ll find so many strange things in this world – discover them. You’ll find more oddities than you can imagine. Standing on the earth you are traveling at 900 nautical miles an hour (even more rather much more than that! Why?)

I hope I’m not getting boring? It also follows from all that I’ve said that you also in this world enter with some purpose, some reason for being here – and now it is up to you to accomplish it. It is for you to decide where you fit in the giant machinery of our world. Soon, very soon, people will look up to you as the man – maybe the nation’s leader; do not let them down (You can be anything; it’s all up to you). You owe it to your family, to your country, to the world to be something and to prove as good for it. You owe it to yourself! Great men are not born; they make themselves great. Be a man so that the people are proud of you like Rafiqui, Maj. Aziz Bhatti, Dr. Barnard, Churchill, Gandhi, the Quaid. Wouldn’t you like them to be? I’m sure you would!

Never be mean, selfish, or tricky to accomplish your aims – I mean to say never lose the good quality you both have: straightforwardness. If you’ve done something wrong you’ve done it, what can anyone do about it? If you are sorry, say so. If you think it’s nothing to be sorry about, forget it!

3rd Nov 69. Continuing my lecture: Being straightforward on the other hand does not give you the passport to be careless – you must not have that in mind, for it will show that you know you are wrong and you don’t do anything correct yourself. Isn’t that so? As a mater of fact it should (being straightforward) help you realize your mistakes and limitations (you have these – no man is free of them.) But once you realize yourself your mistakes try to correct them, take pains to do it. Honestly, you’ll like the way you work on yourself. You’ll be a better person – No I don’t mean you’re bad; you are both good chaps and for good chaps the aim should be to become exceptional fellows.

Now you will ask what will I get by becoming good? Why should I be good at all! That is one question and statement which no one has been able to answer satisfactorily because you get very little, by doing good, naturally. Then the only plausible answer left is that you get the satisfaction and mental peace, you get rewarded in a later stage of your life. Personally I’d answer the question in a different manner altogether. You being unselfish never do anything for yourself – (I hope you take me seriously; it sounds silly, doesn’t it?) But you do it for others. Why? Because as I said you owe it to them – it is their right! How? It is their right because you are their son, their brother, uncle, cousin. As your parents they’ve brought you up for what? They’ve put up with all your wishes and whims, stayed up nights when you were ill, fed you, clothed you and what is more, they have never claimed what is their right on you. (“Why?” is another question I’d like you to think about). Even though they never told me that I owe them anything, I know that I do. I know too that I’ll never be able to return all that I’ve got from them (I’m not talking of material things). I am what they made me. You must understand this.

Besides this I’m sure you have great ambitions to become something really fantastic. You must prove to yourself these ambitions are not mere dreams (I can tell they are not if you just work hard enough). You want to be a hotrod army officer – commando chap? Go ahead plan your work that way, play that way so that you are fit for the job. You want to go to USA on scholarship to become a rocket and spaceship designer? Work for it. You want to rise like Napoleon (I wish you’d read his biography – by Emil Ludwig)? Think and plan in his style.

In short concentrate your energies in one direction do not waste them. I’m sorry I am not able to give all this advice emphatically for I myself suffer from a lot of drawbacks. Nevertheless you would learn from your and others’ mistakes and do well.

One more bit before I wind up: please do read. Read anything – comics, autobiographies, novels, anything but do read with a clear mind; never just for the heck of it; and then try to find out what is it that appeals to you. In this connection, Rukhsana and Farzana will be in a better position to advise you than I am but then I can tell you a few good books. Little Men by Luisa M. Alcott. In biographies, Churchill’s and Napoleon’s are the best. Of course you may come across some exceptional ones just by fluke. Personally I liked war books better Reach for the Sky (Paul Buckhill) and Dam Busters – then of course Alistair Maclean’s HMS Ulysses – are the ones I read the earliest. They are very absorbing. (The underlined books are in my shelf you can have them).

So then I hope you did not mind very much the long lecture. In any case I’ve spent five hours on it. It is all up to you how you take it. Do write to me. Anytime you want to know anything – anything – you let me know and I’ll send you a précis like this. Any time you feel stuck anywhere, let me know. Do let me know your views about the happenings around you as well. If there are any questions, do not hesitate – if you want confidential answers that too could be arranged! Anything that interests you, any book, anything you’d like to try your hands at and dad doesn’t approve of, let me know – maybe I’ll convince him. When I get a reply to this letter maybe by then I’ll have completed my second dose to you.

Khuda Hafiz
Rashid

P.S. Vol. 2 will not be so general. I’ll talk of one topic, in science maybe.
P.S. Keep Vol. I so that I can read and laugh when I get to Karachi. Rashid.
P.S. Tell Ma, Pa, I’m fine

Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi

2011-08-20T00:01:00.002+05:00

Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624), popularly known as Mujaddid Alf-i-Sani (the Renovator of the Second Millenium), was a great Sufi who defied the religious experiments initiated by the Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Akbar and emphasized the uniqueness of the Muslim nation. In a famously quoted anecdote he is said to have refused to bow down before Akbar’s successor, the Emperor Nuruddin Jahangir (1569-1621), himself a precursor of Muslim nationalism in his own way.

Sirhindi’s crucial role as a supporter of Muslim nationhood is mentioned by Iqbal in the poem ‘To the Sufi Masters of Punjab’ in Gabriel’s Wing (see Chapter 90 in A Novel of Reality). The poem was apparently based on an actual visit to the tomb of the saint in the late 1920s, in which Iqbal’s son Javid, a little child at that time, also accompanied him.

Yet another dimension of the work of Sirhindi is introduced in the seventh lecture of the Reconstruction, ‘Is Religion Possible?’ Here, he is described as:

…a great religious genius of the seventeenth century… whose fearless analytical criticism of contemporary Sufism resulted in the development of a new technique. All the various systems of Sufi technique in India came from Central Asia and Arabia; his is the only technique which crossed the Indian border and is still a living force in the Punjab, Afghanistan, and Asiatic Russia. I am afraid it is not possible for me to expound the real meaning of this passage in the language of modern psychology; for such language does not yet exist.

Self-Development through Iqbal

2011-08-19T13:34:00.001+05:00

Self-Development through Iqbal is a 10-week online course from the Republic of Rumi Website, and is certified by Iqbal Academy Pakistan. It will start on October 3, 2011.

Special introductory fee
Pakistani Students: Rs.1000
Foreign Students: US$24 (plus postage and handling)

Registration closes two weeks before the beginning of the session. The course will be repeated in January, April, July and October 2012.

Designed and conducted by
Khurram Ali Shafique
Author of Iqbal: an Illustrated Biography

Offered by the Republic of Rumi Website; certified by Iqbal Academy Pakistan; in co-ordination with Educational Resource Development Centre (ERDC), Dr. Iqbal Society of North America (DISNA) and other organizations

Course Outline

INDUCTION: a new perspective on self-development through Jalaluddin Rumi
THE SEVEN STAGES: introduction to a “mainstream” model of self-development from the works of Attar, Nezami, Shakespeare, Bhittai and Iqbal
PREPARATION: Activities on the first three stages in the story of Javid Nama, and the practical ideals emerging from them
APPLICATION: Activities on stages 4-6 in the story of Javid Nama, and the practical ideals emerging from them
CULMINATION: Activities on final stage in the story of Javid Nama, and practical tips for applying the whole model in personal, professional and social lives

How to Register

In Pakistan: If you are located in Pakistan, please send the course fee (Rs.1000) through demand draft in the name of "Educational Resource Development Centre" to ERDC, A-735, Block H, North Nazimabad, Karachi. Phone: +92-21-36723454, +92-21-36051229. Alternatively, you can also transfer money online into the ERDC bank account (please email republicofrumi@gmail.com for details).
Internationally: You can register using Paypal. Send email to republicofrumi@gmail.com for details.

Your name, email address, phone number and postal address will be required along with the registration fee. You can send this information through email to republicofrumi@gmail.com

Introduction to Iqbal Studies

2011-08-18T12:11:00.001+05:00

The online course, Introduction to Iqbal Studies, has had a very successful run in June and July—successful in terms of enrollment as well as participant feedback. It has now been decided to offer online courses from the Republic of Rumi website on a quarterly basis. These will be 10-week courses beginning the first Monday of every fourth month:

October-December 2011
January-March 2012
April-June 2012
July-September 2012
October-December 2012

Two courses shall start on Monday, October 3. One of them is a repeat of 'Introduction to Iqbal Studies'. The other is a new course, 'Self-Development through Iqbal', details of which shall be announced in this newsletter very soon.

Introduction to Iqbal Studies has been designed and conducted by me. It is certified by Iqbal Academy Pakistan and is being offered by the Republic of Rumi Website in coordination with Dr. Iqbal Society of North America (DISNA). Registration fee is US$24 (Twentyfour US dollars). For Pakistani applicants it has been subsidized to PKR1000 (One thousand Pakistani Rupees).

Registration:

If your are located outside Pakistan, please visit the relevant page at the Disna Website for online registration through Paypal.
If you are located in Pakistan, you can send Pakistani students can send a crossed cheque in the name of "Khurram Ali Shafique" to "Khurram Ali Shafique, Research Consultant, Iqbal Academy Pakistan, 6th Floor, Aiwan-i-Iqbal, Off. Egerton Road, Lahore, Pakistan", or transfer money online (for details, please email republicofrumi@gmail.com ).

Destiny and Free Will

2011-08-17T00:01:00.000+05:00

The following passage from ‘The Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality’, the fourth lecture in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930-34) serves as a good introduction to Iqbal’s position on the issue of destiny and free will, which forms a central theme in his depiction of the Sphere of Mars in the fourth chapter of Javid Nama.

The Quran in its simple, forceful manner emphasizes the individuality and uniqueness of man, and has, I think, a definite view of his destiny as a unity of life. It is in consequence of this view of man as a unique individuality which makes it impossible for one individual to bear the burden of another, and entitles him only to what is due to his own personal effort, that the Quran is led to reject the idea of redemption. Three things are perfectly clear from the Quran:

(i) That man is the chosen of God:

‘Afterwards his Lord chose him Adam for himself and turned towards him, and guided him’ (20: 122).

(ii) That man, with all his faults, is meant to be the representative of God on earth:

‘When thy Lord said to the angels, “Verily I am about to place one in my stead on Earth”, they said, “Wilt Thou place there one who will do ill therein and shed blood, when we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness?” God said, “Verily I know what you know not’” (2: 30).
‘And it is He Who hath made you His representatives on the Earth, and hath raised some of you above others by various grades, that He may prove you by His gifts’. (6: 165)

(iii) That man is the trustee of a free personality which he accepted at his peril:

‘Verily we proposed to the Heavens, and to the Earth, and to the mountains to receive the “trust”, but they refused the burden and they feared to receive it. Man undertook to bear it, but hath proved unjust, senseless!’ (33: 72).

Caliphate

2011-08-16T00:01:00.000+05:00

In his lecture ‘Political Thought in Islam’, delivered in London in 1908, Iqbal explained some of the aspects of conventional constitutional law in Islam. The following excerpt gives us an idea about the drift of his mind.

In theory all Muslims, men and women, possess the right of election. There is no property qualification. In practice, however, women and slaves did not exercise this right. Some of the early lawyers seem to have recognised the danger of mass-elections as they endeavour to show that the right of election resides only in the tribe of the Prophet. Whether the seclusion of women grew up in order to make women incapable of exercising a right which in theory could not be denied to them, I cannot say.

The elector has the right to demand the deposition of the Caliph, or the dismissal of his officials if he can show that their conduct is not in accordance with the law of Islam. He can, on the subject, address the Muslim congregation in the mosque after the prayer. The mosque, it must be remembered, is the Muslim Forum, and the institution of daily prayer is closely connected with the political life of Muslim communities. Apart from its spiritual and social functions, the institution is meant to serve as a ready means of constant criticism of the State. If, however, the elector does not intend to address the congregation, he can issue a judicial inquiry concerning the conduct of any State official, or any other matter which affects the community as a whole. The judicial inquiry as a rule does not mention the name of any individual. I quote an illustration in order to give an idea of this procedure:

In the name of God, most merciful and clement. What is the opinion of the doctors of law, the guides of the people, on the encouragement of the Zimmis, and on the assistance we can demand from them, whether as clerks to the Amirs entrusted with the administration of the country, or as collectors of taxes?... Explain the above by solid proofs, establish the orthodox belief by sound arguments, and give your reasons. God will reward you.

Such judicial inquiries are issued by the State as well, and when the lawyers give conflicting decisions, the majority prevails. Forced election is quite illegal. Ibn Jama, an Egyptian lawyer, however, holds that forced election is legal in times of political unrest. This opportunist view has no support in the law of Islam; though undoubtedly it is based on historical facts. Tartushi, a Spanish lawyer, would probably hold the same view, for he says: “Forty years of tyranny are better than one hour of anarchy.”

Independence Day: August 14 or 15?

2011-08-14T01:25:00.000+05:00

On the morning of August 14, the last British Viceroy Mountbatten attended a ceremony at the Constituent Assembly Building (now the Sindh Assembly) in Karachi. There he “transferred the power” to the Governor-General designate Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the elected representatives of the people.

The nation had become independent but technically speaking, Pakistan was not yet born. The Viceroy flew off to New Delhi the same afternoon. The Union Jack was still flying in the Governor-General house when it was suggested to the Quaid that it should be removed now that British had left. He refused, since such discourtesy would have been beneath his dignity. Hence the British flag was brought down at its appointed hour of the sunset and not without due respect.

That sunset also marked the beginning of the 27^th of Ramadan – the “Night of Power”, which according to the Quran was better than a thousand nights, when angels and the Spirit descend on the earth in order to carry out every task under the direct command of the Creator. It was a night which, according to the Quran, is peace till the dawn. The Quran itself had been revealed on this night more than 1300 years ago.

The radio station of Lahore went on announcing itself as “All-India Radio” till shortly before midnight.

The birth of Pakistan was announced at the appointed hour, which was the midnight. The next morning, i.e. August 15 (Ramazan 27^th), the newspapers felicitated the people on the birth of an independent state. Quaid-i-Azam was sworn in as Governor-General. Liaquat Ali Khan took oath as Prime Minister. The flag of Pakistan was hoisted. The Quaid addressed the nation on radio. And, therefore, “the evening and the morning were the first day.”

The question then arose whether the “Independence Day” should be celebrated on August 14^th or 15^th in the future? My friend Aqeel Abbas Jafri tells me that he has seen in the national archives an official circular that was properly circulated the next year stating that although Pakistan came into being on August 15, it would be more appropriate if it celebrates its “Independence Day” on August 14, since the nation had technically become independent with the transfer of power by the last Viceroy.

This practice has been followed since 1948. Unfortunately there is no dearth of sensationalists who distort these facts in order to gain quick attention. They raise objections to the celebration of the Independence Day on August 14.

I almost became a victim to one myself when I read his book The Murder of History in Pakistan in the early 1990s. The author made much of the fact that Pakistan was born on August 15, and therefore it was wrong to celebrate the Independence Day on August 14. This author did not care to address some basic questions which any historian with a shred of self-respect would have tried to answer before raising the alarm: When was the date of the Independence Day changed to August 14? Who changed it, under what authority and was any reason given? Documents are available in the national archives and they leave no room for ambiguity.

The argument presented in The Murder of History in Pakistan has been picked up by countless other sensationalists. Neither of them has the self-respect to even raise these basic questions. We cannot say whether they fail to raise the questions because their real intention is not to set the record straight; they just feel sorry for having become independence, since they have been raised up with a slave mentality and therefore it hurts them when they see everybody else celebrating independence.

On our parts, it is our duty to know the facts. The people of Pakistan became independent on August 14, 1947 AD (Ramazan 26, 1366 AH). As an independent nation they themselves created Pakistan the next day, August 15, 1947 AD (Ramazan 27, 1366 AH). The birthday of Pakistan is August 15 just as the Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah mentioned in his inaugural address to the nation that morning. The “Independence Day”, in all fairness, cannot be the same date. It has to be the day when power was transferred to us (at least to those of us who are willing to have it). That was August 14, 1947.

This is just one of the several questions that are shamelessly thrown at the patriotic Pakistanis, very often by some who know neither shame nor self-respect. End of the day, the answer to all such questions boils to down to one counter-question: Are you happy that you are free? Let’s stop at saying that an answer beginning with “Yes, but…” counts as “No.”

Postscript: My answer is “Yes”, and I hope that so is yours. Happy Independence Day, August 14, 2011.

Special announcement: August 14 next year will fall again on Ramazan 26. Once again, the night of the Independence Day will be the “Night of Power”.

Shama Tabriz

2011-08-13T00:01:00.001+05:00

Shams-i-Tabrizi, or Shams of Tabriz was a qalandar who visited Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273) in Konya, most probably in 1247, and then disappeared. Little else can be verified about him with any degree of historical authenticity. At least two cities claim to be his burial places: Khoy (Iran) and Multan (Pakistan), but how he may have arrived in either of these remains unclear, as are the circumstances of his death. Some classical biographers have also transposed events from the life of Shamsuddin Muhammad, the 28th Imam of Ismaili Shias, who died in 1310.

The layers of ambiguity surrounding the historical personality of Shams are well-matched by the treatment accorded to him by his famous disciple. Rumi not only named a collection of his own ghazals after his mentor, calling it Divan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz, but also referred to him with great admiration in the Masnavi.

The well-known anecdote about Shams Tabriz throwing the books of Rumi in water and then retrieving them, as well as the alternate version used by Iqbal in Secrets and Mysteries (see Chapter 18), may have been floated by the inner circle of Rumi’s disciples as a similitude for the true nature of the epiphany experienced by Rumi upon meeting his mentor: Rumi became aware of a source of knowledge higher than books.

The anecdote, if treated as a parable, offers yet another possible interpretation. Only eleven years after the meeting between Rumi and Shams, the sum total of the five hundred years of Muslim civilization got burnt down in the form of the libraries of Baghdad, and the ashes went down the River Tigris, just as the books catch fire and are thrown into water, respectively, in the two different versions of the parable.

In the two stories, Shams retrieves the books from the ashes, and from water, respectively. Likewise, the poetry of Rumi, inspired by Shams, retrieves the essence of the fallen Muslim civilization, and takes it to a higher plane.

Imam Shafi

2011-08-12T00:01:00.000+05:00

Imam Abu Abdullah Muhammad bin Idris Shafii (767-820) was the founder of the Shafii school of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. His tomb is a prominent landmark of the Old Cairo (Egypt).

Shafii receives a glowing tribute from Iqbal in Secrets and Mysteries. The famous saying of Shafii, “Time is a Cutting Sword” is explained by Iqbal at length, with some unconventional observations: Time is non-linear, and more than a series of days and nights.

Apparently, one of the purposes for choosing the quotation from Shafii and explaining it in this manner was to show, as Iqbal would write to the translator of his poem soon afterwards, “I claim that the philosophy of the Asrar [i.e. ‘Secrets of the Self’, the first part of Secrets and Mysteries] is a direct development out of the experience and speculation of old Muslim Sufis and the thinkers. Even Bergson’s idea of time is not quite foreign to our Sufis… I wish I had time to write an extensive book on the subject to show to the Western student of philosophy how philosophic thinking makes the whole world kin.”

Ali Hajveri

2011-08-11T00:01:00.001+05:00

Abul Hasan Ali Hajveri (c.990-1077), popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, was born in Ghazna and died in Lahore (now in Pakistan), where he had been living since sometime after 1030. In Secrets and Mysteries (1915-1922) by Iqbal, he appears as a guiding force of Muslim civilization and a role model.

Hajveri wrote many books but his only surviving text is Kashful Mahjub (Revelation of the Mystery), which is nothing less than a miracle of non-fiction art: one of the earliest treatises on Sufism, it remains a standard reference work equally suited to the novice as well as the most advanced scholars even more than nine centuries later.

The book consists of twenty-five chapters. The first fourteen deal with general concepts of Sufism, such as the affirmation of knowledge, poverty, the etymology of Sufism, and so on. Hajveri’s approach in these chapters is distinguished from Qushayri, the author of a multi-volume treatise on mysticism and some other predecessors, since he seems to be more concerned more with giving insight than information.

The last eleven chapters offer a revelation each, from which the book derives its title. These eleven “revelations” are: maarifat (knowledge of the mysteries) of God; unification; faith; purification from foulness; prayer; alms; fasting; pilgrimage; companionship, rules and principles; definitions; and sama (devotional music). It is obvious from the list that Hajveri has based his “revelations” essentially on the obligatory forms of worship and other tenets of Islam practiced by the majority of believers in their everyday lives.

Genesis

2011-08-10T12:35:00.002+05:00

The following passage from the third lecture in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930-34) offers Iqbal’s comments on the Quranic version of the story of Genesis.

The remarkable points of difference between the Quranic and the Biblical narrations suggest unmistakably the purpose of the Quranic narration.

1. The Quran omits the serpent and the rib-story altogether. The former omission is obviously meant to free the story from its phallic setting and its original suggestion of a pessimistic view of life. The latter omission is meant to suggest that the purpose of the Quranic narration is not historical, as in the case of the Old Testament, which gives us an account of the origin of the first human pair by way of a prelude to the history of Israel. Indeed, in the verses which deal with the origin of man as a living being, the Quran uses the words Bashar or Insan, not Adam, which it reserves for man in his capacity of God's vicegerent on earth. The purpose of the Quran is further secured by the omission of proper names mentioned in the Biblical narration–Adam and Eve. The word Adam is retained and used more as a concept than as the name of a concrete human individual. This use of the word is not without authority in the Quran itself. The following verse is clear on the point:

‘We created you; then fashioned you; then said We to the angels, “prostrate yourself unto Adam”’ (7: ii).

2. The Quran splits up the legend into two distinct episodes–the one relating to what it describes simply as `the tree' and the other relating to the ‘tree of eternity’ and the ‘kingdom that faileth not’. The first episode is mentioned in the 7th and the second in the 20th Surah of the Quran. According to the Quran, Adam and his wife, led astray by Satan whose function is to create doubts in the minds of men, tasted the fruit of both the trees, whereas according to the Old Testament man was driven out of the Garden of Eden immediately after his first act of disobedience, and God placed, at the eastern side of the garden, angels and a flaming sword, turning on all sides, to keep the way to the tree of life.

3. The Old Testament curses the earth for Adam's act of disobedience; the Quran declares the earth to be the ‘dwelling place’ of man and a ‘source of profit’ to him for the possession of which he ought to be grateful to God. ‘And We have established you on the earth and given you therein the supports of life. How little do ye give thanks!’ (7: 10). Nor is there any reason to suppose that the word Jannat (garden) as used here means the supersensual paradise from which man is supposed to have fallen on this earth. According to the Quran, man is not a stranger on this earth. ‘And We have caused you to grow from the earth’, says the Quran. The Jannat, mentioned in the legend, cannot mean the eternal abode of the righteous. In the sense of the eternal abode of the righteous, Jannat is described by the Quran to be the place ‘wherein the righteous will pass to one another the cup which shall engender no light discourse, no motive to sin’. It is further described to be the place ‘wherein no weariness shall reach the righteous, nor forth from it shall they be cast’. In the Jannat mentioned in the legend, however, the very first event that took place was man’s sin of disobedience followed by his expulsion. In fact, the Quran itself explains the meaning of the word as used in its own narration. In the second episode of the legend the garden is described as a place ‘where there is neither hunger, nor thirst, neither heat nor nakedness’. I am, therefore, inclined to think that the Jannat in the Quranic narration is the conception of a primitive state in which man is practically unrelated to his environment and consequently does not feel the sting of human wants the birth of which alone marks the beginning of human culture.

Thus we see that the Quranic legend of the Fall has nothing to do with the first appearance of man on this planet. Its purpose is rather to indicate man's rise from a primitive state of instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of a free self, capable of doubt and disobedience. The Fall does not mean any moral depravity; it is man's transition from simple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness, a kind of waking from the dream of nature with a throb of personal causality in one's own being. Nor does the Quran regard the earth as a torture-hall where an elementally wicked humanity is imprisoned for an original act of sin. Man's first act of disobedience was also his first act of free choice; and that is why, according to the Quranic narration, Adam's first transgression was forgiven.

Self-Development through Iqbal

2011-07-03T05:19:00.001+05:00

Self-Development through Iqbal

is a new online course from the Republic of Rumi.

Details shall appear on this page soon.

Note: 'Introduction to Iqbal Studies' is also being repeated on popular demand. See details.

Course Schedule: Introduction to Iqbal Studies

2011-07-02T20:03:00.003+05:00

The online course 'Introduction to Iqbal Studies' is now going to be a regular feature of the Republic of Rumi and shall be offered four times a year according to the following schedule.

2011

September 5 thru November 4: Registration closes on August 14, 2011.

2012

January thru March

April thru June

July thru September

October thru December

See course details.

For registration and queries, contact republicofrumi@gmail.com
.

The Arab World

2011-07-02T00:01:00.001+05:00

The significance of Arabia as the cradle of Islam cannot be overstated. As such, the Arab World is mentioned throughout the works of Iqbal in endearing terms.

“It is only natural that Islam should have flashed across the consciousness of a simple people untouched by any of the ancient cultures, and occupying a geographical position where three continents meet together,” he states in ‘The Principle of Movement in Islam’, the sixth lecture in the Reconstruction (1930-34). “The new culture finds the foundation of world-unity in the principle of Tauhid.”

Apparently for this reason he advised his contemporaries to reconnect with the spirit of the classical Arabic poetry and expand their horizons beyond the Persian heritage (although the Persian heritage was deemed important in its own right).

However, a major thrust of Iqbal’s work is to rid Islam “of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it” (as suggested in the Allahabad Address). According to him, “early Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre-Islamic Asia were not in a position to realize” that “in view of the basic idea of Islam that there can be no further revelation binding on man, we ought to be spiritually one of the most emancipated peoples on earth.”

Looking back at the more recent history, Iqbal believed that “the first throb of life in modern Islam” was the movement started by “the great puritan reformer, Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahhab, who was born in 1700, studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout the whole world of Islam.” According to Iqbal, “the essential thing to note” about the Wahhabi Movement is “the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion…. [since] its vision of the past is wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on the traditions of the Prophet.” (Perhaps in this matter the legacy of Abdul Wahhab can benefit from the thought of his South Asian contemporary Shah Waliullah).

Europe, East and the Muslim East

2011-07-01T00:01:00.004+05:00

Regarded from a purely literary standpoint, the debilitation of the forces of life in Europe after the ordeal of the [First World] war is unfavorable to the development of a correct and mature literary ideal.

Indeed, the fear is that the minds of the nations may be gripped by that slow-pulsed Magianism which runs away from life’s difficulties, and which fails to distinguish between the sentiments of the heart and the thoughts of the brain. However, America seems to be a healthy element in Western civilization, the reason for which perhaps is that it is free from the trammels of old traditions and that its collective intuition is receptive to new ideas and influences.

The East, and especially the Muslim East, has opened its eyes after a centuries-long slumber. But the nations of the East should realize that life can bring about no revolution in its surroundings until a revolution takes place in its inner depths and that no new world can take shape externally until it is formed in the minds of men. This ineluctable law, which has been stated by the Quran in the simple but eloquent words, ‘Verily, God does not change a nation until it changes itself’ governs both the individual and the collective spheres of life; and it is the truth of this law that I have tried to keep in view in my Persian works.

Iqbal, 'Preface' to The Message of the East (1923)

Shibli Nomani: On the Miraj of the Prophet (peace be upon him)

2011-06-30T00:03:00.003+05:00

Maulana Nezami Ganjavi, Shah Waliullah, Mirza Ghalib, Shibli Nomani and Allama Iqbal are just a few of those great Muslim writers whose reflections on the Miraj of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) may be regarded as original and substantial contributions on the subject. Here I want to discuss just one of them, Shibli Nomani.

According to Shibli Nomani, the incident was much more than a facinating miracle. Shibli treats it as a precusor to the Migration of the Holy Prophet to Madina and the emergence of Islam as a state and a powerful nation.

The incident of Miraj is mentioned at least twice in the Quran, most notably in the opening verses of the surahs Isra (Bani Israel) and Najam. Usually, commentators treat only the first few verses of Surah Isra as related to the Miraj but Shibli observes a thematic unity in the surah. He suggests that the opening lines about the night journey of the Prophet from Makkah to Jerusalem blend seemlessly into themes that are unmistakably related to the next phase of the Prophet's career, i.e. his life at Madinah.

Throughout the Muslim history, the incident of Miraj has remained at the centre of the creative consciousness of the society. By observing a beautiful connection between the Prophet's visit to the heaven and the establishment of a state on earth, Shibli added a new chapter to the ongoing discourse on the subject, and we can see how particularly relevent and useful this new dimension could have been for those Muslim societies which were going to emerge as independent states within decades of Shibli's writing. Shibli made it possible for them to see the heavenly journey of the Prophet as an inspiration for building the new Muslim states!

The incident of Miraj is discussed at great length in the Seeratun Nabi in the third volume, which was completed by Shibli's disciple Syed Sulaiman Nadvi and published in 1924.

Listen to beautiful recitation of Surah Isra by Mishary Rashid, with English translation, and see if you agree with the thesis of Shibli Nomani.

If the video doesn't display properly on this blog,
use the following links for watching it at Youtube:

Surah Isra, Part 1
Surah Isra, Part 2

Surah Isra, Part 3

The prophet and the mystic

2011-06-29T00:01:00.000+05:00

‘Muhammad of Arabia ascended the highest Heaven and returned. I swear by God that if I had reached that point, I should never have returned.’ These are the words of a great Muslim saint, Abdul Quddus of Gangoh.

In the whole range of Sufi literature it will be probably difficult to find words which, in a single sentence, disclose such an acute perception of the psychological difference between the prophetic and the mystic types of consciousness. The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of ‘unitary experience’; and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large. The prophet’s return is creative. He returns to insert himself into the sweep of time with a view to control the forces of history, and thereby to create a fresh world of ideals. For the mystic the repose of ‘unitary experience’ is something final; for the prophet it is the awakening, within him, of world-shaking psychological forces, calculated to completely transform the human world. The desire to see his religious experience transformed into a living world-force is supreme in the prophet.

Iqbal, Lecture V, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Concious experience

2011-06-28T00:01:00.002+05:00

“...interpretation of our conscious experience is the only road by which we can reach the ego...”

Iqbal, Lectur IV, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Art and literature according to Iqbal

2011-06-27T00:01:00.002+05:00

In his first book of poetry, Secrets and Mysteries (1915-1922), Iqbal differentiates between poets who celebrate optimism and beauty, and those who indulge in dead ideas and ugliness (this distinction is often forgotten in our times). The poets of the first kind lead their society to success and the second to doom.

In the second work, The Message of the East (1923), he applies this poetics on the contemporary scene and shows that the literary ideals coming out of the West after the First World War (1914-1918) are unlikely to be healthy. Therefore, the future of the East, and perhaps of the world, depends on the ability of the poets of the East to attune themselves with the new impulses of life arising in Eastern societies.

In the third work, The Call of the Marching Bell (1924), he traces his own poetical career to show how he gradually dissociated himself from the self-destructive movement of Western thought as well as the decadent trends of the East (which he suspects would find new sponsors in the West very soon). Saying goodbye to the decadence of both societies, he arrived at a new vision and became attuned to the rebirth of civilization that is now happening in the East (especially mentioned in ‘The Dawn of Islam’ – see Chapter 49 in A Novel of Reality).

The fourth work, Persian Psalms (1927), includes a section exclusively dedicated to depiction of the art and religion of the slaves. The examples seem to highlight the new trends emerging in the West in the interwar years (1919-1938). It seems that they are being imported in to the East, including the Indian sub-continent, by the new intellectuals. Iqbal warns his readers against the dreadful impact of such trends (see Chapter 62 in A Novel of Reality).

The fifth work, Javid Nama, illustrates the ultimate outreach of a poet of Iqbal’s school of thought: here, Rumi leads the poet on an odyssey across the spiritual universe. The journey culminates on a face to face meeting with God and a direct vision of the destiny of the human race unveiled before the eyes of the poet. Hence the analogy of Khizr becomes completed here – just like the legendary guide, Iqbal has now received knowledge from the Divine Presence and learnt the events of the future history of the nations (see Chapter 80 in A Novel of Reality).

In the sixth work, Gabriel’s Wing (1935), he shows how the visionary artists weave a timeless tapestry even when hampered with the limitations of mediums and materials that are time-bound (see Chapter 86 in A Novel of Reality).

In the seventh work, The Blow of Moses (1936), he declares a “war” against the present age. One of the five sections of the book is dedicated to art and literature. A careful reading of these poems in the light of the previous works of Iqbal depicts a rather disturbing scenario: the East, which reawakened not a long time ago, now faces a new threat from its own intellectuals who are blindly the West. These trends include the kind of poetry that was denounced in Secrets and Mysteries as responsible for the destruction of societies.

The last two poetical works – What Should Now Be Done…? (1937) and The Gift of Hejaz (1938) – show how the poets and artists can work together with other segments in their societies for discovering a practical solution for their societies.

Sarosh

2011-06-25T07:28:00.000+05:00

In Persian literature, Sarosh is variously understood to be the “voice of conscience” and the angel of poetic inspiration.

Hence Rumi is made to say in Javid Nama, “This silver portrait of beauty was born in God’s mind; he ranks with Gabriel and his name is Sarosh.” The entity is originally based on the Sraosha, a sacred figure in Zoroastrian mythology without any equivalent in the Vedic system (and hence he is seen by Iqbal after meeting Vishvamitra, the representative of Vedic wisdom).

In Javid Nama, he is depicted with two long tresses reaching down to the small of his back from either side of his shoulder. This could be symbolic of the two hemispheres of brain, as he is shown to be engaged simultaneously in music and verbal arts (respectively assigned to the right and the left hemispheres of brain).

Vishvamitra

2011-06-24T14:30:00.001+05:00

Vishvamitra is at the center of many classical legends of Hinduism.

Originally King Kaushika in ancient India, he is said to have renounced his kingdom in order to acquire spiritual powers. This involved several tests and prolonged meditations, during which he was often tempted by the celestial nymphs, apsaras – one of whom succeeded and begat a daughter, Shakuntala (who would grow up to become the heroine of an epic in her own right, and bear the son Bharat, after whom the land would be named).

The king is said to have succeeded in becoming a brahmarishi – a sage of the highest order – and earning the title Vishvamitra (literally, a friend of everyone, in Sanskrit).

Retaining his royal temperament, he would display unusual anger as well as compassion – on one occasion compelling another legendary king, Rajah Harishchandra, to give up kingdom, while on another occasion creating an entire new heaven to lodge someone who had been denied entry into Paradise.

He was the mentor of the young Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu according to the Hindu belief. He also received Gayatri, one of the most sacred mantras of the Vedas.

Iqbal adapted the mantra into an Urdu poem, ‘The Sun’, as early as 1902, and included it in The Call of the Marching Bell (1924). In Javid Nama (1932), Vishvamitra himself appears meditating in a cave on the Moon (caves have been a conventional preference for initiation rites, and hence the cave of Vishvamitra serves as the starting point for Iqbal’s celestial journey).