Javidnama (poster)

Book launch tonight: "Online"

Would you like a free ebook of 2017: The Battle for Marghdeen as soon as it is published tonight? Some coupons will be made available from this blog for a limited time.

Marghdeen is an ideal city presented by Iqbal in Javid Nama. There is no poverty, crime or injustice. Life is inside-out and people know their destinies. 

In my new book, 2017, I have tried to explain that Marghdeen is a parable about our times. It describes what can be achieved today, if we are willing to understand the principles and bring a change in how we see the world. 

The book is just 80 pages, but has taken me five years to write. I hope that everybody will find it readable and interesting - some kind of "non-fiction thriller". 

It will be released electronically by Libredux, UK, tonight at midnight when Pakistan celebrates its 65th Independence Day. A special post will be uploaded on this blog and sent out in the newsletter at that time. 

The Afghan Nation

Iqbal (center) with King Nadir (2nd from left)
during official visit to Afghanistan in 1933

Stray Reflections (1910) 

The verdict of history is that buffer states have never been able to form themselves into great political units. So was the case with Syria – a buffer state between the Empire of Rome and that of the Persians. It seems difficult to forecast the future of Afghanistan.

Javid Nama (1932)

Translated by A. J. Arberry

Asia is a form cast of water and clay;
in that form the Afghan nation is the heart;
if it is corrupt, all Asia is corrupt,
if it is dilated, all Asia is dilated.
So long as the heart is free, the body is free,
else, the body is a straw in the path of the wind.
Like the body, the heart too is bound by laws—
the heart dies of hatred, lives of faith.
The power of faith derives from unity;
when unity becomes visible, it is a nation.
Imitation of the West seduces the East from itself;
these peoples have need to criticize the West.
The power of the West comes not from lute and rebeck,
not from the dancing of unveiled girls,
not from the magic of tulip cheeked enchantresses,
not from naked legs and bobbed hair;
its solidity springs not from irreligion,
its glory derives not from the Latin script.
The power of the West comes from science and technology,
and with that selfsame flame its lamp is bright.
Wisdom derives not from the cut and trim of clothes;
the turban is no impediment to science and technology.

Iqbal: A Miracle of Verbal Art

This write-up is based on a series of emails posted in The Republic of Rumi Newsletter from July 10 to September 27, 2008. It offers a brief background to my book The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality (2007).  

It was an October morning in 2006. I was staying at a friend's place in Lahore and finishing my breakfast before leaving for the office of Iqbal Academy Pakistan with whom I work as a consultant. Suddenly, an idea flashed across my mind: I don't know how or why.

It struck me that there were seven lectures in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930-34), Iqbal's philosophical work in English prose. Incidentally, there were also seven chapters in Javid Nama (1932), his greatest poetical masterpiece. Did they match?

While finishing breakfast, I began comparing the two in my head. Yes, indeed, the two sets were identical. Each lecture in the Reconstruction seemed to be a commentary on the corresponding chapter of Javid Nama! 

Those familiar with Iqbal Studies would probably understand the significance of this "discovery". The Reconstruction is one of the most problematic books of the 20th Century due to the controversies it has raised and problems supposed to be left "unresolved". Seminars have been conducted exclusively for discussing its contents. Hundreds of articles and papers and scores of books have been written to attack, defend or explain its propositions. Javid Nama, too, is a major work. It has been translated into more than sixteen languages. Preface to its German translation was written by the Nobel laureate Herman Hesse (the author of Sidharta). What I had "discovered" that October morning could affect much this huge bulk of literature.

When I shared my observation with M. Suheyl Umar, the Director of Iqbal Academy, he too was moved. Mr. Ahmad Jawaid, the Deputy Director, who had ever been so kind to me, insisted that I should start investigating the idea without delay.

My initial findings were published as The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality in March 2007. This was against the advice of some of my well-wishers who believed that I should take longer. I knew that they were right but still I wanted to go ahead with the publication because further discoveries which I had made in those few months were of such nature that research about them could go on for decades, and not just by me but by several people.

I had discovered that the work of Iqbal was not just a collection of books. The nine books of poetry, one book of prose and one pamphlet on which Pakistan was based were the only works which he cared to preserve and hence got them copyrighted (except for the last one which was a public document). It was possible to read these works as a unified whole: a single narrative.

This was incredible because Iqbal had published his books over a duration of twenty-three years (from 1915 to 1938) and yet every single line in these books written in three different languages (Persian, Urdu and English) seemed to form a coherent structure.

The protagonist of this narrative was the reader himself or herself. The challenge was to find Joseph. The name appeared frequently in the works of Iqbal. Usually it had been taken as a figure of speech, but after comparing all of its "appearances" I became quite convinced that Iqbal was mentioning something specific – a person, a thing, something which was hidden and would come out at a specific time in the future. You could even tell the characteristics of this "Joseph". For instance, he had got something to do with both Sufism and politics, and so on. 

So, who was Joseph? That is the search I had carried out in those few weeks since October 2006. The reason I had then wanted my book to be published quickly was this: I had found Joseph. My book, The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality (2007) attempts only to help the reader solve this mystery. Since this article is not meant to be a plot-spoiler, I won't say here who or what is Joseph, but would rather recommend the readers to turn to my book (it can also be read online for free on my website).

Here, I want to mention just three artistic devices through which it becomes possible to decode the works of Iqbal as a single narrative and to interact with it in such manner like finding Joseph in it, or solving other such mysteries:

1. Five Wisdoms
2. Seven Stages
3. Nine Questions

As I hope to show in some future post, these aspects are found consistently throughout the works of Iqbal: all sets of five items invariably turn out to be describing the Five Wisdoms, all sets of seven items Seven Stages and all sets of nine items Nine Questions.

As far as I know, this kind of coherence has not been claimed for any other writers (although I have discovered it in the works of two more authors since then and have short-listed a few others in whose works I am expecting to find the same phenomenon).

Mahdi of Sudan

Muhammad Ahmad bin Abdullah, popularly known as Mahdi of Sudan (1844-1885), is one of the most problematic appearances in the works of Iqbal.



Historically, the Mahdi of Sudan was a Sufi master from North Africa who turned militant and claimed to be Mahdi, the long-awaited redeemer who would set the stage for the Second Coming of Jesus. He extended the kalima – Muslim proclamation of faith – to include, “Muhammad al-Mahdi is the Khalifa of the Prophet of God” and replaced the fifth pillar of Muslim faith, the pilgrimage to Makkah, with an obligatory jihad – mainly against fellow Muslims of Turkish and Egyptian origins – and used force for implementing a wholly uncritical vision of the past, especially in matters of law. Careful not to claim prophet-hood, he nevertheless asserted that he was inspired by Gabriel, the angel who used to bring revelation to prophets.

Since Iqbal was known to be irreverently skeptical about almost all of these ideas, readers may be shocked to find the spirit of Mahdi appearing on the Sphere of Venus in Javidnama (1932), and singing an anthem about the impending birth of Iqbal’s ideal world. However, precisely due to his famous eccentricities, Mahdi is of immense value as a focal point for an intensive study of the turmoil that exists in the heart of the Muslim world in modern times (and unlike some other modern mystics, his movement attempted to “extricate the individuals from an enervating present” rather than slavishly surrendering their souls to its dictates).

A Western counterpart, although incomparably more ignoble, is perhaps the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), who also appears in the works of Iqbal, mainly to personify a spontaneous overflow of tendencies existing in the heart of the Western society.

After taking Sudan in 1898, the British conqueror Lord Horatio Kitchener (1850-1916) opened the tomb of Mahdi and scattered his bones. In Javidnama, Kitchener’s subsequent death in a torpedoed ship is mentioned as the revenge of Mahdi’s spirit, and compared with the drowning of the Pharaoh (according to the Quran, the Pharaoh drowned during the Exodus).

See also Chapter 72 in The Republic of Rumi: a Novel of Reality