Allama Iqbal and the Concept of Muslim Nation

IQBAL S CONTRIBUTION TO THE REAWAKENING OF THE MUSLIM WORLD Muhammad Aman Hob ohm Some succession before his death the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal, in whose memory this meeting is held, wrote the following quatrain When I depart from this instauration e really wizard will say He was k standardised a shotn to me barely in truth, none knows this traveller, Or what he said, and to whom nor thence he came. I mystify neither the good fortune of knowing Iqbal personally nor am 11 an Iqbal scholar. When I was asked by the Honorary General Secretary, Pakistan Cultural Group, to move in this meeting and to share with you some of my cubic yardghts on the voice do by Mohammad Iqbal to the renaissance of the Muslim World in general and to the re-awakening of Muslims of pre-partitioned India in particular, I accepted, mainly for the following two reasonsFirstly I facial shewion that as a Muslim whose own understanding of Islam has been blockheadedly influenced by Iqbal it was my duty to join you in paying homage to this wide and nobleman soul repaying some of the debt of gratitude I owe him for enlightening me through his publications on so many aspects of Islamic teachings and for in-creasing my love and respect for the courier (peace be upon him) and his message through Iqbals inspired exposition of the trust of Islam, the religion of my choice.Secondly acceptance of your kind invitation to address tonight lies in the fact that I hail from a country for which Iqbal has always had the highest esteem and what is more, a deep and abiding love and perceptiveness i. e. Germany. Iqbal himself tells us in the preface to Payam-e-Mushriq the loudness in which his art has probably reached the height of power and perfection, that of the two great sages who have influenced him more than anyone else in his career as a mind and poet, one was Maulana Jalal-ud-Din Roomi who hailed from the eastern, the former(a) was Goethe, who came from westside.Iqbal w ent to Germany in 1906 when he studied school of thought at the Universities of Heidelberg and Munich. He presented his doctoral thesis entitled The Development of Metaphysics in Persia to the Munich University which, in November 1907, conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. His thesis was an original contribution to the put down and it s trough retains its importance. During his stay in Heidelberg and Munich he developed deep admiration for Germany, German thought, and poetry.As every scholar of Iqbal knows thither are innumerable instances in his writings, his letters and in recorded conversation with him which intelligibly indicate that the whole kit of German philosopher and poets have been a source of great inspiration to him. I have in my possession a number of letters which Iqbal wrote to his German tutor in Heidelberg. These letters, some of them written in fluent German, express his love and admiration for Germany in a most touching and persuade way. It is impossible for me, writes Iqbal to his tutor to forget your beautiful country where I have learned so much. My stay in Heidelberg is nothing now but a beautiful dream. How Id wish I could repeat it. I am very fond of Germany. It has had great influence on my ideals, and I shall never forget my stay in that country. Never shall I forget the days I spent at Heidelberg, where you taught me Goethes Faust, those were very beaming days, indeed. And a final quotation, Germany was a kind of second folk to my spirit. I learned much and I thought much in that country. The home of Goethe has found a permanent place in my soul.Iqbals stay in europium from 1905 till 1908 has had, I think one can call it, revolutionizing effect on his attitude to life, and nowhere does this harness a more forceful expression than in his poetry. Iqbals career as a poet began during his school days. His earlier poems show him as a caramel brown of nature and as a patriot to his country, undivided India. Iqba l was, indeed, an ardent Indian nationalist, until he went abroad. However, during his stay in Europe he had an opportunity of take apart modern nationalism at close quarters in its arious manifestations, with the- dissolvent that he came to draw in the fundamental, antithesis between the narrow creed of racial and geographical loyalty and the broad humanistic tabulook of Islam. Now he was no longer the poet of a particular nations. Despite he became the poet of Islam, and as much(prenominal) I dare say the poet of humanity. Likewise, his penetrating study of Western philosophy and social thought at their source, so to say, his stay in Europe enabled him probably as the first Muslim in Modern lines, to study Islam in the light of modern philosophical concepts.In this process and this is significant as it shows the mettle of which Iqbal was do, his faith in his religion Islam and significance and lasting address of the fundamental values of Islam which far from weakening, gained so much in carriage and conviction and assumed such dimensions that from now on he consecrate himself wholly and solely to The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam to apply the title, of his well known collection of lectures on the subject he became the inaugural Muslim thinker of our age.But we cannot say him the philosopher of Islam, for he was far more than a unadulterated lover of wisdom. His feet were too firmly planted in the earth. The very essence of his teachings was movement, dynamism, creative activity and not passive contemplation. Art thou alive? Be en soiastic, be a creator, Be a vanquisher of the Universe like me Smash the World into pieces if it does not suit thee And bet forth another world from the depth of thy being It is irritating for a free man to live in a World made by othersHe who is devoid of creative power Is naught for me but an heathen and a heretic. This is the spirit which made him take upon himself the gigantic task of stirri ng millions of fellow countrymen, millions of human beings and making them cast off the moral inactiveness which had paralysed their mind and spirit in the course of centuries. And this is also the spirit which prompted him, by chance even compelled him to associate himself actively with politics from the later 1920s till the day of his death. It is because the governmental ideas such as are taking regularise in India today, may affect the structure of Islam, Iqbal is reported to have said, that I am interested in politics. And he said elsewhere Politics has its roots in the spiritual life of man godliness is a force of great importance in the life of the man-to-man as well as of nations. And religion which in its highest manifestations is neither doctrine nor priesthood nor mere ritual, can alone ethically pre-pare modern man for the kernel of the great responsibility which the advancement of modern science necessarily involves.It is yet by rising to a fresh vision of his origin and future, his whence and whither, that man will eventually triumph over a company motivated by an inhuman competition and a civilization which has upset its spiritual unity by its inner conflict of religious and political values. So far Iqbal, the political thinker and visionary, who in this strength too has found a place in history, through his renowned presidential address at the Annual Session of the All India Muslim League at Allahabad in December 1930, in which he gave the world the concept of a consolidated, independent Muslim State in the Indo-Pakistan Sub-Continent.He thus became the founder, the originator of the Pakistan idea, though the word Pakistan was not coined by him. Iqbals unique contribution to Muslim thought is his concept of the Ego and of the perfect man, as other speakers tonight are likely to dwell upon at length. This is a point, should like to make according to Iqbal man can achieve his highest possibilities only inwardly and through society. This society must, however, fulfil certain conditions which Iqbal has formulated very clearly and which I may be permitted to enumerate, because of the importance which I personally seize to them.The ideal society must have a spiritual tail which is provided by the principle of Tawhid. The state according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the spiritualism in a human organization. Islam, as a policy, is only a practical means of making this principle, the principle, of Tawhid, a life story factor in the intellectual and traditional life of mankind. It demands loyally to divinity fudge, and, this in my opinion is a pointed reference to British raj in lndia, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God close amounts to mans loyally to his ideal nature. Iqbal further insists that it must centre around the visionary (peace be upon him), that it must have a code the Holy al-Quran and a focus Mecca, and it ought to apply itself to conquering the forces of nature. Iqbal was convinced that the decadence of the East as it obtained in his days and before, its economic and political disintegration were caused to a large ex-tent by its neglect of science. But let us not forget that he also demanded that his ideal society must champion traditions, for traditions are a factor of stability. His ideal society is the Ummah as envisaged by Islam.His ideal man the Prophet (peace be upon him). At a clip when the East was in an extremely distressing and difficult situation, defeated and abject by an adversity who seemed to be all powerful while the West stood at the apex of its glory, when no one would have given a frame for the Muslims and their future he brought out in verse/and poesy/and prose thus laying the foundation for the resurgence of Islam of which we are witnesses he brought out restated fundamentals, nay essentials of Islam in a clarity which cannot be surpassed.And by doing so he restored confidence in the hearts of millions of our brethren, fortified their belief and gave them in the altogether hope for the future. A future and that was Iqbals most cherished vision in which alI Muslims would form an indivisible community, united in the belief that their religion, the religion of Islam and here I may be permitted to quote Iqbal once again that their religion, i. e. Islam is not a departmental affair. That is neither mere thought nor mere feeling, nor mere action that it is the expression of the whole man. May God bless his soul.