Afia Ambreen
After the completion of burial ceremony of the poet-philosopher, Allama Iqbal , an English officer said: “Today, you have buried the last true Muslim of this subcontinent.” The 81st death anniversary of national poet and philosopher Dr Allama Muhammad Iqbal will be observed on 21 April. Iqbal through his revolutionary thinking had given the Muslims of the sub-continent the concept of a separate state where they can live in accordance with their religion and customs.
Born in Sialkot in British India on November 9, 1877, this great Muslim philosopher is known for his poetic work. His famous collections of poetry include Zarb-e-Kalim, Bang-e-Dara and Bal-e-Jibril. Iqbal was a strong proponent of the political and spiritual revival of the Islamic civilization across the world, but specifically in South Asia.
He is also considered one of the most important figures in literature with literary works in both Urdu and Persian languages.
Allama Muhammad Iqbal is the spiritual and intellectual founder of Pakistan. No poet or philosopher in the history of the world has inspired and energized millions of people as Iqbal did. He was the last and greatest thinker of the historic Aligarh Movement which brought about a paradigm shift in the consciousness of the Muslims of India, and transformed their destiny.
But Iqbal’s place in history is not limited to his role as a modernist, reformist Muslim thinker in India. He is the most outstanding poet-philosopher of the world of Islam, and of the world in general, since the death of Jalaluddin Rumi in 1273. Poet, philosopher, educationist, lawyer, political activist, social reformer, Iqbal is unmatched in his versatility and the breadth of his knowledge and vision. His message is more relevant and important to contemporary Muslims than the message of any other Muslim thinker of the past or present.
This is due not only to the fact that Iqbal faced the challenges of both traditionalism and modernity fearlessly, but also and more importantly – because he had a profound understanding of the integrated vision of the Qur’an which he made the basis of his philosophy. With the advent of colonialism, Muslims lost not only political power but also economic opportunity and cultural autonomy. Nowhere was this felt more acutely than in India where, though a minority in a Hindu-majority land, Muslims had had a powerful presence historically. In 1857-58, a section of the British Indian Army revolted against the British, who apportioned the greater share of the blame for this occurrence to Muslims and instituted openly discriminatory policies against them.
This caused Muslim fortunes to reach their lowest ebb in the 1860s and 1870s – a fact which made many Muslims wary of associating Islam with politics and who restricted it to a practice of personal piety and ethics.
Deeply concerned about this mindset, Iqbal took pains to demonstrate to his fellow Muslims that Islam could not be limited in such a way. In his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930, he stated: “It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life history of the Muslims of India.”
Iqbal reiterated the same idea in his presidential address at the annual session of the All-India Muslim Conference in Lahore in 1932: “Politics have their roots in the spiritual life of man. It is my belief that Islam is not a matter of private opinion. It is a society, or if you like, a civic church. It is because present-day political ideals, as they appear to be shaping themselves in India, may affect its original structure and character that I find myself interested in politics.”
The history of the Pakistan Movement has revealed that Allama Iqbal not only convinced Quaid-e-Azam to return to the Subcontinent and become a part of practical politics but also elaborated on the concept of an independent state in his Allahabad speech. A great philosopher and poet, Allama Iqbal is, on the one hand, regarded as a national poet and thinker in Pakistan and, on the other, also known across the world. He is known as Iqbal Lahori in Iran and India has given his ‘Tarana-e-Hindi’ the status of a national anthem. The British government had also honoured him with the title of ‘Sir’.
During his lifetime, Iqbal’s great challenge was to explicate to his fellow Indian Muslims why Islam could not be limited to ethics. If he was living today, he would have faced a very different challenge.
One needs to ponder what Iqbal would have said to the Pakistani leaders who are so preoccupied with politics that ethics means nothing to them.
We must feel honored that Allama Iqbal is acknowledged across the globe. We need to adopt a realistic approach to admit that today’s Pakistan is far removed from Iqbal’s concept of an independent nation. In the current circumstances, it is important to design our national policies according to the ideology of Allama Iqbal so that his dream of a peaceful Pakistan can be fulfilled. Young Pakistanis must reclaim Iqbal’s dream and undertake the responsibility for actualizing it.
