Iqbal- the 20th Century Reformer

by Ali Shariati

  Iqbal is an artist, a responsible and committed poet of his time and his community. But this does not mean that the level of his thought and sentiment and the scope of his artistic and literary creation can be summarized in a few superficial and common place political and journalistic slogans. The question of artistic commitment in his works is not limited to routine political matters but involves a wide human and intellectual commitment of which anti-colonialism forms a decisive part.

  Between the two extremist points of view prevalent in Asian and African societies, Iqbal proposes a third one. The first view point is, as Taqizadeh and Mirza Malkam Khan put it: We must be westernized from head to toe and we cannot accept some aspects and reject others!

  They hold that there is no choice against the West as its new culture, ethics, philosophy, arts, and mode of life all constitute a uniform, consistent, and inseparable fabric. We must accept it in its totality and reject all our features that are incompatible with it.

  The other extremists show hostility to whatever comes from the West. They even consider it illegitimate to drive a car or consult a modern doctor. The idea of total rejection of the West, including all manifestations of its civilization and culture, has been and is observed among some segments of China, India, Japan, and, particularly, among orthodox Jewish rabbi.

  But Iqbal starts with an analysis of thought and criticism of the civilization and culture of the East and the West. He says: The East saw what was right but overlooked the world whereas the West saw the world but fled from what was right!

  He then declares that total submission to European civilization would entail humility and slavery of the East as well as the loss of whatever the East possesses and is required by humanity, that is, devotion to the truth and justice, love of metaphysics, search for virtues, constant stimulation of the oriental spirit to seek the secret of creation, absolute truth, and mystery of the universe. On the other hand, breaking away from the West would entail stagnation, weakness, even yielding to its domination. This is so because a non-industrialized society will always remain dependent on Western, industrial imperialism.

  Iqbal tells us that contrary to statements by dubious thinkers to the effect that it is impossible to adopt Western science and technology while rejecting its culture, ethics, social relations, and mode of life, we can and we must follow this policy. There is no reason to prove that a society that knows pure love, gnosticism, illumination, and unadulterated, ethical pleasures should not be able to use a tractor instead of a plow, travel in a jet airplane instead of riding a camel or use an electric lamp instead of a candle.

  Man can do this and, in fact, it falls within his responsibility and ideal to combine these two. The human being attains perfection when he experiences ascension of his soul and development of his ‘self at the same time that he flies in an airplane and travels to other planets. Such a person is more competent and his flight to space is more conducive to human evolution and prosperity.

  Iqbal’s message is this—we should light a fire in our hearts, rekindle the flame of faith, gnosticism, and great human love in our soul in order to become better acquainted with the essence of existence, the meaning of soul, the secret of nature, and the ultimate objective of being. Also, in order not to be plagued by a deadlock, by obscurity, confusion of faith, and aberration of thought at the very time when we are at the zenith of power, success, industrial development, and material welfare, as happened in Europe, we should strengthen our religious feeling in ourselves in order to achieve self-control and freedom from anti-human, base, and criminal passions as well as from avarice, fear, and weakness of the spirit. At the same time, we should adopt advanced science and technology and the logic of the West in order to master the world and conquer nature, to defeat poverty, weakness, and to subdue factors of nature with the help of these two. Through freedom from material want, attainable by means of modern science and technology, we should proceed along the path of spiritual evaluation, the search for truth and the advancement of humanity.

  Iqbal wished Pakistan to be a new, great experiment in the 20th century Islam. He wanted it to be an India that has brought European civilization within itself. This is an ideal Islamic society. He himself was such a man, an Eastern heart with a Western-trained mind, that is, a knowledgeable and reconstructed Muslim!

  This is not only the necessity of Muslims or of the Orient, but that of humanity, as well. Mankind, half grown in the East and half in the West and both being imperfect examples of full men, resembles a bird whose wings are separated from each other. Each wing may grow and become strong irrespective of the other, but they cannot lift the bird off the ground. Islam tries to affix these two wings on the same broken body so that they can grow harmoniously and to the same degree. But, unfortunately, Islam met the same fate as the bird did. Hence Iqbal endeavors to reconstruct it.

  The efforts made by Iqbal and all Islamic, learned reformers are not confined within the boundary of any particular religion or nationality. It is, at the same time, an effort made for the reconstruction of humanity at large and for the establishment of a new civilization and a new race of men which is the aspiration of any law.

  Finally, Iqbal is an intellectual genius who continued Sayyid Jamal’s movement of recapturing selfhood among the Islamic community, stretching from the Persian Gulf to North Africa and to the frontiers of China. This movement is widely misinterpreted of late to mean excessive orientalization and a nauseating tendency towards pre-Islamic paganism, coming at the heels of an ape-like westernization.

  It does not mean revival of native, local, and tribal traditions or collecting ethnic superstitions or returning to rotten, perverted, rigid, backward, and reactionary traditions. It does not mean reviving archaic customs like match-making rites, using special necklaces to dispel the evil eye, or hanging a donkey’s sack in the sitting room, and so forth. This is also a nauseating imitation of Europeans and Americans.

  The movement of the return to selfhood means returning to our human origin and revival of our cultural, intellectual, constructive, and progressive values. It does not mean pretending to insult Europeans and returning to reactionary and native customs and rites in the same way as was advocated when the westernized people themselves opposed the westernization of the fashion of the day.

  Returning to one’s self is a profound and difficult movement aimed at knowing and realizing the ‘self. It involves recognition of European civilization and culture, recognition of the modern world with all its good and bad as well as recognition of the history of civilization, culture, literature, religion, morality, and of the rise and fall of societies and civilizations. It also involves understanding the general public and being in harmony with the fabric of society. Finally, it means the revival of what was killed in us by decadence or eliminated and distorted by imperialism. This is not the kind of work that can be accomplished by the translation of a couple of Fanon’s or Aime Cesaire’s interviews or through some Iranian’s articles. Iqbal recaptured himself.

  But how did he do it? He set out for Europe and was converted into a philosopher and thinker at the world level. He became thoroughly familiar with Western culture, civilization, and society, then turned to Islam, and succeeded in knowing himself through toil, efforts, meditation, intuition, constant struggle, study of Islam and the Quran as well as through mysticism, culture, attending to the vicissitudes of Muslim and Indian people and governments and, finally, by means of active political, literary, artistic, and philosophical participation for the cause of independence and in the search for justice in efforts against colonialism.

  In the end, through self-realization and self-education, he recaptured his ‘self and after wandering about and contemplating the world of yesterday and today, he turned the ‘self’ into an oriental Muslim, a progressive scholar, a liberal-minded believer who, having illuminated his soul, perceived as a mujtahid, philosopher, artist, literary figure, and Islamologist.

  This is the significance of returning to one
’s ‘self’. This is what amounts to being a 20th century man. This is an intellectuals’ role in a backward, Islamic, oriental society plagued by colonialism and imperialism. This amounts to the possession of a school of thought and action and a world view based on firm and authentic convictions in the midst of philosophical deadlock and confused thinking which are prevalent today. This is becoming Ali-like. In short, this is Muhammad Iqbal, a full-fledged Muslim, the architect of the reconstruction of Islamic thought in our century.

  Chapter Three: Ideology

  God is immortal and the human being is His confederate, the bearer of His Spirit, the fulfiller of His mission, and, finally, His successor in this sacred and meaningful nature. Just as a mirror, the human being reflects the Might, Omniscience, and Beauty of God. He is a living portrait, conscious of self who revolves, grows, nurtures, lives, and enlivens God’s Commands.

  From the heart of every particle of His dark earth, a sun shines forth. On the tongue of every particle of His sand, every leaf of His trees, and from the sound of His water, the sound of His earth and the sound of His flowers, songs of love and His praise can be heard. He is neither a spiritless and senseless entity nor an insignificant, aimless, and cold mass composed of futile and absurd elements, but He is the endless variation of waves from the boundless ocean of Truth and a highly polished mirror faithfully reflecting the signs of a spirit, a Being that is the living and illuminating Source of life as well as the beauty, value, awareness, and perfection and all that gives meaning to the world and to being, gives meaning to being human, gives value to life, and responsibility and direction to movement. With such a God and such a universe, the human being, this divine-like creature is free, conscious, and creative, before whom angels prostrated themselves and the earth, heaven, and whatever lies between them are his to take.

  He hunts for truth, beauty and goodness with the weapon of knowledge, art, and ethics. He praises greatness and respects values. He seeks freedom and, through knowledge of the universe, he attains the stage of consciousness of self and thence to consciousness of God. Then, on the day of his death, he moves to eternity, from multiplicity to unity, from becoming to being, from worldliness (through observing, thinking, choosing, going, living, and being) to providence and salvation in the next world, from subsistence to resurrection, from multitheism to monotheism, from the ascension in the Masjid al-Aqsa (the Farthest Mosque in Jerusalem) of the world to the Lote-Tree of the Boundary of Nearness which is but two spans away from God and even closer than that. He breathes with the Spirit of God, has a divine primordial nature. When faced by good deeds, he responds with love. When faced by unlawful deeds, with disgust.

  His consciousness of self draws him to alienation and solitude, finds this world strange, foreign where his divine-like ‘self is in exile. Then, he experiences an apprehension for the Unseen, the need to search for ‘origin’, longing for union, impatient for escape, bored with staying where he is and ardently desirous of going to an unknown place which is not here. He becomes annoyed and harassed by his being. His clothes feel tight. His shoes pinch his feet. He wants to fly to a higher plane, impatient to escape. Being as he is, staying as he is, living as he is, all become humiliating and suffocating.

  He goes farther than knowledge and reasoning, achieving a divine art, and a miraculous elixir by which he learns to reach subsistence through the annihilation of ‘self, to prove his ‘self through its negation, to attain martyrdom through his death for human life, freedom through servitude, and rebellion through devotion.

  Five times everyday and night throughout his lifetime when the drum of divine sovereignty sounds in the heavens, he belittles all pretensions to greatness through his praise of God (allah akbar, God is Greater). He throws asunder all pride, all lordships, kingships, and deities which are but satanic suggestions and temptations of the deceiving devil and stands attentively, face to face, with the only true Almighty, worshipped by those whose hearts love beauty and whose spirits are devoted to the truth.

  While multitheists and those who cover over the truth spend their lives running like dogs in search of a bone, going on errands for a master, serving at the threshold of an idol, flattering whoever is praised by others, in servitude, in Iqbal’s words, ‘like a dog before a dog’, worshipping power, gold, and women, humiliating themselves at the doors of inhumane masters, and begging the favors of their masters at the cost of their own honor, the monotheist divides life into years, years into months, months into weeks, and weeks into days. Every morning when he awakens, at noon when he returns from work, in the afternoon when he goes back to work, at sunset when he again returns from work and in the evening before going to bed, he addresses Him, announcing to all those who rebel against God’s Commands (taghut), by repeating:

  “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of all Being, the All-compassionate, the All-merciful, the Master of the Day of Doom, Thee only we serve; to Thee alone we pray for help. Guide us in the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast blessed, not of those against whom Thou art wrathful, nor of those who are astray.” (1:1-7)

  And, finally, the human being who has made a covenant with God, who has fortified himself with monotheism, is wearing the clothes of ‘guarding against evil’, who sees with the eyes of gnosis, who, through prayer and devotions, reaches towards Lordship, who is being consumed in love, in commanding to good and preventing what is not, in migration, and in jihad transforms the ‘self and the world.

  In his translation of Khayyam’s quatrains, Edward Fitzgerald, the well-known English poet, has artistically used his imagination resulting in a very free translation of Khayyam’s verses making the verses very famous in the West. He translated one quatrain, thusly:

  Ah, love! Could thou and I with fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire Would not we shatter it to bits And then re-mold it nearer to the heart’s desire!

  In the words of Ramakrishna, “We are essentially called upon to take part in this conspiracy.” The miraculously created accomplices—God, the human being, and love—will never be defeated because humanity—which is “becoming” in moving towards God—will be made manifest. In spite of the whisperings of satanic forces, the darkness of the enveloping dark night, the conjuring of bond-breaking sorceresses, the back-stabbing of envious traitors, the Spirit of God within the human being will creature a life and a victorious movement overflowing with virtue and perfection. Ultimately, time will bear witness to the fact that the earth, after having been made the victim of cruelty and injustice, will be covered with justice and truth and that the deprived will become the leaders of humanity and the heirs of history.

  We are Easterners, orientals. We want to stand against the West which is trying to finalize and make absolute its own style of civilization, culture, mode of life, and human behavior and to impose a world upon us at the cost of our negation, the elimination of our identity and denial of all of our values, to transform us and make us faceless and, consequently, parrot-like, docile individuals. We should extricate ourselves from the inauspicious influence of this evil which has enveloped our age like a dark night and which is busy casting a spell on people while it devours the globe. We should, indeed, entrust ourselves to the Light which has illuminated us with love throughout the lifetime of humanity and which is now hidden behind terrible clouds that darken the atmosphere and never give forth rain.

  We are connected to the Third World. It would be more correct to call it the Second World because there have been and are two worlds for human beings. If we accept the definition of Third World advanced by a writer as ‘the collection of nationalities with one common concern’, then it should be said that in this world of downtrodden nations, and, in Fanon’s words, ‘people on the earth whose portion is wrath’, we, as well as all those true human beings who are striving for what is right and who follow a correct path to transform the order and the life system of their fellow man, have a unique past and fate. Each of
us, in company with our group, send our greetings to each other five times each day and night in the course of our ritual prayers.

  We are passing time in this century, although we do not exactly live in it. Nevertheless, we should not restrict our vision to the narrow confines of our environment. We should not devote all of our attention to the events in close proximity to us or to what is involved within the rigid framework of our personal relationships, customs, imagination, motives, traditions, or ethnic or tribal issues. We should not ignore the age we live in nor the situation created for us by the rulers of the world. We should look beyond our frontiers and clearly see the world, all fronts, places of ambush, plots, good and evil, clearly recognize the world, humanity at large, both in its ugly and its beautiful aspects, its achievements, ailments, rough edges, and predicaments, lest we stand still in reactionaryism and stagnation, becoming innocent victims of others and easy prey to those who are ready to devour us.

  We should be in the midst of realities, in the heart of clashes, in the center of events and movements of nations. We should be the central figure in the arena of our age, not absent, negligent, or solitary so that they do not take us into account and take no notice of us when they are shaping the destiny of humanity and history. We should undertake certain missions, responsibilities, and contributions. Finally, we are Muslims and Islam for us,at this point, is more than anything else, an ideology.