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Iqbal
and the Reconstruction of Islamic Thought
We
have defined Islamic Revolutionary thought as the imperative to
remove the dichotomy between Divine Revelation and state
authority, or between the religious and the secular domains of
human existence, and to establish the unconditional and
unqualified ascendancy of the Qur´an and the Sunnah over all
spheres of life, so that the Islamic System of Social Justice
can be established in its totality and, as a consequence, all
forms of political repression, economic exploitation, and social
discrimination can be eliminated from human society. The
achievement of this goal in 7th century Arabia was the greatest
accomplishment of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and it is this triumph
of the Prophet which is acknowledged by historian Dr. Michael
Hart in these words: "he [Prophet Muhammad] was the only man in
history who was supremely successful on both the religious and
secular levels."
The Islamic System
of Social Justice, as established by Prophet Muhammad (SAW),
continued in its ideal form for at least 30 years after his
death, and then it started to decline. Gradually, however, the
ideal unity between the religious and the secular gave way, and
a dichotomy appeared in the Muslim society between the political
rulers and the religious leadership, and then the latter
themselves got divided into the scholars of the law (ulama) and
the mystics who concerned themselves mainly with the
purification of the soul (sufia); in this way, the "unity"
gradually degenerated into a "trinity." The political and moral
decay of the Ummah continued to worsen with each passing
century. In the meantime, the development of physical sciences
and technology in Europe under the influence of Renaissance and
Reformation — which were themselves a result of Islamic
influences reaching Central Europe through Muslim Spain — led to
a power potential which resulted in the conquest of Muslim lands
by the forces of Western Imperialism. The evolution of social
sciences in Europe also accelerated, and French and Bolshevik
revolutions gave fresh dimensions to the human thought,
including the ideas of freedom, democracy, human rights,
equality, and the need to eliminate all exploitation.
In
the Indian subcontinent, efforts to revive the authentic and
pristine Islam began with Sheikh Ahmad Sirhindi, and gained
momentum with Shah Waliyullah Dehlvi and Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed.
The stage was thus set, at the beginning of the 20th century,
for Allama Muhammad Iqbal to play his momentous role in laying
down the intellectual foundations of Islamic Renaissance.
The achievements of
Allama Iqbal vis-à-vis the reconstruction of Islamic religious
and revolutionary thought can be summarized as follows: In the
first place, he proved that the intellectual and scientific
progress that was achieved by the European man during the last
few centuries was actually a manifestation and unfolding of the
Qur´anic spirit. According to Iqbal, the birth of Islam was the
birth of inductive intellect; it was the Qur´anic emphasis on
observation and experience, as well as its stress on the
concrete and the finite, which gave rise to the scientific
method of inquiry. The scientific spirit was born as a result of
the imperative by the Qur´an to give up all superstitious and
fanciful beliefs, to rely on the senses and the faculty of
reason for gaining knowledge of the material world, and to
contemplate the physical and natural phenomena because these are
signs of Almighty Allah (SWT). It was under the influence of
such Qur´anic teachings that the inductive method of inquiry
blossomed among the Arabs, before being carried through the
universities in Muslim Spain into Europe, paving the way for the
Renaissance. It was in this sense that Iqbal saw the
intellectual side of the European culture as "only a further
development of some of the most important phases of the culture
of Islam." Secondly, he proved that the concepts of political
and economic rights of man, which seem to have been born and
developed in the West, were actually derived and borrowed from
the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). Thus, to say that all
human beings are born equal, that every human being has certain
inalienable rights (especially the provision of basic
necessities of life) concerning which there must not be any
discrimination on the basis of gender, race, color, caste, or
creed, and that all forms of exploitation — whether political or
economic — must not be allowed to continue in a decent and
humane society, is to express the basic tenets of an ideal
Islamic state as given by Prophet Muhammad (SAW), as well as to
describe the most remarkable features of the era of Al-Khilafah
Al-Rashidah.
Thirdly, Iqbal
brought to the fore the urgent need and the immense significance
of developing a new ilm al-kalam, i.e., of reconstructing the
Islamic theology in the light of modern knowledge and of
rebuilding the edifice of religious belief on the basis of newly
available scientific data. Iqbal paved the way for this gigantic
task by liberating Islamic theology from the quagmire of
Platonic ideas and the labyrinth of Aristotelian logic, and then
by establishing Islamic beliefs on the foundation of modern
experimental sciences, including mathematics, physics, biology,
and psychology.
Two
related achievements of Iqbal that we are going to discuss in
this chapter are as follows: first, his challenge to the
dominant Western thought and civilization, especially his
forceful criticism and condemnation of two fundamental
socio-political concepts of the West, i.e., secularism and
territorial nationalism; secondly, the ingenious manner in which
he reconstructed the Islamic revolutionary thought and presented
the Islamic System of Social Justice on the highest intellectual
level, harmonizing it with the highest ideals of human rights,
as well as his presentation of a brief yet comprehensive
description of the methodology for bringing about the envisioned
Islamic Revolution.
Iqbal´s ideas concerning secularism and territorial nationalism
are so well-known and crystal-clear that we need not go into
their details. Secularism, according to Iqbal, is the biggest
evil in today´s world, and the separation of Divine guidance
from state authority is the root cause of all corruption. Human
sovereignty is kufr as well as shirk, irrespective of whether it
manifests itself in the form of individual sovereignty
(autocracy and kingship) or in the form of popular sovereignty
(democracy and people´s rule). A number of couplets can be
quoted from Iqbal´s poetry to prove this point; however, Iqbal
has expressed his abhorrence of human sovereignty, in a most
subtle and perspicacious manner, in the following couplet of his
masterpiece Iblees ki Majlis-e-Shura:
We ourselves have
dressed Kingship in the garb of Democracy,
When man has grown
to be a little self-conscious and self-observant.
In other words,
Iqbal is saying that the consciousness of human rights, which
prospered in Europe under the influence of Renaissance and
Reformation, was essentially a positive development in the human
social evolution. However, it was Satan and his agents who
diverted this consciousness towards popular sovereignty, and in
this way the rule of a king was replaced with the rule of the
people. Both forms of political systems are equally unacceptable
from the Islamic perspective, as absolute sovereignty belongs to
no one but the Creator, Owner, and Ruler of the universe,
Almighty Allah (SWT). The very concept of human sovereignty is a
form of filth, and will remain so whether it belongs to a single
Pharaoh and Caesar or whether it is distributed piecemeal to a
few million citizens of a country.
As for the modern
concept of territorial nationalism — which happens to be an
absolutely unavoidable appendage of secular polity — the fact is
that two of Iqbal´s poems on this subject are so devastating
that, even if Iqbal had composed no other poetry, these two
would have been sufficient to establish his place as the
greatest iconoclast of Western culture and political theory and
the greatest ideologue and rejuvenator of Islamic ideological
nationhood. Iqbal has categorically declared, in his Urdu poem
entitled Wataniyyat, that territorial nationalism as a political
concept is the most pernicious of all the various idols of
modern age. Territorial nationalism constitutes a virulent and
lethal disease which, by causing discord and animosity among
different groups of people and by producing mutual rivalry and
antagonism, leads to a type of politics which is devoid of
morality and a kind of trade which becomes an instrument of
Imperialism. All this results in destruction and devastation of
weaker nations at the hands of stronger ones.
As for the famous Persian poem by Iqbal, which he composed as a
rejoinder to Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani´s (RA) comment that
nowadays nations are established on the basis of homelands, the
following points need to be noted. First, as pointed out by
Maulana Madani, the word he had actually used was qaum and not
millat, and it was a sign of Iqbal´s magnanimity that he
promptly admitted this oversight. However, even though his
personal integrity and piety as well as his role as a freedom
fighter is beyond doubt, the main clarification given by Maulana
Madani — that his remark was only a statement of fact rather
than an imperative sentence — can only be described as inane.
This is because Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani was a religious and
political leader, and it is obvious that every statement that
comes from such a personage necessarily contains a strong shade
of advice and command. Iqbal´s condemnation too was specifically
directed towards the essentially Western thought that nations
are formed on the basis of homelands. As a matter of fact, the
ability to discern and recognize kufr and shirk in all their
countless forms and myriad guises constitutes a special gift and
favor of Almighty Allah (SWT) which He bestowed on Iqbal.
In short, it was on
the basis of a strong negation of secularism and popular
sovereignty on the one hand and of territorial nationalism on
the other that Iqbal challenged the modern Western civilization,
warning the modern Western man that his attitude will cause his
culture to commit suicide with its own weapons.
Let us digress a
little before going any further. It is indeed ironical that in
our country, which came into existence in the name of "Muslim
nationhood" and whose entire struggle for independence was
fought on the basis of "separate electorate", we find that
numerous politically prominent leaders and parties are nowadays
openly talking about a "joint electorate", where a person´s
religion could not be included in his identity card, and where
minorities are being given the right of a double vote. The
champions of secularism in Pakistan never get tired of quoting
the 11th August 1947 statement of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah, in which he declared religion to be a private affair of
the individual. In our opinion, taking this particular statement
of the Quaid as representing an interim and temporary tactic
would be one thing, but to embrace it as a permanent foundation
of Pakistan´s constitutional framework and political system
would be a clear and glaring rejection of the very ideology of
Pakistan, as well as an open and flagrant revolt against the
views put forward by the main ideologue of our country, Allama
Iqbal. Such a deviation from the ideological basis of Pakistan
would eliminate the very justification of this country as a
separate and independent state, and would lead, ultimately, to
its total disintegration. On the other hand, strengthening this
ideological foundation, and establishing a complete
constitutional framework as well as a politico-socio-economic
system on its basis, would become the starting point of a new
global civilization. In this way, the revival of Islam would
then unleash the power that is urgently needed by humanity to
replace the prevailing "New World Order" with the "Just World
Order" of Islam. It is precisely this "threat" of Islam as a
living force which is so repulsive to Satan and his agents as
well as to the Jews and the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants)
that even the slightest progress in this direction disturbs them
in a most serious manner.
Iqbal has explained
the revolutionary teachings of Islam concerning the social,
political, and economic spheres throughout his Urdu and Persian
poetry. However, one of his last Urdu poems, entitled Iblees ki
Majlis-e-Shura (or "The Devil´s Parliament"), is especially
significant in that it represents Iqbal´s final message to the
Muslim Ummah on the one hand, and the result of his life-long
deliberations and reflections on the other. The central theme of
this poem is that the evil forces active in this world —
represented by Satan and his advisers — have decided that they
have nothing to fear from the rising tides of democracy or
socialism; all they are really concerned with is the possibility
of the revival of Islam. The so-called democracy of the West is
only a veil for imperialism (as it is nothing more than the rule
of the capitalists), and socialism cannot heal the wounds of
humanity either. It is only Islam that has the potential to pose
a real challenge for Satan and his diabolical schemes.
Thus, Satan says:
How could I be
frightened by these socialists, straying about the streets?
Wretched and straitened, distracted in mind, incoherent in
speech!
The only menace I anticipate may come from that Community:
Which still a spark of ambition hidden in its ashes retains.
Knows he to whom are revealed the inner secrets of time:
Not socialism, but Islam is to be the trouble of the morrow.
In spite of his
apprehensions regarding the revival of Islam, Satan feels
content when he notes that the Muslims are in no position to
become a threat to his rule: They have practically given up the
ideals and values of Islam, and their once burning faith has now
been attenuated to nothing more than an inherited dogma or a
matter of theological controversies. Satan, however, warns his
disciples that although the Muslims are not likely to pose any
danger, other people may discover the virtues of Islam after
trying and discarding various man-made systems of life, one
after the other. And it is here, says Satan, that the real
danger to his rule lies:
I do know this
Community is no longer the bearer of the Qur´an:
The same capitalism is the religion of the believer now.
And I know too, that in the dark night of the East
The sleeve of the holy ones of the Haram is bereft of the white,
illuminating hand.
The demands of the present age, however, spell the apprehension:
Lest the Shari´ah of the Prophet should come to light one day.
The four couplets that follow are not only the gist of the
entire poem, but the fact is that they represent Iqbal´s
understanding of the Islamic System of Social Justice and are
the result of his life-long study and deliberation on this
subject.
Beware, a hundred times beware, of the law of the Prophet!
´The protector of women´s honor, the tester of men´s capacities,
the rearer of worthy men!´
´The message of death to any kind of slavery!´
´No sovereigns and no monarchs, no mendicants begging!´
´It does purify wealth of all pollution:´
´It makes the wealthy trustees of wealth and property.´
What greater revolution in thought and action will there be!
´Not to the crowned heads, but to God alone does this earth
belong!´
The first couplet in
this series describes the social system of Islam as being
established on two fundamental points. The foremost goal of the
Islamic social system is to establish a society where the
protection and preservation of the honor and dignity of women
can be ensured; segregation of the sexes and enforcement of
proper dress codes are some of the means to this end. Secondly,
as far as the earning of livelihood or the performance of other
strenuous duties are concerned, Islam places such
responsibilities on the shoulders of men, and not of women; it
tests and tries the abilities of men and forces them to be
responsible. In the second couplet, Iqbal describes the
political system of Islam as being characterized by an equality
of the ruler and the ruled, a state of affairs where there is no
slavery and no exploitation of any kind. Of course, there is
only one possible way to achieve this egalitarianism in real
life: The exploitation of the weak by the strong and the
enslavement of one class by another can be eliminated only by
rejecting human sovereignty and submitting before the
sovereignty of the Creator. Thus, Islam demands its followers to
establish the sovereignty of Almighty Allah (SWT) on earth,
which is the same thing as the vicegerency (or Khilafah) of the
Muslims in the socio-political governance.
In
the third and fourth couplets, Iqbal describes the economic
system of Islam. It is an indication of the rich and versatile
personality of Allama Iqbal that, even though his main subject
was metaphysics, he still had a deep interest in the
comparatively dry and dreary science of economics. Iqbal was
fully cognizant of the fact that, in today´s world, economic and
financial matters have assumed central importance in the human
society, and that man has now been reduced to Homo economicus
for all practical purposes. Regarding the issue of "Capital",
Iqbal makes it clear that while Islam takes advantage of the
human desire for profit and encourages investment as well as
cultivates a healthy competitive environment, there is
absolutely no chance whatsoever of the menace of capitalism
taking root in a true Islamic society, as the very foundation of
capitalism — interest or usury — has been strictly prohibited by
the Qur´an. Keeping in view the references to riba in various
other couplets of Iqbal, it is our humble opinion that the
degree to which Iqbal recognized and expressed the immorality
and vice of riba is simply non-existent in the writings of any
other scholar or intellectual.
Concerning the domination of "Feudalism", Iqbal asserts that
this is in diametric opposition to the economic teachings of
Islam. In his numerous Urdu and Persian poems, Iqbal
passionately maintains that land, the source of sustenance for
humans and animals, cannot be the private property of kings or
landlords. The earth belongs to Almighty Allah (SWT), and its
productive capacities are meant by the Creator to be equally
available to all those who are in need of it. The practice of
absentee landlordism, in which the "owner" of the land takes
away the lion´s share from the produce of the land without
performing an iota of the labor involved, is not only highly
cruel and unjust to the ill-fated farmer, but it is the
principal cause of the concentration of politico-economic power
in the hands of a few hundred families. The ownership of massive
land-holdings provide the landlords with immense amount of money
and influence, and the resulting electoral and political power
allows them to control the legislative and policy-making process
with highly deleterious consequences for the nation.
Let us add here two
crucial points regarding the issue of feudalism and absentee
landlordims. In the first place, the fact is that all the lands
included in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent are, technically
speaking, kharaji and not usheri. According to the judgment of
the second Caliph, Hadrat Umar Farooq (RAA), which was later
unanimously accepted by the entire Muslim Ummah, all those lands
which are conquered by the Muslim armies in the course of a war
can never become private property of individuals but must remain
the collective property of the whole Ummah. This means that the
agricultural lands of our country, as well as the income and
production thereof, are to be treated as public property and
must, therefore, be used for the welfare of the whole populace,
both Muslims and non-Muslims. This was the opinion of such
eminent scholars as Jalaluddin Thaneseri, Shah Waliyullah Dehlvi,
Shah Abdul Aziz, and Qazi Sanaullah Panipati. Secondly, the
practice of Mazre´at or absentee landlorism is actually a kind
of riba, the only difference is that it involves agricultural
land instead of money. Three great scholars of Islamic
jurisprudence — Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Shafa´e, and Imam Malik —
have categorically declared this practice as absolutely haram,
that is, prohibited by the Shari´ah. Only Imam Ahmad Ibn Hanbal,
and two disciples of Imam Abu Hanifa (Imam Muhammad and Imam Abu
Yousuf) have allowed this, but they too have prescribed some
conditions to reduce its unfairness. However, later generations
simply legalized the practice of absentee landlordims by means
of various legal excuses; this was done mainly under the
influence of kingship and has, therefore, nothing to do with
pristine Islam or the egalitarian teachings of the Islamic
economic system. The credit for voicing the strongest
condemnation of this in our times goes to Iqbal who, with a
boldness that was unique to him, proclaimed that a revolution is
needed to eradicate the evils of feudalism and absentee
landlordism:
Of the hireling´s
blood outpoured
Lustrous rubies make the lord;
Tyrant squire to swell his wealth
Desolates the peasant´s tilth.
Revolt, I cry!
Revolt, defy!
Revolt, or die!
In short, Iqbal
fully understood — and did his best to educate others regarding
it — the three logical corollaries of the doctrine of Tawheed
that had a direct bearing on the Islamic System of Social
Justice, as given below:
Since all human beings are the creation of a single Creator,
there is no inherent or congenital inequality on the basis of
race, color, or gender;
Absolute sovereignty belongs only to Almighty Allah (SWT), and
human beings are His vicegerents who must not transgress the
limits set by the Sovereign; and
The
sacred right of absolute ownership belongs to Almighty Allah (SWT)
alone, and human beings are only trustees who must not use
anything they may find in their possession against the wishes of
the rightful Owner.
As a logical upshot
of the above understanding of the meaning of Tawheed, Iqbal made
a forceful call for a revolution to replace the existing state
of repression and exploitation with the Islamic System of Social
Justice. In addition to his role in pinpointing the ultimate
goal of the struggle for an Islamic state — which is the
establishment of Justice — Iqbal also elucidated the
methodology, in an extremely comprehensive yet compact manner,
for bringing about the envisioned revolution.
According to Iqbal,
the first stage in the process of an Islamic Revolution is a
purely "educational" one: To inculcate the teachings and the
message of the Holy Qur´an in the minds of the audience, so that
a profound metamorphosis occurs in the way people think and
feel, in their goals and objectives, and in their values and
priorities in life. People must change from within before they
can change the world. It is this internal and psychological
revolution in the personalities of individual human beings that
is the absolutely essential pre-requisite for any meaningful and
stable change in the politico-socio-economic system. This
transformation of the individuals will then cause them to unite
as a force, which will become the starting point for a global
revolution. It must be noted that in the revolutionary struggle
of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), the only instrument that was employed
for exhortation, admonition, purification of the soul, and
reformation was nothing but the Holy Qur´an.
In
addition to this Jihad bil-Qur´an, there are two more components
of the initial or preliminary phase of the revolutionary
process, and these can be described as "organization" and
"passive resistance." What is meant by "organization" is that
all those who have accepted the revolutionary ideology — those
who have consciously come to believe in the Qur´an — must be
organized in the form of a party. This organization must be
highly disciplined, since the task ahead is to replace a deeply
entrenched corrupt and satanic system, and, therefore, the
achievement of the proverbial army discipline of "listen and
obey" is to be the goal of this organization. During the initial
stages, when the number of dedicated and committed workers will
be rather low, a policy of "passive resistance" is to adopted.
What is meant by "passive resistance" is that all persecution,
whether verbal or physical, must be endured without any
retaliation. There must not be any retreat of any kind; yet
there must not be any revenge or counterstrike either, not even
in self-defense. This perseverance and passive resistance must
continue till the time when there is enough strength available,
both in terms of the number of workers and their training,
morale, discipline, and their willingness to sacrifice, that a
challenge can be thrown to the defenders of the status quo.
In
the revolutionary struggle of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his
Companions (RAA), we see that the entire twelve years that were
spent in Makkah were characterized by passive resistance. The
order of the day was to endure all kinds of ill-treatment and
oppression without striking back, to be patient, to persevere,
and to go on calling people to the light of Islam. Thus, the
following instructions by Almighty Allah (SWT) were typical of
the Makkan period:
For the sake of thy
Lord, be patient (Al-Muddassir 74:7)
We know very well that that thy bosom is at times oppressed by
what they say (Al-Hijr 15:97)
And bear with patience what they utter, and part from them with
a fair leave-taking (Al-Muzzammil 73:10)
But wait for thy Lord´s decree, and be not (impatient) like him
of the fish (Al-Qalam 68:48)
Indeed, this phase of non-violence is similar to the attitude of
the companions of Hadrat Isa (AS), who were instructed to remain
passive even in the face of persecution. Their prophet had told
them: "Do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you on
the right cheek, turn and offer him the other also. If anyone
wants to sue you and takes your shirt, let him have your cloak
as well. If someone in authority presses you into service for
one mile, go with him two" (Matthew 5:39-41).
Some
Muslim scholars have objected to this teaching as being
"unnatural", but what needs to be realized is that this was not
a permanent part of the message of Hadrat Isa (AS), but that he
had ordered his followers to remain passive and peaceful only
till the time when they had enough strength to challenge the
ungodly system. In a similar way, Prophet Muhammad (SAW)
instructed his Companions (RAA) to remain passive and peaceful
during the years in Makkah. This was an interim order and
represented a phase of the revolutionary strategy. Thus, as soon
as the situation changed, and a powerful base of the believers
was established in Madinah after the Hijrah, the policy of
passive resistance was immediately replaced by that of active
resistance and challenge. Almighty Allah (SWT) then allowed the
Muslims to launch their offensive by giving the following
instructions:
Sanction is given
unto those who fight because they have been wronged (Al-Hajj
22:39)
And fight them until fitnah is no more and Deen is for Allah
(Al-Baqarah 2:193)
And fight them until fitnah is no more, and Deen is all for
Allah (Al-Anfaal 8:39)
The purpose of this fighting (or Qitaal) for the cause of Allah
(SWT) is the elimination of fitnah, or the eradication of the
rule of falsehood, and establishment of the Kingdom of God on
earth.
The two main phases
of the Islamic revolutionary process — propagation of the
message with a calm fervor and non-violence in the manner of a
saint, followed by challenging the status quo in the form of an
active and even armed struggle — are clearly and concisely
presented by Iqbal in the following Persian couplet:
Like the dervish
drunken be;
Quaff the winecup instantly,
And, when thou art bolder grown,
Hurl thyself on Jamshid´s throne!
The second couplet of this ghazal is also very meaningful:
´This our world´, they asked of me,
´Is´t congenial to thee?´
´Nay´, I answered; and they cried,
´Break and strew it far and wide!´
It was with a strong
desire to revive the revolutionary teachings of Islam and to
pave the way for an actual Islamic Revolution that Iqbal tried
to motivate the Muslims, especially their religious elements.
And it was with this very objective in mind that Iqbal
vehemently opposed the prevalent pantheistic trend in Islamic
mysticism, which in his view was responsible for watering down
the spirit of action and dynamism among the Muslims and had led
to their pathetic state of virtual paralysis. We refer again to
Iqbal´s poem, Iblees ki Majlis-e-Shura, in which we find Satan
advising his followers on how to keep the Muslims inert:
Our safety lies in
that the mo´min remains a slave till Doomsday:
Renouncing this transitory world for others´ sake.
Keep him well absorbed in the thought and contemplation of God
in pre-morning hours:
Ye all make him grow stronger in his monastic disposition!
Although Iqbal
addressed the sufia as well as the ulama, and tried to wake them
up from their deep slumber, it was actually the educated youth
of Muslim India that were the real target of his poetry. Iqbal
reminded the Muslim youth of the lost glories and grandeur of
their Muslim ancestors, and motivated them to action through his
predictions about the revival and renaissance of Islam. Iqbal,
unlike Altaf Hussain Hali before him, presented a bright picture
of the future, and removed the darkness of despair and pessimism
that had become a hallmark of the Muslim society in the late
19th century.
Despite all this, the fact remains that Iqbal neither started
any revivalist movement himself nor laid down the foundations of
any Islamic party, even though — as disclosed recently by the
late Dr. Burhan Ahmad Faruqi — he not only deeply felt the need
for such a revivalist struggle but came very close to achieving
this goal as well.* This is precisely the reason why we compared
Allama Iqbal with Shah Waliyullah Dehlvi (RA) in the preface of
the present book. Although an eminent writer, scholar, and
teacher, Shah Waliyullah Dehlvi spent his life almost in the
style of a recluse, and never attempted to start any revivalist
movement of any kind. He, however, was a well-informed and
politically aware person, and that is why he invited Ahmad Shah
Abdali from Afghanistan to save the Muslim rule in India. On the
other hand, Shah Waliyullah Delhvi did succeed in establishing
an Islamic milieu wherein, in the very next generation, it
became possible for Sayyid Ahmad Shaheed Barelvi (RA), and his
own grandson Shah Ismael Shaheed (RA), to launch a movement of
Jihad on the pattern of the pristine and authentic Islam of the
age of Sahaba (RAA). In a very similar manner, Allama Iqbal
invited Muhammad Ali Jinnah and requested him to lead the Indian
Muslims in their national struggle. On the other hand, it goes
to the credit of Iqbal that he, by reviving the Islamic
religious and revolutionary thought, produced an intellectual
climate in which initially Abul Kalam Azad was able to form his
Hizbullah, and later Maulana Maududi established his
Jama´at-e-Islami. It must be noted that it was none other than
Iqbal himself who had invited Maulana Maududi to migrate to
Punjab, a place which had become quite congenial for the
launching of an Islamic movement as a result of the impact of
Iqbal´s poetry.
* Cf., Faruqi, Dr.
Burhan Ahmad., Allama Iqbal aur Musalmanon ka Siyasi Nasbul Ain
(Lahore: All Pakistan Islamic Eductaional Congress, 1994)
Written By: by Dr.
Israr Ahmad (Tanzeemi Islami) |
