IQBAL DAY IN WASHINGTON

THE Iqbal Society, Washington, commemorated the 28th death anniversary of Iqbal on April 21, 1966. Before the meeting started Ambassador G. Ahmad said, "I am happy to announce that, with a view to promoting understanding, the Iqbal Academy of Pakistan has decided to award l,000 dollars annually to the Western study on Iqbal in the Western hemisphere. The Iqbal Society here is currently working out the details and these will be shortly made known."

The session of the Society was opened by the Chairman of the group, Ambassador Loy W. Henderson, the former U. S. Deputy Under Secretary of State. He was followed by Dr. William C. Kirk, the American Cultural Affairs officer at Lahore during 1962-65, who read extracts from one of Iqbal's most famous poems "The Mosque of Cordoba."

The featured speaker on the occasion was Dr. Sheila McDonough, Assistant Professor of Religion at the Sir George Williams University, Montreal. Doctor McDonough was a lecturer from 1957 to 1960 in English and Comparative Religion at Kinnaird College, Lahore, and is the author of a book entitled Pakistan and the West, which was published in 1960 in Lahore. She obtained her Ph. D. from the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies, and the subject of her thesis was "G. Perwez : A study in Islamic Modernism."

In previous years, similar functions were held in Washington where eminent scholars and thinkers expressed their appreciation of Iqbal's philosophy. In view of their importance they are also being reproduced.

IQBAL does not belong in the category of those who produce art for art's sake, or who write for the pleasure of self-discovery and self-expression. He was rather one for whom the creative process was a matter of anguish, because he wanted to communicate with other men, and because words and forms were never adequate for his purposes. He has told us of his struggles to find words. As he put it:

One is reminded that T.S. Eliot also complained of the heaviness, the burden laid on a poet who can never give adequate tongue to all he has to say. In Eliot's phrase :

We have no time here to draw out all the parallels one might find between Iqbal and Eliot. Both are certainly major religious poets of this century, and both are serious men frustrated by the difficulties of language. Each felt oppressed by the weight of a vision that demands speech and form. To quote Iqbal again

The seriousness of Iqbal is a measure of the sincerity of his faith. He sees the effort to live, and in his case the struggle to write, as exemplified in the Quranic image in which Abraham is thrown into the flames as a test of his faith. As Iqbal sees it, life is always a consuming fire testing the faith of those who try to respond to the challenges of existence with courage and creative action. When Iqbal says to us — hear me — he certainly means that his writing is intended to challenge us and to strike sparks in our minds.

I have suggested that we should try to approach Iqbal by focusing our attention on the poem in which he tries to tell us of the effect on him of his visit to The Mosque of Cordova. I have used the expression "Vision or perish" for two reasons. Firstly, the expression conveys briefly the effect on Iqbal by the sight of the great mosque. The experience he had on that occasion helped crystallise in his consciousness the whole of his feeling about the problem of time—what Eliade calls the terror of history-and it also crystallized his view of the authentic Muslim answer to his terror. "Vision or perish" should give us a key to understanding what the Mosque said to Iqbal, and, therefore, it should also help us to grasp what Iqbal is passionately trying to say to us.

Secondly, the expression in its English form comes, of course, from the Book of Proverbs (29.10), namely, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." For Westerners trying to grasp something of the purpose of Iqbal, it is important to realise that his work has something like the flavour of the prophet Amos, or of John the Baptist. We Westerners sometimes imagine that a poet of the East must somehow be soft and sentimental. Iqbal is anything but vague and misty-minded. If we are to meet him on his terms, we have to know that he is often fierce, and that his is a fierceness we should be familiar with, as it has its roots in the single-minded intensity of Semitic prophecy.

If I ask myself as a Western Christian at what point Iqbal speaks most directly to me, I would answer that I hear him most clearly precisely when he lashes out at me, as, for instance, in his poem occasioned by the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. He wrote then:

Iqbal died in 1938, but he seems to have had a pretty clear idea of the woes that were coming to birth in his time. His fierceness, as in the kind of comment quoted here, seems usually to have been well founded.

Iqbal's main effort was not directed towards bringing Christians to a more honest and constructive self criticism, but rather towards stimulating Muslims so that they might cast off the bad habits of self-satisfaction and dreamy other-worldliness. It is because I can feel the sharpness of Iqbal's knife when he takes a cut at Christians that I can imagine how stringing his blows must be when they are felt by Muslims whom he made the centre of his efforts. When Iqbal says "hear me" he usually means that the words will hurt, but he also means that his purpose is to provoke in order to stimulate more honestly, and more creative life.

Turning now to the poem "The Mosque of Cordova," we find a lucidity that can speak with immediacy to anyone. Nevertheless, though we can at once feel that we know what Iqbal is saying, we should recognize that his poetic language has roots in a long and glorious tradition of Urdu and Persian poetry. One can never claim to have unfolded all the possible connotations and suggestions that could be awakened by Iqbal's imagery, especially in the minds of those as familiar as he was with the Muslim literary past.

The image he uses for time — two coloured thread of silk — is an instance of one such complex image. Dr. Anne — Marie Schimmel has commented that the view of time implied here, namely — the Creator dyed time with two different colours — has parallels in ancient Iranian ideas about the ambiguity of time which seems to reward and punish man in an arbitrary fashion without reference to human efforts.[1] Similar images are found in Sufi poetry, and in pre-Islamic Arab poetry, where much reflection is done about the strangeness of life in which hunger or food, water or thirst, life or death come to man with a casualness whose source seems impenetrable.

We should note that Iqbal's use of a familiar image rarely indicates a simple repetition of an old theme. Much of his genius lies in the ease with which he has used the traditional forms as vehicles for the expression of new insights. In the case of this reference to two-coluored thread, Iqbal uses the old idea of the unintelligibility of the suffering and joy meted out to man by the blind and haphazard happenings in time, but he goes further and says that it is this very ambiguity of time which is precious. The ambiguity is, in his words, the touchstone by which man's works are measured. Most human efforts become ultimately futile in the face of the remorseless rolling on of time. But at a few points, man has been able to escape the destructive power of time by doing work whose perfection shines and speaks across time. As Iqbal sees it, the Mosque of Cordova is one such instance of successful response to the test. In his words, the Mosque manifests work whose perfection is still bright with the splendor of love.

Here, again, we must pause to consider the layers of meaning involved, in this case, in the word translated as "love". The Urdu word is Ishq ; this word is continually used in Iqbal's writings, and is certainly one of the keys to his world-view. Yet, just because he means so much by it, we can never feel that we have easily grasped all that he means to say when he uses it. In this same poem, he indicates something of what the word means to him:

From all this, it seems clear that Ishq is strong, courageous power, the speech of God, the warmth of life, that gives effective vitality to everything. Ishq for Iqbal is the power of genuine individuality. To put it in another way, no one can do good work as long as he is crippled by self-conscious fear for his own well-being. The creative man is the self-forgetting man who is open to the reality outside of himself and responding vigorously to its challenges. In human terms, Ishq is the opposite of crippling fear, and nervous self-consciousness.

Probably each of us, at one time or another, has had an experience in encountering a great work of art comparable to the experience of luminous wonder that Iqbal tells us he had before the Mosque of Cordova. For Iqbal, the experience before the great Mosque had a kind of revelatory quality. He saw revealed there the vision of the ideal Muslim — "here stands his inmost self manifest in your stones."

This vision helped to crystallize his conviction that whenever the members of the Muslim community had reached a high level of disciplined faith in, and openness to, the power and beauty of God, then they had been capable of magnificent creativeness in all areas. And for Iqbal the vision also conveyed the certainty that it is always possible for community to reach the same peak of perfectly disciplined creativeness once more. When Iqbal cuts and slashes at Muslim follies, it is always because he wants the community to come alive as vividly again.

On the other hand, Iqbal's love for the Mosque of Cordova did not lead him to any form of sterile sentimentalism about the Muslim past. He had no wish to return to the Middle Ages. Since time is so significant in his thought, he takes it as normal that an age should die, and that all kinds of radical new challenges should shake the Muslim community out of its complacency. He knows that the Christian world has been disturbed and jolted by many reforms and revolutions in the past four hundred years, and he sees the coming of similar shocks to the Muslim world as basically healthy. In his words:

The phrase "God's secret will" is a key to the manner in which Iqbal looked at the historical process. The phrase has its roots in one aspect of the Quranic portrayal of God, namely, that He is the Subtle (iii. 45). "And God is the best of schemers."

As Iqbal sees it, the problem in looking at the historical process is to discern the finger of work. Once the finger is discerned, then believers should become co-workers, and co-artists co-operating with God in the process of working towards more tangible manifestations of beauty and righteousness.

I think that this idea is comparable to what the Christian theologian Paul Tillich has called "belief-ful realism". Tillich says that our troubles usually come from falling victims to the temptations of either romantic utopianism or sterile realism. Tillich maintains that the only genuinely constructive attitude is the one which grasps realistically all aspects of a given situation, which sees through the situation to the ground of hope, and which then goes on to unleash creative energy that can transform the present. Such creativeness would be a way to overcome the terror of history.

Iqbal has sometimes been accused of advocating a kind of undisciplined dynamism. It is true that when c ne reads Iqbal, especially in Urdu, one feels a kind of vehement urge to rush out and shake the pillars of the universe with life-affirming vigour. But to accuse Iqbal of carelessly stirring up the hearts arid minds of his hearers is to fail to do justice to the seriousness of his purposes. In Iqbal's terms, the shaking is for the purpose of disciplining the faithful so that they can become sharp, knife-like blades cutting into the fogginess of life with clear and telling words and deeds. To quote him one last time:

IT is indeed an honor and a pleasure to be called upon to preside on this exalted gathering and to speak before such a distinguished audience on this sacred occasion of the death anniversary of Allamah Iqbal of Pakistan, who was a poet and a philosopher, a fine prose writer, a great linguist, a remarkable jurist, a well-known lawyer, a leading politician, an esteemed educationist, a respected teacher, and a great art critic. And in all these roles he truly excelled himself.

I am sure the Honorable Walter H. Judd, Congressman, Minnesota, and the Honorable William 0. Douglas, Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, in their eloquent speeches will tell the esteemed audience at length about the lofty thoughts and ideas of this great poet-philosopher. In fact, I was first accorded the honour of presiding on this august meeting, but later, in the invitation I received from His Excellency the Ambassador of Pakistan, I noticed a referencc was made to a speech by me. Accordingly, in compliance with this second honour, I am going to make a reference, albeit briefly, to the highlights of the noble ideas of this great genius by reciting to you some of his verses in Persian, which the other honourable speakers may not be in a position to do.

To the people of Pakistan, Iqbal is more than a poet and philosopher. He is a symbol of liberty and freedom. It was he who first dreamed of a separate state for the Muslims of the sub-continent, gave them a message of hope and inspiration and infused in them the spirit of freedom from foreign domination.

This great genius wrote poetry in both Persian and Urdu, each poem perfect in itself. Notable among his Persian writings are the following :

1. Asrar-e-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self): the first and philosophically the most comprehensive work of the poet, in which Iqbal expounds his doctrine of the human ego. This book was translated into English by Professor R. A. Nicholson of Cambridge in 1920.

2. Rumuz-e-Bekhudi (Mysteries of Selflessness): this book deals with the individual in relation to society. The author visualises and describes his Ideal Islamic Society, its bases, its aims, ideals and the ways and

3. Payam-e-Mashriq (Message of the East): this book was written as a response to Goethe's Westoestlicher Divan.

4. Gulshan-e-Raz-e-Jadid (The New Rose-Garden of Secrets): written on the pattern of Gulshan-e-Raz of Mahmud Shabistari, who wrote this treatise, well-known in mystic literature, in answer to nine questions put forth by a certain Sufi. Iqbal undertook to answer the same questions in the light of modern thought.

5. Javeed Namah (Letter of Eternity), written after the pattern of Dante's Divine Comedy. In his imaginary journey, the poet is guided by Maulana Jalal-ud-din Rumi.

Iqbal was a believer in the brotherhood and equality of man and, therefore, rejected the class tyrannies of society. And being religious, he criticized the growing intellectualism of modern thought. He was learned in Arabic, Persian and Indian thought and philosophy, and ardently urged the rejuvenation of the East. Between the East and the West, he acted as a bridge and sought to unite the two.

Iqbal has done so much to awaken the East and re-inspire confidence in the hearts of its peoples regarding their contribution to the ultimate good of humanity. He recounts some of the contributions made to the world by the East as follows (Pas the Bayad, 60):

Iqbal wants the people of the East to have an Association of their own to settle the political, economic and cultural questions. He says (Ibid., 59, 61):

And he suggests Teheran as the centre of such an Association by saying ( Z. K., 149 ):

تہران ہو گر عالم مشرق کا جنیوا شاید کرۂ ارض کی تقدیر بدل جائے

Throughout his poetry and prose Iqbal places the greatest emphasis on action or movement. A few glimpses from his poetry will suffice to give the reader an idea of Iqbal's attack on passivity and the age-old concept of adjusting oneself to his surrounding:

There would have been little scope for man's mental and physical powers if he had only to adjust himself to his surroundings. His creative urge could not be satisfied by merely sheltering himself from wind and rain, heat or cold. It is the surroundings that have to be moulded and adjusted to man's requirements and his ever-increasing desires. The real romance of life lies in recreation, reshaping the visible and invisible forces of nature; subservience to them is a mere existence, not life. Thus he says ( B. J., 26):

Raising his voice over whispers of disappointment and dismay circulating among the people of the East, he told them of man's destiny. He particularly recalled their own achievements and assured them of their future progress and prosperity. Iqbal is no mere idealist. He studies the progress of man from the time of his birth onwards and suggests concrete proposals. He lays down irrefutable axioms, quotes instances from history, and fills his reader with confidence and courage necessary for the achievements of his destiny. In a simple, straightforward way he addresses man ( J. N., 15-16):

In concluding, I venture to say how pleased the soul of Iqbal — which undoubtedly prevails over this gathering — must be to see his high ideas put into effect in the great and independent, peace-loving country, Pakistan.

While preserving its traditions, this country is advancing in a dynamic course of action towards progress and prosperity under the wise guidance of its great leaders.

Ideem it a very great honor indeed to have been invited to speak tonight on the occasion of the Death Anniversary of one of the truly great men of this century, Muhammad Iqbal. Iqbal received his primary education in a Scottish Mission School, which indicates to those of us who are Presbyterian Christians, that the church in which I hold my credentials as a clergyman, must have had some influence upon his early life, for it is well-known in the Christian world that the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian and if ever you come upon a Scot who is not a Presbyterian, you may be certain that some one has been tampering with his religion. So, my spiritual kinsmen who put a robust brand of religion into him, must at the beginning of this man's life, tinctured his outlook and attitude on life. Some men live to see the attainments of their cherished goals during their lifetime. Iqbal, whose memory we honor here tonight, was not such a fortunate person. All his life he struggled to unify the Muslims of the great South Asian sub-continent into a viable political entity. He dreamed the dream of Pakistan but was not permitted to see his dream come to fulfilment. In his poetry and in his prose, he created, however, a philosophy upon which this dream could be erected. In this philosophy he synthesized the spiritual qualities of the East and the intellectual disciplines of the West, an ideal way of life which envisioned a society deeply interested in the service of humanity, in the promotion of peace, and in providing equal opportunities for all, irrespective of colour, caste or creed. In 1938 before such a nation could becreated, Muhammad Iqbal passed from this world, but his spirit continued to inspire his fellow Muslims of the sub-continent until scarcely a decade after he had gone, under the leadership of his close friend, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the nation of Pakistan was born, dedicated to the attainment of the great humanitarian mission which Iqbal had espoused and foreseen.

Much has been written of Iqbal but perhaps the more revealing description of the man was penned by Jinnah himself. Hear him as he speaks, "Iqbal was not merely a preacher and a philosopher, he stood for courage and action, perseverance and self-reliance and above all for faith in God and devotion to Islam. In his person were combined the idealism of the poet and the realism of the man who takes a practical view of things." So spoke Jinnah.

Those of you here tonight who may not be familiar with this great man's biography would probably appreciate a succinct sketch. Muhammad Iqbal was born on February 22, 1873, into a middle class family of Kashmir ancestry at Sialkot in Punjab. He was sent first to the village school, as is usual for Muslim children and later, as I indicated, to the Scot's Mission School where his genius was recognized and carefully nurtured. He then attended the Government College at Lahore and received further encouragement from Sir Thomas Arnold, the well-known orientalist and writer, who at that time held a professorship in the College. In 1905 he left his own country for a period of three years of study and travel abroad. He studied first at Cambridge, then in Heidelburg and Munich, where he continued his research work. From Munich he received his Doctorate in Philosophy. In 1908 he was called to the Bar and returned home that year to teach philosophy and English literature, in his old college, and to practise law. To his reputation as a philosopher, poet and jurist, Iqbal now added his gifts as a statesman, and in this capacity he earned international recognition. He first served on the Punjab Legislative Council for three years. In 1931 and 1932 he attended the Round Table Conferences which met in London to frame a constitution for the subcontinent and in the latter year was elected President of the All-India Muslim League. Iqbal has been called the spiritual god-father of Pakistan. Not only was he the first amongst statesmen of the Muslim renaissance in the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent to conceive the physical idea of Pakistan as a new and sovereign state, and to present this idea to the world as a practical proposition, but years before his poet's spirit had already conditioned the spiritual environment wherein this young state was to be born to grow and to live.

Iqbal's poetry is written in Urdu and Persian. His prose includes works in English and Urdu. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is claimed as one of the most significant works from his pen. It is a series of six lectures delivered in the English language and published in 1934 by the Oxford University Press. You will notice as you read his poetry he is alway dealing with the value and meaning of the ego. The Secrets of the Self, the first and philosophically most comprehensive work of the poet, was translated into English by Professor R. A. Nicholson of Cambridge in 1920. Other translations of a selection of Iqbal's lyrics and odes were brought out by Professor A. J. Arberry under the titles of Tulips Of Sinai and Persian Psalms respectively. Selections from poems written in Urdu were translated by Professor Kiernan and published under the title Poems of Iqbal. So the great man finished his course, and died in Lahore on April 21, 1938. And it is there in the shadow of the Mosque in which he had worshipped that his remains now lie.

A Pakistani scholar has described Iqbal's philosophy in the following words: In an age that holds human life cheaper than the life of the humblest worm, Iqbal sang of the sanctity of human life and the greatness of the human self. To him human personality, as an image of God, should be so developed as to prove itself worthy of Him whose image it is. From Iqbal's conception of human personality we get an idea of human relationship and the standard of values in human life. That which fortifies personality is good, that which weakens it, is bad." And I might interpose that in this, we Christians are in full agreement. Art, religion and ethics must be judged from the standpoint of personality. Says Iqbal: "Goodness is not a matter of compulsion, it is the self's free surrender to the moral ideal and arises out of a willing co-operation of free egos. A being whose moments are wholly determined like a machine cannot produce goodness. Freedom is thus a condition of goodness. The final act is not an intellectual act but a vital act which deepens the whole being of the ego and sharpens his will with the creative assurance that the world is not something to be merely seen or known through concepts but something to be made and remade by continuous action. It is a moment of supreme bliss and also a moment of the greatest trial for human personality" (Reconstruction, 198). It will be pertinent to assess the contribution that Iqbal has made to world thought. But it is a question largely of comparative values So far as Iqbal himself was concerned the was content with claiming that he has sought in his poetry to interpret Islam in the content of modern thought. But this is a vastly modest underestimation of a genius who has been universally acknowledged as ranking among the greatest poets 'and philosophers in all history. Iqbal represents the enlightened synthesis of Eastern and Western learning, the best of traditional Muslim literary culture and its modern mode of expression, the poet's sensitivity, coupled with the scientist's attitude for rational ratiocination. To the cynics and scoffers who have lost all faith in humanity, Iqbal taught the grandeur of the human self, the sanctity of the human personality, the need for universal brotherhood for the redemption of mankind from the catastrophe of aggressive nationalism. Here, as Muslims and Christians, we pay tribute to the memory of a great philosopher, a jurist, a statesm an and a poet. Let us contemplate the challenge to the East and the West, to the Muslims and the Christians of the world which Iqbal formulated in one of his best known poems : "In the West intellect is the source of life, in the East love is the basis of life. Through love intellect grows adquainted with reality and intellect gives stability to the world of love. Arise, and lay the foundations of a new world by wedding intellect with love."

WE are living today in a world of unprecedented ferment and change. A large part of mankind has just begun to breath the intoxicating air of human freedom. At the same moment another large section of human beings is being forced to don prison garb, regimented and driven like beasts of burden. Some segments of the world's population are being forced by events to decide whether they can best attain their hoped-for political and economic development by democratic or by authoritarian means.

In such times as these, it is a good thing for us to pause to contrast the eternal truths preached by the great spiritual leaders of mankind with the crass ideologies of those who would crush the human spirit and make man an instrument for the creation of a soul-less state.

After all, what is Man? Some years ago I heard an eminent Lebanese philosopher say that when the Conference on Human Rights convened in Paris after World War II, the delegates spent several months trying, in vain, to agree on an answer to that ultimate question. How could they declare what the rights are to which a human being is entitled until they decided what a human being is?

One of the great spirits of modern times to whom we can go for renewal of our faith in God and in man, was the Muslim poet whose memory we revere tonight. Mohammed Iqbal, the man who dreamed a dream for the Muslims of the South Asian sub-continent and whose dream became reality in the creation of the nation of Pakistan, held no brief for those who would attain even the goals of political and economic independence by destroying the identity of the human being. Rather did he sing of the sanctity of human life, of the grandeur of the human self, and of the inviolability of the human personality.

Like all those who profess the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths, Mohammed Iqbal conceived of man as being created in the image of God. In the core of his philosophy he held that the human personality, being in the image of God, should be developed in a way to prove itself worthy of being in that image. Those things which fortified the human personality, said Iqbal, were good ; those which weakened it were bad.

We of American heritage are reminded of the words of those who founded our nation. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," they said, "that all men are created. . ." They based the whole venture on the conviction that there is a Creator, but man is His child and therefore partakes of His nature. Man has from his Creator the capacity to make moral judgements and decisions. He can become more and more like God, if he will. To do so is the deepest joy and chief fulfilment of life. The more he becomes one with God, the more he will sense his identity with all humanity.

The faith regarding the nature of man and of God and of the universe that filled Iqbal in the sub-continent and inspired the founders of my country, is being coldly and cruelly challenged to-day. The conflict tearing the world apart is not an old fashioned struggle for control of land ; it is for control of man — the mind of man, the soul of man, the whole of man.

We need to sit at the feet of men like Iqbal whose profound insights and inspiring words help us see afresh not the minor things that separate — whether race, nationality, language, or culture — but the deep things that unite — our common faith in God and our common humanity.

Iqbal, to whom we pay homage tonight, was an extraordinary man in the breadth of his interests and the scope of his accomplishments. He was at once a great poet, a great philosopher, a great lawyer, and a great political thinker. But most of all, he was a great human being, a man who saw as the most significant of human rights the opportunity to serve humanity.

Born in Sialkot, West Pakistan, in 1873, Iqbal received his intermediate education in a Scottish mission school. Here he came under the influence of the prominent Muslim scholar, Mir Hasan — an in‑ spiring personality who perceived the genius of the poet and moulded it. Finishing his distinguished career at school he joined the Government College, Lahore, where he came in contact with another magnetic personality, Professor Sir Thomas Arnold, an embodiment of all that was "the noblest and the best" in Western Civilization.

Iqbal's love and appreciation of Eastern values and of Western discipline, his desire to break down the so-called barriers between East and West, his desire to see his country play its full part in the estab-ment of world peace, may be related largely to these early influences of his two great teachers.

Equipped with the idea of one humanity and one God as the basis of Muslim culture, which he learned at the feet of Mir Hasan, and the scientific approach of the West to the problems of life, which he gained from Professor Arnold, Iqbal went to Cambridge in 1905. For his further researches he went to Munich where he submitted his thesis, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia, and obtained his Doctorate in Philosophy. That same year he was admitted to the Bar, and the mind that had shown its grasp of philosophical ideas and its sensitivity to the things that are not seen, now revealed its ability to master practical legal issues.

Iqbal returned to India and started his practice at Lahore. He entered into political life in 1927 when he was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council, and remained a member for three years. He was elected president of the annual session of the Muslim League held at Allahabad in the year 1930. In his presidential address, he demanded "the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India."

Un fortunately, Iqbal did not live long enough to see the results of his efforts. From 1934 onwards his health deteriorated ; he could not accept the invitation to Oxford as Rhodes Lecturer in 1935. On the morning of April 21, 1938, his body breathed its last. But his words, like spirit, will be immortal.

Iqbal's philosophy of life accepted the principles of freedom,equality and love as the basis of world brotherhood. His concept for the new country of Pakistan, whose formation he did so much to inspire, was the establishment of a society deeply interested in the service of humanity, in the promotion of peace and in providing equal opportunities for all, irrespective of colour, caste, or creed. There was no conflict in him, as there need be none in you or me, between love of country and love of mankind. To work for the proper interests of one was to promote the well-being of the other.

Iqbal devoted the greater part of his life to giving people a faith in such an ideology of love and peace. His poems continue to speak that message to all men of all continents and cultures today.

Iqbal's faith in humanity was not misplaced. Along with the great cleavages that exist in the world today, and occupy most of our attention, there is, nevertheless, a vast movement among the free peoples of the world to understand each other, to respect each other, and to inspire in each other mutual confidence and trust. It goes beyond mere tolerance ; there is increasing appreciation of the values in other cultures than one's own. Understanding, appreciation, confidence and trust are the spiritual foundations for any world order which is to withstand the ideological onslaughts of those who worship the material state.

We Americans who are taking part tonight in this tribute to the great poet-philosopher of Pakistan are grateful that our own national leadership is alive to the need for the peoples of the world to know each other better. The President of the United States has advocated that people of all nations seek each other out and learn more of each other not by just one method, but by thousands of methods. This people-to-people contact which is certainly in the spirit of Iqbal's concept of the universality of mankind, can become a powerful force in determining the course of world events. Even tyrannies eventually have to pay some attention to changing attitudes and wishes among their peoples.

This gathering tonight is typical of the sort of relationship between persons of all sorts of backgrounds, which creates genuine feeling of brotherhood amongst people of different races and cultures. Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, South Asians ; Christians, Jews, and Muslims, we are gathered here to pay homage to a great Muslim spirit in a Muslim House of God. The memorial service in which we are taking part is sponsored by an American organization, the Council on Islamic Affairs, which is composed of Christians, Jews and Muslims. We are gathered together because our desire to pay tribute to a greatman is a bond which transcends differences of cultures, creeds and nationalities.

More and more people-to-people partnerships are being created as the human race gropes its way towards the spiritual perfection which Iqbal called "being worthy of having been created in the image of God."

It was a desire to help relieve the suffering of people in need in China that sent me there long ago to work for ten years as a physician. ButI learned more than I taught, and I received more than I gave. That is what generally happens when men join hands with other men to meet human needs. I have counted it a great privilege to participate in voluntary organizations such as World Neighbours, to recruit and support teams of trained and dedicated men and women to work in village centers in various Asian and African countries, there to enable people to lift the levels of their health, their agriculture, their education, their living.

Iqbal knew some men are evil and cruel ; but most men are kindly and good. With the universally understood symbolism and the delicate appeal of beautiful poetry, he called on all good men to stand together in common service of humanity — in realism, opposing the evil of the day that men might have opportunity to pursue freely their idealisms for tomorrow.

We greatly honor here tonight the memory of the gifted man and noble spirit. He spoke to his own people and to all men. May we refresh our spirits by joining in his prayer:

Mohammed Iqbal — lawyer, jurist, and poet — was born in 1873 and died in 1938. He rests in a simple tomb outside the main entrance to the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore. This man who was the spiritual godfather of Pakistan filled his poetry with songs of many things — from simple daily events to metaphysics and philosophy. He was passionately religious and devout.

The Westerner will find in Iqbal's philosophy of religion a challenging outlook on life and the universe, and a universal concept of God. More than this, he will find concrete proposal for building the future world along new lines.

The great contribution of the West to the East is the scientific attitude. The great contribution of the East is in Charity or Love — as epitomized by Mohammad and Christ, Buddha and Confucius. Iqbal recognized what Science introduced to ancient Asia might do. He saw its potential for good, its potential for evil:

And when we view the nuclear discoveries of this age we can say with him, "and yet no sunrise on life's thick night unfurled."

Iqbal recognized that if science were to treat kindly with Asia — not make it a sweatship of capitalism on the one hand nor the victim of communist regimentation on the other — it must be controlled in the public good :

The most remarkable phenomenon of modern history to Iqbal was the new spiritual understanding between the East and the West. He put this thought into verse:

The great need these days is for bridges of understanding between East and West. The need is for bridges of understanding at the highest intellectual levels, so that the great divergent civilizations may come to know and understand each other and, knowing, come to tolerate, respect, and even admire each other. Iqbal was a voice from the East that found a common denominator with the West and helpedbuild a real community that absorbs all differences in race, in creed, in language. So it is that in deep humility we pay tribute to the name of Iqbal and send up our prayers in gratitude that this man was permitted to pass among us. And so I say that although he was the son of Pakistan, we of America also claim him.

[1] A. Schimmel, Gabriel's Wing, 295.

[2] A ghazal from Bang-i-Dara, 320-321.

[3] H. E. Ali Gholi Ardalan, former Ambassador of Iran to the U.S A. means of attaining them. It was translated into English with introduction and notes by Professor A. J. Arberry.

[4] Dr. Edward L. R. Elson was a distinguished Minister of the National Presbyterian Church, Washington.

[5] Selection from the "Saqi Namah," Bal-i-Jibril, pp. 173-174

[6] Hon'ble Walter H. Judd was a Republican Member of the House of Representatives.

[7] Justice William 0. Douglas, Justice of the United States Supreme Court.