ALLAMA IQBAL IN 50 VOLUMES OF THE 'ISLAMIC CULTURE^'

Prof. Dr. Muhammad Riaz

The Quarterly Islamic Culture has been published regularly from Hyderabad Deccan starting from January, 1927. The event speaks of its importance that its back volumes have been nicely reprinted abroad. It was first edited by the famous translator of the Holy Quran in English and author of several valuable articles, late convert Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall (d. 1936) and its second editor has been another famous staunch convert Muhammad Asad. The last 13th article in the first issue of January, 1927 of this journal entitled "The Reform in the Muslim Society" which is the English translation of Prince Saeed Haleem Pasha's (d. 6th Dec., 1921) French article[1] had impressed Al-lama Iqbal considerably and he has referred to his book "Islam lashmiq" (To Islamised) in the sixth lecture on Ijtehad contained in the anthology 'The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Is-lam' in early 1929. He again refers to the impact of this article on him in the spheres of Mercury in Javid Nama which was first published in 1932. Iqbal himself wrote two important articles in this journal. One appeared in issue No. 4 of the year 1928 which is entitled "Khushhal Khan Khattack": the Afghan warrior poet' and another in volume No. 2 of 1929 which is the text of his Presidential address in the Oriental Conference Lahore. During Iqbal's life time, only one article by Professor Dr. Kh. Ghulam Sayyidain appeared in January 1938 issue of this journal. In the synopsis (i.e. introduction) the editor referred to the exalted position of Iqbal as the poet and thinker.[2] He also refers to Iqbal Day celebration carried out in all parts of the Sub-Continent on 9th January, 1938. The article covering 8 pages actually contains introduction and first chapter of his book Iqbal's Educational Philosophy; the manuscript of the book was submitted to the author by him in 1936 and Mama Iqbal wrote the following encouraging letter to this author:

Lahore

21st June, 1936.

My dear Sayyidain,

Thanks for your letter which I received a moment ago. Your summary is excellent and I have got nothing to add. My will, I hope, be published about the end of June and I will send you an advance copy. This collection has a part devoted to . You may not find anything new in it, yet it reaches you in time you may read the portion mentioned above.

I suppose you are aware of the Educational implications of Leibnitz's monadism. According to him monad (the mind of man) is a closed window. incapable of absorbing external forces. My view is that the monad is essentially assimilative in its nature. Time is a great blessing.... While it kills and destroys it also expands and brings out the hidden possibilities of things. The possibility of change is the greatest asset of man in this present surroundings.

Your sincerely,

 Muhammad Iqbal

P.S. My general health has much improved. The improvement in the voice is slow[3]...

On 21st April 1938 Mama Iqbal passed away and the journal published the following obituary;

Sir Muhammad Iqbal is dead

On the morning of the 21st April this news came as a numbing shock to the Muslim world. Everyone who is acquainted with Iqbal's genius -- be it through his unbelievably beautiful and thought-pregnant poetical works in Persian and Urdu, or through his epoch-making philosophical discourses, in English, on the intellectual and social structure of Islam -- feels the loss of this personality as the greatest blow to Muslim life in India. In mourning him we do not conceive of his death as that of a single man: we realise that something that appears in a nation perhaps once in a century, something that was infinitely precious in, and because of, its uniqueness, has been suddenly taken from our midst. The world of Islam is lie a bleeding body from which a vital limb has been cut away at a time when it was needed most. The glory of Iqbal's name and work will shine for ever; but his active presence, his loving spirit to which his nation, our Muslim nation, has been accustomed to turn for guidance as to a light in the midst of darkness; is no more; and there is darkness in our hearts.

Iqbal is dead. May his great soul rest in peace.

The news of his death reached us at the moment when the present issue of Islamic Culture was leaving the press. A full appreciation of his personality and his literary record will appear in the July number. A most important writing of this journal is the editor Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall's valuable notes about Allama Iqbal's famous lectures. By that time only six lectures had published and editor's review was published in volume No. 4 of the year 1931. Iqbal's lectures have been widely ac-claimed on the International level but the review of the author of the Islamic Culture still deserves a deeper attention of scholars of Iqbal's Studies:

"The Quran is a book which emphasises 'deed' rather than 'idea'. There are, however, men to whom it is not possible organically to assimilate an alien universe by reliving as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests. Moreover, the modern man, by developing habits of concrete thought -- habits which Islam itself fostered at least in the earlier stages of its cultural career -- has rendered himself less capable of that experience which he further suspects because of its liability to illusion."

Thus Sir Muhammad Iqbal begins his preface to the Six Lectures now before us; and the lectures themsevles are an at-tempt to explain the 'idea' implicit in the 'deed' emphasised by the Quran and to explain the nature of that 'special type of religious experience' in terms acceptable to 'the modern man!' One might plead that the language of the Quran is infinitely clearer, and that the type of mind which can require such explanation might well be regarded as a bewildered and to some extent perverted type of mind, of which the great majority of modern men are happily innocent. But the fact remains that there are minds which can accept no truth seriously which is not couched in the difficult jargon of modern scientific philosophy and that such minds, being those of the technicians, are, in a technical age, regarded as the elite. Sir Muhammad Iqbal has set out to preach Islam to them in their own language, and his perfect mastery of the jargon is in itself sufficient to ensure for him a respectful hearing. We cannot help wondering what the effect of these lectures was upon those who heard them; they are so obviously de-signed to be read, and read most thoughtfully; so full are they of phrases tightly packed with thought, and paragraphs which only yield their meaning to a second reading. They must have dazed and bewildered the audiences which listened to them in Madras, Hyerabad and Aligarh; and that bewilderment has led, no doubt, to a notion, which we have heard expressed, that Sir Muhammad Iqbal has obscured the clear light of Islam. The notion is born of a misunderstanding; it is not the truth. Sir Muhammad Iqbal has, on the contrary, in these lectures, done, perhaps, the greatest service that it is possible for any Muslim to render to Islam today. He has demonstrated to the Pandits of modern thought, in their own language and with a display of learning equal to their own, that Islam is really their religion though they know it not.

He has done more than that, for he has brought out certain truths of Islamic teaching which have been misunderstood or neglected by the Muslims themselves. We need give only one in-stance: the real meaning of 'the Last of the Prophets', Muhammad (God bless and keep him') is the last of the Prophets because his message set men on the path of progress by inaugurating the Inductive Method of reasoning, by adjuring men to study nature and collate facts and phenomena; hence there is no further need of that Prophetic guidance which was necessary in the childhood of the human race. This, of course, does not mean that God no longer gives men further guidance, but that man is henceforth in a position to seek that guidance for himself, and it is a part of the Divine Plan that he must do so.

The comparative rationality of stories retold for man's instruction in the Qur'an as compared with the same stories told as history in the Bible and Other Sacred Books is so remarkable and has been so seldom noticed that we are particularly grateful to Sir Muhammad Iqbal for calling serious attention to it. For example:

"Turning to the legend of the Fall we find it in a variety of forms in the literatures of the ancient world. It is indeed, impossible to demarcate the states of its growth, and to set out clearly the various human motives which must have worked in its slow transformation. But confining ourselves to the Semitic form of the myth, it is highly probable that it arose out of the primitive man's desire to explain to himself the infinite misery of his plight in an uncongenial environment, which abounded in disease and death and obstructed him on all sides in his endeavour to maintain himself. Having no control over the forces of Nature, a pessimistic view of life was perfectly natural to him. Thus, in an old Babylonian inscription, we find the serpent, (phallic symbol) the tree and the woman offering an apple (symbol of virginity) to the man. The meaning of the myth is clear -- the fall of man from a supposed state of bliss was due to the original sexual act of the human pair. The way in which the Quran handles this legend becomes clear when we compare it with the narration of the Book of Genesis. The remarkable points of difference between the Quranic and the Biblical narrations suggest unmistakably the purpose of the Quranic narration. .

1.      The Quran omits the serpent and the rib-story altogether. The former omission is obviously meant to free the story from its phallic setting and its original suggestion of a pessimistic view of life. The latter omission is meant to suggest that the purpose of the Quranic narration is not historical, as in the case of the Old Testament, which gives us an account of the origin of the first human pair by way of a prelude to the history of Israel. Indeed, in the verses which deal with the origin of man as a living being the Quran uses the words' Bashir, or Insan', not 'Adam', which it reserves for man in his capacity of God's vicegerent on earth. The purpose of the Quran is further secured by the omission of proper names mentioned in the Biblical narration -- Adam and Eve. The word Adam is retained and used more as a concept than as the name of a concrete human individual. This use of the word is not without authority in the Quran itself. The following verse is clear on the point.

"We created you; then fashioned you; then said We to the angels, 'Prostrate yourselves unto Adam'." (7:10)

2.      The Quran splits up the legend into two distinct episodes -- the one relating to what it describes simply as 'the tree' and the other relating to the 'tree of eternity' and the 'kingdom that faileth not'. The first episode is mentioned in the 7th and the second in the 20th Sura of the Quran. According to the Quran Adam and his wife, led astray by Satan whose function is to create doubts in the minds of men, tasted the fruit of both the trees, whereas according to the Old Testament man was driven out of the garden of Eden immediately after his first act of disobedience, and God placed, at the eastern side of the garden, angles and a flaming sword, turning on all sides, to keep the way to the tree of life.

3.      The Old Testament curses the earth for Adam's act of disobedience; the Quran declares the earth to be the 'dwelling place; of man and a 'source of profit to him for the possession of which he ought to be grateful to God. 'And we have established you on the earth and given you therein the supports of life. How little do ye give thanks!' (7:9). Nor is there any reason to sup-pose that the word 'Jannat' (garden)as used here means the supersensual paradise from which man is supposed to have fallen on this earth. According to the Quran man is not a stranger on this earth. "And we have caused you to grow from the earth", says the Quran. The 'Jannat' mentioned in the legend, cannot mean the eternal abode of the righteous. In the sense of the eternal abode of the righteous, 'Jannat' is described by the Quran to be the place. "wherein the righteous will pass to one another the cup which shall engender no light discourse, no motive to sin". It is further described to be the place "wherein 'no weariness shall reach the righteous, nor forth from it shall they be cast." In the 'Jannat' mentioned in the legend, however, the very first event that took place was man's sin of disobedience followed by his expulsion. In fact, the Quran itself expalins the meaning of the word as used in its own narration. In the second episode of the legend the garden is described as a place "where there is neither hunger, nor thirst, neither heat nor nakedness". I am, therefore, inclined to think that 'Jannat' in the Quranic narration is the conception of a primitive state in which man is practically unrelated to his environment and consequently does not fell the sting of human wants the birth of which alone marks the beginning of human culture.

"Thus we see that the Quranic legend of the Fall has nothing to do with the first appearance of man on this planet. Its purpose is rather to indicate man's rise from a primitive state of instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of a free self, capable of doubt and disobedience. The falI does not mean any moral depravity; it is man's transition from simple consciousness to the first flash of self-consciousness, a kind of waking from the dream of nature with a throb of personal causality in one's own being. Nor does the Quran regard the earth has a torture-hall where an elementally wicked humanity is imprisoned for an original act of sin. Man's first act of disobedience was also his first act of free choice; and that is why, according to the Quranic narration, Adam's first transgression was forgiven. Now goodness is not a matter of compulsion; it is the slef's free surrender to the moral ideal and arises out of a willing co-operation of free egos. A being whose movements are wholly determined like a machine cannot produce goodness. Freedom is thus a condition of goodness. But to permit the emergence of a finite ego who has the power to choose, after considering the relative values of several courses of action open to him, is really to take a great risk; for the freedom to choose good involves also the freedom to choose what is the opposite of good. That God has taken this risk shows His immense faith in man; it is for man now to justify this faith. Perhaps such a risk alone makes it possible to test and develop the potentialities of a being who was created of the 'goodliest fabric' and then 'brought down to be the lowest of the low'. As the Quran says: 'And for trial will We test you with evil and with good'. (21:36). Good and evil, therefore, though opposites, must fall within the same whole. There is no such thing as an isolated fact; for facts are systematic wholes the elements of which must be understood by mutual reference. Logical judgment separates the elements of a fact only to their inter-dependence."

We are moved to give the reader two other long quotations in illustration of what we have said about the "modern" phraseology and at the same time high worth of these most noteworthy lectures.

"Life is a passage through a series of deaths. But there is a system in the continuity of this passage. Its various stages, in spite of the apparently abrupt changes in our evaluation of things are organically related to one another. The life history of the individual is, on the whole, a unity and not a mere series of mutually ill adapted events. The world process, or the movement of the universe in time, is certainly devoid of purpose, if by purpose we mean a foreseen end -- a far off fixed destination to which the whole creation moves. To endow the world process with purpose in this sense is to rob it of its originality and its creative character. Its ends are terminations of a career; they are ends to come and not necessarily premeditated. A time-process cannot be conceived as a line already drawn. It is a line in the drawing, an actualisation of open possibilities. It is purposive only in this sense that it is selective in character, and brings itself to some sort of a present fulfilment by actively preserving and supplementing the past. To my mind nothing is more alien to the Quranic outlook than the idea that the universe is the temporal working out of a preconceived plan. As I have already pointed out, the universe, according to the Quran, is liable to increase. It is a growing universe and not an already completed product which left the hand of its maker ages ago, and is now living stretched in space as a dead mass of matter to which time does nothing, and consequently is nothing.

"We are now, I hope in a position to see the meaning of the verse -- "And it is He Who bath ordained the night and the day to succeed one another for those who desire to think on God or desire to be thankful". A critical interpretation of the sequence of time as revealed in ourselves has led us to a notion of the ultimate Reality as pure duration in which thought, life and purpose inter-penetrate to form an organic unity. We cannot conceive this unity except as the unity of a self -- an all-embracing concrete self -- the ultimate source of all individual life and thought. I venture to think that the error of Bergson consists in regarding pure time as prior to self, to which alone pure duration is predicable. Neither pure space nor pure time can hold together the multiplicity of objects and events. It is the appreciative act of an enduring self only which can seize the multiplicity of duration -- broken up into infinity of instants -- and trans-form it to the organic wholeness of a synthesis. To exist in pure duration is to be a self, and to be a self is to be able to say ' I am'. Only that truly exists which can say 'I am'. It is the degree of the intuition of 'I-amness' that determines the place of a thing in the scale of being. We too say 'I am'. But our 'I-amness' is de-pendent and arises out of the distinction between the self and the not-self. The ultimate Self, in the words of Quran, can afford to dispense with all the worlds."

And again:‑

"Finite mind regards Nature as a confronting "other" existing per se, which the mind knows but does not make. We are thus apt to regard the act of creation as a specific past event, and the universe appears to us as a manufactured article which has no organic relation to the life of its maker, and of which the maker is nothing more than a mere spectator. All the meaning-less theological controversies about the idea of creation arise from this narrow vision of the finite mind. Thus regarded, the universe is a mere accident in the life of God and might not have been created. The real question which we are called upon to answer is this: Does the universe confront God as His "other", with space intervening between Him and it? The answer is that, from the Divine point of view, there is no creation in the sense of a specific event having a 'before' and an 'after'. The universe cannot be regarded as an independent reality standing in opposition to Him. This view of the matter will reduce both God and the world to two separate entities confronting each other in the empty receptacle of an infinite space. We have seen before that space, time and matter are interpretations which though puts on the free creative energy of God. They are not independent realities existing per se, but only intellectual modes of apprehending the life of God. The question of creation once arose among the disciples of the well known saint Ba Yazid of Bistam. One of the disciples very pointedly put the common sense view saying: "There was a moment of time when God existed and nothing else existed beside Him. "The saint's reply was equally pointed. "It is just the same now" said he, "as it was then". The world of matter, therefore, is not a stuff co-eternal with God, operated upon by Him from a distance as it were. It is, in its real nature, one continuous act which thought breaks up into a plurality of mutually exclusive things."

Sir Muhammad Iqbal's book is designed for non-Muslim of a certain mentality and for Muslims who have fallen under the influence of that mentality through scientific education in a foreign medium. It deserves, however, to be studied closely by all who are interested in Islam, or modern philosophy, or both.

The following 24 articles and reviews have appeared during the first 50 years of Islamic Culture or about Allama Iqbal:

Now we wish to have a view of the articles and reviews by and on Iqbal in the journal.

Iqbal's Educational Philosophy by Dr. Kh. Ghulam Sayyidain whose two chapters were published in the journal as referred to above was published fully in 1938.[4] Its several editions have appeared so far and it has been rendered into Urdu[5] as well. So many books and articles about Iqbal's educational thoughts have been published by other author uptil now, but Iqbal's Educational Philosophy whose manuscript was judged by Iqbal himself is still a popular and important work.

Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakim and Dr. S. Naeem-ud-Din were renounced scholars of Iqbaliyat and their articles published in the Islamic Culture on Rumi and Iqbal have considerable depth.

Iqbal's Presidential Address in the Oriental Conference, Lahore have been included in several other anthologies and its Urdu translation is also available.[6] It has many portions common with Iqbal's lectures,[7] The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Iqbal was under deep impact of the Khushhal Khan Khattack. On the basis of the Cap. Reverty's literal English translation of Khushhal Khan Khattack's Pushto Poetry in to English, Iqbal had written this article. The translation of the couplets of Khushhal Khan Khattack is reflective in Iqbal's Persian and Urdu poetry of Javid Nadia (1932) and Bal-i-Jibreel (1935). In an article in Urdu I had compared Iqbal derivations from Khushhal Khan Khattack's translated couplets Khushhal Khan Khattack's impact is envisageable in other section of Iqbal's poetry, particularly with the last portion of Zarb-i-Kalim.

Iqbal's affinity with the quarterly' Islamic Culture, started with the very first issue of this journal in 1927. This issue contains English translation of Prince Saeed Haleem Pasha's article "The Reform of Muslim Society". Saeed Haleem Pasha (1863-1921) was leader of Religious Reform Party of Ottoman Turkey and had risen to the higher office of Interior and Prime Ministers during the First World War[8]. This three detailed articles are still being publishing in the form of an anthology in Turkish language: Islam lashmiq (Islamisation of knowledge) the crisis in our thinking and' the reform of the Muslim society'. The fast article was published in the form of a booklet and also translated into Urdu in the Stab-continent several times. Allama Iqbal was impressed by Saeed Haleem Pasha even more than the national poet of Turkey. Muhammad Afif (1880-1936) who has been ac-claiming Iqbal's superiority over himself and recommending the scholars to go through his works. In the sixth lectures on 'Ijtehad', Allama Iqbal refers to Saeed Haleem Pasha's piercing vision quite vividly:

The Religious Reform Party, on the other hand, led by Saeed Haleem Pasha, insisted on the fundamental fact that Is-lam is a harmony of idealism and positivism; and, as a unity of the eternal verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity, has no fatherland. 'As there is no English Mathematics, German Astronomy or French Chemistry,' says the Grand Vizier, 'so there is no Turkish, Arabian, Persian or Indian Islam. Just as the universal character of scientific truths engenders varieties of scientific national cultures which in their totality represent human knowledge, much in the same way the universal character of Islamic verities creates varieties of national, moral and social ideals.' Modern culture based as it is on national egoism is, according to the keen-sighted writer, only another form of barbarism. It is the results of an over-developed industrialism through which men satisfy their primitive instincts and inclinations. He, however, deplores that during the course of history the moral and social ideals of Islam have been gradually de-Islamized through the influence of local character, and pre-Islamic superstitions of Muslim nations. These ideals today are more Iranian, Turkish, or Arabian than Islamic. The pure brow of the principle of Tawhid has received more or less an impress of heathenism, and the universal and impersonal character of the ethical ideals of Islam has been lost through a process of localization. The only alternative open to us, then, is to tear off from Islam the hard crust which has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on life, and to rediscover the original verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity with a view to rebuild our moral, social, and political ideals out of their original simplicity and universality.

Such are the views of the Grand Vizier of Turkey. You will see that following a line of thought more in tune with the spirit of Islam, he reaches practically the same conclusion as the Nationalist Party, that is to say, the freedom of Ijtehad with a view to rebuild the law of Shari at in the light of modern thought and experience.[9]

'The Reform of Muslim Society' has even a deeper and more spacious impact on IqbaL Here are only a few contrasts from the late Pasha's translated article and the Allama's couplets from his Javid Namah suffice to bring home the impact of the immortal writing: our intellectual elite are no longer able to assure themselves with full conviction, that Islam is the human religion par excellence: religion in its highest and completest form; that it is civilisation itself in the most perfect sense; and that, consequently, there can be no social salvation, as there can be no eternal salvation, outside it. They apparently forget that, if for the Christian world, all roads lead to ROME, for the Muslim world all roads lead to MECCA. In other words, each of these two worlds is called to follow a different direction and destiny, to play a different part in the general evolution of humanity.

The man or God takes not colour and scent from anyone, the man of God receives colour and scent from God: every moment there is in his body a fresh soul, every moment he has, like, God, a new labour.

Declare the secrets to the believer, declare the exposition of the mystery of Every day.

The caravan has no halting-place but the Sanctuary, the caravan has naught but God in its heart;

I do not say that its road is different--

It is the caravan that is different, different its regard.

The history of the Muslim world provides categorical confirmation of my diagnosis of the cause of decadence. It teaches us in fact that the decline of that world coincided with the appearance in it of a certain scholasticism. The Muslim religion is absolutely opposed to excessive subtleness and quibbilings in religious thought -- which explain the absence of a priesthood in Islam. The said scholasticism propagated the belief that the very urgent recommendations of the Prophet (peace be upon him) in favour of research and science related exclusively to the truths contained in the Shari'at, and that meditation of those truths ought to engross the human mind. It was an utterly arbitrary reading of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) intentions; for, after having taught us ethical and social truths in the Shari'at he never ceases to insist on the necessity of acquiring by our own efforts more and more knowledge and of instructing ourselves without a respite. He tells us that by science we shall appreciate our religion better, and shall practice it all the better if we are learned. Thereby he mean to secure to us, by means of a constant striving which would deliver to us the secrets of nature, a material happiness worthy of the ethical and social happiness which he offered to us freely in the Shari'at. Nevertheless, the mysticism to which the Muslim world became a victim, and which is the work of a pseudoclergy self established wrongly in its midst, became so general as at last to dominate the Muslim

The religion of God is more shameful than unbelief's because the mullah is a believer trading in unfaith; in our eyes this dew-drop of ours is an ocean, to his eyes our ocean is dew-drop. At the elegant graces of that Koran-vendor I have seen the Trusty Spirit himself cry out! His heart is a stranger to what lies beyond the sky, for him the Archetype of the Book is but a fable; having no share of the wisdom of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) religion, his heaven is dark, being without any star. Short of vision, blind of taste, an idle gossip, his hairsplitting arguments have fragmented the community. Seminary and mullah, before the secrets of the Book, are as one blind from birth before the light of the sun. The Infidel's religion is the plotting and planning of Holy War;

Only such a remoulding of Western mentality can put an end to the class struggles which persist in spite of all the changes made in order to get rid of them. All those aspirations towards liberty and equality, all those social claims pressed daily with more or less of violence, yet never satisfied, will be fulfilled on that condition of a changed mentality. Then only will be West attain the social justice she has sought so long in vain.

From the various observations and comparisons which I have made, it follows -- let me say it once again -- that Muslim society has no reason to prefer the ethical and social principles of the West to those of the Shari at. The latter are incomparably superior. It is not by departure from them but, on the contrary, by endeavouring to understand them better and practise them better that we can hope to put an end to the present decadence  of the Muslim World.[12]

For Westerners intelligence is the stuff of life, for Easterners love is the mystery of all being.

Only through love intelligence get to know God, love's labours find firm grounding in intelligence; when love is companioned by intelligence it has the power to design another world. Then rise and draw the design of a new world, mingle together love with intelligence. The flame of the Europeans is damped down, their eyes are perceptive, but their hearts are dead; they have been sore smitten by their own swords, hunted down and slaughtered, themselves the hunters. Look not for fire and intoxication in their vine'; not into their heavens shall rise a new age.

It is from your fire that the glow of life comes, and it is your task to create the new world.[14]

Notes and Explanation