Iqbal on the Need of Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam in the 21st Century
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
CA
With the very breath, turn the world upside down
And lay down the foundation of another Kaaba.
If Kaaba falls to ruin, it would ease love’s task
To raise another palace and bring forth a new design…
Iqbal was essentially an evaluator, a reformer, a transformer, a visionary, and at best an iconoclast who visualized that people who do not change and grow, they perish. Vision is what turns cities into empires, and nations into civilizations. Vision is the life-blood, and without it people are as good as dead. He understood the true spirit of Islam which relentlessly demanded improvement, action and adjustment at every moment of life.
To an answer as to what is the Qur’an, Iqbal once himself replied, “It is the message of death for the bourgeois, but for the helpless proletariat, a support.” In fact, Iqbal initiated the biggest controversy of his life with Maulana Husain Ahmed Madni, the orthodox head of the seminary of Deoband, when the Maulana said, “Nations were founded on the basis of territory and not religious ideals.” Iqbal recorded his strongest criticism in his Persian poem, stating, “The non-Arab world hasn’t yet grasped the mystery of religion, or else how could Husain Ahmed from Deoband utter such nonsense!” For Iqbal the presence of an ideal or ideology was the main thing.
It was his life mission to unsettle and replace the dogmatic and stagnant forces that had hijacked the vibrant and revolutionary spirit of Islam. He aimed to liberate, and unleash this driving spirit, in order to lay the foundation of a new world, free of tyranny and poverty, the two abiding aims of the Islamic Sharia. For him, man is the most, Mohtabar, respected creation of God on three accounts: man is God’s best creation; man is God’s deputy on earth, and man is equipped by God with a special gift, the gift of creativity.
Iqbal holds that God is willing to act as man’s co-worker, his facilitator and his strongest ally, provided man engages himself in the works of creativity, improvement, and beautification of His Estate, and remains faithful to Him.
God is alive, and He loves those who are alive and active. Iqbal contends that Spiritual ascension is essential for man, and its acquisition through good deeds, and through the sublimation of Self is a must, an obligation and not an option - Self is not a concept or thing, but an action, if man wants to remain worthy of the honor that God has bestowed on man. Man stands very high in Iqbal’s estimation. It was unfair on the part of E.M. Forster to characterize Iqbal’s concept of Self as a ‘fighting unit’, and his philosophy, “not an enquiry into truth, but a recommendation as to how the fight should be carried on”. Iqbal wanted to see Muslims and through them the entire humankind not as an indolent and a lazy lot, but a vibrant entity, engaged positively in the promotion of love and progress.
Love proclaimed the birth of a being with a bleeding heart!
Beauty trembled at the advent of a being gifted with vision!
Nature worried that out of passive clay, was born at a last a being
Self-creating, self-destroying, self-regarding
Word went around from the heavens to the night of eternity
Beware we who are veiled, the one who rends veils is born at last!
It thus was, not an observation, but a matter of great irritation for Iqbal to see humans, especially the Muslims reduced to a body of soulless people walking on two feet, physically alive, but metaphorically dead. Human beings are of two kinds, according to an Egyptian scholar, Ahmed Shauqi. There are those who are living dead; and there are those who are alive in their graves. Muslims fitted in the first category.
In the early part of the 20th century, Muslims were in most walks of life worse than the lotus eaters of Coleridge, resigned to the social backwaters of civilization; happy in their helplessness, fully entrapped in the network of pre-destination, dependent completely on the working of charms and the movements of the stars. Muslims were just an apology of what they once used to be. Iqbal took up the case of Muslims as a starting point, like T. S. Eliot and Walt Whitman had done, but the target of his message was not a specific community, but humanity as a whole. Iqbal’s characterization as a communalist, or a narrow- minded Muslim, as done by orientalists like R. A. Nicholson and E. M. Foster, is simply uncalled for.
As an iconoclast Iqbal aimed to seek the destruction of the false gods, be those of nationalism, or of racialism, or the gods of orthodoxy in religion. He was quite merciless in his treatment of those who resisted the brisk walk of change. In a rapidly changing dynamic world, there simply was no place for the old and outdated stumbling blocks, be those of tradition or of religion interpreted in a twisted manner. Through his prose and poetry, he struggled to liberate the Muslim mind from the sterility of five hundred years of intellectual lethargy, and of tyranny of the obscurantist orthodoxy. Bigotry, rigidity, and the sanctity of ‘Taqleed’, blindly following the religious and cultural clichés and traditions, and the cleaning of all this was Iqbal’s passion. It was a difficult task then, and it is tougher even now.
The Muslims in the 21st century are not any better. In the words of Dr. Khalid Abdou El Fadl, Muslim thinking has remained either pro-West or anti-West. Muslims’ zest for being reactionaries has robbed them of their true role as pro-active people, who once never waited for a thing to happen as a pre-requisite for their response.
Muslims according to Fadl, need to pose to themselves questions like: Is their attitude in the modern times pro-human or anti-human, and are their doctrinal assertions of modern Islam humane or inhumane. Iqbal in his time had also raised some similar questions.
In his six thought-provoking lectures, he attempted brick by brick to reconstruct the Eastern mind, enlightening it on such vital topics as God, Nature, Time, Reality, Thought, Destiny, Resurrection, Prayers, Finality of Prophet-hood, and Miracles. In all of these, he drew the attention of Muslims to the fact that there was no conflict between religion and science, and that the day was not very far when both would act in unison to discover some unsuspected mutual harmonies. He reminded Muslims of the Qur’anic message that Hikmah or wisdom is like their lost treasure. They should pick it up wherever they find it as it basically had been their own.
Muslims’ problems emanate not from Islam but from its distorted interpretation, selectively made with a specific aim in view, and its defective implementation. Problems also come from its followers who lack education and vision, and from their non-critical attitude, and from the blind and docile acceptance of the out-of-time and tune interpretations, offered to them as solutions by the religious Ulema, and by the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence in matters of religion. It is not in the spirit of Islam to stay static or remained frozen in time and space.
In the 21st century, Muslims can be found standing at the cross-road, with their bodies in the 21st century and their minds and hearts in the 8th century. They welcome the industrial modernization and benefit from it happily, but are unwilling to accept the Westernization that comes with it; they are keen seekers of the unity of Muslims as an Ummah, which is latent in Islam, but appear quite unwilling to abandon the charm of their regional culture or nationalism which is an antithesis to that unity. They are also split on the issue of how to hold on to the truth in an age which is pluralistic and global. Assigning an equal status to women is still irksome to them. Quite a few firmly believe a Muslim’s right to have four wives.
In the comity of 57 Muslim countries, there is hardly any one country which can be cited as an example where human and civil rights are respected, and minorities honored. Naturally, it did not come from Islam. The Qur’an, and the belief in One God, both urge its followers to believe in the oneness of humanity. Monotheism is inherently meant to lead its followers to the belief in the oneness of mankind. Islam equates the presence of poverty in a Muslim society to the loss of faith, as stated in Sura Al-Maun, and the acquisition of knowledge an obligation for a Momen if he believes in the Day of Judgment - the Day of Accountability.
STRUGGLE FOR SOUL: There is a struggle for the very soul of Islam that is going on. As recently as last week, a very liberal country like Canada refused to administer the oath of citizenship to those women who insisted on taking it clad in burqa. The issue of Sharia Laws has already become a red rag for the Western world. In the Muslim world, honor killings, vinni customs, involving the dispensation of girls as compensation for the crimes committed by the elders and other draconian cultural customs, are rampant. Some of the questions that are being asked by well-meaning Muslims, as well as non-Muslims, are:
1. Is Islam inherently supportive of human rights, liberal values and religious pluralism?
2. Does Islam tolerate other religions when it comes into power?
3. Does Islam recognize the freedom of conscience, thought, expression and dissent?
4. Does Islam condone the use of force in achieving some political goals?
5. What is meant by the term kafir? Does Islam condone the killing of kafirs?
6. What is the Qur’anic message on the status and position of women, and are they to be under the domination of men?
7. What is Islam’s take on a just war? Is there a thing as a Holy War?
8. Is Islam compatible with the concept of democracy?
9. Do Muslims inherently aspire to establish a khalifate in the world?
10. Given a choice, what would a Muslim do first - end of poverty or a compromise on purdah, etc?
Iqbal in his Divine Comedy, the Javed Nama presented the essence of his philosophy and offered his answer to the above humanistic issues. He said, “Humanity binds men together in fraternity; so keep your feet fixed on the path of amity. The man of love who sees men with God’s eye, loves heathen and believer equally. “Zindagi dar justuju posheeda ast: Asl-e-oo dar aarzoo posheeda ast.” For Iqbal, there always appears a great crisis in those cultures which demean human-self, or negate its worth in life. The existence of self is the basis of all intuitions, and it is cogently connected with reason and intellect. It is the Self in human that takes away, “Boai Gadai”,
“Jo Fiqr hua tal-khai doran ka gala band—Us Fiqr mai baqi hai abhi buayi gadai”
Iqbal read meanings in the rituals of Islam, and approached even the miracles of Prophets from a humanistic angle. In the assemblage of five daily prayers, Iqbal found a great social benefit apart from its cognitive value. He said the practice is reflective of the need that unity of human beings is a fact of life because it removes all the barriers of rank and station that stand between man and man.
In the finality of the Prophet-hood Iqbal surmised, “In Islam prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition. The abolition of priesthood and hereditary kingship in Islam, the constant appeal to reason and experience in the Qur’an, and the emphasis it lays on Nature and History as sources of human knowledge, are all different aspects of the same idea of finality… every one was one’s own guide now.” Even a humble had enough to teach wisdom to the seeker.
Iqbal struck hard on those who believed in pre-destination. He raised an uproar through his Asrar-i-Khidi, published in 1915, because the belief in mysticism and Sufism had begun serving as a good rationale for those who had chosen to remain inactive, and practice indolence, sluggishness and resignation as a way of life. Even a dog when hit by a stone knows that it is not the stone that he should go after, but the man holding the stone. How could human beings be more dumb than a dog?
In Javed Nama, answering angrily to one who said that the fate of a glass is to brittle and to break, Iqbal is seen telling him that the glass has had the option to overturn the situation by becoming hard like a stone.
Man is born with multiple destinies. If he fails at one, then like Moses, he should move on to another. After all, man is endowed with the gift of creativity. Forces that bring tragedies in human life from outside, do not, and should not, deprive humans from creating newer and better worlds inside. That is how God becomes a co-worker of man. God creates stones, and man by adding value, turns them into diamonds; God creates deserts and man turns them into orchards; God creates poison, and man turns them into antidotes. Is there a limit to human potential!
Dr. Fazlur Rahman sums up the teachings of Iqbal when he says, “Iqbal was not just a reformer, but the most daring intellectual modernist the Muslim world has produced.” Iqbal urged Muslims to rethink their entire concept of and approach to Islam. It is only through re-thinking, re-visiting and re-constructing and re-adjusting their understanding that Mjuslims can meet the challenges of the modern age. Iqbal asked Muslims to revive the practice of Ijtehad, a reasoned way out to the modern problems. After all, the Christians and the Jews did finally learn after centuries of fighting how to live together, without losing their respective identities as Christians and Jews.
Approaching religion in a literal way is like missing its main message. Dr. Fazlur Rahman calls the practice as equal to robbing the Qur’an of its meaning, and shutting our eyes to the social change that has occurred and that is palpably occurring before our eyes.” He cites an interesting example. ‘It is as though, in view of the Qur’anic emphasis on freeing slaves, one were to insist on preserving the institution of slavery so that one could earn merit in the sight of God by freeing slaves.” Should Muslims have the maximum number of poor people in their midst, in order to earn reward from Allah for dispensing charity to them?
THREE AREAS: Iqbal underpinned three areas in which the Muslims urgently needed to reconstruct the religious thought without compromising or breaking away with the main framework of religion.
1. The first area is the Islamic Law. The four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence have begun treating their traditions as final and complete, and thus feeling no compulsion of revising them ever. Amina Wadud a woman scholar opines, “No community will ever be exactly like the other. Therefore, no community can be a duplicate of the original community.” The Qur’an never stated this as the goal. The Qur’anic goal has been to emulate certain key principles of human development like Justice, Equality, Harmony, Moral Responsibility, Spiritual Awareness and its development.” Iqbal was in touch with the pulse of his times. A basic difference between Iqbal’s vision of the Islamic Law and the various subsequent movements with seemingly similar purposes has been that his main interest was putting an end to tyranny and poverty through the implementation of the Islamic Law. Unfortunately, the Islamic laws, like that of the Blasphemy law, or the law of women witness, in their implementation have resulted in the further confiscation of those very basic human rights to safeguard which these laws were initiated, and they ended up in the further spread of tyranny and poverty.
2. The second area that needed a re-visit was the State. In relation to the State, Iqbal noticed two tendencies. One, how the local non-Islamic habits gradually have tended to distort the universal character of the ethical ideals of Islam. Second, how some Islamic states have sought to dominate others in a way that it has inhibited the flourishing of the less resourceful states. Iqbal clearly tells us that the Qur’an is anti-classical. It was the Prophet of Islam who lifted the ancient world out of its dogmatic cradle and placed it into the modern frame. Iqbal insisted that through deductive reasoning, study of Nature and History alone could man master his environment, and be in line with the modern times.
3. The third area that needed a review, according to Iqbal, was a change in the Individual. Islam recognized the worth of humans by rejecting blood-relationship as a basis of human unity. Blood-relationship is an earth-rooted concept. Iqbal believed in the modern concept of synergy, which is that individual ego must seek its expansion through union with the ego of the larger group. It is a win-win approach for mankind and it is being preached by the pundits of human resources in their board meetings. The entire humanity must move forward together, and not in piecemeal. The search for a purely psychological foundation of human life is spiritual in origin. Material wellbeing and intellectual soundness are just the tools.
Iqbal always looked for new stars, as he was always fed up with the old moons and suns. He always longed for a new world order, and is bold enough to ask God, “Bring new patterns into being, for our nature seeks originality.”
Iqbal regarded Taqleed, or blind following, as poison to human beings, a kind of insult to them. For him it is the freshness of originality and the spirit of creativity that distinguishes a free man from a slave. These issues are very complex, and their solution is hard to come by as they are entrenched in tradition and culture. The task is as hard as separating vanilla flavor from the vanilla ice cream. A lot of sensitivity is involved. Iqbal’s times were comparatively better, and yet he often remained misunderstood. It was the impact of his giant intellect and vision that he remained popular as a Poet of Islam, though he never grew a beard, and he never undertook a journey for Hajj. Can anyone now dare to speak on behalf of Islam without apparently looking as most Islamic? I leave the question open to the reader.
