IQBAL AND MAULVI SAHIB

(23.04.1975)

Profound and fundamental changes are going on in Pakistan today: changes which have long been overdue, and which concern every aspect of our national life.

Change and dynamism is the very stuff of which living biological and social patterns are made. Yet there are fossilised elements in our society which have always opposed and which continue to oppose any change in the patterns of our thinking, our living and our social organisation. Thus the new and the old are locked in an inexorable battle whose out-come is yet to be seen.

This, of course, is a universal phenomenon. The battle between old social and political norms and the new revolutionary modes of thinking and organisation is raging every where, and the storms of revolution are shaking the five continents. Pakistan cannot be, and is not, an exception.

It is not a new fight by any means. In the context of our era, which on a world scale has been the era of colonial domination of the world by Western capitalist nations over the last two to three hundred years, the struggle began as soon as the alien powers arrived to subvert and conquer technically backward regions of the world.

To begin with, in the South Asian region, it was an unequal fight. The old, seemingly well established, feudal empires went down like nine pins in the face of the onslaught from the West. Then began a long period of soul searching and preparation to understand what had happened.

Some accepted the superiority of the Western capitalist nations as a kind of racial characteristic; others blamed our humiliation on our moral lapses, thus conceding the moral superiority of the invaders; still others cursed the stars and waited for the turn of the wheel of blind fortune. Nobody recognised that men make their own fate according to their understanding of the nature of change in phenomena, and the laws of the dynamics of human society.

Iqbal's thought was the fulfillment of the urge in our national psyche which wanted to come to grips with the facts of change -- and the necessity to create in ourselves the capacity to meet the challenge of the times.

All revolutions begin with the desire for change, but mere desire is not enough. Revolution is a matter of changing concrete phenomena, and it is in the depth of the being of a human group that the desire for change is moulded into the thought which enables it to undertake the herculean task of transformation of self and of reality. Iqbal was the focal point in our national being in which this process completed itself. In him were concentrated all the contradictions of our old and new self, and in him these contradictions were resolved to give us the new collective personality which was necessary for meeting the challenge of the times. From him emerged the pure stream of the essential nature of the Muslim people, which slowly but surely transformed the Muslims of South Asia into a self realising and self reliant national group with clear objectives and a programme. From a confused, frightened, scattered multitude of cross purposes we were transformed into a nation.

To think that Iqbal's path was smooth and unobstructed is to disregard history. He was criticised for his new vision. The young, of course, were quick to assimilate him. The old -- and especially those who were well entrenched in positions of religious and spiritual authority -- reacted with suspicion and antagonism. .

His very first book raised a storm of protest, because he had dared to challenge a well-established "spiritual" authority in the person of Khwaja Hafiz. It was regarded not as an attack on a form of quietistic thinking but on religion itself.

The real reason for the opposition of the orthodoxy to "Asrar-i-Khudi," however, was not the verses about Khwaja Hafiz, but the entire purpose with which that great poem was written. it was a challenge to the idolatry of the Mullah who had transformed the simple Islamic faith into a complex and rigid, unchanged and unchanging system of law and. thinking, which served as a prop for: the unchanged and unchanging feudal, and later colonial-feudal status quo. The very insistence of the Mullah that there is no change possible in life, society, or in the law, made him the strongest prop of the colonial.feudal set up of the class society which Iqbal, and the masses of Mus!ims, were pitted against.

Whep Iqbal attacked the Mullah -- and he did so consistently until the end of his days -- he was not challenging the religion of Islam, but rather the static and changeless view of life and society of which the Mullah had become the exponent and defender. This attack the Mullah regarded not as an attack on himself but on the religion of Islam.

This of course has not changed with time. Even now, when every Mullah has become an Iqbalite, he identifies Islam with himself and himself with Islam. Anybody criticising the thinking of our modem Mullahs is charged with being critical of Islam itself.

It was this identification of Mullah and his thinking with Islam which Iqbal criticised. His call for Ijtihad, and his attempt to reconstruct religious thought of Islam, was an attack on the authority of the Mullah to impose on us the view of an unchanged and unchanging feudal order as the very essence of an Islamic way of life. The call of the modem .Mullahs to impose on us an unchanged and unchanging "Islamic" system of their thinking, is the continuation of the attitude of the Mullahs of Iqbal's day, and of those in earlier periods of our history as far back as the fall of Baghdad .

Of course the Mullahs did not sit back at the challenge. They fought tooth and nail to preserve the colonial feudal order and their view of a changeless society, because in the preservation of that society they saw the perpetuation of their own authority. The present struggle in our society between the protagonists of an unchanging "Islamic" system (very easily identifiable as a feudal and neo-colonial class society) and the Islamic Socialists, who are working to bring about fundamental changes in our society, is the continuation of the struggle which started with Iqbal.

The reason why Islamic Socialists constantly refer to the works of Iqbal, in their ideological struggle against the Maudoodites is not Iqbal's appreciation of Socialism, of Marx and Lenin, or of the October Revolution. That is only a secondary matter. The real reason is that only Iqbal, out of all the Muslim thinkers of the 19th and 20th century has taken his stand for the reform of our society on the dynamic vision of Islam which is contained in his works.

In the Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal has provided us with a complete, well-reasoned, and incontrovertible thesis on the necessity for change in life, society and the law which has become the basis for the revolutionary action of Islamic Socialists. Whereas the Mullah asserts the unchangeability of the social organisation, and hence of the Law of Shariat, Iqbal asserts that Islam envisages a society in constant change and in permanent revolution.

Without this sanction for the continuation of the principle of Ijtihad in our society we cannot take a step forward in the task of transforming our society from a neo-colonial feudal class society towards a socialist Islamic society.

The greatest struggle in the modern Islamic societies has raged around this very concept. Is the law of Islam capable of evolution and change? Without settling this question a society composed of Muslims has no possibility to transform itself.

The opposition of the Mullah to Iqbal was based on this very concept of changing the law of Islam as being the core of his philosophy. We are still fighting the Mullahs who refuse to accept this concept.

Of course the first and fore-most tactic of the Mullahs of today is to take over Iqbal and identify his thought with themselves. For centuries they monopolised Islam as their special preserve -- and gave it the form of a philosophy of the status quo. Now that Iqbal's thought has made a breakthrough and established the necessity of change, the Mullahs have monopolised him to use the authority of his personality for the same old purpose. The man whose philosophy begins and ends with the vision of Islam as revolution and change is now being harnessed to the purpose of counter revolution and the vision of an unchanging immutable "Islamic" system whose features can be easily recognised in the neo-colonialist strategy of John Foster Dulles.

The question once again is being asked whether Iqbal was an Islamist or a Socialist. We have said enough on this subject to repeat the oft repeated. The contradiction implied by the modern Mullahs when they bring up this question, was long ago resolved by Jamal ud Din Afghani who coined the term Islamic Socialism. Such great leaders of Muslims as Maulana Hasrat Mohani have used the concept for describing themselves:

Darveshi-o-lnqilab Maslak hai Mera

Sufi Momin hoon, Ishtiraki Muslim

Quaid-e-Azam himself used the term to describe the ideological position of Pakistan . And the struggle which Peoples Party has waged over the last seven or eight years, has brought millions of Pakistanis into the sweep of this world transforming thought.

And yet the Mullahs raise the question again and again. This persistence of the Mullah not to understand, or to pretend not to understand Iqbal calls to mind an early poem of his.

"I tell you the story of a Maulvi Sahib, though the purpose by no means is to demonstrate the sharpness of my wit. His purity of conduct was loudly acclaimed everywhere; the great and small paid him respect.... The flask of his heart was full of the wine of asceticism, and somewhere at its bottom were the dregs of the thought of being a know all ... The pious, one asked an acquaintance of mine; 'what sort of person is this Iqbal in his observance of the commands of Shariat? He listens to music at night, and reads the Quran in the morning ... This is not Iqbal but a combination of contradictions. His heart is the book of wisdom but his nature is full of madness... He is aware of the ways of a debauch but also knows Shariat. As for Tasawwuf he is an equal of Mansur. I ca,nnot understand the reality of this man. He must be laying the foundation of some new variety of Islam, One day I met the saintly one by the roadside. The old topic came up again I said to him, 'I have no complaint on that score ... If you do not understand my reality, this does not take away from the fact of your being a know-all. I am myself unaware of my reality. The waters of my ocean of thought run deep. I myself have the desire to see Iqbal. I have shed tears enough searching for him. Even Iqbal is not aware of Iqbal's meaning. But this remark of mine does not imply derisive laughter at you."

This is not the only poem of Iqbal satirising the incomprehension of the Maulvi Sahibs of his time about Iqbal's meaning. In later poems of course, his derisive laughter at their expense was louder and more stinging:

-"Deen-i-Mullah Fi Sabeel-illah fasad."

-"Kaabe Ke Brahman."

-"Mullah Ki Azan aur, Mujahid Ki Azan aur."

-"Hai Bad-Amozi-i-Aqwam-o-Milal Kam Isska."

-Main janta hoon anjam usska

-Jis Ma'arke men Mullah hon Ghazi."

One could go on quoting endlessly. But it is no use because Syed Abdullah (1) will interpret all this as the result of Iqbal having been misled into an anti-Mullah attitude by the modernist youngmen who surrounded him towards the end of his life and whose evil influence made him write such mordant denunciation of Mullahs and Mullahism. Of course the glibness with which Maulvi Sahibs explain away anything they like is part of their profession. It does not matter if they have come a long way from their original status and started wearing lounge suits. (2)

NOTES:

Iqbal and Maulvi Sahib. Published in The Pakistan Times 23.4.75.

1. Syed Mohammad Abdullah. A scholar of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. A Professor at the Oriental College Lahore . A regular columnist in Urdu newspapers of the right wing trend. He tried to prove that Iqbal was not only a socialist, but had no sympathy whatsoever with socialistic ideas.

2. Although Syed Mohammad Abdullah was an outspoken enemy of Western culture, he was almost always meticulously dressed in a lounge suit.