IQBALISM: HOw he saw the KHUDI and THE NEW MUSLIM MAN

IQBALISM

The Khilafat Movement was started by Ulema groups and pan-Islamists after the defeat of Turkey’s Ottoman regime in the First World War. From this tension emerged a man who would become the second major figure in the evolution of Muslim nationalism in India after Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and, consequently, that of Pakistani nationalism. In fact, he believed that the fall of the Ottoman caliphate in Turkey could be catalytic to the emergence of a renaissance in Islam. He also applauded the takeover of Turkey by Mustafa Kamal — a secular nationalist who abolished the caliphate and declared Turkey to be a modern republic.

On Kamal’s reforms, Iqbal wrote:

"The truth is that among the Muslim nations today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber and attained self-consciousness…"

Even though, later on in life, Iqbal would begin to alter his views about Kamal’s reforms, for a while he did see the new Turkish republic as a dynamic political and social model of Muslim evolution

Many ulema were not amused by this. In response to their criticism, he wrote:

Zhud taang nazar ne mujhe kafir jana,
Aur kafir samajhta hai Mussalman hoon mein

The religious bigot considers me an infidel
and the infidel deems me a Muslim

Iqbal was conscious of the fact that the Muslim community in India was evolving with two competing sets of ideas one which encouraged the community to embrace western education and political concepts, and one which explained this community as part of a global Muslim community (ummah).
Iqbal uniquely merged the two tendencies to come up with a complex synthesis which would go a long way in adding a weighty ideological dimension to the Muslim League, and, eventually, become an important building block in the construction of what would become Pakistani nationalism.

Iqbal then turned towards the idea of Muslim nationhood which was opposed to Syed’s reformist, rationalist and modernist propensity.

He agreed that the Muslims of India were part of a larger global Muslim nation (ummah), and that Islam cannot be separated from their everyday lives (as Syed might have suggested).

Nevertheless, Iqbal believed that this idea was being upheld by men who wanted to retain a stagnant and dogmatic status quo.

The new Muslim man KHUDI

Iqbal called it khudi — a powerful expression of informed individualism. Khudi was inspired by the study of the ego by German philosophers such as Nietzsche and Hagel, but Iqbal presented it as an attribute which did not lead to selfishness and conceit, but to the spiritual and intellectual blossoming of a human being, and, consequently of the community he was a part of.

The idea first appeared in its matured form in Iqbal’s 1915 book, Asrar-i-Khudi (The Secrets of the Self). In it he asserted that God had created man and blessed him with khudi so that he is fit for the role of being His vicegerent on earth. The new Muslim man’s purpose was to discover his khudi by demolishing the torpors of obscurantism, dogmatism and inertia.

Iqbal, though, never shied away from confessing the impact certain European philosophers had on him. What’s more, in dealing with the western idea of parliamentary democracy, Iqbal suggested that it (democracy) was ‘a political ideal in Islam’.

Yet, the process one had to go through to spark his khudi and become the new Muslim man, in essence, is a metaphysical pursuit.

The new Muslim man realises his potential through intellectual introspection, but wasn’t introverted or cut off from society.

Iqbal was a staunch individualist. When he had suddenly dropped out of the Khilafat Movement, he was visited by a leader of the movement who found him relaxing on a sofa and smoking a hookah. The leader complained: ‘We read your poems and go to jail. But here you are, enjoying a smoke?’

Iqbal casually replied: ‘I am the nation’s qawwal. If the qawaal begins to sway with the crowd and gets lost in a trance, then the qawaali is over.’

He was critical of ancient Islamic scholars such as Al-Ghazali (1058-111), and Ibn-i-Taymiyah (1268-1328), who cautioned against the dangers of philosophy (because too much of it might lead one to heretical, even, irreligious thought).

Iqbal wrote that Islam was not opposed to Philosophy because the Holy Quran urged believers to reflect upon God’s creations and to peruse knowledge for the sake of it.

Iqbal did not see Islam and its holy scriptures as a ‘block universe’; instead he saw them as processes of ‘continual actualisation’.

Dr M Khalid Masud in his essay — Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Ijtihad — noted that Sir Syed had used the word ‘reformation’ to explain his iconoclastic ideas, which made the conservatives believe that he was somewhat changing the doctrines of Islam.

Iqbal on the other hand, consciously used the term ‘reconstruction’ which did not carry the same negative perception (in the minds of the ulema) as the term reformation had.

Looking to transform the Muslim community into a distinct polity, Iqbal, unlike Sir Syed, was not repulsed by politics. He was a prominent member of the Muslim League who often contested elections.

In December 1930, while speaking at a party convention in Allahabad, Iqbal finally announced what he expected the Indian Muslim polity to do.

He urged the creation of a separate Muslim state within the Indian British Empire. But even more interesting is how he explained this state ideologically:

"(This state) for India means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; (and) for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arab imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own spirit and with the spirit of modern times."

This is a remarkable statement which was increasingly downplayed during the post-1970s’ rise of the more myopic narrative of Pakistani nationalism.

The statement clearly suggests that Iqbal saw the Indian Muslim community and polity to lead the way in rejuvenating a stagnating faith according to modern times, and, in the process, neutralise the impact of ‘Arab imperialism’ on it.

References: with the special thanks to Nadeem paracha shb for research and analysis.

• Amir Riaz: Alama Iqbal aur Thereek-e-Khilafat (Daily Dunya, August 7, 2013).
• Khurram A. Shafique: Iqbal: His Life and Our Times (Libredux Publishing, 2014)
• Muhammad Iqbal: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought (first published 1930).
• F. Vahadat: Islamic Ethos and the Specter of Modernity (Anthem Books, 2015)
• Wayne A. Wilcox: The Wellsprings of Pakistan in Pakistan: The long View ed. L. Ziring (Duke University Press, 1977).
• Ayesha Jalal: Self and Sovereignty (Sang-e-Meel, 2001)
• Hakim: Fiqr-i-Iqbal
• LA Sherwani: Writings, Speeches and Lectures of Iqbal (Iqbal Academy, 2005)
• M Abbas (ed.): The Muslim Community – A Sociological Study (Maktab-e-Aliya,1983)
• JL Esposito’s entry Contemporary Islam in Oxford History of Islam (Oxford University Press)
• Zafar Anjum: Iqbal: Life of a poet, philosopher and politician (Random House, 2014)
• Majid Faruky: Philosophy and Theology in Oxford History of Islam
• M. Iqbal: The Recreation of Religious Thought in Islam (ed. M. Saeed Shiekh)
• SA Wahid Mu’ni: Maqala-e-Iqbal (Lahore, 1963) p.54-55
• Dr. Amna Afreen: The Reformers of Islam (University of Karachi, 2013)