Allama Iqbal is the last great man in the scholarly tradition of Muslims upon whom there is a general consensus. His intellectual guidance rightly makes him the most effective intellectual leader of the Muslim Ummah in modern times. Especially in South Asia, his status is so established that it will be hard to find a thinker or writer of this region who is not directly or indirectly influenced by him.
What has earned Iqbal this pedestal of greatness is his creative ability. There are many poets. Similarly, there are many leaders and thinkers. Pre-Partition Muslim India was self-sufficient both in poets and leaders. But the greatness of Iqbal’s creative ability was that he expressed his ideas at a time when others had no concept of them. His vision was always far ahead of others and his unique ability to articulate it was extraordinary. The width of his knowledge encompassed all disciplines, from the modern to the ancient and from the East to the West. He had a deep understanding of law, politics, religion and philosophy. The existence of Pakistan is a living example of his knowledge and foresight. Reviving a nation, defeated and in despair, with miraculous poetry, providing a common basis for making it a nation according to the modern concept of nationalism, clarifying the political goals of this nation in the Allahabad sermon, choosing an excellent leader like Quaid-e-Azam to present the case of this nation in front of the ruling British, giving sermons for the modern reconstruction of religious thought of this nation shackled by blind following and inertia; These are feats that, when considered, make it hard to explain how one man could have demonstrated such a level of creative ability.
However, the appearance of the largest Muslim state and the fifth largest state in the world in the form of Pakistan shows how great a man Iqbal was. Today, many people criticize Iqbal due to the current condition of Pakistanis. But the true reason for the current condition of Pakistan is that though we accepted Iqbal’s political and national vision, we have more or less abandoned his intellectual vision or at least are not aware of it. One of the reasons for this unfamiliarity was probably that Iqbal presented his thoughts mostly in Persian poetry or in those sermons which are not easy for most people to understand and benefit from.
The intellectual vision of Iqbal that we rejected and the rejection of which has caused our destruction, if captured in one word, is creative ability. That is, building a new world by breaking the shackles of blind following and status quo. Obviously, this construction requires creative ability. If it is there, a new world can be created and challenges can be overcome. This is the very fact that Iqbal has described in ‘Javed Nama’ in the form of a message of Allah.
He who lacks the power of creation
Is naught to Us but an atheist and an agnostic.
He has not taken his share of Our Beauty,
He has not eaten the fruit of the Tree of life!
That is, Allah Almighty says that he who does not think creatively is a kafir and a heretic to us. He did not partake of our beauty and was deprived of eating the fruit of the tree of life. When nations lose creative power, it is not because they lack creative ability. God does not create a human being who does not have any creative ability in some aspect. It’s just that speaking creatively in a nation bound by blind following and status quo, is synonymous to inviting a storm of opposition from all sides, which requires great courage to withstand. For this, a person needs to have a lot of confidence in his message. This courage and confidence comes from knowledge. Hence, we know that Iqbal himself had to face immense opposition and even fatwas (Islamic legal ruling)of kufr (Disbelief). But Iqbal was a scholar of multiple disciplines, from modern and ancient as well as West and East, thus in the end, his creative ability won. This was the very creative ability that led to the miracle of Pakistan and this is the very creative ability that, if ignited today, can pull the otherwise in-peril boat of Pakistan, out of every storm.
Translated by Ali Zafar