Advocates and Detractors of Iqbal: A Study Across Cultures

— Criticism on Iqbal is as vast as ocean. A huge corpse of material has been published both in the East and West. Yet, no critic has passed a final verdict on him to cover all dimensions of his poetic thought and philosophy. Therefore, his works still need further interpretations in order to do justice with him. There is a need to take nothing on trust and a critic should break the fanciful myth that has been allowed to grow round Iqbal over the decades, and to expose the bogus and misleading premises that support a calculated misrepresentation of him. His critical canvas is so broad that it is not easy to write on him without knowing his indepth poetic thought, philosophy and sources of knowledge. The present paper tries to analyse the arguments and criticism, thesis and antithesis of both advocates and detractors of Iqbal. The emphasis is put on to project the real literary personality of Allama Iqbal on solid grounds. The findings of this paper are that Iqbal has been misrepresented by the detractors in the wide literary circles of the World due to misunderstandings of his poetic basis and philosophical thought. The crux of the Iqbalian philosophy is unbiased to any religious faith and sentiments whatever he has said and written in his prose and poetry have a solid background like theological, scientific, historical and logical evidences. The reason of their misunderstandings is their partial knowledge about the multidimensional personality of Iqbal. In contrary to that the advocates have analysed the whole personality of the poet and have minutely studied the basic sources of his knowledge. Therefore, the present paper is projecting Iqbal as the flawless revolutionary reformer and rational philosopher. Iqbalian Literary Criticism.

There is a need of original critical aptitude to assess and comprehend Iqbal, minutely. A lot has been written on his different dimensions till present but all writers have not been successful in representing him correctly. They have merely added confusions in their writings. Against those writers and critics Syed Abdul Vahid in Glimpses of Iqbal has vehemently raised his voice, he writes: To illustrate this we have only to mention that Iqbal was a great poet, a philosopher, a leading politician and a religious reformer. Now a critic trying to discuss his politics consciously or unconsciously refers to his poetry also. Those who do not like the stand Iqbal took in politics, start discussing his sublime poetry also from the same angle. Such writers add nothing to our knowledge, but add considerably to our confusion (Vahid 118). Abdul Vahid suggests that a critic should analyse only that facet of Iqbal with which he or she can do justice. It, therefore, becomes mandatory for a researcher who works on any critic of Iqbal or other thinker to first know critic's competency, his strong and weak zones of knowledge The question that arises here is why a writer fails to do justice with Iqbal? The answer of the question is that for understanding Iqbal's poetry and philosophy a critic must have an essential knowledge of following three primary requirements: (a) Western literary and Philosophical background; (b) Knowledge of Islam, access to the Quran and Sunna (The primary sources of Islam); (c) Knowledge of Eastern Mystical schools of poetry and a good command on Persian language and literature.
The critics who wrote on Iqbal without keeping the above significant fields into consideration have merely filled their pages with misinterpretations and misconceptions about his works. However, there exist both advocates and detractors of Iqbal in a huge number and the present study introduces few of them as under: The advocates of Iqbal exist both in the East and the West. Among the advocates of Iqbal one name is of Dr. Fermaan Fathepuri who in the preface of his book "Iqbal Sub Keleyea" (Kitab se Pehlay) acquaints its readers to the problem that no justice has been done to Iqbal's works by all his critics. No doubt thousands of research papers and books have been written on him but little part of it is of sublime kind, worth of recognizing as original and justifiable criticism on Iqbal (Fathepuri1).
The other name among the advocates of Iqbal is of S. Aalam Khundmiri. He in his Some Aspects of Iqbal's Poetic Philosophy-a volume of his four lectures has stressed, "One who is, or aspires to be a serious student of Iqbal, cannot separate Iqbal the poet from Iqbal the philosopher, particularly when one is discussing his mature poetry. If his philosophic thought has certain strong poetic elements, his poetry contains equally strong philosophic concerns. Of course the synthesis is uneasy but it is there as a living fact" (Khundmiri vii Muhammad Iqbal (2000).In his translation of Iqbal's poetry, Mustansir Mir seeks to convey every level of meaning and mood in the poems, while making the text as readable and idiomatic as possible.
Another notable critc among the advocates of Iqbal is Asloob Ahmad Ansari. He defended Iqbal from those detractors who attacked his poetic language. He in 'Iqbal Essays and Studies' (1978) has pointed out that Iqbal has been criticized by the traditional Ghazal writers for his verbal idiom, fineness, decorum and correctness but did not highlight the freshness and originality of vision. His poetry has been examined from the linguistic point of view also but what his critics ignore is the larger aspect of stylistics and the processes involved in the intricate pattering of the literary verbal structures. Ansari is of the view that: They (Iqbal critics) showed little or no awareness of the functioning of image-clusters, of the system of symbology, of myth as the exteriorisation of the collective consciousness, and of style and value as cohering into a pattern and thus raising the question of meaning. They could at best perceive a particular poem sprinkled over with similes and metaphors but had no notion of contextualism or of the correspondence between the thematic and formal components of a work of art (Ansari, 1978: xvi).
Ansari is further of the view that the framework of Ghazal bears a striking resemblance with French Symbolist poetry and it is Iqbal who conferred upon this genre the maturity, the comprehension and the width of range which opened a new direction in which Ghazal can move and readily absorb the ambivalent drives and impulses of our humanistic culture. Iqbal has made the age-old symbols of Ghazal vibrate with new potencies of meaning in accordance with the changing of life.
Asloob Ahmad Ansari has made an important point that literary criticism is distinct from lucid and coherent exposition of concepts like as some critics usually bound their criticism mere to deducing philosophy of life from Iqbal's poetry or rather regard his poetry as substitute for it without following the real assumptions or laws of literary criticism. Talking about Iqbal's philosophical system is important but literary criticism as per Ansari is basically a matter of explication and involving the endeavour to discover and reveal the enactment with events of reality, which is mediated through the in woven fabric of the literary artifact. It, therefore, requires on the part of the critic, the exercise of discrimination, aesthetic distancing and sensitivity to verbal nuances and texture as much as to the relevant co-ordinates of meaning (Ansari, 1978: xviixviii Iqbal was committed to Islam and for this reason some detractors attacked him as they considered commitment as a drawback which makes an artist narrow sensed and delimits his vision from seeing things indifferent perspectives. Malik disagrees with the view of such detractors and asserts that commitment develops emotional intensity in an artist, this emotional intensity as per Iqbal instill feelings even into stone and gives birth to the great art. As per Malik neither commitment nor noncommitment are evaluative measures but they are descriptive terms. There was the existence of both committal and non-committal artists among the great artists of the world, among the non-committal artists were Shakespeare, Hafiz, Ghalib, James Joyce and from committal artists were Dante, Milton, Wordsworth, Sadi, Tolstoy, Yeats, Tagore and Iqbal. According to Malik Eastern critics accept blindly whatever art and views are imported from the West. They accept Shakespeare's Negative Capability and T.S. Eliot's theory of impersonality without giving little thought to it. Shakespeare has written sonnets as well which projects other great dimension of his personality. They do not either recognise the differentiation between the later Eliot and early Eliot. Malik, in order to justify his point of view refutes the critical remarks of Tolstoy that he has hurled on Shakespeare. Tolstoy did not regard Shakespeare even as an average artist. As per him it is perpetual propaganda that has made him attraction of the readers although he was not an artist because an artist needs to have a conscious commitment with his life. Malik does not agree with Tolstoy and by keeping commitment and noncommitment aside he asserts that Shakespeare was a great artist, he would have been either in both the cases whether in the presence of commitment or in its absence(Malik,Surood-e-SahrAafrin:9-11).
Malik rebuts such detractors of Iqbal, whose purpose was to lower down his stature by passing baseless remarks on him without going through his works. They tried to make Iqbal's commitment to Islam as means to prove him narrow sensed and unrealistic. Malik asserts that Iqbal was such a dynamic artist and broadminded personality who produced the character of Devil in 'Jabreel-o-Iblees' and 'NalaiIblees' with sympathy and objectivity. It is Iqbal who wrote about the experience and mature consciousness of Prophet Khizar, he wrote 'Abu Jahal ka Nawha' and Malik also refutes those detractors of Iqbal who consider his poetry merely as a statement and not poetry in true sense. Among these detractors the most prominent is Kaleem-ud-din Ahmad who has written a whole book to prove that Iqbal's poetry is not poetry but merely a message, oration and statement. Malik agrees with his view that Iqbal's poetry is poetry of statement, a message but he also believes it is poetry as well. Malik justifies his view that Iqbal's poetry is not merely a statement but poetry also he writes that the poetry of Dante, Milton, Eliot, Faiz is also a message.
The element of oration (Khitabat) is essential part of world poetry. Eliot has called this oration (Khitabat) the second voice of poetry. It becomes a flaw when its purpose remains merely to influence and attract others and it takes the form of skill if used within the context. The use of oration is made in the dramas of Shakespeare, Milton's Paradise Lost and in the poetry of Iqbal at such places where it was inevitable due to material and subject like the oration of Shakespeare's Othello before he dies, the language which Milton's Satan uses in his speech and the oration used in Iqbal's Shikwa, Jawab-e-Shikwa, Khazir-e-Rah etc., all as per their context were liable to such language. Malik challenges Kaleem-ud-din Ahmad and such critics for composing better poetry or even a couplet than Iqbal's couplet, Shakespeare's couplet, Milton's poetry, Eliot's, Wordsworth's or Shelley's poetry. Malik therefore states that the poetry of statement lies in the poetry of great poets of the world and it cannot be always rejected. It is sometimes a way of stating which creates such enthrall, power and mesmerizing effects that a statement turns into a poetry. No doubt the poetic devices like simile, metaphors etc., instill soul into a verse but if the same poetry is composed without poetic devices then who can deny the miraculous genius of such verses. To illustrate this Malik in one of his books has given the example of certain couplets from above mentioned poets (Malik,Surood-e-SahrAafrin:12-13).
Malik in his paper Iqbal and Rhetoric writes that Iqbal has been constantly accused of being fond of rhetoric by a section of the so called progressive critics. Iqbal's theoretical pronouncements about language and style prove him, almost indisputably, to be nearer to the Romantic and Crocean aesthetic than to the mechanical aesthetic of the rhetoricians. In Iqbal's view 'feeling', 'idea' and 'word' are organically related to one another (Malik, 2009:63-65 (Malik,2009:6). One agrees with his conclusion that Iqbal's rhetoric is no rhetoric at all. It is the masterful use of language by a great artist. Language as per Iqbal is a purposeful and inevitable means of expression. He in a letter wrote that: I do not consider language as an idol to be adored but regard it as purposeful means of expression (Schimmel, 1963: 61 It is pertinent to mention that Nicholson ratifies whatever he has learned from Iqbal and accordingly he advocates the introduction of Iqbal to the world of audience.
Arthur The Mysteries of Selflessness, a translation by Arberry is the projection of Iqbal's concept that if selfhood is developed in isolation from society its end will be then an unmitigated egoism and anarchy. Because Iqbal was not interested merely in the individual and his self-realization, he was equally concerned with the evolution of an ideal society or community as he preferred to call it. It is only as a member of this community that the individual, by the twin principles of conflict and concord, is able to express himself fully and ideally. It is only as an association of self-affirming individuals that the community can come into being and perfect itself. Iqbal thus escapes from Libertariansim by limiting the community's authority, making it a challenge and not an insurmountable obstacle to the individual's self-realization.
Arberry in the preface of The Mysteries of Selflessness has pointed out that the ideas in Asrar-i-Khudi and Rumuz-i-Bekhudi are not particularly new. Not particularly new either is the proposition that Islam is the ideal society.
What is new, and what justifies Iqbal's pretension to be a leader of thought is the application of this philosophical theory of individuality and community to the religiouspolitical dogma that Islam is superior to all other creeds and systems. The propaganda for Islamic unity in modern times has been continuous from the days of Jamal-ud-Din Afghani. Iqbal was one of the latest albeit one of the ablest and most influential of its publicists. He supplied a more or less respectable intellectual basis for a movement which is in reality more emotional than rational.
About Rumuz-i-Bekhudi Arberry views that Iqbal in it states the case for international Islam and to support his view Arberry quotes The Reconstruction of Religious Though in Islam: …every Muslim nation must sink in her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical over lordship. It is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free independent units whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual aspirating. It seems to me that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a league of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members (Iqbal, Reconstruction 159).
Dr. Annemarie Schimmel (1922Schimmel ( -2003 In response to Iqbal's detractors regarding the difficulty in his expressions, Dr. Schimmel tells the story that after her publication of the Turkish-prose translation of the Javid Namah, she received a letter, in very bad Turkish orthography, revealing that the letter writer was an unlearned man; but he expressed his admiration for Iqbal's work, and asked her for more books of his in Turkish translation. Dr. Schimmel writes that the person wrote that: He was a bearer (he wrote "Karson") in a restaurant in a small town of Eastern Anatoliathat seems to be sufficient proof for Iqbal's unquestionable appeal to simple minds too, who do not grasp properly the philosophical implications of his poems but are moved just by the energy they feel, even through the medium of a translation (Schimmel 380).
Philosophy of Iqbal has been considered by some critics merely as poetical and not as a closed-up fixed system, or, even worse, as a simple outburst of Islamic resentment against Western thought, as apology rather than true philosophy. Dr. Schimmel diametrically counters such detractors by commenting on the background of Iqbal's philosophy, she writes: No doubt, Iqbal cannot be understood without the religious background of his homeland. He's firmly rooted in the prophetical tradition of Islam, and in the mystical thought of India. He has struggled against whatever he thought wrong in this mysticism and has rediscovered the personal, dynamic God of Prophetic revelation who is described best not in the abstract philosophy of the lectures but in the poet's deep and pathetic prayers (Schimmel 381).
Dr. Schimmel observes that one should not forget that a difference exists between a scientific philosopher and a prophetic philosopher. Iqbal was certainly of the second type, endowed with an extraordinary capacity for assimilation, and for synthesizing seemingly divergent facts into a new unity that may look, at the first glance, surprising enough, but has, in any case, proved as stimulating formative of the Weltanschauung of Pakistan. among them, those of which the writer is most consciouschiefly the inadequate understanding of Islam and also of the crucial role played in history by ideological and moral factors are corrected as far as possible in the present study" (Smith 210). His ignorance and misconstrues about Iqbal even in his second work goes nowhere and is crystal clear when he says, "Yet Iqbal is so contradictory and unsystematic that it is difficult to assess him. He is the Sufi that attacked Sufism, and perhaps the liberal who attacked liberalism. The historical consequence of his impact seems on the whole to have served to weaken liberalism among Indian Muslims and to help replace it with an illiberal nationalistic and apologist dogmatism"(Smith 210).

Sometimes one gets the impression that Iqbal's study of
Smith's assessment of Iqbal's impact has great weight in it although it cannot be accepted in its totality because Iqbal's influence has not strengthened illiberalism only but encouraged radically liberal thinking among the Muslim intelligentsia also. His observation that Iqbal is unsystematic and contradictory is, however, untenable. Could Smith comprehend the system of Iqbal's thought most of the contradictions would have been resolved. Iqbal was committed to a liberalism which has very little in common with the materialistic and unbridled liberalism known to Smith and his (Iqbal's) Sufism (spiritual purification) was not anti-life and escapism. Iqbal's standpoint of socialism was quite explicit but the fact remains that a mere materialist like Smith cannot appreciate it. A belly-centred world view for which the material alone is real and the mental develops out of it cannot understand the mystique of the spirit. Iqbal saw both the capitalist economy and its socialist version as springing from the womb of materialism.
Another detractor of Iqbal Sir Hamilton Gibb is a Christian writer who criticizes Iqbal on the basis of religion. He, in his book Modern trends in Islam says, "In these days, when we are enveloped in an atmosphere charged with propaganda, it is the duty of every investigator to define precisely to himself and to his audience the principle which determines his point of view. Speaking in the first person, therefore, I make bold claim to say that the metaphor, in which Christian doctrine is traditionally enshined, satisfied me intellectually as expressing the highest rage of spiritual truth which I can conceive"(Gibb xi). Gibb remarks while pointing out that Muslim writers are apologetic, he says, "The outstanding exception is the Indian scholar and poet, Sir Mohammad Iqbal, who in his six lectures on The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam faces outright the question of reformulating the basic ideas of Muslim theology"(Gibb x). Later on in the same book Sir Hamilton Gibb says: "He (Iqbal) aimed to reconstruct the established theology of Islam; but the theology which he attempts to restate is not, in fact, the Sufi theology…Iqbal has tried to refashion thought in terms of Western humanism"(Gibb x) The main charge that Gibb has brought against Iqbal is that he has mistranslated some of the Quranic verses. He says: Throughout the lectures he constantly appeals to Quranic verses in support of his argument. But we cannot help asking ourselves two questions 'Do they mean what Iqbal says they mean'? In one or two instances I suspect actual philological misinterpretations(Gibb 83).
It is not enough to make blindly wild charges even one would expect a scholar like Gibb to quote the verses of the holy Qur'an which he thinks Iqbal has misinterpreted.
Another critic from Oxford, Alfred Gaillaume also wrote on Allama Iqbal in his book on Islam. Describing Iqbal's ideas that Heaven and Hell are states and not localities, Guillaume remarks that it hardly needs saying that all this comes perilously near heresy in Islam (Vahid127).The superficial and little knowledge of Alfred Gaillaume may be obvious when he asserts that the reader can see Iqbal has left the Muslim with some principles based partly on texts which for generations have been interpreted in quite a different way, and partly on Christian thought in modern time (Vahid 127).
It seems Guillaume has read little portion of Iqbal's poetry. However, the western critics have often misinterpreted Iqbal, like the other from American soil J.S. Badean, professor at the University of Cairo. In his book The Lords Between he has written that according to Iqbal the Quran was given as a guide only for the period when modern science was unknown, which is not actually the case, God has sent the holy Quran upon Prophet Mohammad (S.A.W) as guidance for the whole universe till its end.
It was from Iqbal's student days he started to write poetry that received criticism from two schools of thought Delhi Iqbal in refutation to Dr. Dickinson's charges has clearly asserted that he does not believe in brutal force as Dickinson has thought instead he believes in the power of spirit. In response to his another charge Iqbal writes when a people are called to a religious war and it is their duty to obey that call as per his belief but he condemns all wars of conquest. He agreed with the view of Dickinson that wars are destructive whether waged in the interest of truth and Justice or conquest and exploitation; these must be put to an end in any case. On Dickinson's reference to his 'Be Hard' Iqbal provides convincing answer by explaining the significance of maintaining the state of tension or conflict for the cause of evolution in an individual especially his evolution of personal immortality. Nietzsche did not believe in personal immortality, Iqbal on the other side looked upon immortality as the highest aspiration of man on which he should focus all his energies. Iqbal has condemned speculative mysticism and inactive quietism.
Iqbal has agreed with the view of Dickinson that his philosophy is universal but in application he has made it particular and exclusive. In its response Iqbal asserted that for making a humanitarian ideal there was a need of society and he found Islam as the suitable society for this purpose. Iqbal had the greatest love for Islam because of its practical and not patriotic considerations, as Dickinson had thought of that he was compelled to start with a specific society (e.g., Islam) which actually among the societies of the world happens to be the only suitable for his purpose. The spirit of Islam is not exclusive as Dickinson has thought of but in the interest of the unification of mankind the Quran ignores their differences and invites all humanity for unification on what is common to them all.
The Mystic or Sufi detractors of Iqbal are also in huge number. When in Asrar-i-Khudi Sufis saw the critical verses on Persian poet Hafiz they flared-up in rage. Though Iqbal has criticized him on advocating a life of ascetic inaction, which is purely the criticism of literary ideals. Hafiz the greatest lyric poet rightly or wrongly is also esteemed as a great Sufi, whether he was or not is a moot question. The issue was many Sufis took Iqbal's lines on Hafiz as an attack on Sufism and reacted with virulent and vulgar attacks on his poetry and prose. Few of these attackers are Khawaja Hasan Nizami of Dargah Nizamuddi, Delhi and Khan Bahadur Muzaffar Ahmad Fazli, a retired Canal Deputy Collector of the Punjab. They did not understand the theme of Asrar-i-Khudi as neither of them was a great scholar (Vahid 120). There are also critics who appreciated Asrar-i-Khudi, like Dr. Abdul Rehman Bijnori and Hafiz Aslam Jairajpuri. Later in the second edition of Asrar-i-Khudi Iqbal omits the lines he had written on Hafiz and replaced them with new lines in which he explains the rules according to which the literature of a nation must be judged.
However, Iqbal's admiration of Mussolini or his verses about Napoleon have often been misconstrued as a manifestation of a Fascist attitude. In fact, it is his admiration for one particular aspect in the personality of these men-their vitalism and strength of character-and not a blanket adoration of these men. Like the German poet Heine, Iqbal praised even a despot if he expressed the fierce vigor of an untrammeled life-force.