February 27, 2005

DR KANIZ Yusuf was motivated to write this book after listening to Wazir Agha at a seminar in Lahore. What Wazir Agha said about Iqbal was not to her liking. Perhaps that was the moment when she decided to paint Iqbal on a larger canvas according to her own enclaved mind. As she was not happy with the state of affairs in Pakistan, like many others, she discovered a redeemer in Iqbal. So this book, Iqbal aur Asri Masail consistently displays her commitment to Iqbal’s thoughts. In doing so she is not particularly happy with those political thinkers, historians and intellectuals who confront Iqbal on various issues. Taking a clue from Dr Javid Iqbal and agreeing with him, she brackets Marxists with religious obscurantists, the pirs, Qadianis and proponents of Lucknow and Delhi schools of thought, who opposed Iqbal during his lifetime and after his death too.

The book starts with the premise that Iqbal is a great visionary and his thought can jolt the minds of the Muslim nation in general and Muslims of South Asia in particular. It can prove to be a sort of elan vital for a nation which is lying dormant for the last so many centuries. She lashes out at the fatalists who still believe that divine will would rescue the Muslims of the world from the dreadful plight of their own making. In her support she quotes Iqbal: “If he does not take the initiative, if he does not evolve the inner richness of his being, if he ceases to feel the inward push of advancing light, then the spirit within him hardens into stone and he is reduced to the level of dead matter. But his life and the onward march of his spirit depends on the establishment of connections with the reality that confronts him. It is knowledge that establishes these connections and knowledge is sense perception elaborated by understandings.”

What she is quoting is the progressive part of Iqbal. While comparing Greek philosophy with the Muslim theology, Iqbal is appreciative of the inductive method of the Quran which invites you for observation and experimentation vis-a-vis the deductive method which depends only on syllogism and arguments devoid of objectivity.

It is not unusual to see that like a true Muslim the author is proud of the expansion of the Muslim empire which made inroads into Europe, Africa and Asia. This muscle flexing of the imperial powers has been lauded by the respective historians as part of their national and religious sentiments. But she is saddened to see that these mighty empires have fallen and have been lost in the pages of history. In her brief account of Muslim history she talks about the rise and fall of the Arab, Mughal and Ottoman Empires in this context.

All the chapters in this book are indicative of the progressive and rational approach of the author who has no sympathy for Asharites and Ghazali and all the other Shariah schools falling in that category. But in a voluminous book like this when the writer wants to encapsulate the larger panorama of world history, it sometimes becomes difficult to do justice to every subject under the sun. She is shy of confronting Iqbal where he falters and tries to equate socialism and social democracy with Islam and at the same time expresses reservations about modern democracy.

It would not be out of place to mention here that while discussing Hegel’s logic and absolute idea, Lenin points out that if we exclude the absolute idea from Hegel’s philosophy he is a materialist. There it seems to be a great similarity between Iqbal’s accommodation and acceptance of socialism and Lenin’s love for Hegel on the same grounds. Wherever Iqbal includes, Lenin excludes the absolute idea (divinity).

While commenting on most of the political systems of the philosophical schools, Dr Kaniz Yusuf’s attitude is ambivalent. She welcomes the progress made in the USSR after the revolution, but deplores it in the light of Iqbal’s vision and ideology, Iqbal’s poetry and thought contradict each other on the role of democracy in the modern world.

The whole edifice of the book is erected on character building i.e. Iqbal’s concept of the human ego — his freedom and immortality. Iqbal says, “Man marches always onward to receive ever fresh illumination from infinite reality which at every moment appears in a new glory, and the recipient of divine illumination is not a passive recipient. Every act of a free ego creates a new situation and thus offers further opportunities of creative unfolding.”

It is not very strange to note that before Iqbal the concept of ego was introduced by the German philosophers, particularly by Fichte, who discusses ego and non-ego, the two concepts adopted by Iqbal, in detail. When Iqbal says infinite reality which appears in a new glory it sounds similar to the Hegelian reason unfolding itself in an upward spiral in the material world.

Dr Kaniz Yusuf also admires “world historical individuals” who change history, but she has grasped only a fraction of their successful roles on the world stage. It is true that the thought of Iqbal in a particular historical context is a sort of stimulant, but it turns into a sermon because it is devoid of a socio-economic structure. A concept, like democracy, is meaningless without allied structures. You cannot introduce democracy in an unfriendly and barren environment where its seed cannot be planted. When she discusses good governance, democracy and other such institutions, she does not take into consideration their economic and social accompaniments. Raising the nine issues facing Pakistan is not without merit. These she wants to resolve in the light of Iqbal’s thoughts.

In the chapter on current issues, she subscribes to the concept of cultural and geographical division of India and Pakistan even before partition actually took place in 1947. She refers to Aitzaz Ahsan’s book Indus Saga in which this position was reiterated. Even before that Prof Qudratullah Fatimi introduced this cultural and geographical division. According to some researchers Prof Ashfaq Ali Khan was the first person who floated this theory. Dr Yusuf thinks the culture of Pakistan is a synthesis of Asian, Indian and West Asian civilizations.

She has discussed the conflict between a secular and a theocratic state showing disapproval of the clergy and quoting from Quaid’s speeches which support secularization of Pakistani society.

Keeping her focus on Iqbal’s thought, Kaniz Yusuf has presented a manifesto for a progressive and enlightened Pakistan where the people are free to practise their religion and where there is acceptance of free inquiry for the attainment of modern knowledge and where human rights are respected. The area and subjects covered in this book are vast and writing on these complicated issues shows her commitment to knowledge, whether you agree with her or not.

 

Iqbal aur Asri Masail

By Kaniz Fatima Yusuf

Sang-e-Meel Publications, 25 Shahrah-i-Pakistan, Lahore

Tel: 042-7220100

Email: smp@sang-e-meel.com

ISBN 969-35-1670-2568pp. Rs750

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