Jinnah was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims

[Devil Soul]

Jinnah was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims
By Yasser Latif Hamdani Published: November 17, 2016

4 CommentsPrintEmail

Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end.

To say Allama Muhammad Iqbal was an extremely complex individual is an understatement. The poet, philosopher and political thinker that Allama Iqbal was, he constantly evolved, or some might argue, regressed in his approach to the idea of a Muslim political identity and how it translated politically.

Iqbal was, at various times, a Muslim modernist (he endorsed the founding of secular Turkish republic as a seminal event in Islamic history), a Muslim reformer (his lectures compiled as the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam show the breadth of his reformist vision) and an uncompromising Islamist believing in theological unity and purity of the Muslim community (his views towards the Ahmadis towards the end of his life are an indication of this).

The undercurrent of Islamic identity was always evident in Iqbal’s poetic endeavours. It is important to place him, for after all a person is a product of his social and material conditions. Mirza Ghalib was the poet of Muslim political decline and embodied the despondence of the Delhi’s Ashrafia at the loss of political power. Iqbal was the poet of Muslim resurgence and revival embodying the growing aspirations of a nascent Muslim middle class. His poetic classics Shikwa, the lament, and Jawab-e-Shikwa, the response to the lament, encapsulate his thinking from very early on.

The idea of the loss of Muslim political power had been the preoccupation of many modernists amongst Muslims, most notably Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A recurring theme in this line of thinking was the idea of ‘theft’ – worldly progress and glory was the inheritance of the Muslims stolen from them by the West. In the lament and its response, Iqbal strongly emphasises this theme. His solution was a subtle departure from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Whereas Sir Syed Ahmad Khan only exhorted the Muslims to edify themselves with western education, Iqbal pointedly refers to the failure of Muslims to live by Quran, which he argues the West has already done. He also denounces mindless aping of the west by pointing out that Muslims dress and act like the Christians and Jews, while Christians and Jews have internalised the lessons of the Quran. This idea took a life of its own.

Iqbal’s earlier outlook on Muslim identity was decidedly inclusive rather than exclusive. This explains his close ties to the Ahmadi community and his effusive praise for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of that sect (such was his closeness that there is speculation that Iqbal had converted to Ahmadi beliefs at one point in his life).

By the 1930s, however, Iqbal’s views seem to have undergone a sea change. Iqbal argued for a separate status for Ahmadis as a religious community. In his essay, Islam and Ahmadism, a rejoinder to Nehru’s articles on the subject, Iqbal exposes his basic anxiety; solidarity of Islam and the danger impacting it by the ideas propounded by Ahmadism. Arguing that the founder of Ahmadism, who he had praised earlier, may have heard a voice, he puts it down to spiritual impoverishment of the Muslim people. He proceeds to vilify Ahmadis as pre-Islamic Magianism which takes on – or steals – the important externals of Islam.

The idea of theft comes into play. Iqbal argues that the finality of prophethood is the key to establishing Muslim solidarity and that Ahmadis, by denying this tenet, would cause the pre-Islamic Magian condition where societies would be broken down and recast in a new light. As a corollary of this argument Allama Iqbal goes on to argue against religious tolerance or the state’s indifference towards being “harmful” to religious communities. In other words, Iqbal was opposed to absolute religious freedom.

Therefore modern historians of thought in Pakistan must grapple with the fundamental discord between Iqbal’s ideas and Jinnah’s vision both of Muslim solidarity and religious freedom. Jinnah as the leader of the All India Muslim League repeatedly ruled out the idea that Ahmadis could not join it. Contrary to Iqbal’s view of Muslim solidarity emanating out of theological consensus, Jinnah’s test was simple: if a person professed to be a Muslim, he was welcome in the Muslim League.

This became a major point of contention in Punjab, where elements in the Punjab Muslim League wanted to exclude Ahmadis from the Muslim League on the ground that Ahmadis were non-Muslims. Simultaneously Jinnah was attacked by pro-Congress Islamic parties like Majlis-e-Ahrar and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) for his tolerance of Ahmadis in the Muslim League. However Jinnah did not budge from his principled position on the issue, going so far as to call such theological and sectarian issues as a danger to Muslim unity.

Similarly, Jinnah was a lifelong advocate of the state’s neutrality in matters of religion – an idea which Iqbal considered as problematic. Throughout the Pakistan movement Jinnah promised freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the future state of Pakistan and on August 11, 1947, as the founder of the country, he made his policy plain once again in that memorable address. Jinnah was also wary of theological issues creeping into political discourse. He understood that the question of who is a Muslim would open up a Pandora’s Box where everyone would be fair game, including his own Shia community. He therefore tiptoed carefully around Iqbal’s ideas which he disagreed with, never endorsing them.

The All India Muslim League itself had utilised Allama Iqbal selectively. They had pointed to his address in Allahabad in 1930 as having laid the foundations of Pakistan. On his part, Iqbal had realised the importance of winning over Jinnah and had written a series of letters in 1936 and 1937 asking Jinnah to take up the cause of Muslims in North-West India and to ignore Muslim minorities in the rest of India.

How influential were these letters in Jinnah’s eventual transformation from ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity to an apostle of Muslim separatism, is a matter for a historian to determine. What we do know, however, is that these letters were long forgotten until Muhammad Sharif Toosi chanced upon them in Jinnah’s personal library. When these were published in the 1940s, Jinnah wrote in the preface that he had not saved his replies to these letters and therefore the famed Iqbal-Jinnah correspondence would remain incomplete. As an amateur biographer of Jinnah, I find it very strange because Jinnah usually saved his replies.

Jinnah in any event was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims. They had not seen eye-to-eye during the Round Table Conferences in England. Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end. Iqbal told Nehru in his last days,

“What is common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician and you are a patriot.” (Nehru mentions this in his book Discovery of India).

These differences are very conveniently swept under the rug by our ideologues who want to concoct the false equation “Iqbal+Jinnah=Pakistan”.

In fact Iqbal has long trumped Jinnah in Pakistan. Pakistan of today, a befuddling religious state that has taken upon itself the burden of spiritual wellbeing of its people is precisely the kind of state Iqbal, the theocrat, had in mind and precisely the kind of state Jinnah, the democrat, wanted to avoid. A great part of the blame, however, lies with Jinnah himself for not having disavowed more clearly Iqbal and his ilk who he took on his fellow travellers in his political struggle to his own detriment.



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Yasser Latif Hamdani
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He tweets as @theRealYLH (twitter.com/therealylh)

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The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of The Express Tribune.

 

[Kompromat]

Total distortion of history by this notorious blogger.

 

[war&peace]

Total distortion of history by this notorious blogger.

The title is a clickbait but it is contrary to the historical facts.
Though the author gives the indication from the very first paragraph of the article in which direction it is headed, it becomes evidently clear in paragraph 5 that pain in his rear end is about Iqbal's change of stance about Qadiyaniat. Though the author very vociferously and preposterously highlights the change Iqbal's opinion about Mirza Qadiyani, he carefully and dishonestly chooses to ignore to discuss the change of Mirza Qadiyani’s stance about his stature.
Mirza Qadyani started as a normal scholar, indulged in debates with Christian missionaries that made him famous and popular among Muslims so much so that none of Muslim scholars of the time objected. Encouraged by this popularity and support of British govt, he declared himself to be the Mujadid of the modern times…It raised some eye-brows but his popularity had become ubiquitous by that time and he had full support of the govt. Many people including Iqbal became enchanted with his new style and way of preaching so they started to praise him. That was the time when only few could oppose him. That was the opportune for Mirza Qadiyani to declare himself as Mehdi….now that was a clear transgression and most of the Muslim scholar spoke against him and many issued fatwas against him. But many Muslim who were not so literate religiously kept following him. But then to complete the agenda of his masters, he finally declared himself to be Prophet Christ and the last messenger and that was the eye opener for many Muslims and then Iqbal realised his true face and opposed this traitor and apostate. So that was how not only Iqbal but thousands of Muslims changed their opinion about this goon.

Thus we see today a lot of grouping within Qadiyaniat, some consider him only the mujadid, some consider him Mehdi while the most devoted believe he was a messenger.

 

[graphican]

Writer is wrong on two fronts.

• Iqbal was infect pan-Islamic, read his verse which asks Muslims to unite from the river Nile to the city of Kashghar to guard the sanctity of Harm. Iqbal was pro-Otomon Empire wishing unity of Muslims.
• Writer assumes Jinnah wasn't Iqbal's first choice, without mentioning who was his first choice then? As a matter of fact, Jinnah came to India on the invitation of Allama Iqbal the fist place.

Now what is the intention of this writer? Before questioning his knowledge, I would question his intent first. What is his intellectual "vector" where he wants to take his readers?

• Is he trying to undermine Iqbal?
• Is he trying to undermine Jinnah?
• So what service to Nation would either of his above goals serve? None?
• What would he get as a result? Something? Some fame? Some invitations in the world to talk about his mental abortions? Some personal gains?

 

[django]

Jinnah was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims
By Yasser Latif Hamdani Published: November 17, 2016

4 CommentsPrintEmail

Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end.

To say Allama Muhammad Iqbal was an extremely complex individual is an understatement. The poet, philosopher and political thinker that Allama Iqbal was, he constantly evolved, or some might argue, regressed in his approach to the idea of a Muslim political identity and how it translated politically.

Iqbal was, at various times, a Muslim modernist (he endorsed the founding of secular Turkish republic as a seminal event in Islamic history), a Muslim reformer (his lectures compiled as the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam show the breadth of his reformist vision) and an uncompromising Islamist believing in theological unity and purity of the Muslim community (his views towards the Ahmadis towards the end of his life are an indication of this).

The undercurrent of Islamic identity was always evident in Iqbal’s poetic endeavours. It is important to place him, for after all a person is a product of his social and material conditions. Mirza Ghalib was the poet of Muslim political decline and embodied the despondence of the Delhi’s Ashrafia at the loss of political power. Iqbal was the poet of Muslim resurgence and revival embodying the growing aspirations of a nascent Muslim middle class. His poetic classics Shikwa, the lament, and Jawab-e-Shikwa, the response to the lament, encapsulate his thinking from very early on.

The idea of the loss of Muslim political power had been the preoccupation of many modernists amongst Muslims, most notably Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A recurring theme in this line of thinking was the idea of ‘theft’ – worldly progress and glory was the inheritance of the Muslims stolen from them by the West. In the lament and its response, Iqbal strongly emphasises this theme. His solution was a subtle departure from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Whereas Sir Syed Ahmad Khan only exhorted the Muslims to edify themselves with western education, Iqbal pointedly refers to the failure of Muslims to live by Quran, which he argues the West has already done. He also denounces mindless aping of the west by pointing out that Muslims dress and act like the Christians and Jews, while Christians and Jews have internalised the lessons of the Quran. This idea took a life of its own.

Iqbal’s earlier outlook on Muslim identity was decidedly inclusive rather than exclusive. This explains his close ties to the Ahmadi community and his effusive praise for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of that sect (such was his closeness that there is speculation that Iqbal had converted to Ahmadi beliefs at one point in his life).

By the 1930s, however, Iqbal’s views seem to have undergone a sea change. Iqbal argued for a separate status for Ahmadis as a religious community. In his essay, Islam and Ahmadism, a rejoinder to Nehru’s articles on the subject, Iqbal exposes his basic anxiety; solidarity of Islam and the danger impacting it by the ideas propounded by Ahmadism. Arguing that the founder of Ahmadism, who he had praised earlier, may have heard a voice, he puts it down to spiritual impoverishment of the Muslim people. He proceeds to vilify Ahmadis as pre-Islamic Magianism which takes on – or steals – the important externals of Islam.

The idea of theft comes into play. Iqbal argues that the finality of prophethood is the key to establishing Muslim solidarity and that Ahmadis, by denying this tenet, would cause the pre-Islamic Magian condition where societies would be broken down and recast in a new light. As a corollary of this argument Allama Iqbal goes on to argue against religious tolerance or the state’s indifference towards being “harmful” to religious communities. In other words, Iqbal was opposed to absolute religious freedom.

Therefore modern historians of thought in Pakistan must grapple with the fundamental discord between Iqbal’s ideas and Jinnah’s vision both of Muslim solidarity and religious freedom. Jinnah as the leader of the All India Muslim League repeatedly ruled out the idea that Ahmadis could not join it. Contrary to Iqbal’s view of Muslim solidarity emanating out of theological consensus, Jinnah’s test was simple: if a person professed to be a Muslim, he was welcome in the Muslim League.

This became a major point of contention in Punjab, where elements in the Punjab Muslim League wanted to exclude Ahmadis from the Muslim League on the ground that Ahmadis were non-Muslims. Simultaneously Jinnah was attacked by pro-Congress Islamic parties like Majlis-e-Ahrar and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) for his tolerance of Ahmadis in the Muslim League. However Jinnah did not budge from his principled position on the issue, going so far as to call such theological and sectarian issues as a danger to Muslim unity.

Similarly, Jinnah was a lifelong advocate of the state’s neutrality in matters of religion – an idea which Iqbal considered as problematic. Throughout the Pakistan movement Jinnah promised freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the future state of Pakistan and on August 11, 1947, as the founder of the country, he made his policy plain once again in that memorable address. Jinnah was also wary of theological issues creeping into political discourse. He understood that the question of who is a Muslim would open up a Pandora’s Box where everyone would be fair game, including his own Shia community. He therefore tiptoed carefully around Iqbal’s ideas which he disagreed with, never endorsing them.

The All India Muslim League itself had utilised Allama Iqbal selectively. They had pointed to his address in Allahabad in 1930 as having laid the foundations of Pakistan. On his part, Iqbal had realised the importance of winning over Jinnah and had written a series of letters in 1936 and 1937 asking Jinnah to take up the cause of Muslims in North-West India and to ignore Muslim minorities in the rest of India.

How influential were these letters in Jinnah’s eventual transformation from ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity to an apostle of Muslim separatism, is a matter for a historian to determine. What we do know, however, is that these letters were long forgotten until Muhammad Sharif Toosi chanced upon them in Jinnah’s personal library. When these were published in the 1940s, Jinnah wrote in the preface that he had not saved his replies to these letters and therefore the famed Iqbal-Jinnah correspondence would remain incomplete. As an amateur biographer of Jinnah, I find it very strange because Jinnah usually saved his replies.

Jinnah in any event was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims. They had not seen eye-to-eye during the Round Table Conferences in England. Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end. Iqbal told Nehru in his last days,

“What is common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician and you are a patriot.” (Nehru mentions this in his book Discovery of India).

These differences are very conveniently swept under the rug by our ideologues who want to concoct the false equation “Iqbal+Jinnah=Pakistan”.

In fact Iqbal has long trumped Jinnah in Pakistan. Pakistan of today, a befuddling religious state that has taken upon itself the burden of spiritual wellbeing of its people is precisely the kind of state Iqbal, the theocrat, had in mind and precisely the kind of state Jinnah, the democrat, wanted to avoid. A great part of the blame, however, lies with Jinnah himself for not having disavowed more clearly Iqbal and his ilk who he took on his fellow travellers in his political struggle to his own detriment.



4 CommentsPrintEmail
on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

Yasser Latif Hamdani
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He tweets as @theRealYLH (twitter.com/therealylh)

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The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of The Express Tribune.

This Hamdani chap is a well know BS artist.

 

[Pandora]

WTF ?? Just shows how blogger wants to distort history just to staisfy his own personal belief about ahmedis.

 

[GreenFalcon]

People think writing crap like this will somehow undo Pakistan or affect the mindsets of the masses

"There is no Power on earth that can undo Pakistan"~~ Muhammad Ali Jinnah

“I want to make it clear to all the enemies of Pakistan, that Pakistan has always been strong and today it has become invincible.”~~ General Raheel Shareef

 

[SQ8]

None of it is factual and it seems to one of many such articulate but absolutely baseless articles written by a particular religious community which not operates less as a community and more as an organised occult trying to push its agenda. The fact that the community in itself as vague in its approach and generally likes to use slow sipping to bring new converts to their religious beliefs is in itself an indicator of them being fearful of initial rejection.

Interestingly, he has some factual ideas in it as Iqbal was interested in Mirza Qadiyani's more balanced and moderate views (he was actually hailed as a very promising and intelligent reformist scholar before he jumped the track and went full Prophet). Once Iqbal did find out however, he was fairly aghast and completely rejected the man( Justice Javed has written about it)

A very good analogy to Qadiyani sect is Scientology; they both operate in similar ways and have created a myth of complexity in their ideas which technically are pretty blase. Without the idea of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiyani being a prophet or messenger; there is actually nothing special or otherwise about the community and its teachings that does not already exist in various offshoots of Sufi teachings.

 

[MastanKhan]

Jinnah was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims
By Yasser Latif Hamdani Published: November 17, 2016

4 CommentsPrintEmail

Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end.

To say Allama Muhammad Iqbal was an extremely complex individual is an understatement. The poet, philosopher and political thinker that Allama Iqbal was, he constantly evolved, or some might argue, regressed in his approach to the idea of a Muslim political identity and how it translated politically.

Iqbal was, at various times, a Muslim modernist (he endorsed the founding of secular Turkish republic as a seminal event in Islamic history), a Muslim reformer (his lectures compiled as the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam show the breadth of his reformist vision) and an uncompromising Islamist believing in theological unity and purity of the Muslim community (his views towards the Ahmadis towards the end of his life are an indication of this).

The undercurrent of Islamic identity was always evident in Iqbal’s poetic endeavours. It is important to place him, for after all a person is a product of his social and material conditions. Mirza Ghalib was the poet of Muslim political decline and embodied the despondence of the Delhi’s Ashrafia at the loss of political power. Iqbal was the poet of Muslim resurgence and revival embodying the growing aspirations of a nascent Muslim middle class. His poetic classics Shikwa, the lament, and Jawab-e-Shikwa, the response to the lament, encapsulate his thinking from very early on.

The idea of the loss of Muslim political power had been the preoccupation of many modernists amongst Muslims, most notably Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A recurring theme in this line of thinking was the idea of ‘theft’ – worldly progress and glory was the inheritance of the Muslims stolen from them by the West. In the lament and its response, Iqbal strongly emphasises this theme. His solution was a subtle departure from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Whereas Sir Syed Ahmad Khan only exhorted the Muslims to edify themselves with western education, Iqbal pointedly refers to the failure of Muslims to live by Quran, which he argues the West has already done. He also denounces mindless aping of the west by pointing out that Muslims dress and act like the Christians and Jews, while Christians and Jews have internalised the lessons of the Quran. This idea took a life of its own.

Iqbal’s earlier outlook on Muslim identity was decidedly inclusive rather than exclusive. This explains his close ties to the Ahmadi community and his effusive praise for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of that sect (such was his closeness that there is speculation that Iqbal had converted to Ahmadi beliefs at one point in his life).

By the 1930s, however, Iqbal’s views seem to have undergone a sea change. Iqbal argued for a separate status for Ahmadis as a religious community. In his essay, Islam and Ahmadism, a rejoinder to Nehru’s articles on the subject, Iqbal exposes his basic anxiety; solidarity of Islam and the danger impacting it by the ideas propounded by Ahmadism. Arguing that the founder of Ahmadism, who he had praised earlier, may have heard a voice, he puts it down to spiritual impoverishment of the Muslim people. He proceeds to vilify Ahmadis as pre-Islamic Magianism which takes on – or steals – the important externals of Islam.

The idea of theft comes into play. Iqbal argues that the finality of prophethood is the key to establishing Muslim solidarity and that Ahmadis, by denying this tenet, would cause the pre-Islamic Magian condition where societies would be broken down and recast in a new light. As a corollary of this argument Allama Iqbal goes on to argue against religious tolerance or the state’s indifference towards being “harmful” to religious communities. In other words, Iqbal was opposed to absolute religious freedom.

Therefore modern historians of thought in Pakistan must grapple with the fundamental discord between Iqbal’s ideas and Jinnah’s vision both of Muslim solidarity and religious freedom. Jinnah as the leader of the All India Muslim League repeatedly ruled out the idea that Ahmadis could not join it. Contrary to Iqbal’s view of Muslim solidarity emanating out of theological consensus, Jinnah’s test was simple: if a person professed to be a Muslim, he was welcome in the Muslim League.

This became a major point of contention in Punjab, where elements in the Punjab Muslim League wanted to exclude Ahmadis from the Muslim League on the ground that Ahmadis were non-Muslims. Simultaneously Jinnah was attacked by pro-Congress Islamic parties like Majlis-e-Ahrar and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) for his tolerance of Ahmadis in the Muslim League. However Jinnah did not budge from his principled position on the issue, going so far as to call such theological and sectarian issues as a danger to Muslim unity.

Similarly, Jinnah was a lifelong advocate of the state’s neutrality in matters of religion – an idea which Iqbal considered as problematic. Throughout the Pakistan movement Jinnah promised freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the future state of Pakistan and on August 11, 1947, as the founder of the country, he made his policy plain once again in that memorable address. Jinnah was also wary of theological issues creeping into political discourse. He understood that the question of who is a Muslim would open up a Pandora’s Box where everyone would be fair game, including his own Shia community. He therefore tiptoed carefully around Iqbal’s ideas which he disagreed with, never endorsing them.

The All India Muslim League itself had utilised Allama Iqbal selectively. They had pointed to his address in Allahabad in 1930 as having laid the foundations of Pakistan. On his part, Iqbal had realised the importance of winning over Jinnah and had written a series of letters in 1936 and 1937 asking Jinnah to take up the cause of Muslims in North-West India and to ignore Muslim minorities in the rest of India.

How influential were these letters in Jinnah’s eventual transformation from ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity to an apostle of Muslim separatism, is a matter for a historian to determine. What we do know, however, is that these letters were long forgotten until Muhammad Sharif Toosi chanced upon them in Jinnah’s personal library. When these were published in the 1940s, Jinnah wrote in the preface that he had not saved his replies to these letters and therefore the famed Iqbal-Jinnah correspondence would remain incomplete. As an amateur biographer of Jinnah, I find it very strange because Jinnah usually saved his replies.

Jinnah in any event was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims. They had not seen eye-to-eye during the Round Table Conferences in England. Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end. Iqbal told Nehru in his last days,

“What is common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician and you are a patriot.” (Nehru mentions this in his book Discovery of India).

These differences are very conveniently swept under the rug by our ideologues who want to concoct the false equation “Iqbal+Jinnah=Pakistan”.

In fact Iqbal has long trumped Jinnah in Pakistan. Pakistan of today, a befuddling religious state that has taken upon itself the burden of spiritual wellbeing of its people is precisely the kind of state Iqbal, the theocrat, had in mind and precisely the kind of state Jinnah, the democrat, wanted to avoid. A great part of the blame, however, lies with Jinnah himself for not having disavowed more clearly Iqbal and his ilk who he took on his fellow travellers in his political struggle to his own detriment.



4 CommentsPrintEmail
on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

Yasser Latif Hamdani
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He tweets as @theRealYLH (twitter.com/therealylh)

• RSS Feed

The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of The Express Tribune.

Hi,

You cannot stop dogs from barking----.

 

[war&peace]

Hi,

You cannot stop dogs from barking----.

But sir, they are too late...now Pakistan is a reality and it is here to stay...the nation that has survived the worst 4th gen war, is not going anywhere

 

[I.R.A]

Pakistan of today, a befuddling religious state that has taken upon itself the burden of spiritual wellbeing of its people is precisely the kind of state Iqbal, the theocrat, had in mind and precisely the kind of state Jinnah, the democrat, wanted to avoid.

This is a very dangerous statement .............. if one starts believing the ideas of this author he could then develop an idea of who is (was) whose disciple in later years of Pakistan. If I evaluate this statement today I can even apply it in context of us and TTP.

And apparently there were two Mahdi operating approximately in the same time period in Muslim world one in then India and one in Sudan (Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah), may be it was presence of the latter that may have made the Indian one to go a further up in the ranking and claim to be Jesus. And I don't know what stopped Jamal ud Deen Afghani for claiming to be one but I have read he encouraged Mahdi of Sudan to claim Mahdiship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad#Announcement_of_the_Mahdiyya

 

[SQ8]

This is a very dangerous statement .............. if one starts believing the ideas of this author he could then develop an idea of who is (was) whose disciple in later years of Pakistan. If I evaluate this statement today I can even apply it in context of us and TTP.

And apparently there were two Mahdi operating approximately in the same time period in Muslim world one in then India and one in Sudan (Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah), may be it was presence of the latter that may have made the Indian one to go a further up in the ranking and claim to be Jesus. And I don't know what stopped Jamal ud Deen Afghani for claiming to be one but I have read he encouraged Mahdi of Sudan to claim Mahdiship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ahmad#Announcement_of_the_Mahdiyya

There is currently one operating in Pakistan by the name of Gohar Shahi.
The Sudanese Mahdi was working against the British so they waged war against him, the one in India was working with them so he was their patron saint.

 

[I.R.A]

There is currently one operating in Pakistan by the name of Gohar Shahi.
The Sudanese Mahdi was working against the British so they waged war against him, the one in India was working with them so he was their patron saint.

Gohar Shahi ............... did he ever claim to be Mahdi, honestly I didn't even know this name I have google searched him after you mentioned him, apparently the search suggests he was an industrialist turned Sufi and then exiled from Pakistan. Renowned Qawals praised him.

The debate of Mahdiship is difficult one, what I understood from whatever little I read about Jamal Afghani ..... he promoted the idea that any Muslim in difficult times can be a Mahdi ............ going by that I can safely say that both Iqbal and Jinnah were Mahdi of their time, guiding Muslims of a region for a just cause. (I will have to refer Blasphemy laws now)

 

[HAIDER]

Jinnah was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims
By Yasser Latif Hamdani Published: November 17, 2016

4 CommentsPrintEmail

Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end.

To say Allama Muhammad Iqbal was an extremely complex individual is an understatement. The poet, philosopher and political thinker that Allama Iqbal was, he constantly evolved, or some might argue, regressed in his approach to the idea of a Muslim political identity and how it translated politically.

Iqbal was, at various times, a Muslim modernist (he endorsed the founding of secular Turkish republic as a seminal event in Islamic history), a Muslim reformer (his lectures compiled as the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam show the breadth of his reformist vision) and an uncompromising Islamist believing in theological unity and purity of the Muslim community (his views towards the Ahmadis towards the end of his life are an indication of this).

The undercurrent of Islamic identity was always evident in Iqbal’s poetic endeavours. It is important to place him, for after all a person is a product of his social and material conditions. Mirza Ghalib was the poet of Muslim political decline and embodied the despondence of the Delhi’s Ashrafia at the loss of political power. Iqbal was the poet of Muslim resurgence and revival embodying the growing aspirations of a nascent Muslim middle class. His poetic classics Shikwa, the lament, and Jawab-e-Shikwa, the response to the lament, encapsulate his thinking from very early on.

The idea of the loss of Muslim political power had been the preoccupation of many modernists amongst Muslims, most notably Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. A recurring theme in this line of thinking was the idea of ‘theft’ – worldly progress and glory was the inheritance of the Muslims stolen from them by the West. In the lament and its response, Iqbal strongly emphasises this theme. His solution was a subtle departure from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Whereas Sir Syed Ahmad Khan only exhorted the Muslims to edify themselves with western education, Iqbal pointedly refers to the failure of Muslims to live by Quran, which he argues the West has already done. He also denounces mindless aping of the west by pointing out that Muslims dress and act like the Christians and Jews, while Christians and Jews have internalised the lessons of the Quran. This idea took a life of its own.

Iqbal’s earlier outlook on Muslim identity was decidedly inclusive rather than exclusive. This explains his close ties to the Ahmadi community and his effusive praise for Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of that sect (such was his closeness that there is speculation that Iqbal had converted to Ahmadi beliefs at one point in his life).

By the 1930s, however, Iqbal’s views seem to have undergone a sea change. Iqbal argued for a separate status for Ahmadis as a religious community. In his essay, Islam and Ahmadism, a rejoinder to Nehru’s articles on the subject, Iqbal exposes his basic anxiety; solidarity of Islam and the danger impacting it by the ideas propounded by Ahmadism. Arguing that the founder of Ahmadism, who he had praised earlier, may have heard a voice, he puts it down to spiritual impoverishment of the Muslim people. He proceeds to vilify Ahmadis as pre-Islamic Magianism which takes on – or steals – the important externals of Islam.

The idea of theft comes into play. Iqbal argues that the finality of prophethood is the key to establishing Muslim solidarity and that Ahmadis, by denying this tenet, would cause the pre-Islamic Magian condition where societies would be broken down and recast in a new light. As a corollary of this argument Allama Iqbal goes on to argue against religious tolerance or the state’s indifference towards being “harmful” to religious communities. In other words, Iqbal was opposed to absolute religious freedom.

Therefore modern historians of thought in Pakistan must grapple with the fundamental discord between Iqbal’s ideas and Jinnah’s vision both of Muslim solidarity and religious freedom. Jinnah as the leader of the All India Muslim League repeatedly ruled out the idea that Ahmadis could not join it. Contrary to Iqbal’s view of Muslim solidarity emanating out of theological consensus, Jinnah’s test was simple: if a person professed to be a Muslim, he was welcome in the Muslim League.

This became a major point of contention in Punjab, where elements in the Punjab Muslim League wanted to exclude Ahmadis from the Muslim League on the ground that Ahmadis were non-Muslims. Simultaneously Jinnah was attacked by pro-Congress Islamic parties like Majlis-e-Ahrar and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) for his tolerance of Ahmadis in the Muslim League. However Jinnah did not budge from his principled position on the issue, going so far as to call such theological and sectarian issues as a danger to Muslim unity.

Similarly, Jinnah was a lifelong advocate of the state’s neutrality in matters of religion – an idea which Iqbal considered as problematic. Throughout the Pakistan movement Jinnah promised freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the future state of Pakistan and on August 11, 1947, as the founder of the country, he made his policy plain once again in that memorable address. Jinnah was also wary of theological issues creeping into political discourse. He understood that the question of who is a Muslim would open up a Pandora’s Box where everyone would be fair game, including his own Shia community. He therefore tiptoed carefully around Iqbal’s ideas which he disagreed with, never endorsing them.

The All India Muslim League itself had utilised Allama Iqbal selectively. They had pointed to his address in Allahabad in 1930 as having laid the foundations of Pakistan. On his part, Iqbal had realised the importance of winning over Jinnah and had written a series of letters in 1936 and 1937 asking Jinnah to take up the cause of Muslims in North-West India and to ignore Muslim minorities in the rest of India.

How influential were these letters in Jinnah’s eventual transformation from ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity to an apostle of Muslim separatism, is a matter for a historian to determine. What we do know, however, is that these letters were long forgotten until Muhammad Sharif Toosi chanced upon them in Jinnah’s personal library. When these were published in the 1940s, Jinnah wrote in the preface that he had not saved his replies to these letters and therefore the famed Iqbal-Jinnah correspondence would remain incomplete. As an amateur biographer of Jinnah, I find it very strange because Jinnah usually saved his replies.

Jinnah in any event was not Iqbal’s first choice to lead the Muslims. They had not seen eye-to-eye during the Round Table Conferences in England. Apparently their relationship was not free of rancour even in the end. Iqbal told Nehru in his last days,

“What is common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician and you are a patriot.” (Nehru mentions this in his book Discovery of India).

These differences are very conveniently swept under the rug by our ideologues who want to concoct the false equation “Iqbal+Jinnah=Pakistan”.

In fact Iqbal has long trumped Jinnah in Pakistan. Pakistan of today, a befuddling religious state that has taken upon itself the burden of spiritual wellbeing of its people is precisely the kind of state Iqbal, the theocrat, had in mind and precisely the kind of state Jinnah, the democrat, wanted to avoid. A great part of the blame, however, lies with Jinnah himself for not having disavowed more clearly Iqbal and his ilk who he took on his fellow travellers in his political struggle to his own detriment.



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Yasser Latif Hamdani
The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He tweets as @theRealYLH (twitter.com/therealylh)

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The views expressed by the writer and the reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of The Express Tribune.

He has right to remove Jinnah pic from his office and hoist Iqbal picture. ..nothing else. .

None of it is factual and it seems to one of many such articulate but absolutely baseless articles written by a particular religious community which not operates less as a community and more as an organised occult trying to push its agenda. The fact that the community in itself as vague in its approach and generally likes to use slow sipping to bring new converts to their religious beliefs is in itself an indicator of them being fearful of initial rejection.

Interestingly, he has some factual ideas in it as Iqbal was interested in Mirza Qadiyani's more balanced and moderate views (he was actually hailed as a very promising and intelligent reformist scholar before he jumped the track and went full Prophet). Once Iqbal did find out however, he was fairly aghast and completely rejected the man( Justice Javed has written about it)

A very good analogy to Qadiyani sect is Scientology; they both operate in similar ways and have created a myth of complexity in their ideas which technically are pretty blase. Without the idea of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed Qadiyani being a prophet or messenger; there is actually nothing special or otherwise about the community and its teachings that does not already exist in various offshoots of Sufi teachings.

More smell of tahrek e fateh type.

 

[Arsalan]

Does the article provide who that intended first choice was? Not really interested in wasting my time on such things but if there is a strong argument then i will like to read it.

Will appreciate if someone can help me with this.


Regards!