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24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 1 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
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( 11 Oct 2021, NewAgeIslam.Com)
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Muhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the EventMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event
of Karbala and the Idea of Freedomof Karbala and the Idea of Freedom
By Mohammad Ali, New Age IslamBy Mohammad Ali, New Age Islam
11 October 2021
One Finds an Excellent Blend ofOne Finds an Excellent Blend of
Islamic and Western Philosophy inIslamic and Western Philosophy in
Iqbal’s PoemsIqbal’s Poems
Main Points:Main Points:
1.
!!!
This essay argues that in Islamic philosophical-literary
tradition, parables and symbolism have been significant
devices to convey religious, ethical, and philosophical
ideas to the masses.
2.
!!!
Specifically, it discusses how Iqbal employed the old,
classical symbols, Ishq and ‘Aql, to introduce modern idea
of freedom in Islamic thought.
3.
!!!
Finally, it criticizes modernist approach of tracing every
modern idea back to the early or medieval history of
Islamic tradition.
-----
!
Sir Muhammad Iqbal
------
Symbols and parables are profound literary devices. They
have been with us for centuries, and we still encounter
them in our daily lives. These devices are ingeniously
crafted to express allegorically some religious,
)
Enter keywords
24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 2 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
philosophical, and ethical values and their fundamental
doctrines Not only can messages wrapped in symbols and
parables easily be grasped by the masses but also, they
can be passed down from generation to generation.
Religions, philosophers, and mystics have been using
these devices to instruct people into their systems. Most
of the time, these parables are based on some real
occurrences that have occurred in a certain point of
history. The Quran frequently, yet creatively, uses
historical occurrences to illustrate its teachings. It exhorts
its readers to draw lessons from them. Through an
examination of the Quran’s treatment of historical
parable, one can conclude that history serves an
educational purpose for people. Furthermore, the Quran’s
representation of historical occurrences engendered
symbolism, for example, Moses and Abraham are the
symbols of good and God-fearing beings and Nimrod and
Pharaoh are the representatives of bad and
oppressiveness. The application of symbols to historical
parables in the Quran inspired an entire philosophical-
literary tradition in Islam. Literary masterpieces by
Fariduddīn Attār (d. 1221), Rūmī (d.1273), and others are
excellent examples of this tradition. They not only drew on
the Quran, but also found parables in Islamic history,
creating symbolism in an attempt to inculcate ethical
principles and moral values in their readers. The stories
they told and the meanings they generated persist today
in our memory, culture, and ethical behavior. It is
important to note that in reference to historical
occurrences they did not question the historicity of these
events because their objective was to draw lessons from
them. Such an approach enabled them to engage freely
with historical events and interpret them in the form of
parable or symbols. Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) belonged
to the same philosophical-literary tradition. Since Iqbal
was trained in the modern western philosophical tradition
as well, one finds an excellent blend of Islamic and
western philosophy in Iqbal’s poems. He tried to present
the modern philosophical ideas, such as, self, or k
hudī
,
freedom, or
Hurriyat
, in the language of the tradition he
inherited. Interestingly, the lessons and ideas Iqbal drew
from historical occurrences were inspired by modern
philosophy. Nevertheless, he projected these ideas onto
Islamic history as if they had always been there.
24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 3 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
This essay is an attempt to understand how Iqbal
employed Islamic symbolism to communicate modern
ideas to his community. To do so, I would like to discuss a
Persian poem, Dar Ma’na-e-Hurriyat-e-Islāmiyya wa Sirr-e-
Hāditha-e-Karbalā, of Iqbal published in his philosophical
poetry book, Rumūz-e-Bekhudī (Secrets of Selflessness,
published in 1918). The poem contains 39 couplets. In this
poem, Iqbal revisits the tragedy of Karbala, which
occurred in 680 AD. Before Iqbal, the tragedy of Karbala
was represented in the Islamic tradition as the battle
between good and evil, Hussain being the good and Yazīd
the evil. However, Iqbal portrays the tragedy of Karbala as
the battle for the freedom of consciousness and will, and
as against an oppressive and authoritarian tyrant. In his
depiction of the tragedy, Iqbal employs terminologies
from the mystical tradition of Islam, such as, ‘
ishq
and ‘
aql
to show what Hussain and Yazid signify through their
symbolism.
In Persian mystical tradition of Islam, the metaphor of
‘
ishq
is used to refer to a pure or sublime state of the
belief in
Tawhid
, or oneness of God. ‘
Ishq
, generally
translated as love, requires faithfulness and loyalty from
the lover (‘
āshiq
) towards his beloved (mā’shūq), meaning
that his heart must belong to his beloved only. Mystics
differentiate between ordinary love (‘
ishq
-e-majājī) and
true love (‘
ishq
-e-haqīqī). For mystics, only the Creator is
worthy of His creation’s true love. By drawing an analogy
from the idea of the worldly love, mystics maintain that
one must forsake any bit of attachment to the world in his
heart in order to attain true love of God because two loves
cannot reside in one heart. When one’s heart is cleansed
of worldly attachments and becomes the adobe of true
love, only then does the lover achieve the sublime state of
belief in the oneness of God. The idea of reason (‘
aql
) is
antithetical to the idea of love. The idea of reason
represents the desires for worldly gains, i.e., money,
status, or power.
In his poem, Iqbal slightly alters the meaning of
Ishq
. He
employs the term to express the idea that the submission
of one’s heart, or will, to the One and Supreme Lord frees
the self from the lesser gods of the world. The first
couplet of the poem declares that whoever pledges to
God, his neck is freed from the shackles of every other
god. This submission is identified with ‘
Ishq
in Iqbal’s
poem, meaning that a faithful lover cannot submit his will
24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 4 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
or consciousness to anyone else: worldly lords, tyrants—
otherwise it would be considered a betrayal. As a result,
an ‘
Ashiq
attains a state of true freedom,
Hurriyat
:
freedom of consciousness in Islam. In the next couplet,
Iqbal says that love and faith (‘
īmān
), complement each
other, and that love enables a faithful lover to do
impossible things in order to preserve what he holds dear.
For Iqbal, this is the freedom of mind and consciousness.
Contrary to ‘
Ishq
, is the idea of ‘
Aql
. Like the mystics, Iqbal
also views the two concepts as opposite binaries. While
‘
Ishq
connotes the spiritual, ‘
Aql
signifies the material. The
sole objectives of ‘
Aql
are to obtain material gains. In the
first half of the poem, Iqbal compares ‘
aql
with ‘
Ishq
, and
emphasizes on the merits and demerits of each. It is
important to note that here and in other places in the
mystic tradition, ‘
Aql
is used as a metaphor to refer to a
mind which is deeply anchored to worldly things. After
establishing that ‘
ishq
is submission to one Lord and
freedom from all, and that ‘
aql
is a corrupted desire for
worldly gains, Iqbal asserts that, like Moses and Pharaoh,
Hussain and Yazid are born out of these two forces. In
Iqbal’s symbolism, Yazid is the epitome of ‘
aql
, who
desired power by oppressing the freedom of will of the
masses. Hussain, whom Iqbal once addressed as the
imam, leader of lovers (‘
āshiq
ān) refused to submit to a
tyrant, a worldly lord, since he had already submitted to
the Supreme Lord. Iqbal beautifully articulates the
opposition of an ‘
āshiq
to a tyrant, he says, Except for
Allah, a Muslim submits to no one, and nor does his head
bow to any Pharaoh, i.e., a tyrant. And, in order to
preserve his ‘
Ishq
, Hussain sacrificed himself. His ‘
ishq
allowed him to annihilate himself.
Hussain sacrificed himself for his Hurriyat, for the
freedom of mind and consciousness, and set an example
of resistance against a tyrant and authoritarian ruler.
Iqbal’s utilization of an historical event and mystical
terminologies in order to look for inspiration that must
correspond to his modern mind presents a unique
example of rereading of our past. One can contend that
the projection of present onto the past will prevent us
from seeing the past as it is. The answer to this contention
could be that Iqbal and other philosophers belonging to
the Islamic philosophical-literary tradition do not engage
24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 5 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
with the historicity of events. Rather, they focus on their
capacity for inspiration. Such efforts require extraordinary
creative intelligence.
However, as much as ingenious are the efforts of Iqbal,
this approach is loaded with some epistemological
problems. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
in order to defend Islam and Islamic civilization against
Western modernity, many Muslim modernists argued that
modern ideas, like, human rights, etc., had never been
foreign to Islam. The rereading of Karbala is a great
example of this approach where Iqbal tries to say that the
idea of freedom had been inherited in the idea of the
Oneness of God.
Similarly, long before Iqbal, Syed Ameer Ali (d. 1928), had
argued that Islam had given numerous rights to women,
for instance, right of inheritance, right of seeking a divorce
(Khula’), etc. hundreds of years before the European
Enlightenment. The drawbacks of this approach are: first,
it avoids the hard question, that is, if these ideas, like the
modern concept of freedom, were always present in Islam
why there had always been authoritarian states,
supported and abetted by scholars, in Muslim societies?
Second, it precludes us from acknowledging that we have
been missing so and so in our tradition and that we need
to reform the tradition to make it sensible in modern
times. And to do so, we need to borrow from other
traditions and civilizations.
This acknowledgment not only enables us to appreciate
the good in modern civilization but also makes us realize
that our tradition is an amalgamation of other
civilizations.
Muhammad Iqbal was a modernist. Through his poetry,
he introduced revolutionary and modern ideas to Islamic
tradition and advocated for reform in Islamic thought.
However, his legacy dried up in India due to our
negligence and indifference. We need to revive Iqbal’s
legacy and engage with it creatively and critically to
further the cause of reform in Islamic tradition.
-----
Mohammad Ali has been a madrasa student. He has also participated in a three
years program of the "Madrasa Discourses,” a program for madrasa graduates
initiated by the University of Notre Dame, USA. Currently, he is a PhD Scholar at the
24/07/22, 7:36 PMMuhammad Iqbal’s Reading of the Event of Karbala and the Idea of…ew Age Islam | Islamic News and Views | Moderate Muslims & Islam
Page 6 of 6https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/iqbal-karbala-freedom/d/125553
Copyright © 2008 - 2022. NewAgeIslam All Rights Reserved.
Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His areas of interest
include Muslim intellectual history, Muslim philosophy, Ilm-al-Kalam, Muslim
sectarian conflicts, madrasa discourses.
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