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Old Tuesday, July 19, 2011
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Iqbal’s Concept of an Islamic State


Allama Iqbal’s greatness as a versatile poet and his originality and profoundity as a renowned thinker can never be denied in any age of human thought and philosophy. His greatness in these fields can attract no controversy. The eternal presence of the Poet of the East in Pakistan is felt with deep reverence and respect more than a visionary poet or merely an academic philosopher. He is the creator of the very conception of the state of Pakistan. The birth of Pakistan, as an independent Islamic state, on the map of globe, had many causes but name so potent as the one that has reference to the vision which Iqbal had about the political future of the Indian Muslims.


Field Marshal Muhammad Ayub Khan, the former President of Pakistan, said, “It is common fallacy to believe that the concept of Pakistan was formed in a poet’s dream. The poet, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, was no idle dreamer. Nor can countries like Pakistan, 364737 square miles; population 80,000,000 spring from the nebulous realm of poetry alone. Iqbal was in fact a philosopher of traditional as well as modern thought who had made a careful study of human affairs, both of East and West, and focused the light of his inquiry on the causes of economic and cultural subjugation to which the Muslims of India had been systematically subjected since their first abortive struggle for independence in 1857. It was in his presidential address at the annual session of All-India Muslim League in 1930 that he spelt out the broad outlines of a plan under which the Muslims of India were led to aspire to an independent state in which they would be free to follow their own way of life.”


Allama Iqbal in the name of Ijtehad, strongly defended his idea of the creation of Muslim Empire within the sub-continent of India, which was very akin to its approximation to the Western conception of the term “state”, purely as an interim and transitional phase of the growth of universal brotherhood of man. Khawaja Abdur Rahim was of the view that Universal brotherhood is an ideal good for human evolution which Islam came to establish, and the symbol of which phenomenon every year is held aloft by Islam for the rest of the world to see on the day of pilgrimage at Mecca, when millions of Muslims coming from distant parts of the world congregate, in the presence of One God, and stand shoulder to shoulder in spite of the local loyalties they may owe to the lands whence they come.


Allama Iqbal said, “For the present every Muslim nation must sink into 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 aspiration. 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.”


The state of Pakistan exists to fulfill higher Muslim aspirations in the modern world history; to begin with, it must be made to serve as a stepping stone to the final phase of Muslim history, as a sort of a platform from where we are to appeal to the rest of the humanity to listen to the Divine Oracle which says that all humanity is one and the various communities into which it is divided is merely for the purpose of identification and the division has no other deeper meaning. The philosophy of colorless cosmopolitan must not be accepted. For the uplift of universal brotherhood of mankind, Pakistan should not emphasis the growth of the distinctive and cultural features. It is rather to stress that the historical evolution of our national life in all its uniqueness is an important condition precedent for the full realization of the ideal of brotherhood of man. We have to love Pakistan and develop the distinctive features of Pakistan’s culture.


Allama Iqbal was of opinion that the rehabilitation of Muslim history could take place provided in Pakistan, future homeland of Indian Muslims; historical task will be approached, for development of national culture with an eye on ultimate goal of universal history. In Islam the idea of territorial frontiers has no ultimate juridical significance, because fundamentally the earth belongs to the God and is the inheritance of the righteous ones. The discords and the conflicts which are presently infesting the world peace and are threatening to mount up to a point where another global war may breakout with consequences too terrible to contemplate, are ultimately traceable to the rigid adherence to the concept of absolute national sovereignty.

No nation is prepared to surrender any part of its sovereignty in favor of the creation of super national authority; that is so simply because the state in our own day has become an idol which is to be worshipped to the utter neglect of our reverence for that element of transcendence which gives to the human history, a universal background. Much of the chaos and disorder that one notices is the social, economic and political. Life in Pakistan ultimately reflects the crisis of a character which has taken place in our interior consciousness. It is here that an attempt that healing has to be initiated. Ethics but not Economics lay down the primary force for the redemption of man. All strength, even material strength is ultimately possible and durable only upon a moral basis.
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