Originally Posted by Gypsified

Iqbal was a poet and just like most other poets, he used symbolism and often ended up in contradictions. So it might not be right to directly blame him in making our lives difficult. However, the fact that the powers to be of this country chose to elevate him to the status of some demigod and a flawless poet of Islam (since we are afflicted with this disease of dragging religion into everything) was what created all the problems. There are too many contradictions in his poetry, he would condemn Western civilization and imperialism but you would find him lavishing the Queen with praise and accepting knighthood, you will find him criticizing democracy in poetry and calling it the most viable system in prose, you will see him saying “juda ho deen siyasat se to ban jati hay changezi” in poetry and calling for Mustafa Kamal’s Secularism in prose, and so on. This might have been natural for a poet, but the moment we decided to elevate his status and take everything from him at face value began all the problems. See what I mean?



Difficulty is one thing, simple plain contradictions another. The former may be excused, the latter is hard to.




There is nothing new here. All these concepts already existed in previous philosophies before Iqbal, although he used them in his poetry is a pretty good way. He actually borrowed a lot from philosophers such as Nietzsche, particularly the concept of ‘khudi’, considering his attachment with Germans. As for the concept of Ijtihad, that again becomes incomprehensible because of the contradictions. He favors Ijtihad in his prose to reconstruct religion and supports democracy and secularism (very brave stance) but in his poetry you would find him criticizing the same things, taking us back to square one.



That is what I meant by problems. Since we have elevated him to a heavenly status, everyone is using him for his own mean ends. A Taliban can use Iqbal for his purpose and a secular person can do the same, because of the contradictions. And because we have politicized the man instead of just appreciating the poet in him, we have created countless problems for ourselves.



Allow me to point out a very important thing. One of the worst things you can do with yourself is to view things in black and white. Either a person is great or nothing, either a thing is good or bad. This is how a child views things. In real life, things and ideas are never in black and white. Iqbal was a human and had his own limitations, just like you and me. Our problem is that we elevate a man to the status of an angel and then are disappointed (and angered) when someone points out their mistakes. This attitude leads to nowhere. You can name any great philosopher from history and I’ll point out his contradictions and mistakes because they were humans who made mistakes. Plato and Aristotle, considered among the originators of philosophy, are full of contradictions and mistakes. And we know about their mistakes because we don’t consider them perfect, because we know they were just humans like us, because they are subject to inquiry and criticism. The moment we start considering someone perfect and refuse to listen anything against them, we are inviting trouble. And this trouble is what our attitude toward Iqbal is causing us today. Objective criticism is something non-existent in this pure land.

No one is asking you to shun Iqbal or anything like that. He was a remarkable poet and you can continue to enjoy his poetry. You can continue to derive inspiration from his concept of khudi and such. But elevating him to perfection is not really a sane thing to do.