Allama Iqbal`s ideas and concept regarding various issues related to the Muslim world

Iqbal`s political ideas outlined
KARACHI, May 8: Allama Iqbal`s ideas and concept regarding various issues related to the Muslim world were discussed by Mohammad Hamza Farooqui during a lecture titled Iqbal Aur Hamara Mustaqbil organised by Idara-i-Yadgar-i-Ghabli at Ghalib Library on Saturday.

Fatima Surayya Bajia presided over the lecture.

Hamza Farooqui said issues that the Muslim world was plagued with today existed even in Iqbal`s time. He claimed that not only did Iqbal point out those issues but also provided their solutions in his poetry. He argued that two segments of Muslim society — religious and governmental — were chiefly responsible for society`s plight. It was in 1927 that the poet delineated that salvation was rooted in Muslim civilisation. He said Muslims were bestowed with a quality that not even Jibreel was given, and Pakistan was God`s gift to us, but its reins were handed over to diabolical forces.

Mr Farooqui said Iqbal had great expectations of mard-i-kohistani and banda-i-sehrai, because both were free-spirited and didn`t care about worldly gains. He said in 1931 Iqbal had preferred Iran to Italy. He mentioned that even in the first half of the 20th century Iqbal addressed through his poetry groups belonging to those parts of the subcontinent that were now in Pakistan. In that context he gave the example of Iqbal`s poem in which an old Baloch was addressed and juxtaposed it with contemporary situation. Similarly, he talked about the Pirzadas and Makhdoomzadas of Punjab whom the poet referred to in his nazms and indicated the role they`d played in Pakistan.

Mr Farooqui said that in 1936 Iqbal penned Iblees Ki Majlis-i-Shura and had already dubbed communism a Frankenstein`s monster born out of the womb of western civilisation. He said the poet touched upon the flaws in western civilization and the strengths of Islam in a number of poems. During the question-answer session Mr Farooqui said mard-i-kohistani and banda-i-sehrai were the people who hadn`t been polluted with western thinking.

In her presidential address Fatima Surraiya Bajia said she was eight years old when Iqbal died. She said she`d become so old that she tended to forget things, but she`d never forget Iqbal`s poetry.

Prior to the speeches, Dr Moinuddin Aqeel told the gathering about Hamza Farooqui`s achievements as a writer and scholar of Iqbal.Dawn