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Friday, June 4, 2021

Iqbal, the Sufi Epistemology and The End of History


Iqbal, the Sufi Epistemology and The End of History


Articles - Islamic Spirituality
Wednesday, 10 Rajab 1428

We attempt in this essay to examine the appearance of an epistemological paradox in the thought of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal.

There was that knowledge which he imparted to his native people, Indian Muslims who were subjected to brutal anti-Muslim British colonial rule, which touched their very souls and fired them with a scorching reaffirmation of commitment to Islam the religion. It was communicated in their native languages - Urdu and Persian. Had it been communicated in English, the European world of scholarship that was waging war on Islam would have rejected and sneered at it. Iqbal would have suffered a loss of prestige amongst his European peers.

And then there was that other knowledge which he communicated in English, and which included his views concerning the ‘End of History’. It impressed European scholarship, as well as his western-educated countrymen. Had some of it been communicated in Urdu or Persian, such as his rejection of belief in the advent of Imam al-Mahdi, of Dajjal the false Messiah or Anti-Christ, and in the return of the true Messiah, Jesus the son of the Virgin Mary (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon them both), it would have created serious and abiding problems for him amongst the Muslim masses. To this day, there are many Muslims who are inspired by Iqbal, but remain blissfully ignorant of his real views concerning the ‘End of History’.

The dualism in Iqbal’s thought and works is compounded by the fact that he sometimes says one thing in English, and then proceeds to say something quite different in Urdu or Persian.

For example, he agrees with the Turkish Ijtihad (if it may be called such) to the effect that the Imamate or Caliphate (which was abolished by Mustafa Kamal’s Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1924) can be vested in a body of persons or an elected Assembly. Provided that a modern Parliament can be constituted of good Muslims, Iqbal would be willing to accept it as a valid substitute for the Caliphate. Yet Iqbal, in verse, urges the restoration of the Caliphate, and seeks that mobilization of the Islamic spirit that would make it possible:
“Taa Khilafat kee bina dunyah main ho phir ustawaar, 
Laa kahein say dhoond kar aslaaf ka qalb-o-jigar.” 

(In order to strengthen or vitalize the cause of (the restoration of) the Caliphate in this world, It is imperative that we locate and rebuild the heart and liver, i.e., the courage, faith and mettle of the first Muslims.)

Iqbal is fairly explicit in his rejection of belief in the advent of Imam Al-Mahdi and in the return of the true Messiah, Jesus the son of the Virgin Mary. This is what he says:

“The doctrine of the finality of prophethood may further be regarded as a psychological cure for the Magian attitude of constant expectation which tends to give a false view of history. Ibn Khaldun, seeing the spirit of his own view of history, has fully criticized and, I believe, finally demolished the alleged revelational basis in Islam of an idea similar, at least in its psychological effects, to the original Magian idea which had reappeared in Islam under the pressure of Magian thought.”
(Iqbal, Dr. Muhammad., Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, ed. by M. Saeed Shaikh, Lahore, Institute of Islamic Culture, 1986) p. 115

Indeed, in his letter to Muhammad Ahsan he adds belief in the advent of Dajjal the false Messiah to the list of Magian ideas which, he claims, have infiltrated into Islamic thought. This is clear from his use of the word masihiyat. (Iqbalnama, Vol. II, p. 231. Quoted in M. Saeed Sheikh, “Editor’s Introduction” to Iqbal’s Reconstruction, op. cit., p. xi).

Yet Iqbal, in verse, is fairly explicit in the affirmation of belief in the advent of Imam Al-Mahdi:
“Out of the seclusion of the desert of Hejaz, 
The Guide of the Time (Khidr-e-Waqt) is to come. 
And from that far, far away valley, 
The Caravan is to make its appearance.”

The view has been expressed that Iqbal’s Khidr-e-Waqt was none other than the founder of Pakistan Muhammad Ali Jinnah. We disagree. By no stretch of the imagination can Jinnah be conceived of having emerged from a distant valley in the Hejaz. Nor could Sultan Abdul Aziz bin Saud, who placed the Hejaz under Anglo-American clientage, be conceived as Khidr-e-Waqt. Who then, other than Imam al-Mahdi, was Iqbal referring to?

We trace this apparently disturbing dualism in Iqbal’s thought and works and suggest that it resulted from an epistemological ambivalence in his thought. Different epistemologies function at different levels of consciousness. Iqbal’s theoretic consciousness, operating with the English language, appears to have functioned with one epistemology. His aesthetic and spiritual consciousness, operating with his native languages, seems to have functioned with another. Unless one succeeds in integrating all levels of consciousness in the personality, an epistemological ambivalence and a dualism in thought can appear.

It would be a disservice to Iqbal to suggest that he deliberately chose this duality of views in order to mislead his European audience. Such would imply that he also, in the process, mislead an entire generation of his native Muslim people who readily absorbed his views expressed in English. Iqbal is too great a scholar to have used Islamic scholarship to mislead his reading audience, which included so many of his own Muslim people.

SUFI EPISTEMOLOGY
The Sufis have a consistent record of not only recognizing, but also of using the heart as a vehicle for the acquisition of knowledge. That experience of the heart, through which it “sees” and penetrates “truth,” is frequently referred to as “religious experience.” In its wider sense, religious experience also includes that intuitive grasp which delivers to the believer the “substance” or “reality” of things. The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon him) referred to it when he warned: “Fear the firasah (i.e., intuitive capacity for penetrating the substance of things) of the believer, for surely he sees with the light of Allah.” And Iqbal himself directed attention to it in his famous couplet:
“Hazaron saal Nargis apni baynuri pay roti hai, 
Bari mushkil say hota hai,chaman main, deedawar paida.” 

“For thousands of years, The narcissus (flower) has bemoaned its blindness; It is with great difficulty that a discerning sage (i.e. one who sees what others cannot see), Appears in the garden (of life).”

Iqbal’s deedawar—i.e., the discerning sage—is clearly he who sees with an inner light. Iqbal is, himself, a true expression of a deedawar.

The epistemology that recognizes ‘religious experience’ as a source of knowledge is herein referred to as the Sufi epistemology. The knowledge itself that comes from such a source is known as ‘Ilm al-Batin.

All through history, it was always important for the seeker of knowledge to be able to penetrate the ‘substance’ or ‘reality’ of things. But that would become absolutely essential in an age in which ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ would be in total conflict with each other. ‘Appearance’ would be so dangerous that, if accepted, would lead to the destruction of faith. And so, in that age, survival would depend upon the capacity to penetrate beyond external form to reach internal substance, and thus be saved from being deceived and destroyed. Islam has declared that such an age would appear before the end of the world. And this reconfirms the abiding importance of the Sufi epistemology.

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon him) advised that Surah al-Kahf (Chapter 18) of the Qur’an be recited every day of Juma’ah (i.e., Friday) for protection from the Fitnah (deception, trial) of Dajjal whose modus operandi is to deceive. The story in Surah al-Kahf of Moses (‘alaihi al-Salam) and Khidr (‘alaihi al-Salam) reveals the inadequacy of that epistemology which admits of knowledge only through observation. Moses is mistaken on all three occasions. Khidr on the other hand, who sees with the light of Allah Most High, corrects the mistakes which Moses made.

The story also indirectly points an ominous finger at the misguided community of Moses, i.e., the Jews, as the people who would experience the greatest deception, would be deceived and would then fail to read accurately the historical process. In consequence of being deceived they would blindly follow the most dangerous of all Pied Pipers, i.e., Dajjal the false Messiah or Anti-Christ, to their final destruction in history. My view is that this deception has already taken place, and the final destruction of the Euro-Jewish State of Israel is now certain.

Iqbal is himself an excallent example of a scholar with a matchless capacity to penetrate beyond appearances to grasp the reality of things. He made a thorough and penetrating study of modern western civilization and came to the conclusion that its appearance was quite different from its reality. Just three months before his death he tore away the veil or appearance of “progress,” and delivered a stinging denunciation of the modern West. Many, including the likes of Shaikh Muhammad Abduh, as well as today’s secular liberals, have declared that they have seen Islam itself in the modern West. Iqbal was not deceived:

“The modern age prides itself on its progress in knowledge and its matchless scientific development. No doubt, the pride is justified…. But in spite of all these developments, tyranny of imperialism struts abroad, covering its face in the masks of Democracy, Nationalism, Communism, Fascism, and heavens know what else besides. Under these masks, in every corner of the earth, the spirit of freedom and the dignity of man are being trampled underfoot in a way of which not even the darkest period of human history presents a parallel.”
(Iqbal, Dr. Muhammad, New Year’s Message, Broadcast from All India Radio, Lahore, Jan. 1, 1938. Quoted in Syed Abdul Vahid, Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal, Lahore, Ashraf, 1964. p. 373)


EPISTEMOLOGY OF THE MODERN WEST
Modern western civilization emerged in consequence of sudden unprecedented change that overtook Europe. A civilization which was previously based on faith (in Christianity), and which had given collective and dramatic expression of that faith in the Crusades, experienced a radical change which transformed it into a civilization based on materialism. The new epistemology, which paved the way for the collective acceptance of materialism, was one that specifically denied the possibility of knowledge being acquired through religious experience, or through revelations from the unseen. Observation and experimentation were the only valid means through which knowledge could be acquired; hence that which could not be observed could not be known. The new epistemology naturally paved the way for a dramatic conclusion, to wit, a world which could not be observed and known, did not exist. Hence there is no reality beyond material reality.

IQBAL’S EPISTEMOLOGICAL RESPONSE                
Iqbal realized that the acceptance of this western epistemology would result in the complete destruction of religion in the world of Islam. Knowledge would be secularized, and the secularized mind would be cut off from the unseen world — the world of the sacred. The heart would then lose that sacred light without which its sight is, at best, dim. Even the best scholars in the world of Islam would then be in danger of being deceived by western Pied Pipers, and all of mankind would dance to their tunes. Islam would be so secularized that a Protestant version of Islam would emerge. An age, which had already experienced the total dominance of western civilization over all of mankind, posed a great danger of precisely such an epistemological penetration of the Muslim mind.

Iqbal’s response was to devote two of the seven lectures that were subsequently compiled in a book as “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”, to a vigorous defense of the Sufi epistemology, and to place these two lectures at the very beginning of the series of lectures. They occupy the same prominent position as the first two chapters of the book. (http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose /english/reconstruction)

In “Knowledge and Religious Experience” and “The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience”, Iqbal presented the most well-reasoned and persuasive challenge to the new western epistemology ever penned by a Muslim. These first two chapters of the Reconstruction were produced and prominently placed for precisely this purpose, i.e., to stimulate Islamic scholarship to probe with Allah’s light, and to penetrate beyond the seductive appearances presented by the modern age, in order to reach its poisonous reality.

More than sixty years have passed since that challenge (in the first two chapters of Reconstruction), and neither has western scholarship condescended to respond to it nor has Islamic scholarship cared to follow in the epistemological trail which he blazed. Indeed, this failure on the part of Islamic scholarship is partly responsible for the terrible plight in which the world of Islam now finds itself. The western world, with its secularized system of education, its politics of power-lust, greed and polarization of society, and its economics of exploitation, has enjoyed almost total success in deceiving the world of Islam and in thus leading it down the road of impotence, anarchy, intellectual confusion, and the ruination of faith.

IQBAL’S AMBIVALENCE
From his adolescent days as a college student in Lahore to his university education in Europe, Iqbal’s exposure to western thought was continuously intimate. He also lived in an age that was forced to observe the literal explosion of western scholarship on the stage of the world. History had never witnessed anything comparable to that scholarship which dramatically extended the frontiers of knowledge in nearly every conceivable branch of knowledge. The scientific revolution of the West was something unique in the world of knowledge. More often than not Iqbal’s respect for western scholarship grew into outright admiration. Our view is that this admiration for western scholarship provoked a corollary. It revealed itself in the startling accusation that “…during the last five hundred years religious thought in Islam has been practically stationary” (Iqbal, Reconstruction, op. cit., p.6).

And the consequence of that profound admiration was found in the Reconstruction, which is littered with references to, and quotations from, his peers in the world of western scholarship. There was no such peer within his own community, and so there is not a single reference in the Reconstruction to a contemporary Muslim scholar in the huge and intellectually influential Indian Muslim community.

This ambivalence, this love-hate relationship which found expression in the first two chapters of the Reconstruction, as in the endless references to Western scholars, was also revealed in Iqbal’s choice of language for addressing Muslims on as important a subject as the reconstruction of their religious thought. He chose to address the Western-educated Muslim intelligentsia in English. It must have been an absolutely amazing spectacle to behold Iqbal, seventy years ago, addressing his largely uncomprehending Muslim audience (one needs to have some knowledge of philosophy in order to comprehend these lectures) in chaste English and in a manner which conformed to Western linguistic etiquette and sensibilities. It must have been an equally amazing sight to behold the same Iqbal using the native Urdu and Persian languages to convey through poetry a message whose form and substance was quite alien to the Western mind.

We believe that Iqbal was not, himself, immune from the negative influence of the very Western epistemology of which he warned so strongly. His poetry, which came directly from the heart, witnessed the unsurpassed use of the Sufi epistemology and was uncluttered by any Western logical or epistemological restraints. The same cannot always be said of his thought when expressed in English. Our purpose in this paper is to direct attention to a subject which, more than any other, illustrates Iqbal’s epistemological ambivalence. That subject is “the end of history.”
 
to be continued . . . .

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