Dear members, I will post a piece from his works, I hope we can have a discussion try and understand what Iqbal may have wanted to say.
To Mods: How about making this one sticky ?
Members: Please do not post more poetry, do discuss the one posted, and once we are exhausted we can post more poetry.
Just to keep every thing organized.
Good poem. Thanks. I agree this should be made sticky.
First: Siaqo Sabaq (context of this poem)
This poem comes from his collection called "Armaghan-e-Hijaz" or the "Gift of Hijaz". Hijaz is the land of Makka Medina of modern day Saudi, that stretches form north down to Yemeni border along red sea coast.
Makka is at the foothills of mountains 6000 feet high.
While Makka bakes in the desert heat, an hour and half from there (like Murree from Pindi), you will find Taif a city situated high in the mountains and thus cool in the summers,
Taif is the city where Mohammad pbuh went for spreading the word of Allah, but was beaten and stoned black and blue. That his shoes were filled with his own blood.
Then he said prayers at a spot not far from a big lake. I have personally seen the little unassuming mosque.
With this intro, let me go back to the poem,
It is ironic that Iqbal sahib has added this poem into the book titled with "Gifts from Saudi".
So what are the cultural/scientific gifts from Saudi today?
-- Wahabism, and Mullahism. Funding of terror in Pakistan and killing of anyone non-Wahabi.
-- The land of Hijaz has been dead scietnfically and intellectually for the last 1300+ years.
-- No scientific or philosophical discovery has come from this dark region
------- All research attributed to Muslim scientist was done at the fringes of Muslim empires, places that were farthest from Hijaz (1000s of miles away)
The reason?
Utter lack of open mindedness due to Hijaz geography and culture.
The rigid form of their religion is in fact the reflection of Beduin culture. And this culture prohibits the very direction that Iqbal is lamenting about in this poem,.
Read the first verse.
-- Some asks "Pakistanis" through a voice form the heavens.
--- Where the heck is your sense of research and your sense of discovery.
Well the answer is simple.
As long as we are following tribal ways be they from Saudi or from Afghanistan. We cannot go on the path of enlightenment, research and discovery. Not happening!
For research and discovery, we have to follow the path of Chinese, South Koreans, Germans, Japanese, and above all Americans. This by the way in Iqbal's time was England, Germany, France and America. But Iqbal refused to say it clearly in this poem. And this where I fault Iqbal for muddling up the message. He points to a problem, but he refuses to accept the solution in front of his very own eyes.
Iqba's hero, Goette was a German artistocrat.
Sure Goette did the philosophical work and wrote Rumi style poem like Faust.
But Goette also wrote a book on theory of light.
Goette had the largest collection of minerals from all across Europe.
What did Iqbal do to follow the footsteps of his hero?
He took faust and rumi and came home to Lahore.
Never in his life Iqbal tried to understand Goette's work on theory of light, or collect minerals from all across Punjab.
Never.
Not even by anyone from Islamia college Lahore (the college started by Anjuman Himayate Islam with Iqbal's efforts).
Iqbal did his work good or bad and is gone now.
What about us. We have the answer to his questions (in this poem) and we still have gone 1000 time worse and copied tribal and beduin ways in Pakistan.
And thus no discovery and no research.
Peace.
