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Sacred Cow: Allama Iqbal - Marde-momin or Superman?
Zahir Ebrahim
This Sacred Cow series examines the impact of the most prominent "sacred cows" among the Muslims who have been instrumental in carving out Muslim people's destiny over the last one hundred years. I begin this series with a name most distinguished, most honored, most loved, most holy, most quoted, and most rehearsed even today, eighty years after his death, "Sir" Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Pakistan's national poet-laureate and intellectual father. This detached scrutiny separates myths from reality on the anvil of empiricism. The dispassionate study discovers that the celebrated hero of Pakistani Muslims, claimed by virtually all Muslim sects of Pakistan, as well as Ayatollah Khomeini's Revolutionary Iran, as their own scholar-laureate, was an opportunist and hypocrite to the core. "Sir" Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal's lofty words selling the liberation of the Muslim mind, did not quite match his own opportunistic services to the Crown, and for which the scholar-laureate of the Indian subcontinent was made the Knight Honorable of the British Empire. This study reveals the depth of depravity of the Nietzschean Superman who soaks nations in blood while dying holily in bed.
This archetype of the diabolical public hero exists in all times and nations. The point of studying history is to not continually fall victim to the vulgar machinations of history's actors. Typically, only the names and contents change. The template of Machiavellian machinations, cultivation of public heroes, harvest of fifth columnist, manufacture of diabolical Hegelian Dialectic for directing outcomes to predefined directions, and public stupidity to fall for elitist agendas as the proverbial useful idiots, do not change. Who might be such fifth columnists selling their consciences in the garb of high morality in our own time? Unless these public heroes are preempted before fait accompli, history's blood will repeatedly flow in every modernity.
This archetype of the diabolical public hero exists in all times and nations. The point of studying history is to not continually fall victim to the vulgar machinations of history's actors. Typically, only the names and contents change. The template of Machiavellian machinations, cultivation of public heroes, harvest of fifth columnist, manufacture of diabolical Hegelian Dialectic for directing outcomes to predefined directions, and public stupidity to fall for elitist agendas as the proverbial useful idiots, do not change. Who might be such fifth columnists selling their consciences in the garb of high morality in our own time? Unless these public heroes are preempted before fait accompli, history's blood will repeatedly flow in every modernity.
The concept of "momin" in Islam is eloquently captured by the twentieth century poet-philosopher of Muslims from the Indian sub-continent, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal, also known as Allama Iqbal (1877-1938). His chivalrous depiction of Islam's ideal person, both man and woman, by the chauvinist term "marde-momin" (and "marde-Mussalman"), is based on his abstraction of "khudi", or the philosophical "self" -- the suppression of what Sigmund Freud had called the "ego" by the elevation of what he had famously introduced as the "superego" -- to become the obedient "slave" of God. In a sentence, it is the submersion of one's own will into God's will.
That is of course also the core Message of Islam, where the word "Islam" itself means "complete submission to the will of Allah". That in turn means to implement the teachings of the Holy Qur'an in one's life as a constitution to daily live by. Which further entails, inter alia, to live one's life as outlined in Surah Al-Asr such that it is not one of total loss (see http://tinyurl.com/Surah-Asr ).
Allama Muhammad Iqbal's theistic exposition of Islam in his philosophy of the suppression of the ego is in contrast to the atheistic nihilistic concept of the Nietzscheian "Superman". Nietzsche's "Superman" is beyond good and evil, the ubermensch born after killing god and becoming god himself with his sheer "will to power". The impact of Nietzsche's philosophy is examined in Morality derived from the Intellect leads to Enslavement! (see http://tinyurl.com/morality-ubermensch )
The strains of German pedigree in Allama Iqbal's philosophy are unhidden despite his take being wholly theistic. It constitutes a Hegelian Dialectic – Nietzsche expands the intellectual man's ego to become "god", while Iqbal deflates the ego to become the slave of God. Their clash, as any clash of opposites, is natural and inevitable. It is the clash between the ultimate evil man (the Superman) and the ultimate good man (the marde-momin). Allama Muhammad Iqbal studied in Germany and was clearly affected by many a German philosopher including both Hegel and Nietzsche. The chauvinistic term "mard" in "marde-momin", its literal meaning being "male", evidently comes from the play on Nietzsche's "man" in "Superman" ("ubermensch" in German).
Allama Iqbal defined "marde-momin" in his seminal poem titled "Tulu-e-Islam" ( طلوع اسلام ). In English it means "Renaissance of Islam". The poem is in his compilation Bang-e-Dara, and the verse in which he used that specific word is:
Endeavoring to induce "Renaissance of Islam" among the backward Muslims is surely a commendable cause to spend one's life in. Like the endeavor to "reform Islam" itself, it can also be a fast ticket to name and fame, knighthood and status.
It is pertinent to point out the commonsense observation that when "revolutionaries" and "reformers" are awarded medals, titles, and knighthood by empire, it can only mean that they work for the benefit of empire in some way. The truth of these words is beyond doubt. It is self-evident.
It has always bothered me that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal accepted the knighthood in 1922 from the King of England, King George V, the head of state of the most plunderous colonizing empire ruling the Indian sub-continent. (According to some other accounts, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal accepted the knighthood on January 1, 1923.) The brief biographical sketch appearing in Government of Pakistan's official website of Allama Iqbal, Pakistan's national poet-laureate, describes the public relations circumstance for the awarding of Knighthood by the British empire to the brightest scion of its Jewel in the crown which has been parroted by virtually all "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's hagiographic biographers without reflection:
'Iqbal was born in Sialkot, in the present-day province of the Punjab in Pakistan, in 1877. He received his early education in that city, where one of his teachers was Mir Hasan, an accomplished scholar who commanded a knowledge of several Islamic languages. Mir Hasan gave Iqbal a thorough training in the rich Islamic literary tradition. His influence on Iqbal was formative. Many years later (1922), when the English governor of the Punjab proposed to the British Crown that Iqbal be knighted in acknowledgment of his literary accomplishments, Iqbal asked that Mir Hasan also be awarded a title. To the governor's remark that Mir Hasan had not authored any books, Iqbal responded that he, Iqbal, was the book Mir Hasan had produced. Mir Hasan received the title of Shams al-'Ulama' ("Sun of Scholars").
... Although his main interests were scholarly, Iqbal was not unconcerned with the political situation of the, country and the political fortunes of the Muslim community of India. Already in 1908, while in England, he had been chosen as a member of the executive council of the newly established British branch of the Indian Muslim League. In 1931 and 1932 he represented the Muslims of India in the Round Table Conferences held in England to discuss the issue of the political future of India. And in a 1930 lecture Iqbal suggested the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Iqbal died (1938) before the creation of Pakistan (1947), but it was his teaching that "spiritually ... has been the chief force behind the creation of Pakistan." He is the national poet of Pakistan.' — http://allamaiqbal.com/person/perbrief.html
While the British empire was making "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal the Knight of the British Empire, the poet-philosopher at the time was trying to awaken the Islam in Muslims to help them end their servitude to the very same empire! Was the British empire run by imbeciles?
Being able to discern such matters forensically is what separates hagiography from reality.
What was "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal being knighted for by the king of Britannia? To instrument the destruction of his own British empire? Or, for "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's brilliant doctrinal craftsmanship as the asset of empire, one who would seed the division of the Indian subcontinent in the already foreseeable post-colonial era?
"Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's two-nation advocacy was instrumental in breaking up the Indian sub-continent. While the poet-philosopher was being anointed "Sir" for ostensibly awakening the Islam in Muslims within India, another Muslim empire, a ruling state no less, the Ottoman empire, was being mercilessly dismembered and secularized by the very same benefactors of "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal.
"Sir" Muhammad Iqbal evidently did not seem too perturbed for that calamity befalling the Muslim Ottoman empire or else he would have surely declined the knighthood awarded him by their enemies. His silence, and his acceptance of knighthood was most convenient for the British empire which had been hell-bent upon tearing that rival Muslim empire asunder for at least two centuries. It had finally succeeded in the backdrop of a fictitiously contrived world war. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's non-opposition to the British empire for their grotesque dismembering of a Muslim ruling state speaks volumes. For one thing, it legitimized the butcherous partitioning of Muslim territories by the Western allies when even the foremost scholar of the Muslims preaching Islam's renaissance, graciously accepted the knighthood of the British empire in its immediate aftermath.
The poet-philosopher displayed no parallel angst for Islam and its renaissance among the Turkish Muslims to prevent that rival ruling state from being so grotesquely dismembered by the British empire. Nor did he visibly oppose the British empire which was forcibly secularizing the new Turkish nation-state away from its three centuries old Islamic roots with its Western sponsored blood-drenched transformation. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal had accepted his knighthood after witnessing all that mayhem upon the Ottoman Muslims.
But the poet-philosopher displayed much soul for Islam and its renaissance elsewhere in Asia as he strove to break up his own Indian subcontinent which could potentially have become a new ruling state in the post colonial era due to the vastness and integrity of its territories and natural resources. Its violent partition by "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's benefactors based on his doctrinal craftsmanship, with concomitant animosity instituted among a people who had hitherto lived peaceably together, while leaving them the imperial gift of a perpetual bone of contention in disputed territory to continually refresh that animosity, certainly ensured that the immense subcontinental region would remain beyond its true potential and always susceptible to easy manipulation. Today, these partitioned nations spend a bulk of their GDP and national debt on defence – defence primarily against each other – rather than on uplifting the lot of their common man.
Furthermore, the uncanny resemblance of:
- "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's unprecedented demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims in the name of religion (an outrageous demand for the separation of a common race of people from their own birthplace not hitherto recorded in history in the thirteen centuries of Islam's existence up to that time),
- the European Zionist Jews' demand for a separate homeland in Palestine (the territories formerly under the newly dismembered Ottoman empire) also in the name of race and religion (again an unprecedented and outrageous demand in the annals of recorded history to be gratuitously awarded land to a people not even born on that land by a third party),
- both demands being so egregiously granted by the receding British empire within less than a year of each other under similar "revolutionary times",
is more than just a passing coincidence of imperial history.
In both cases, violently partitioning, by imperial fiat, two pieces of geography upon which they were only the colonial occupiers (India) and war-booty custodians (Palestine) respectively, and which weren't theirs to partition in the first place. (See The Search for Historical Truth: Partition of India and Palestine, http://tinyurl.com/India-Palestine-Partition )
Both cases respectively leading to the two largest displacements in modern history of innocent peoples forcibly being separated from their ancestral homes and their land, with bloodshed of the civilians caught in the atrocious imperial partition rivaling that during the preceding two world wars among soldiers and non-combatants.
The common political instruments in both cases, the Round Tables and the United Nations, constructed by the same financial oligarchy in whose principal's name the Balfour Declaration was issued by the British Empire, is also not a mere coincidence. I have forensically examined some of this history in my analysis of the existential dilemma facing the Palestinian peoples, see Pamphlet: How To Return to Palestine ( http://tinyurl.com/Palestine-Zahir ). The carnal linkages of the same financial oligarchy which bankrolled the theft of Palestine, to the establishment of the Round Tables (where the issue of the partition of India was addressed and concluded) by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, is well documented. Behind them was the wealth of the same financial oligarchs as the founders of Palestine. And today, the children of the Round Tables fashioning the contemporary Anglo-American policies for ushering in Global Governance, are the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, also called CFR, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the UK, also called Chatham House.
For any honest scholar with at least some wherewithal of modern imperial statecraft, and observing all the forces that shape international events from "Mt. Fuji":
'Aspire to be like Mt. Fuji, with such a broad and solid foundation that the strongest earthquake cannot move you, and so tall that the greatest enterprises of common men seem insignificant from your lofty perspective. With your mind as high as Mt. Fuji you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces that shape events; not just the things happening near to you.' (Miyamoto Musashi, quoted in Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski),
it is most pertinent to question the unarticulated motivations of this knighted poet-philosopher of Muslims whose inspirational verses are admired and rehearsed much among the literati in many nations even today. One way to ascertain the many strands of invisible forces which drive motivation is to forensically examine their overt acts, both of commission and omission. That's the best one can do as no one can peer into the abyss of another's soul.
If "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal knew so much about "marde-momin" that he was preaching that delectable philosophy to others, why did the Indian Muslim counterpart of Theodor Herzl – the founder of the Jewish State in Palestine – not decline the royal knighthood as a demonstration of his own "marde-momin-ness"? "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal surely could have taught the mentally colonized Indian Muslims, and of course the world's Muslims (except for the Turks) – the raison d'être for his lifetime of versification to help Muslims break their shackles of servitude – a more compelling lesson by way of setting an example himself!
Furthermore, if "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal knew so much about the cognizance of the "self", why could the virtuous antagonist of Nietzsche not straightforwardly discern that he was himself being used as a stooge by the British empire which was tickling his over inflated ego as their own favorite "hakim-ul-ummat" ("physician of the Muslim umma") with such knighthood, and was only buying his cooperation for the legitimacy that his acceptance conferred upon their acts on the decapitation of the Ottoman empire and the atrocious granting of the Balfour Declaration to the Jews?
The "hakim-ul-ummat" could have surely taught the Indian Muslims, then being ruled for over 250 years with corrosive mental colonization, what his philosophizing of "khudi" actually meant in practice by immediately declining the knighthood handed him by the very same oppressor of Muslims. If he had himself conviction of any of it, his brilliant verses like the following one from his compilation Zarb-E-Kaleem, would have been given a practical demonstration for what sharpening the superego on the grindstone of submission to God as the only Benefactor meant, as opposed to sharpening the ego on empire's benefaction:
خودي کا سر نہاں لا الہ الا اللہ
خودي ہے تيغ، فساں لا الہ الا اللہ
Khudi ka sirr-e-nihaaN La ilaha il Allah
khudi hai tegh-e-fasaaN La ilaha il Allah
The secret of the Self is hid, In words "No god but He alone".
The Self is just a dull-edged sword, "No god but He," the grinding stone. (Source)
Does "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal not appear to be more and more like Nietzsche's Superman and less and less like his own marde-momin?
The principle definition of Nietzsche's Superman is that one can preach and enact anything upon others and one is not bound to it for one's own self – because, one is above others, an ubermensch, beyond good and evil, the Superman. The definition of marde-momin however entails just the opposite, principally, that one is bound by the same requirements and constraints as one inflicts upon another (which in this case is being a perfectman, a momin, a slave of Allah, and not of empire or fellow man).
To be generous, one could aver that minimally, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal remains an enigma, using homilies in local vernaculars such as "shadow underneath the bright lamp", to perhaps apologetically explain away the unpalatable actions of one's hero.
More straightforwardly put however, any preacher's word is only as good as his own character to live up to that preaching. To walk the talk so to speak, if the talk is held with any degree of conviction. That is principally, and unequivocally, demonstrated by the Prophet of Islam who brought the Message of the Author of the Holy Qur'an to mankind. If the Prophet of Islam had accepted a medal or knighthood from any of the ruling kings and empires of his time to whom he sent invitations to accept Islam, or, if his Ahlul-Bayt successors (see http://tinyurl.com/Ahlul-Bayt-In-Quran3 ), had accepted knighthood from the oppressive Muslim rulers and empires of their own epoch, then their brilliant exponents inducing "Renaissance of Islam" also accepting imperial anointments in their own times would surely be aboveboard; as just walking in the footsteps of one's own heroes and imams.
Knighthood and its title "Sir" is always, but always, only awarded by Britannia to those who serve the British empire's interests in some way. As the factual record stands, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal undoubtedly served the diabolical interests of the British empire – his poetic exposition on Islam's empowerment of man notwithstanding.
One could argue that Iqbal knowingly used Islam for the British empire's own instrument of divide et impera. Because, as one could arguably reason with certitude, no farsighted sage known for the immensity of his intellect can ever be so shortsighted.
In Germany having become acquainted with Hegel and the Hegelian Dialectic, and in Britain with the broader agenda of the British empire from Rhodes to the Round Tables, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal surely understood in the wake of World War I, that colonialism was already on the wane and a new era of nation-states was being ushered in. That the Anglo-American establishment would now be running the interim new world order of the twentieth century with neocolonialism rather than direct colonialism. With that as the percipient backdrop, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal therefore surely understood that the partition of the Indian subcontinent was advantageous to the Great Game players of the preceding century. That it would surely be more productive to make it appear to be the natural demand of the people of India themselves. The British empire had already observed how the Hindus and Muslims had come together in their previous rebellion of 1857, and had demonstrated an uncanny ability to live together peaceably for centuries. They had to be torn asunder to ensure that such a large land mass and large population center could not rise to become rivals of the Western hegemony which was only changing the stripes on its flag in the twentieth century, not its exercise. (See The Search for Historical Truth: Partition of India and Palestine, http://tinyurl.com/India-Palestine-Partition )
"Sir" Muhammad Iqbal therefore, either opportunistically or ideologically, whereas history written by hagiographic as well as Western scribes makes it out to be due to the "dire" political reality of Muslims in India, took over from where his Cambridge compatriot Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Founder, Pakistan National Movement, had left his 1933 "now or never" template for partitioning India (see http://tinyurl.com/now-or-never-chrahmatali1933 ). "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal drove his own long-gestating version of the two nation advocacy through the Muslim League leadership, convincing them of its validity by the sheer weight of the imposing name that was proposing it. His own. Any lesser man making the same proposal would have been ignored – just as Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a non-entity, not known for his non-existent poetic brilliance for "Renaissance of Islam", was sensibly ignored for substantially similar concept.
The empire had cultivated and anointed the right asset for pushing the real coup de grâce to the Indian subcontinent forward in the next baby-step. Fathering the right political demand and a national movement for a "Muslim State". Just as it was simultaneously transpiring for the long-planned partition of Palestine for the construction of the Jewish State. Only an ignoramus, or the most simpleton, will think that Israel was created for the Jews due to the immediately transpiring "dire" consequences of the HolocaustTM in World War II. No – the partition of India was long-planned. Surely no later than the granting of the Balfour Declaration to the Jews in 1917. Someday, documents yet to be uncovered from the still classified imperial archives will furnish the smoking gun behind the conception of a new pathological puppet Muslim State as the empire was decapitating the all powerful ruling Muslim state. The principle behind the partition plan of the Indian subcontinent had to be to create a pathological condition in the Indian subcontinent which would be hard to overcome. Which is precisely the empirical evidence. (See The Search for Historical Truth: Partition of India and Palestine, http://tinyurl.com/India-Palestine-Partition )
To execute that long term imperial plan, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal deliberately spun a specious dogma by using Islam as the pretext for the underlying irreconcilable differences between the two peoples, Hindus and Muslims. The temporary political instability, the manufactured "revolutionary times", was speciously argued to be the unconquerable permanent manifestation of these fundamental differences due to religion. Suddenly, within just a few short years after World War I and the formation of the Round Tables, two peoples were deemed to no longer be able to co-exist together in changing times after having done so for a thousand years.
"Sir" Muhammad Iqbal doctrinally instrumented a forced separation of a people that remains unprecedented in the entire fourteen and a half century history of the Muslims to this very day. And he did it all in the name of "Renaissance of Islam" – Many literate Muslims to this day love him for it! I am not sure who is the bigger abuser of Islam, the atheist Jewish Superman Zbigniew Brzezinski who confessed to "giving to the USSR its Vietnam war" by goading the Afghan Mujahideens with: "God is on your side" (see http://tinyurl.com/Islam-Socialization ), or, the theist Muslim marde-momin "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal who caused the blood-drenched partition of an entire subcontinent using pretty much the same doctrinal goading.
The recurring statement above, manufactured "revolutionary times", bears closer inspection. That term in quotes comes from David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of the other blood-soaked partition legatee of the British empire, who famously expressed its utility most poignantly sometimes in the 1930s for the forced creation of the Jewish State in Palestine by the expulsion of its indigenous population:
'What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible at such great hours is not carried out – a whole world is lost' — David Ben Gurion (cited in Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and reality of the Israel—Palestine conflict, Verso books, 2003, pg. xii)
The afore-cited author further quotes the Jewish historian Tom Segev to explain the diabolical genius that lay behind the construction of these "revolutionary times": 'The idea of transfer had accompanied the Zionist movement from its very beginnings, ... "Disappearing" the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist Dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence.' And Finkelstein himself notes with brilliant hindsight: "The key was to get the timing right."! (Ibid.)
It is impossible that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal, while being so brilliant on the one hand, remained stoically unaware of the underpinnings of the Zionist movement, and its Nietzscheian "will to power" through the creation and harvesting of "revolutionary times".
The following is what Leo Strauss, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's atheist counterpart and also contemporary philosopher of the new Jewish State in the founding, wrote in 1931-32, directly expressing Nietzsche's philosophy of "will to power" of the Superman as the key motivational force behind the demand and orchestration for the Jewish State:
'Political Zionism has repeatedly characterized itself as the will to normalize the existence of the Jewish people, to normalize the Jewish people. By this self-definition it has exposed itself to a grave misunderstanding, namely, the misunderstanding that the will to normality was the first word of political Zionism; the most effective criticism of political Zionism rests on this misunderstanding. In truth, the presupposition of the Zionist will to normalization, that is, of the Zionist negation of galut [exile], is the conviction that "the power of religion has been broken". Because the break with religion has been resolutely effected by many individual Jews, and only because of this reason, it is possible for these individuals to raise the question on behalf of their people, how the people is to live from now on. Not that they prostrate themselves before the idol of normality; on the contrary: they no longer see any reason for the lack of normality. And this is decisive: in the age of atheism, the Jewish people can no longer base its existence on God but only on itself alone, on its labor, on its land, and on its state. ...' — Leo Strauss, The Early Writings 1921-1932, pg. 202
And we have already witnessed in all the preceding verbiage that for "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal, the philosopher of the new Muslim State in the founding, the key motivational force behind the demand and orchestration for the Muslim State during exactly the same time-period, was the Hegelian converse of Nietzsche's Superman, the marde-momin.
Two opposite types of man, yet harvesting the same modus operandi of "revolutionary times" to realize their respective dream state, one for the Jewish Superman, the other for the Muslim marde-momin.
The near simultaneity of the same methods appearing in both Palestine and the Indian subcontinent for their respective partitioning by the same masters, using the ideologically similar doctrinal justification of burrowing deep into the respective religious ethos to find a rationale for the "Jewish State and the "Muslim State", employing the same diabolical political science of "revolutionary times" to legitimize the manufactured political demand and its concomitant political movement among its respective masses who fervently begin to believe in their new destiny as the only solution to their respective existential dilemma, and by getting the timing right in both cases, identifies the common lines of forces behind their common thinking pattern. Especially when observing all the forces which shape events, both local and distant, overt and hidden, from the heights of "Mt. Fuji".
It is further impossible that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal, while so brilliantly bred in England and Germany in their elite political institutions, a Cambridge man, chosen as member of the executive council of the newly established British branch of the Indian Muslim League, made representative of the Muslims of India in the Round Table Conferences held in England to discuss the issue of the political future of India, was simultaneously also so poorly read of empire's own political doctrines. That he had closed his eyes to what their own institutional elite openly declared as the endgame of their international political ideology for the newly emerging nation-states which they were temporarily thrusting upon all former empires (the British, the Ottoman, the Hapsburg):
'We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands, because to impugn the sovereignty of the local nation states of the world is still a heresy for which a statesman or publicist can perhaps not quite be burned at the stake but certainly be ostracized or discredited.' — Arnold Toynbee, The Trend of International Affairs Since the War, International Affairs, November 1931, page 809
To proclaim on the one hand the great Allama's brilliant mind, and on the other hand excuse him for his pathetic ignorance of world affairs while he is a most distinguished political player representing the political future of an entire subcontinent, is a non sequitur. (See The Search for Historical Truth: Partition of India and Palestine, http://tinyurl.com/India-Palestine-Partition )
Such absurdities only occur in Alice in Wonderland, or in the academic mind ensconced in the ivory tower of immanent philosophy. When encountered in real political life, it is almost always indicative of Superman at play weaving images on the screen of Plato's cave for controlling the public mind (see http://tinyurl.com/Plato-Myth-of-the-Cave ).
Moving right along.
How were "revolutionary times" manufactured for the Indian subcontinent?
Muslims are so sensitive to their religion that to create riots on demand among Muslim polity is even easier than before. Draw a cartoon, make a movie, and voilà, – there is raw anger pouring into the streets which can be trivially harvested to create "revolutionary times" on demand. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's two nation advocacy was similarly harvested by the Muslim League political leaders to bring Muslim public out into the streets demanding a separate nation after their sensitivities were appropriately "tickled". The emotional Hindu-Muslim riots were instrumental in forcing the public mind for partition. In marketing terms, it is called demand creation. Just as riots can be engineered today by drawing a cartoon or making a film with useful idiots and planted stooges fanning the flame – when the firewood is primed, any match can light the fire – the fertile grounds for "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's two nation reality was politically engineered on demand by shrewdly preying upon the public mind. Its fulfillment therefore, as the demand of the Muslims themselves, thus became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Exactly what the British empire wanted all along but pretended that they were merely acquiescing to the Muslim demand for partition. Such a crime unilaterally committed without that pretext of "Muslim demand" in place would otherwise have united the entire subcontinent's public against the British empire. And that "Muslim demand" was given existential currency only by the temporary "revolutionary times" manufactured for that purpose. The same way as in these times when the American public mind was made to "United We Stand" to every abhorrent and evil act of their superpower government by the "catastrophic terrorism" of 9/11 – their "revolutionary times" to make possible what "is inconceivable in normal times." See Behavior Control by The Mighty Wurlitzer to perceptively fathom how the public mind is made with adept perception management ( http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer ).
Now that the engineered fait accompli of partition, and the senseless spilling of each others blood cannot be reversed, the least these offspring nations of the Indian subcontinent can do is to acquire some national "sha-oor" (wisdom, wherewithal) and recognize their common enemy. It is not each other, it is not each others religion, nor each others culture. It is the supra-national state in the making as the one-world government. This new elephant will be ruling them with no less a draconian trunk than in the colonial era, using house niggers, useful idiots, planted stooges, and mercenaries to govern their public mind no less effectively than when the subcontinent was the spectacular Jewel in the crown of the British empire.
The fact that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal did serve long term British imperial interests, or more aptly put as the Anglo-American interests, is not in question. The truth of these words is once again beyond doubt. The conferring by the King of the British empire, and Iqbal's acceptance, of the royal knighthood alone make it self-evident that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal was their prized doctrinal scholar and he knew it. The affect of Iqbal's two nation dogma which debilitated the entire Indian subcontinent, perpetually enslaving it to the Western powers, loudly bespeaks it. Judging a tree by tasting its fruit – and not by the elegant narrative of the orchard from a poet's fertile imagination – underscores the undeniable truth of the matter.
There will continue to remain a primary question mark on "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's role and the forces which motivated him. It is not merely an academic question mark today almost a century later, even though what his two nation advocacy instrumented in practice cannot be undone. But it is most pertinent to perceptively examine the Machiavellian matter of "cognitive infiltration" of the public mind by the brilliant mind, the Superman.
Muslims today must better apprehend the dynamics of social engineering which manipulate and almost choreograph the public mind using their respective sensitivities, attachments, and beliefs, which for them is primarily sources from their religion.
Therefore, the question must be perceptively examined as it has direct pertinence to understanding matters in today's scientific modernity which is far more susceptible to social engineering with the ubiquitous reach of the Mighty Wurlitzer, than was ever possible before.
Was "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal only unknowingly the stooge of the British empire, easily cultivated by them due to the size of his own ego, or was he also their Trojan Horse? Was it due to his shortsightedness alone that he effectively handicapped an entire subcontinent from ever becoming a world power by using empire's own strategy of divide et impera, or was it due to his long range thinking on behalf of the British empire whose king had so honored him, that he diabolically employed divide et impera using his poetic skills and expertise of Islam? Does it matter which one – if in either case Muslims fell for it?
The fact that the British ruled their colonies by cultivating both useful idiots and Trojan horses is not in doubt. All the feudal titles and "sirs" bestowed upon the natives of the Indian subcontinent speak to the brilliant governance of over three hundred million peoples by a handful of foreigners sitting ten thousand miles away. They employed the same class of strategic thinking for their withdrawal as they had employed for managing their occupation for over two centuries.
A similarly celebrated "Sir" of the Indian subcontinent of that colonial era is "Sir" Syed Ahmed Khan, the man who helped implement Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay's English-only Indian Education Policy, effectively constituting a "brown sahib" Muslim class and separating them from the languages of their birthplace – and hence their own heritage!
The following speech made by Lord Macaulay in 1835 is in the official records of the British Parliament:
'What then shall that language be? One-half of the committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be-- which language is the best worth knowing?'
'I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.'
'We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, –a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.' -- http://pakistan-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/p/macaulay-minute-on-indian-education-2nd.html
Read Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay's speech in its entirety to barely catch a glimpse of the depth and long range strategic thinking of the most diabolical and sophisticated colonizer ever to occupy the Indian subcontinent in recorded history.
The flattersome tickling of their native informant with "Sir" speaks to the brazen cultivation of that house nigger who so successfully led the implementation of Macaulay's education policy among Muslims. (To understand that adjective "house nigger" see FAQ: What is an Intellectual Negro? http://tinyurl.com/House-Nigger ) Its impact is visible to this very day among the post-partitioned nations so violently spawned from that once fabulous Jewel in the Crown by harvesting the untiring labors of another one of their key "Sirs".
While such a smoking gun as Lord Macaulay's speech is obviously not yet discovered in the archives of the former British empire to identify the real intellectual pedigree of "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's and his confrere Ch. Rahmat Ali's pernicious two nation advocacy (at least I am not aware of it), the evidence of sharing the benefactions of the British empire with all the rest of their useful idiots and mercenaries speaks loudly enough.
And so does the Hegelian Dialectic – create the problem of "brown sahib" in one century, and then offer a solution opposing that tendency in their offspring in the next century – and use both to continue to inflict empire's primacy upon them for centuries.
Just like contemporarily creating the "freedom-fighter" Mujahideen in one decade, harvesting their offspring to create the "Islamofascist" Terrorist in the next decade, and using both to similarly inflict empire's supremacy upon the same foolish Muslim mind which time and again gets taken in by a most cunning foe.
The masterful foe did not disappear with the waning of colonialism – which only morphed into neocolonialism and "democracy". The white man's burden also did not lessen with it. That burden today is "reform Islam" ( http://tinyurl.com/Reform-Islam ), "moderate Islam", to counter "militant Islam", for a similar diabolical purpose. It similarly attempts at discovering, cultivating and harvesting the most respectable looking scholars and intellectuals among Muslims themselves (see http://tinyurl.com/identifying-moderate-muslims ), and minimally purchases their silence with paychecks from its vast military-industrial-academe complex. It is a fortunate gift of providence to the Muslims that their masterful foe has not yet found a talent like "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal to preach "moderate Islam" to them – for the Allama's lofty teachings on Islam are actually its deadly nemesis. Surely only a talent like the Allama's could even counter it.
Seduction always comes wrapped in attractive garb. Unless it can attract, it is not seducing. Self-evident of course, but something easy to ignore when one is madly in love. It is what's underneath the beautiful gown that must be ferreted out in order to judge, whether or not one is in love, and before one shares the nuptial bed. Afterwards, it is fait accompli and only of interest for keeping historians and narrators in paid jobs. That preemption requires "sha-oor", wisdom, insight, courage, and a fully functioning brain to engage it. In the guise of developing that very "sha-oor" among the Muslims to end their servitude to empire, the good Allama was awarded the knighthood by empire which had exactly relied on that servitude for over two centuries.
Because, one may easily surmise that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal had the stellar intellect to instinctively perceive that the public mind so steeped in mental slavery will never detach itself from its chains. And, just like the Muslims have mindlessly been parroting the verses of the Holy Qur'an for centuries, they will also mindlessly be rehearsing his beautiful verses explaining the Holy Qur'an for many more centuries without any "sha-oor" ever developing between their ears. If the majestic words of the Holy Qur'an could not free Muslims from the yoke of servitude to fellow man and to their own ego, their "nafs", their petty self-interests, the verses of a mere mortal social scientist, despite his over-inflated ego, certainly weren't gonna better that instruction. But his uplifting poems heralding Islam's renaissance were attractive enough for the Muslim public mind at an emotional level. It enabled crafting an imposing intellectual opinion-maker as the "hakim-ul-ummat" for the time being. And that's all the legitimacy that was required to mobilize the public mind for the imperial agenda at hand to seed its fait accompli. The diabolical strategy was beautifully executed as a text-book Hegelian Dialectic. One for partition imbued with the spirit of Islam (the Muslims represented by the Indian Muslim League), and one dead set against it (the Hindus represented by the Indian Congress), thus creating the necessary "revolutionary times" which the clash of opposites always bring, and from whose ashes was fashioned their new Great Game on the newly emerging Grand Chessboard of the post-colonial era.
This analysis is substantiated by two incontrovertible facts.
- The facts on the ground since the partition match the preceding discussion. Specifically the fact that none of these three nations have been able to substantially raise the level of their general public's well-being beyond the pre-partition levels. Each nation has only cultivated new ruling classes while simultaneously increasing the share of poverty. With an ignorant and down-trodden majority public, no nation can ever rise. That was the overarching philosophy behind the partition of the subcontinent, and in the rise of the subsequent national leadership in each nation. Each one was encouraged to spend on defence against the other, encouraged into making opposite alliances with reigning superpowers, and encouraged into holding each other in perpetual check like two scorpions in a bottle. This forcing function of "encouragement" once again transpired by ensuring useful idiots, stooges, mercenaries, or at least manipulatable leaders, always stayed at the helm of national affairs, just as it has been so in the United States of America. Any undesirably patriotic leader is simply assassinated as an example to others to not stray beyond the narrowly permissible guidelines on international affairs, with a bit more leeway to indulge their lusts for leadership and power in domestic affairs. Can the recipients of the partition of the Indian subcontinent deny any of this with a straight face for their respective nations?
- The fact that it was "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal who introduced the idea of a Muslim State to the political leadership of the Muslim League, including to Mr. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founding political leader of the state of Pakistan. It was not a demand which organically emerged from the Indian Muslim peoples of the subcontinent themselves. It had a singular, and knighted, prime-mover.Historical records show that it was "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal who approached Mr. Jinnah who was initially for a united Indian subcontinent after the withdrawal of the British. It was "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal who convinced (the naïve?) Mr. Jinnah of the rationale for a separate nation state for the Muslims based only, and only, on the immediately unfolding "revolutionary times" on the ground. Absent those opinion-making "revolutionary times", the most outstanding constitutional mind among the Muslims in the Indo-subcontinent which that century had yet produced, wanted a united India like the leaders of the Indian Congress led by Hindu leaders. Mr. Jinnah was arguably never afforded the political opportunity to develop a constitutional framework for helping found a constitutional republic in a united post-colonial India such that even ninety nine percent of the people could not deprive the remaining one percent of their rights. Let alone the majority Hindu legally deprive the huge Muslim minority their constitutional rights in anyway based on race, religion, or creed. Such was the precedent setting constitutional republic upon which the egalitarian United States of America was once founded, which in turn had employed England's own great charter of liberties for its own white peoples, the Magna Carta. All that political capital of the colonizing white man of how to live together in liberty for themselves, was chucked aside by "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal just when liberty was finally beckoning. And by the political stooges he had somehow managed to enlist to lead the political movement for a Muslim State, all of whom instead patterned their call for liberty on the misanthropic Jewish State to seed permanent discord in the land! (See The Search for Historical Truth: Partition of India and Palestine, http://tinyurl.com/India-Palestine-Partition )The brilliant white mind yet prevailing upon the colonized one, just as Lord Macaulay had successfully fashioned a century before, clearly shines through. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal evidently understood both minds well, having risen from one, to become the other. Which is why "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal was the first to politically propose, in 1930, before anyone else in India even imagined it, or wanted it, the conception of a Muslim State to be carved out of the Indian subcontinent. A singular prime-mover, deftly cultivated and anointed by the British empire, and chosen to give political representation to the Muslims on his "Islamic" credentials previously established as the "hakim-ul-ummat". Can the recipients of the Muslim State deny any of this with a straight face? The facts are reported officially by the Government of Pakistan. Only their fuller context on the grand chessboard is underscored by this analysis done by a citizen of that same Muslim State (which, the reader might already be aware, is his only citizenship, by choice, despite being a US permanent resident, meaning, bearer of the famous "green card", for almost three decades).
The public mind must remain ever vigilant for the arising of another such "hakim-ul-ummat" among them. That public mind has already been primed for the "final savior" to engage the Armageddon which their preachers daily frighten them with from high pulpits. And he just might show up adorning the mantle of "moderate Islam".
I have already unmasked several such wanna-be, including the famous "Ambassador of Peace", similarly dispatched by the masterful foe to the Muslims, mainly of Pakistan, to now preach "moderate Islam" and "khilafat" --- the same sort that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal remained silent on while the same imperial masters were dismantling it as the Ottoman empire. Fortunately, this "Ambassador of Peace" isn't quite in the Allama's intellectual class – too transparent ( see http://tinyurl.com/Fatwa-Tahir-ul-Qadri ). And nor is this clever convert to Islam in the United States of America whose dazzling oratory and brilliant command of the Arabic language has acquired him a large following among the educated "moderate Muslims" ( see Hamza Yusuf in The Mighty Wurlitzer http://tinyurl.com/MightyWurlitzer ).
They are almost always imposing experts on Islam, they say and do mostly the right things with much eloquence, also carefully don't say and do all the right things with stone silence, and sometimes purvey half-truths, quarter truths, and outright lies wrapped in the veneer of truth. That veneer is often Islam. Muslims come flocking to them because of it, and because of their endearing power of expression as orator, or littérateur, or both. With their power to mold public opinion, they assist the superpower empire du jour in its aims of primacy and hegemony just as the good "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal, "Sir" Syed Ahmed Khan, and all the rest of the pious "Sirs" assisted the superpower empire of their time.
Perceptive scrutiny of evidence and imperial motivations on the grand chessboard of the British empire from the dizzying heights of "Mt. Fuji", indicates that the simpleton Muslims and Hindus of India, including their British trained political leaders, were as much in control of their ancient land's blood-partition as the people of Palestine! To this day the twin peoples of the Indian subcontinent, especially Pakistanis, are denied this comprehension under the false flag of separatist religionism.
The tragedy is that even their best genius minds peddling academic, legal and political wares refuse to recognize, to this very day, that the biggest fraudsters foisted upon the Indian sub-continent by the sly elites of the British empire, were all their distinguished indigenous knights who, until their very last, remained British assets playing many roles, some as stooges, and others as Nietzschean ubermensch.
The Muslim public mind, especially the Pakistani's, admires "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's beautiful poems dearly, whether or not it comprehends the words, let alone the philosophy. Muslim scholars, poets, ullemas, and literati who quote him liberally often hold deep convictions that "hakim-ul-ummat" Allama Iqbal's vast body of words speaks for itself and needs no apologies. Yes, and so do "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's vast body of acts, of both commission and omission. More than his lovely poetry which has had virtually zero impact upon the Muslim public mind, "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's acts have left a lasting imprint on the destiny of the Muslim public, and upon the lands they have lived on for millennia. And perhaps these do need an apology.
Muslims, like every other intelligent people, have an opportunity to learn from scrutinizing their own past history with a forensic eye, and not a jaundiced one of flag-waiving religionism, nationalism and patriotism. Only by overcoming socialization into the standard narrative, can one preempt becoming victims of "future history". That learning however can only happen by exercising one's own internal imam, one's intellect, and not with hero-worship of Sacred Cows rehearsing their beautiful gifts of delectable words. They often only lead one to hell on earth while promising the heaven beyond.
Watch video documentary
The Day India Burned: Partition, 1947, BBC Special Presentation
Partition... 70 years on: A primer - BBC Newsnight
It is always possible that I have misperceived the great Allama Iqbal's pious motivations. In which case, the great Allama, while being a brilliant poet-philosopher, was also a shortsighted political fool. He could neither perceive that the "revolutionary times" were transient and manufactured, nor foresee that partition would only benefit his imperial masters in their new great game in the post-colonial era. Take your pick – either a Superman or a useful idiot. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal's political profile hardly reads like a naïve simpleton's to even arguably conclude the latter:
"Already in 1908, while in England, he had been chosen as a member of the executive council of the newly established British branch of the Indian Muslim League. In 1931 and 1932 he represented the Muslims of India in the Round Table Conferences held in England to discuss the issue of the political future of India. And in a 1930 lecture Iqbal suggested the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of India."
The judgment of this analysis however, does not rest upon Allama Iqbal's internal motivations. But is based entirely upon his visible acts. Of both omission and commission. It is these acts which principally lend some insight into his primary motivation and the forces driving it. "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal consistently behaved exactly as the honorific "Sir" entitled him to behave, as the Knight of the British empire – he was their Superman!
Only that inner mental attitude explains why "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal felt no compunction about abusing Islam to separate a people who had lived together for a thousand years. A Superman spins morality for others, but feels himself beyond good and evil. Ends justify means including public deception. None of which spring any great fountains of guilt in the ubermensch. Study Nietzsche to perceptively comprehend this evil philosophy and its lasting impact on the superior intellect of Allama Iqbal. Nietzsche himself adapted it from Plato's virtuous philosopher-king, whereby, the superior intellect of the philosopher-king kills God – meaning, becomes atheist. All the rest of Nietzsche naturally followed from just that one tiny but fundamental change to Plato. The superior intellect is transformed from the virtuous philosopher-king of Plato to Nietzsche's Superman. This new Superman is still licensed, just as he is with Plato, to control and guide other lesser peoples' destinies as their "moral" steward – for he is the most enlightened among them. For Plato, the virtuous philosopher-king is not just entitled to be the public's guide, but is morally required to be the public's guide. The virtuous philosopher-king is closest to Truth, hence to God, and hence better able to govern with moral wisdom those lacking in that merit. Same in Nietzsche's world. The Superman is required to be the public's steward – except that the Superman is also god. The Superman now defines morality for the public, what is good and what is evil, while himself remaining beyond the pale of his own preaching to the lowly, like any god. The Superman now feels intellectually entitled to play with these lesser intelligent people's lives. They are just sheep, dispensable, butcherable. The Superman can get them to dance on his strings whenever he wants, to fight his battles, to carry his burden, to do his dirty work, just like Zeus and Apollo, the mythical gods of Athens in Greek mythology.
While the great Allama Iqbal may have been preaching the virtuous Platonic version of "marde-momin" to the Muslim public mind, he evidently himself believed and acted on the Nietzsche's version of the ubermensch! His hypocritical actions alone speak to the truth of those words.
1 : behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.
Dictionary Definition of hypocrite
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings
synonyms : pretender, dissembler, deceiver, liar, pietist, sanctimonious person, plaster saint;
informal : phony, fraud, sham, fake
usage : "I've been made to feel inadequate my whole life by someone who turns out to be a total hypocrite"
The author seeks evidence that would credibly indicate that "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal ever returned the Knighthood. His own statement to this effect would be useful. If such evidence is available, the author will appreciate receiving a reference.
The author seeks evidence from newspaper clippings of any public statement that "Sir" Allama Iqbal emphatically made against the Crown condemning its tyranny, between the years 1906 and 1938, the thirty-two years that he was carefully nurtured by, and faithfully served, the white man's empire. Had he not served the British imperial interests as the compliant representative of the white man to the millions whom they governed, then unlike "Sir" Syed Ahmed Khan and "Sir" Aga Khan III, the other two Indo sub-continent Muslim patron saints of the British empire who were equally awarded knighthood for being empire's compliant house niggers, our marde-momin would not have been given such a privileged rank nor offered the knighthood. This is not mere opinion, but statement of fact, There is no doubt in the truth of these words. It is self-evident. Even more self-evident is the fact that had our marde-momin an ounce of dignity and self-respect after all his lovely versification of Islam as the "deen-e-Shabbiri", the Islam exemplified by Imam Hussein and his Ahlul Bayt in not bowing before imperialists of their time, he would have disdainfully declined to be honored by the King of England. We have an easy forensic yardstick for identifying both useful idiots and mercenaries even today. Just see who puts "Sir" Allama Iqbal as the marde-momin while brazenly ignoring title "Sir" and all that it implies for a scholar who preached virtuous Islam. Oops, the entire nation of Pakistan!
See the rise of the new religious Right among both Shia and Sunni striving to bring Revolutionary Islam to Pakistan by harvesting popular as well obscure verses in Persian and Urdu of "Sir" Allama Muhammad Iqbal for their cause célèbre, Epilogue: Pakistan on the chopping block in 2018? http://tinyurl.com/Pakistan-on-chopping-block )
Was "Sir" Allama Iqbal an Ahmadi?
Was "Sir" Allama Iqbal also an Ahmadi and the follower of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the fellow who created a new "peaceful Islam" Movement in India as the so called "promised reformer" after the militant 1857 Indian War of Independence which the British empire termed "mutiny", had failed? A new document find reveals that to be the case.
This is a most significant question because Mirza Ghulam Ahmad anointed himself God inspired "prophet", "mujjaddid", "messiah", etc., and founded an intellectual Movement of "peace" in the name of Islam which principally did not challenge the British empire's right to rule the Indian sub-continent as the new divinely appointed authority over the Muslims. The hijacking of the verse 4:59 of the Holy Qur'an to "Obey Allah, Obey the Messenger and those vested in authority over you", made it theologically easy. (See https://tinyurl.com/Qadiani-4-59-Subversion) This indefinite clause has been used for fourteen centuries to legitimize imperial authority over the Muslim mind. Initially it was by the Muslims themselves and the world saw one dynastic Caliphate after another deriving their legitimacy as administerers of God's authority over the Muslim public. Well, by the beginning of the 19th century the burden had passed on to the Anglo-Saxon Christian empire to rule the Muslim mind in the Indian sub-continent. The Ahmadiyyat Movement sought to neutralize Indian Muslim militant and intellectual opposition to the British empire which had surfaced with extreme violence in 1857, uniting Hindus and Sikhs with Muslims in common cause. (See historical backgrounder https://tinyurl.com/Backgrounder-Qadiani)
The new "peaceful Islam" philosophy was marketed under the banner of "reform" not much different in its political dispensation than the "moderate Islam" being marketed by Daniel Pipes and his patsies like Tahir-ul Qadri et. al. worldwide, defining the new "good Muslim" and advocating full cooperation with all of the empire's mandates, narratives, and political directions. The overzealously religious Muslims of the Indo sub-continent needed subduing by all means possible, and theology is usually among the first recourse of any invader from an advanced civilization intellectually sophisticated enough to understand its power to command obedience. The Mongol invaders weren't and therefore eventually came to be absorbed by the relatively richer Indian civilization themselves. The new invaders, the more advanced British empire, understood Machiavelli. And so the Indians got the flourishing Ahmadiyyat movement which tacitly accepted the white man's burden of the superior civilizing force gradually bequeathing political and educational enlightenment by piece-meal dispensation to the backward Indian natives to slowly bring them up to speed on the self-governance they demanded! In the meantime, the white man continued to plunder the Jewel in the Crown as fair compensation for his selfless la mission civilisatrice!
The fact that the British empire exactly harbored that very primacy complex and cultivated native Uncle Toms to help run the empire's la mission civilisatrice is already proven by Lord Macaulay's speech of 1835 to the British Parliament which had led to crafting of the Indian Education policy for its Jewel in the Crown. The number of Ahmadis and other Muslim minorities anointed into "Sir" by the British Empire, the Uncle Toms trained in London and brought forth into public prominence and into Muslim leadership, all of whom subsequently led, energized, and participated in the manufactured separatist movement to divide the Indian sub-continent in the name of Islam, is itself beyond doubt. It is both factual and self-evident.
The shocking discovery here is that "Sir" Allama Iqbal, the Ahmadi documentation claims, was an Ahmadi!
The "shocking" part, so to speak, is why would a supposed intellectual of the stature of "Sir" Allama Iqbal fall for this "mujjaddid reformer", and as the document asserts, "in 1897, Sir Muhammad Iqbal took the pledge of Mirza sahib"?
It is not like "Sir" Muhammad Iqbal was born into the Ahmadiyya sect and inherited that belief system like many of its notable members who played a direct role in the orchestration of Pakistan, men like "Sir" Zafarulla Khan.
If this report is to be believed, Allama Iqbal intellectually adopted the Ahmadiyya faith by taking the pledge of allegiance directly at the hands of its original founder who called himself the divinely anointed "mujjaddid"!
Why isn't this "fact" more well known in Pakistan where the scholarly study of Iqbal, and all things Iqbal, termed "Iqbaliyat", is ubiquitous?
Virtually every Muslim group, sect, and fiqh, of Pakistan claims "Sir" Iqbal to be their intellectual based on his lofty poems selling the "marde-momin". But it was Iqbal who claimed Ahmadiyyat as his intellectual foundation.
Begin Quote
Dr. Iqbal's attachment grew so much that in 1897 he formally took the bai'at at the hand of Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. This was confirmed by Maulvi Ghulam Muhiy-ud-Din Qasoori, ex-General Secretary of the Anjuman Himayat-i Islam, Lahore, at the time when the Munir Court of Enquiry was being held in Pakistan in 1953. His statement was reported in a newspaper as follows:
"After five years, in 1897, Sir Muhammad Iqbal took the pledge of Mirza sahib." (Daily Nawa-i Waqt, Lahore, 15 November 1953.)
End Quote
Reference: See Chapter 2, Maulana Hafiz Sher Mohammad, Dr. Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha'at Islam Lahore Inc., U.S.A. 1995, http://www.muslim.org/iqbal/ch2.htm .
Download pdf of the full book from http://www.muslim.org/iqbal/smiatam.htm .
See Chapter 8 for English translation of some verses of "Sir" Allama Iqbal's poems that were written in praise of the British rulers of India, http://www.muslim.org/iqbal/ch8.htm . The future knighted "Sir" of the British empire evidently also harbored scant reservations for writing flattering praise for the oppressive British sovereigns if such gratuitous ass-kissing of the Massa could make him standout as their greatest Uncle Tom from among their worldwide subjects! Please visit these links to read for yourself how the British sovereign were "the protective shadow of God" over their colonial subjects.
Well, sure enough, Iqbal stood out, the British empire noticed him and his conversion to Ahmadiyyat, educated him, groomed him to serve their interests, appointed him to the Round Table, and eventually knighted him! Allama Iqbal's willing acceptance and retention of knighthood betrays his true motivation for the lavish praise that he had heaped upon the King and Queen of the British empire and supported their imperial causes by his acts of both commission and omission. It all makes sense. The acute discernment of facts and all the forces that drive them can lift the fog of confusion, but only for those able to examine the matter with some degree of emotional detachment.
Analyzing Iqbal and Ahmadiyyat in his early years
If Iqbal's Ahmadiyya pledge is indeed a fact and not mere myth as the majority of "feel-good" Muslims who claim him as their marde-momin are wont to assert, often with far less evidence concerning Iqbal's attachment to Ahmadiyya in his early years (as opposed to his last years when he openly came out in condemnation of it as examined below) than is provided by the Ahmadi document in support of their claim, then it is also a comprehensible fact. A brilliant young opportunist at the start of his career openly signaling his willingness to make the Faustian bargain in the service of empire. Whether Iqbal actually believed in this absurdity in the inner most recesses of his heart only he would know for sure, but the Ahmadi document asserts that other pilgrims in the camp believed that he was really a believer in their faith and followed in the footsteps of his family members' disposition towards Ahmadiyyat (see ch2, op. cit.):
Begin Quote:
1. Dr. Iqbal's father, Shaikh Nur Muhammad, was a great admirer of Hazrat Mirza.
2. Dr. Iqbal's elder brother, Shaikh Ata Muhammad, had formally joined the Ahmadiyya Movement by taking the bai'at (pledge).
End Quote
However, the prima facie evidence of what followed his pledge of allegiance to Ahmadiyya in 1897 at the ripe young age of twenty, is entirely self-consistent with the observation that Iqbal calculatingly did everything he possibly could to attract the attention of the British empire with ass-kissing praise of the occupying colonial power that even today sickens one to the stomach (see ch8, ibid.):
Begin Quote
Upon the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Dr. Iqbal penned an epicedium of ten pages, entitled 'Tears of Blood', from which we give a few verses below. The Queen died on the day of Eid-ul-Fitr, and Iqbal wrote:
"Happiness came, but grief came along with it, Yesterday was Eid, but today came muharram [month of the year associated with the deepest mourning for Muslims]
"Easier than the grief and mourning of this day, Would be the coming of the morn of the day of judgment.
"Ah! the Queen of the realm of the heart has passed away, My scarred heart has become a house of mourning.
"O India, thy lover has passed away, She who sighed at thy troubles has passed away.
"O India, the protective shadow of God has been lifted from above you, She who sympathised with your inhabitants has gone.
"Victoria is not dead as her good name remains, this is the life to whomever God gives it.
"May the deceased receive abundant heavenly reward, and may we show goodly patience."
(Baqiyyat-i Iqbal, poem runs over pages 71– 90. Translator's Note: I have only translated here some of the verses quoted by Hafiz Sher Mohammad in his original Urdu work.)
End Quote
The Ahmadi Iqbal succeeded in winning the British empire's trust to the point of being sent not just to England to be groomed in the ways of empire as was deemed necessary by Lord Macaulay in his 1835 statement to the British Parliament for manufacturing British empire's House Niggers "who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, –a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.", but also to Germany to get a doctorate in nihilism! Let's examine this latter oxymoron a bit more forensically keeping empirical facts before us in order to not stray into baseless speculation.
Arguably it was Iqbal's gratuitous pledge of allegiance to Ahmadiyyat which signaled to the British empire that this brilliant young mind from the unknown backwaters of Sialkot was reliably willing to be their diabolical asset among the Muslims. The Nietzschean Superman is naturally amoral; beyond all belief systems that ordinary mortals are infused with. Noble lies and end justifies the means is the Superman's only "religion". The demonstration of gratuitous and willing allegiance to a manifest absurdity by a most intelligent mind, as opposed to the dimwitted falling for it, is often a potent signal of a non sequitur. To attempt to seek the psychological explanation of this empiricism in political science, it could only have been a brilliant signal to the ruling British empire that this intelligent lad was prepared to be their house nigger and do anything for them! The British empire, as even the present Pax Americana empire building NGOs throughout the world, was always on the look-out for super intelligent peoples, alongside the useful idiots, who could be groomed to serve them in their own respective stations. Non sequiturs can brilliantly aid in that identification of the natural Nietzschean Superman candidate for grooming.
This actually explains why Allama Iqbal received such remarkable and early prominence from the British empire, more than anyone else in the colonized Indian sub-continent. The empire perhaps quickly discerned that this most intelligent future Indian asset was by his nature beyond good and evil and would do anything for them without necessarily needing to be explicitly told what to do. It is not an insignificant coincidence that Iqbal was the only notable scion of the sub-continent who also received his grooming in Germany, in the atheistic philosophy of Nietzsche and Hegel – as an Indian Muslim! Iqbal was even given a doctoral thesis supervisor who was himself a prominent student of Hegel.
So observe this strange non sequitur: the British empire is grooming a most brilliant Muslim intellectual to get a Ph.D. in statism and the nihilistic order!
Not unless one intimately learns Hegel and the Hegelian Dialectic that one can appreciate the sophistication of the nihilistic devil underneath the white virginal wedding gown. And Iqbal is formally trained by the British empire in that very diabolical theology of imperial mobilization such that in a fit of public conscience the marde-momin can easily give away the bride's secret to protect his peoples from the syphilis epidemic that always follows in its wake?
Why did the British empire take that risk of training a brilliant Muslim intellectual in this avant-garde nihilistic order whose home base was even in its rival empire?
To this scribe's knowledge, no other stalwart "Sir" from the backwaters of the Indian sub-continent, Hindu or Muslim, groomed in England to serve the British empire, is known to have also received such academic training in Nietzsche and Hegel in Germany. The author would appreciate receiving a citation that might demonstrate otherwise.
Why is Iqbal such an exception? How did the British even know to make that exception and so early on in Iqbal's career?
Indubitably, only if the Massa had recognized and were certain that they were grooming a trusted lieutenant, their own Superman!
Undoubtedly Iqbal's bizarre pledge of allegiance to "Hazrat" Mirza Ghulam Ahmad – to so obvious a charlatan who although being a brilliant interlocutor of Christian missionaries from all the historical accounts, is fundamentally little different from the flourishing "sufi pirs" dotting the sub-continental landscape even today who routinely claim communion with God or with the supernatural and sell divine prescriptions, just that in his case God had happened to prescribe peaceful coexistence of the Indian Muslims with the colonizing British rulers of India – inspired that trust.
How and why did Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian in India, like Bahaullah of Iran, and Abdul Wahab of Arabia previously, succeed in making his reform Movement so prominent – it is also not an insignificant coincidence that all three Movements shared one strange common denominator in their respective Messianic dispensation, namely, asserting a divine mandate for advocating to their respective Muslim followers to not challenge the colonial authority of the British empire – is beyond the scope of this analysis. It should however also be self-evident to the students of imperial history who benefited in all three cases; cui bono always being a pretty good yardstick to learn which god one shills for.
The fact that the imperial trust in their new Frankenstein, diabolically wrapped in marde-momin's virtuous garb but principally serving empire's own interests as its Superman, is strictly honored, is categorically betrayed by evidence of "Sir" Allama Iqbal's own actions and inactions.
True to his pledge of allegiance to the new messianic figure of India, which in effect was the pledge of allegiance to the British empire, the first significant thing our marde-momin did was to invent the brilliant rationale for the unprecedented separate Muslim nation-state to match what was happening in the other long-planned Rothschild's Round Table project, the unprecedented partition of Palestine under Moses Hess' brilliant invention of Rothschild Zionism to motivate the already well-settled Jews of a culturally developed and sophisticated Europe to migrate to the rural farm lands of Palestine.
Allama Iqbal unveiled his specious rationale for a separate Muslim "nation-state" in synchronicity with the British empire's Balfour Declaration issued to Lord Rothschild gratuitously granting the European Jewry a Jewish "nation-state" of their own in Palestine. The two rationales are shockingly similar, even coming at precisely the same epoch in the aftermath of World War I when vast territories of others were Machiavellianly being carved out in smaller "nation-states": a) neither minority community can co-exist with the majority; b) both speciously draw on theology from their respective Holy Books to sell the unprecedented political act of a separate homeland to their respective unwitting mass base in the name of their respective religion; and c) both are helped by respective "revolutionary times" on the ground to legitimize their demand in the most diabolical and murderous examples of Demand Creation. The modern students of advertising and marketing, more than engineers and doctors, would perhaps be better acquainted with that term which today drives a trillion dollar industry. For the psychological sophistication that underlies that concept, see Edward Bernays' 1928 classic book titled: Propaganda, for some real case studies of Demand Creation.
The diabolical Balfour Declaration remained unopposed by "Sir" Allama Iqbal when even non Muslims like Mahatma Gandhi most straightforwardly exposed the speciousness of the Jewish demand! Read below the eloquence of commonsense from the mind of a Hindu non-separatist national leader which the marde-momin Allama Iqbal, the brilliant philosopher separatist leader of Muslims, could never muster! And how could he ever muster any such effrontery as intellectual and moral integrity demanded after his Faustian pledge of allegiance to the British empire as God's protective shadow over India? The marde-momin of the future Pakistan had already prepared the same sort of partition demand on behalf of the Muslims of India! The demand, politically legitimized from mere ink on lifeless paper to a thriving Movement by giving it continued considerations at the Round Table Conferences, outright neutralized not only the tiny Indian Khilafat Movement which was being a thorn in the British empire's gluteus maximus, but also preemptively neutralized any serious Indian Muslim mass opposition to the Crown's bastardization of the former lands of the Muslim Ottoman empire from arising in India and opening a second front of momentous civil disobedience on that count. The risk mitigation strategy of neutralizing any effective Muslim protest over handing Jerusalem and Palestine to the Jews from making governance impossible in the Indian sub-continent for the British empire is clearly visible here.
The trust (or the calculated bet) of the British empire in "Sir" Allama Iqbal as the faithful Superman of empire had been fully vindicated. The marde-momin of Islam is not known to have uttered any condemnation of the Jewish demand for Jewistan, let alone of the most sophisticated and diabolical Balfour Declaration fraud inflicted upon a naïve agrarian Muslim population of Palestine, in the twenty years that he lived afterwards as the knight of the British Round Table. Nothing like the following straightforward truth escaped the trusted knight's brilliant mind – and for what reason it escaped the great Mahatma's will be taken up in a separate episode of the Sacred Cow series dedicated to Gandhi and his own grooming by the British empire to play in the Hegelian Dialectic:
"But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood? Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are French in precisely the same sense that Christians born in France are French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain at will? This cry for the national home affords a colorable justification for the German expulsion of the Jews." --- Mohandas K. Gandhi, on Jews & Middle-East, November 1938
It is surely not impudence to ask why such egregious silence on the most shocking travesty to be inflicted upon an innocent, mostly Muslim, indigenous peoples of Palestine from one who so profoundly articulated the "marde-momin" when even non Muslims can courageously speak their mind in condemnation of it? The six million Jews of Europe haven't even perished yet in the infamous still to be built gas chambers, but the marde-momin of Islam already appears more concerned for their Jewish welfare than his own Muslim peoples of Palestine – if "Sir" Allama Iqbal's ugly silence is permitted to explain his tacit endorsement of the Jewish demand for Jewistan.
No zealot Muslim scholar of Pakistan proudly quoting Allama Iqbal is ever willing to straightforwardly face that question of tacit endorsement of oppression by the abject silence which unequivocally colors the "muffakar-e-Pakistan" as nothing more than the opportunist house nigger of the British Round Table. But look at the conundrum: How can a Pakistani intellectual even begin to address that question of their sacred cow, let alone effectively challenge the raison d'être of the Jewish State in Palestine with a straight face, without himself confronting the very raison d'être of Pakistan in the Indian sub-continent?
A brilliantly administered preemptive perpetual check by the Round Table progenitors of the Jewish State upon Muslims in every time and space, thanks to "Sir" Allama Iqbal. In order to confront Jewistan with any degree of intellectual integrity and honesty, Muslims are forced to confront the creation of Pakistan. Both nation-states nuclear armed, both dystopic in their birth-pangs and at birth, and both, even today, a basket case of their respective civilizations to say the least; the two peoples respectively living "in the native land of the hypocrite" of their own in the name of god!
The fact that even both people are identically indoctrinated in the fairy tale construction and divine destiny of their respective nation is beautifully betrayed by the following Jewish example. It is evidently a tad easier for the Muslim mind to look more objectively at the "other", especially its enemy, than at its own self, so here is looking at the Jewish state:
"The state of Israel founded in 1948 following a war which the Israelis call the War of Independence, and the Palestinians call the Nakba – the catastrophe. A haunted, persecuted people sought to find a shelter and a state for itself, and did so at a horrible price to another people. During the war of 1948, more than half of the Palestinian population at the time – 1,380,000 people – were driven off their homeland by the Israeli army. Though Israel officially claimed that a majority of refugees fled and were not expelled, it still refused to allow them to return, as a UN resolution demanded shortly after 1948 war. Thus, the Israeli land was obtained through ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. This is not a process unfamiliar in history. Israel's actions remain incomparable to the massive ethnic cleansing of Native Americans by the settlers and government of the United states. Had Israel stopped there, in 1948, I could probably live with it. As an Israeli, I grew up believing that this primal sin our state was founded on may be forgiven one day, because the founder's generation was driven by the faith that this was the only way to save the Jewish people from the danger of another holocaust." -- Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine – How to End the War of 1948 (emphasis added)
Perhaps the aforementioned candid example from the pen of a remarkable Jewish Israeli truth-teller, the professor of linguistics, late Tanya Reinhart, dispassionately confronting the Zionist myths, can prompt the interested Muslim Pakistani reader to also go look at how Pakistani children are, even today, ubiquitously indoctrinated into the state philosophy from Kindergarten to university, not to forget in the religious madrassas now dotting virtually every neighborhood of Pakistan. The following is stated in the section titled National Education Policy 1998-2010, of the 2007 White Paper on Education Policy prepared by Pakistan's Education Ministry:
"Continuing on the 1979 & 1992 policies, this policy makes several leaps. First, in 21st century it visualizes Pakistan as an ideological state ... the country cannot survive and advance without putting the entire system of education on Islamic foundations....the only justification for our existence is our total commitment to Islam as out sole identity. Second, education is perceived as an instrument to 'build the sound Islamic society'. Third, Islam and Islamic values should not be part of Islamic studies alone but also all other disciplines." (emphasis added)
That, all that, in this author's view, is the momentous and overarching consequence of what otherwise does appear on the surface to the cynic as a rather gratuitous and bizarre pledge of allegiance, and to the aficionado as nothing more than the insignificant petulance of youthful exuberance, for a most brilliant young mind to accept on the hand of a "sufi pir" on his absurd claim that God spoke to him and told him to not oppose the British empire!
It is likely that the Muslim mind, especially the Pakistani mind, will easily reject these historical linkages without any consideration of their merit. But it is for everyone to also quite democratically observe and ponder upon, that the Ahmadiyya sect's sacred mosque today just happens to be most generously located in Haifa, Israel! The Ahmadiyya community settled early in the Zionist Jewistan in the making, as early as 1928 according to wikipedia. Why such benevolence is shown towards the Ahmadiyya sect by the Zionists, when the Jewish State since its inception is systematically usurping all sacred vestiges of Islam and Muslims from The Holy Land? Interestingly, the Bahais of Iran's temple, the Bahai Gardens, and its "World Headquarters" are also located in Israel. Why such benevolence to fringe Muslim sects who so generously advocated peace with the British empire's la mission civilisatrice? The linkage of the Ahmadiyya Movement to the Zionist project is unequivocally manifest. It is also a categorical fact that Allama Iqbal played a most auspicious role for the British empire's divide and conquer strategy on the new evolving grand chessboard full of warring nation-states carved out of former empires: categorical omission on the Jews' side to support their dystopia, and categorical commission on the Muslims' side to father their dystopia.
"Sir" Allama Iqbal being baptized an Ahmadi in an Ahmadi sympathetic home, although a painful issue for many zealot Muslims to reconcile with, is pertinent only in so far as it is a coherent explanation of empirical facts which all can see. None of the facts discussed here are classified as state-secret of any nation. What Iqbal's inner-most religious beliefs may have been or how he may have evolved spiritually, was really his own private affair. People of many religions, as well as no religion, have equally served empire in all times as its useful idiots, mercenaries and Superman! "Sir" Allama Iqbal, the evidence betrays, and as persuasively argued here, was manifestly among the Superman.
Caption The Mahmood Mosque in Kababir, Haifa, Israel was built by Ahmadiyya Muslim community in the late 1970s. Kababir is a mixed neighborhood of Ahmadi Muslim Arabs and Jews on Mount Carmel in Haifa. When established in 1928, the majority of the town's residents were part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. The first Ahmadiyya Muslim Missionary from India in Israel was Jalaluddin Shams. (Image and text source Wikipedia)
Analyzing Iqbal and Ahmadiyyat in his last years
A second revealing Ahmadi document lends new insights into "Sir" Allama Iqbal's "fickle mindedness" to easily go with the political flow when it was necessary to do so, titled: Sir Muhammad Iqbal's Statement re The Qadianis, by Maulana Muhammad Ali. It is a rebuttal written by this famous late Ahmadi scholar who is also deemed to be the first Muslim English translator of the Holy Qur'an to offer a fair and well-respected translation to the English speaking world (MMA 1917), to "Sir" Allama Iqbal after the lauded poet-philosopher had evidently turned volt face on his pledge of acceptance of the Ahmadiyyat faith towards the latter part of his life and belatedly condemned the Qadiani Ahmadis "kafir" circa 1935. Why had Iqbal waited so long to issue his condemnation? Download pdf http://aaiil.org/text/books/mali/sirmuhammadiqbalsstatementsqadianis/sirmuhammadiqbalsstatementsqadianis.pdf .
This document shockingly reveals that "Sir" Allama Iqbal invited "the British Government to interfere in the religious controversy between the Qadianis and the orthodox to help the majority against an insignificant minority,".
The "shocking" thing here, once again putting the exclamation in double quotes to emphasize it, is that "Sir" Allama Iqbal is seen inviting the British empire's intervention in supposedly a purely religious matter among the Muslim sects. The knight of the British empire is gratuitously calling upon his Christian masters as the colonizing state of India to legally deem the Qadianis, even if deemed a dubious Muslim sect by the pious keepers of the faith, officially "kafir"!
"Sir" Allama Iqbal's own words, written as a Postscript in clarification of his own statements to which presumably Maulana Muhammad Ali was responding, leave no room for doubt that Iqbal is calling upon the British empire, the "rulers" of India, to declare the Qadianis non-Muslim:
"I understand that this statement has caused some misunderstanding in some quarters. It is thought that I have made a subtle suggestion to the Government to suppress the Qadiani movement by force. Nothing of the kind. I have made it clear that the policy of non-interference in religion is the only policy which can be adopted by the rulers of India. No other policy is possible. I confess, however, that to my mind this policy is harmful to the interests of religious communities; but there is no escape from it and those who suffer will have to safeguard their interests by suitable means. The best course for the rulers of India is, in my opinion, to declare the Qadianis a separate community. This will be perfectly consistent with the policy of the Qadianis themselves, and the Indian Muslim will tolerate them just as he tolerates other religions." Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, circa 1935 (source: http://www.koranselskab.dk/profiler/iqbal/qadianis.htm )
Once again, "Sir" Allama Iqbal is a) inviting state sanction on "takfir"; and b) inviting a Christian State's sanction colonially ruling India on a Muslim internal theological matter!
What sort of marde-momin is this?
This document written by the famous and most respected translator of the Holy Qur'an, and "Sir" Allama Iqbal's own words, lend compelling evidence to the idea that the rising takfiri trend in Pakistan today has a most distinguished intellectual pedigree in the Indian sub-continent that goes back at least to the Ahrar of the 1930s! See: Memo: The 'Ahrar-Ahmadiya controversy' of 1953 and Shia Killings today in 2013. And given that the beleaguered Shia Muslims of Pakistan today rush to proclaim "Sir" Allama Iqbal as their own greatest contributor to mankind in the twentieth century, they may have this same great benefactor to thank for the rabid state-sponsored "takfirism" that has now engulfed Pakistan with the state officially adjudicating in 1974, and subsequently continually "tickling", the specious doctrinal question who is Muslim and who isn't. That sword is now hanging over the Shia minority of Pakistan themselves. See: What Role did Shias Play in Condemning Qadianis to Kafirdom in Cahoots with Sunni Scholars in 1974?. Furthermore, as evidence of the veracity of the first half of the preceding statement, that the Shia pulpit too unabashedly proclaims "Sir" Allama Iqbal as the "alambardar" (flag-bearer) of "deen-e-Shabbiri" (the deen as exemplified by Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet of Islam, at Karbala), the Qom (Iran) trained fiery Shia pontiff of Pakistan, Syed Jawad Naqvi of Lahore, is oft heard declaring this tall knight of the British empire to be the first and foremost intellectual exponent of "valih-e-faqih" (even before the late Ayatollah Khomeini had borrowed Plato's 2500 year old "philosopher-king" and cleverly re-flavored it to give it revelatory underpinnings under the banner of "revolutionary Islam")! See The Rise of Revolutionary Islam in Pakistan – A Report on Behavior Control. To this has been added the new cacophony of Sunni Barelvi version of Revolutionary Islam. It also enlists "Sir" Allama Muhammad Iqbal to its cause célèbre, but calls it "deen-e-Muhammadi". Their raison d'être in contrast to the Shia version, is to enforce the Article in Pakistan's Constitution of Ahmadis declared as kafir, enforce Pakistan's Blasphemy laws without show of mercy, and bring the religion of Prophet Muhammad and the Sunni Caliphs back to power. See Epilogue: Pakistan on the chopping block in 2018? http://tinyurl.com/Pakistan-on-chopping-block.
To even ask such a loaded religious doctrinal question who is a Muslim and who isn't, never mind to try to answer it, only benefits the cultivation of divide and conquer!
The fact as per this document that Allama Iqbal even participated in that Machiavellian question like any ordinary mullah of the day (and of today), something which even puzzled Maulana Mohammad Ali as is visible from his rebuttal, is a most disturbing fact. The brightest Allama of the British empire is a European trained intellectual philosopher in the Age of post enlightenment. He is not only academically intimate with Hegel and Nietzsche, Spinoza and Will Durant, but is also plugged in politically as the member of Round Table representing Muslim political interests. Even a quick peruse of his long essay titled: "The Muslim Attitude towards the Ahmadiyya Movement", written in response to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru inquiring into the Muslim attitudes towards the Ahmadis, trivially shows the reader that "Sir" Allama Iqbal is a sophisticated and intellectually savvy scholar to say the least. Read his essay which is even used today by both the feeble of mind and the shrewd Machiavelli to lend an intellectual veneer to the marginalization of Ahmadis and Qadianis as non Muslims : http://www.koranselskab.dk/profiler/iqbal/ahmadiyya.htm .
Therefore, once again, is it gross impertinence to ask whether the shinning knight of the British empire is so politically naïve as to not realize that the foolish doctrinal question of trying to settle who is a Muslim and who isn't – and especially under a politically charged imperial umbrella that harkens to the partition of the sectarianly divisive Indian sub-continent – only begs open an endless Pandora's box? That pursuing that question can never achieve anything productive, or in the national interest, except the inevitable political disenfranchisement of the minority public thus targeted, and for whom, it is safe to presume, their practice of religion is often their native belief system of birth for which they will willingly live and die in the extremes like any self-respecting people? Does it take a rocket scientist to know that only "revolutionary times" will be the natural harvest of fueling that volatile inferno? This is entirely self-evident.
We can see the truth of this observation even today. It is now almost trivial to seed, germinate, cultivate and harvest theological differences among Muslims based on that exact same doctrinal question for pushing any political agenda no differently than how the British empire cultivated the Hegelian Dialectic of "peaceful Islam" to encourage the Muslims of the day to refrain from challenging its sovereign authority over them as an integral part of their own religion Islam. Compare with today's Hegelian Dialectic of "moderate Islam" as the new "peaceful Islam" du jour of Tahir-ul Qadri and Daniel Pipes et. al. It also refrains from questioning the empire's narratives of the day, narratives that aid and abet its latter day "imperial mobilization" agendas. And juxtapose it against both of its antithesis, "militant Islam" based on Sunni derived orthodoxy and "revolutionary Islam" based on Shia derived orthodoxy. All these opposites and their exponents naturally clashing with each other and with all others on the grand chessboard of today, inevitably leads to percolating "revolutionary times" all along the "arc of crisis" in the "global zone of percolating violence". Just as it was self-servingly presaged by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (1976-1980).
The violence, both externally directed, and internecine, is naturally seeded in a self-fulfilling prophecy because one side terrorizes while the other side defends itself, and the third party sprinkles the "peaceful" reform panacea to the mix to add to the chaos and confusion of the "revolutionary times". The fact is that they all principally serve the same interests, to lend natural justification for whatever a priori political agenda that needed to be foisted upon the public, to be automatically achieved in the guise of the officialdom pursuing legitimate reactions to these manufactured "revolutionary times". See Hegelian Dialectic – What is it? if you are unfamiliar with journeying with the uber sophisticated Machiavelli on the road to "imperial mobilization".
These two document finds are what they are. Please read them carefully in the light of what is examined here, and make up your own damn mind of why and how did "Sir" Allama Iqbal come to adopt Ahmadiyyat and its pragmatic theosophy of not only not opposing the British empire as the rulers of the sub-continent, but working cooperatively with all its imperial agendas. All notable Ahmadis, without exception, as far as I am aware, pragmatically cooperated with the discourse boundaries and the political directions bequeathed by the British empire to the sub-continent. The factual record of the actual acts and deeds of our noble Superman, and of the concomitant rewards so reaped from the British empire, from the unknown rags of Sialkot to the coveted knighthood of empire, reflects that very Ahmadiyyat theosophy of pragmaticism despite all his moral sermonizing of the virtuous marde-momin! Oscar Wilde most straightforwardly summarized this state of affairs in The Picture of Dorian Gray: "And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite."
The purpose of the rehearsal of this sacred history and its non conformist analysis is not so that the reader may be intellectually entertained so to speak, and shout their applause when they approve or attempt to denigrate the author when they find the material unpleasant --- as has evidently been the case since the publication of Sacred Cow: Allama Iqbal - marde-momin or Superman? in December 2012. But that the reader experiencing cognitive dissonance upon examining their own history from a different angle on the broader canvas of the grand chessboard, may shrewdly come to comprehend the sophisticated methods of the devil and how it seduces the "likkha parrha jahils" just as easily as the dimwitted. While it may have become a well worn cliché, it is surely necessary to reiterate it again to remind the reader who is already squirming in discomfort, that the purpose of dispassionately studying the past with some emotional detachment is so that one can effectively prepare to counter the sophisticated devil in one's own times. The purpose of dispassionately studying the present, in spite of being so close in time to the events one is living through that often the perspectives of even the finest scholars can get naturally distorted due to both emotional attachment and incompleteness of truthful information, is so that one can come to comprehend the past. For history, especially dystopic history, often repeats itself. What might appear as an insoluble puzzle of history can at times easily be unraveled by dispassionately looking at similar events and attitudes of the present. And what might be sowing confusion in the present is easily comprehended by forensically examining the past away from the narratives of power and its officialdom. See the report: Behavior Control by The Mighty Wurlitzer to fathom how the public mind is Machiavellianly made in the present by the control of the narrative. It was made in the same way in the past with similar Machiavellian forces in play. George Orwell, among all the perceptive essayist of modernity, summed it the most elegantly: "Those who control the past control the future, those who control the present control the past"!
As the final word, the Ahmadis today, born and socialized into their core belief system no differently than any other people, including the Shias and the Sunnis in their myriad Muslim sects, cannot be denied their political rights in Pakistan and continued to be marginalized as "non Muslim". The problem is not that they don't have rights like any other minority in Pakistan --- and if some feel that these minority rights aren't the same or equal to the majority's rights because of which the distinction is made in the first place between majority and minority in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is posited as the Islamic state, then that is a separate question and applies to all minorities without distinction for which the solution is to not have a religion based state. Thus far, the Christians, Hindus, Jews, Parsis, Sikhs, etc. do not have the same problem as Ahmadis. All minorities in Pakistan freely practice their religion, and their skill-craft, under constitutional protection.
The problem specific to the Ahmadis is that these poor souls, like any people born into their religion-culture and socialized into its core values from birth, choose to self-identify themselves as "Muslim". Why? Well, because they think of themselves as Muslim! The rest of the clergy class among the traditional Muslims (both Shia and Sunni) would like to deny them that self-identification and that's the real crux of the matter.
This issue of self-identification opened the Pandora's box which has plagued Muslims of the Indian sub-continent ever since Mirza Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the successor of the Prophet of Islam, and claimed to have been sent by God as the long awaited "Promised reformer" to the Muslims. The issue would surely have died out for its brazen speciousness, except that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad started acquiring a prominent following, especially among the educated Muslims. They in turn started preaching Ahmadiyyat doctrine to the Muslim masses in the name of Islam, and under the obvious benefaction of the British empire whose rule was always helped by any divisiveness among Muslims and the people of sub-continent.
This cognitive infiltration of the religion of Islam that God sent a "reformer" after the Prophet of Islam, created the anticipated backlash among the ullemas of Islam in the sub-continent. They obviously felt their sacred religion being deliberately corrupted in the name of Islam by this pretender to prophesy, like all the other pretenders of antiquity who had arisen after the death of the Prophet of Islam. They had been dealt with severely by the Muslim Caliphs with uncompromising warfare in huge battles, until all the false prophets had been killed and their armies subdued. This topic has always been ripe for getting Muslims to cut each others throats in the name of their own religion. In the hands of modern Machiavelli, and especially under game theory laced behavioral calculations of the Muslim public reaction in the aggregate, it is a sure fire way of lighting internecine fire and chaos conditions that could be made self-sustaining.
That infernal question of who is a Muslim and who isn't in the sectarianly infested Muslim polity remains the devil's gambit to sow discord among a foolish people. We have had fourteen centuries of Islam and that should have, by now, at least civilized the Muslim mind to respond to discourse with discourse, to intelligence with intelligence, and to intellectual warfare with intellectual warfare and intellectual self-defence. But we still tend to respond to discourse that does not please us with the hammer if not the sword!
When a purely theological and academic matter that is best relegated to intellectual discourses in mullah seminaries among the idle caste posing as the self-appointed guardians of faith, is cast in political overtones, then those participating in it can only be the devil's apprentice. Separating propaganda and dystopic conditions that support rulers to control their dominions, from religious dogma, when the two have deliberately been intertwined first and foremost requires expending matching intellectual energy to confront the villainy, not state sponsored and mob tyranny. It goes without saying that a state, a religion, and a people must surely always defend themselves by whatever means that will be effective when under attack. But to not understand the Mephistopheles before them is to continually fall into its trap. This applies to both the Muslims of Pakistan and to the Ahmadis of Pakistan who like to call themselves "Muslim". Someone else entirely is harvesting the theological differences between them for their own vested interests. Duh!
This analysis, accordingly, has separated the propaganda of imperial mobilization from the right to bear any religion or belief. A people are entitled to believe whatever they feel inclined to believe --- the freedom to believe, to think one's own thoughts, without coercion and manipulation, is an inalienable right. Indeed, right to believe is even more fundamental than the freedom to express those beliefs, and for those expressions to be permitted to be heard by others. Merely being free to shout idiotically in a bullhorn in the Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park is poking fun at the very concept of inalienable rights. Abstract inalienable rights are meaningless unless its exercise is fully permitted in letter and spirit. No political right in any fair society and civilization may be circumscribed, or marginalized, by the exercise of one's inalienable rights, except when straight-jacketed in absolute tyranny in a slave-state.
Any religion that oppresses people in its name is certainly not made by God, but by man! Why should any rational human being bow before man in the name of God?
If any facts used here are deemed to be in error, the author would appreciate receiving a citation to published reference that might indicate otherwise.
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This article appears in the author's book: Hijacking The Holy Qur'an And Its Religion Islam - Muslims and Imperial Mobilization (http://tinyurl.com/Book-Hijacking-Islam-2ed-2015).
Book PDF URL: http://sites.google.com/site/humanbeingsfirst/download-pdf/book-hijacking-quran-islam-2nd-edition-2015-zahirebrahim.pdf
Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/Allama-Iqbal-Superman
Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/Allama-Iqbal-ubermensch
Source URL: http://faith-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2012/12/allama-iqbal-marde-momin-or-superman.html
Print URL: http://print-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2012/12/allama-iqbal-marde-momin-or-superman.html
Pak-Politico URL: http://pakistan-humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2012/12/allama-iqbal-marde-momin-or-superman.html
Source PDF: http://sites.google.com/site/humanbeingsfirst/download-pdf/sacred-cow-allama-iqbal-marde-momin-or-superman-zahirebrahim.pdf
The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at UET (Lahore), MIT, and Stanford University, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley ( http://tinyurl.com/zahir-patents ), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 Prisoners of the Cave was rejected by numerous publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org. Verbatim reproduction license at http://humanbeingsfirst.org/#Copyright.
First Published Friday December 14, 2012
Last Updated on "Sir" Allama Iqbal's 80th death anniversary, Saturday, April 21, 2018 06:00 pm 17083
Links Wednesday, September 19, 2018 11:00 am 17108
Abstract updated March 14, 2019
Sacred Cow: Allama Iqbal - Marde-momin or Superman? By Zahir Ebrahim 40/40