(1) When Pakistan - the great vision of Iqbal- came in to existence, the Islamic
community thought it had arrived at its destination. It put down its guards and
put aside its arms.it did so when, infact, the greatest struggle was just beginning.
In simple minded fashion political liberty was confused with spiritual and intellectual
freedom. The first, doubtless, has been achieved, but achieving the second, demanded
a more arduous devotion and constant effort.
(2)
Observing the community’s performance over the last
27 years, a critique could justifiably charge that the post – partition
history of Pakistan can be characterized
as the beginning of the new type of western imperialism, particularly
through economic aid and trade on the one hand, and through cheap
books, magazines, films and radios on the other. The power was
so subtly exercised that the new slave did not recognize the
chains any more. They called them borrowed bracelets!
(3)
To Iqbal the spiritually empty but externally glittering west,
against which he warned the community so insistently, was a threat,
looming large . Perhaps he did not anticipate how overwhelmingly
would, it enchant the beleaguered community. When Iqbal rung
his warning bell, against western materialism , they were many,
even in the west, who saw the symptoms but stoutly protested
against the charge and claimed that basically the heart was in
the right place and western man was spiritually as healthy as
ever. Since then
A great deal happened to more than justify Iqbal’s pre-monition.
(4)
The second world war, the discovery of the wide spread spiritual
emptiness of the Nazi and fascist regimes and colossal inhumanity
of Stalin’s regime shattered all illusions about the
existence of spiritual strength in the western man. The display
of unspeakable humanity in Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima, in Moscow
and in Hungry, in the Dachau and many other places shattered
all the carefully nurtured illusions about the existence of
enviable patterns in the western man. This was one facet.
(5)
Side by side the total power available to mankind to produce
goods for immediate satisfaction of physical needs and pleasures
and increased manifolds. There has come about a world wide
democratization of good things of life. The spiritual emptiness
of the modern
materialist is sought to be filled by the sound of rock and
din of automobiles.
People recklessly plunge in to a race for acquisition of things
to distract the mind, To engage the eye, to satiate to body,
and fill all the time.
In the 21st century, there has been no shortage of worldly
philosophers justifying the new materialism. But the newly
discovered power
has another aspect also. Means are now available to release
natural forces imprisoned in matter at a dimension that humanity
can
easily obliterate it self out of existence. The possibility
of total destruction is one pervasive fact of modern world.
The
resultant look is singularly confused.
(6)
Now withstanding the astounding glitter, the growing spiritual
emptiness continues. The façade of normalcy shows signs
of strain and decay. Each day its mortar crumbles a little
more. The much touted and so called axiomatic principles of
economics and politics seem over so uncertain sources of strength.
Democracy or its identifiable techniques do not seem any more
to prevent totalitarianism, or oppression; fundamental rights
bind no dictator’s hand; tight monetary controls no more
prevent inflation; state controlled cooperative or socialized
farming does not increase the produce; nor the state-controlled
industries assure a better lot to the individual worker. (7)
The decision are constantly getting out of hand. A worker in
a factory hardly has a meaningful say in regard to what he
does or produces. At a slightly higher scale, the manager of
the factory finds himself a helpless creature in the hands
of yet higher and stronger combinations. Te legislature feels
equally helpless. The options and choices in the making of
national legislative policy originate and are dealt with at
a yet different level, and often enough, the legislature are
called upon to merely authenticate what has already been decided
beforehand.
(8)
Simultaneously, a mad struggle is on to control the communication
media, the means to manipulate the human
mind. The colossal battle
for the control of human mind is on in full fury. Radio, television,
films, newspapers, magazines and paperbacks are now locked in
struggle to control human mind. All entertainment and information
is objective oriented-whether to promote free enterprise in the
so-called free societies, or the fearsome leviathan known as
the modern socialist welfare state. Overt and covert indoctrination
goes on constantly in the evenings or at night, after the day’s
chores are done, hardly any conversation or exchange takes place
between parents and children or husband-wife. They are all being
talked to, by the Radio or the television, who represent either
the ‘big industry’ or the ‘big brother’,
the hard-earned free hours have become the covert schools for
deprivation of all freedom. Freedom implies a genuine possibility
of choice-an exercise of critical faculty. But where all media
reaching the most private sanctuary of a man’s home give
no information but constantly serve creation of a desired opinion,
then the critical faculty is put to a deep slumber; it has no
chance of survival. However, when the performance of a self-proclaimed
welfare state fails to match its promise, large doses of propaganda
whet the appetite but fail to carry conviction; the daily widening
gap between expectations and achievements produces two typical
reactions: skepticism and apathy in some and commitment to violent
and revolutionary politics in others. Skepticism and apathy produces
lack of commitment and nothing is more tragic than a soul without
faith and without commitment. On the other hand, the revolutionary
politics of gun reduces humans to irrational animal level and
destroys the under-pinning of law on which the edifice of civilization
is built. In formalism and return of mysticism represent reaction
of yet another type where it is not merely imitative, it is essentially
a search for authentic experience. For the third world, the problem
is compounded because a spirit of thoughtless imitativeness permeates
the avant-grade of the developing countries. Everywhere elites
count, but they do a great deal more in developing countries.
Our elites thoughtlessly, without an authentic experience of
the spiritual and intellectual crises that faces the western
youth, imitatively adopt the external styles of the current categories.
Far too many are phony hippies madly engaged in their hedonistic
frenzies; vocal socialists furiously building up bourgeoisie
industrial or agricultural empires for themselves. Such wide
scale absence of authenticity at every level double confounds
an already confused situation. In such a situation, old songs
of wisdom and of moderation find few listeners.
(9)
Constant and speedy change has become a special feature of modern
times. The revolution in technology and the consequent changes
in the very structure of human society has made yesterday’s
solutions otiose for today’s problems. Weather it is
a field of crop-raising or making of raiment or manipulating
of public mind, father’s experience has become irrelevant
for the son. This has had understandable effect in other fields
also. If father’s technology could be improved upon,
why not his morality, is a growing question in many young mind,
particularly when he is being constantly exposed to aggressive
secularism.
(10)
Things are no better in regard to the past also. There was a
time when it provided an image of what people had to aspire
for it provided the wisdom which could be trusted as dependable
means to solve all problems. Alas! The past has no such promise
for the modern man. Over the centuries a great change has come
about in the west. The orthodox church insisted that everything
pronounced by it was a valid and binding as “the religion”
as if the church was immune from error; no part could be rejected with out
involving injections of the eschatology of the whole. Protestantism was a rebellion
from with in the Christian community, but the rise of scienticism was rebellion
with out. The very argument that rejection of the part amounts to rejection
of the whole was utilized by the modern scientist with deadly effectiveness.
They asserted that if a part of what the church claim to be revealed could
be demonstrated as false or erroneous, no gaurentee remain for the truthfulness
of the rest. The rise of scienticism provide a great impetus of modern secularism
which seems to have eroded the foundation of religion in the west.. When the
church’s world view was shaken , its ethical teachings also lost their
authority. This was not all .the proponents of all the earth-oriented and secular
philosophies borrowed left and right to give new goals to hereafter oriented
religions. The theory of relativity was plainly abused to justify the thesis
and there was nothing permanent about ethical values and there was also relative
in content and application; that there was no higher moral law above the man,
and man was the maker of all laws including the moral laws. Freud and Marx
provided theoretical foundations for mounting fresh attacks.
(11)
One this discernible result of some of above trends is that many,
feeling powerless to control their future finding no meaningful
guidance from the past, imagine that the present alone holds
the possibility for their meaningful participation, for they
can still posses the moment. By choosing to live only in the
present, the modern man cuts himself from those values which
had propped man’s vision of himself as hero in history.
The sense of unfolding of our divine design has no meaning
for him; long terms goals have lost their relevance. Institutions
like marriage and filial ties have become forms with out their
former content. Marriage was for protection of virtue; it becomes
outmoded where extracting the last drop of pleasure from the
fleeting time is the top priority. With out an
Identifiable and permanent frame of reference , every one free
to seek perpetuation of what he thinks best. The opponent is,
by necessary logic of the situation, either wrong or misguided.
The issue in conflict is, therefore, not resolved on principle
but gets sorted on
The basis of power. The unresolved conflicts continue to increase.
The future appears full of foreboding symptoms.
(12)
Iqbal was keenly aware of the dangers that were implicit in the
west for the people in the east who were then actively seeking
political independence. He warned against the gathering threatening
clouds. He persistently pleaded for a clear sighted commitment
to Islam. He boldly sought a separate Muslim state to provide
a refugee for the Muslim community where in it could separately
build up the spiritual and physical resources to meet the new
challenge.
(13)
Iqbal also spoke for the urgent fresh and fundamental reconstruction
of Islamic law.
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