The Secrets of the Self (Asrar-i Khudi) — A Philosophical...

[1] The present translation follows the text of the second edition.

[2] His criticism of Hafiz called forth angry protests from Súfí circles in which Hafiz is venerated as a master-hierophant. Iqbal made no recantation, but since the passage had served its purpose and was offensive to many, he cancelled it in the second edition of the poem. It is omitted in my translation.

[3] The principles of Islam, regarded as the ideal society, are set forth in the author’s second poem, the Rumúz-i Békhudí or “Mysteries of Selflessness.” He explains the title by pointing out that the individual who loses himself in the community reflects both the past and the future as in a mirror, so that he transcends mortality and enters into the life of Islam, which is infinite and everlasting. Among the topics discussed are the origin of society, the divine guidance of man through the prophets, the formation of collective life-centres, and the value of History as a factor in maintaining the sense of personal identity in a people.

[4] This view was held by the orthodox Imám Ahmad ibn Hanbal in its extreme (anthropomorphic) form.

[5] Kor. ch. 23, v. 14: “Blessed is God, the best of those who create.”

[6] Cf. his note on “Islam and Mysticism” (The New Era, 1916, p. 250).

[7] Here Iqbal adds: “Mauláná Rúmí has very beautifully expressed this idea. The Prophet, when a little boy, was once lost in the desert. His nurse Halíma was almost beside herself with grief, but while roaming the desert in search of the boy she heard a voice saying:

‘Do not grieve, he will not be lost to thee;

Nay, the whole world will be lost in him.’

The true individual cannot be lost in the world; it is the world that is lost in him. I go a step further and say, prefixing a new half-verse to a hemistich of Rúmí (Transl. l. 1325):

In his will that which God wills becomes lost:

‘How shall a man believe this saying?’”

[8] Transl. l. 289 foll.

[9] According to the Tradition, “The true Faith is between predestination and freewill.”

[10] Transl. l. 673 foll. In a note on “Our Prophet’s criticism of contemporary Arabian poetry” (The New Era, 1916, p. 251) Iqbal writes: “The ultimate end of all human activity is Life—glorious, powerful, exuberant. All human art must be subordinated to this final purpose, and the value of everything must be determined in reference to its life-yielding capacity. The highest art is that which awakens our dormant will-force and nerves us to face the trials of life manfully. All that brings drowsiness and makes us shut our eyes to Reality around, on the mastery of which alone Life depends, is a message of decay and death. There should be no opium-eating in Art. The dogma of Art for the sake of Art is a clever invention of decadence to cheat us out of life and power.”

[11]Ibid. l. 537 foll.

[12]Ibid. l. 631 foll.

[13]Ibid. l. 1531 foll.

[14] Kor. ch. 23, v. 102.

[15] Transl. l. 1549 foll.

[16]Ibid. l. 323 foll.

[17]Ibid. l. 435 foll.

[18]Ibid. l. 815 foll.

[19]Ibid. l. 849 foll.

[20]Ibid. l. 893 foll.

[21] Man already possesses the germ of vicegerency, as God says in the Koran (ch. 2, v. 28): “Lo, I will appoint a khalifa (vicegerent) on the earth.” Cf. Transl. l. 434.

[22] Writing of “Muslim Democracy” in The New Era, 1916, p. 251, Iqbal says: “The Democracy of Europe—overshadowed by socialistic agitation and anarchical fear—originated mainly in the economic regeneration of European societies. Nietzsche, however, abhors this ‘rule of the herd’ and, hopeless of the plebeian, he bases all higher culture on the cultivation and growth of an Aristocracy of Supermen. But is the plebeian so absolutely hopeless? The Democracy of Islam did not grow out of the extension of economic opportunity; it is a spiritual principle based on the assumption that every human being is a centre of latent power, the possibilities of which can be developed by cultivating a certain type of character. Out of the plebeian material Islam has formed men of the noblest type of life and power. Is not, then, the Democracy of early Islam an experimental refutation of the ideas of Nietzsche?”