Iqbal deals with the idea of Islam as a social movement for
the basis of a structure of State and social society in his sixth
lecture in ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ titled ‘The
Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam’. In order to understand
fully this structure that Islam aims to create, it is pertinent to first
understand how Iqbal views Islam as a movement in its essential nature.
And what problems have been faced by Muslims in the past in being unable to
achieve that with a view to those elements which would fulfill the said deficiencies.
It is also important to bear in mind the fact that Iqbal does not wish to
present an alternate view of Islam but only what he recognizes as the practical
manifestation of the true spirit of the Quran.
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| Sultan ul Faqr |
To begin with, Iqbal defines the cultural movement of
Islam as ‘an emotional system of unification’. Emotional here does not mean
erratic and sentimental but signifies its classification as a system
which deals primarily with the control of or access to deeper human faculties
of cognition and comprehension beyond the physical senses. For Iqbal and Sultan Bahoo as we shall later see, the nexus
of reason and emotion is a complementary pair not meant to be opposites
challenging one another. This system is unifying by virtue of its recognition
of the centrality of the Human Individual as its mode. This, in turn, relies
upon a ‘perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin’.
This is the conceptual phase of Iqbal’s ideology.
These two elements are central to the spiritual concept of
the Quran and the teachings of Sultan
Bahoo (RA). As for the Human Individual, the holy Prophet declared:
خلق اللہ آدم علی صورتہ
Allah created Adam in His own Image
Sultan Bahoo adds to this by
declaring, “Adam (AS) is the Human. He who reaches the stature of Adam (AS) is Human. If someone asks if
the children of Adam are capable of reaching his stature then it is possible as
per the verse: [5]
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| Teachingsof Hazrat Sultan Bahoo |
لقد کرمنا بنی آدم
And we have also honored the children of Adam”
The second element deals with the understanding that all
human life is spiritual in its origin.
Sultan Bahoo’s explanation of the origin of Humanity in the World
of the Spirit (Aalim-e-Lahoot) explains in detail how all souls were once in
union before Allah, as the Quran reminds:
الست بربکم؟ قالو بلا شھدنا
Am I not your Lord? Verily, we testify!
This conception of
the Human Self as the reflection of Allah is central to the
understanding of the place of the individual in Islam and Sultan Bahoo guides his followers
towards this very purpose i.e. the actualization of the Human potential of
perfection which is based upon the common spiritual origin of mankind. This is
the concept upon which, as per Iqbal, Islam’s notion of unification entirely
depends. As the Prophet (PBUH) said:
من علف نفسہ فقد عرف ربہ
He who recognizes his Self recognizes his Lord.
After having established the concept of Islam and its essential
features, Iqbal goes on to analyze how to establish a living factor of
this principle of the emotional and intellectual life of mankind. He identifies
the principle of Tauhid (oneness) as the practical means of achieving
this. Tauhid demands loyalty to Allah above all else. And because Allah is
Himself the spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to Him amounts to Man’s
loyalty to his own ideal, actualized nature.
The teachings of Sultan Bahoo
reveal the demands of Tauhid. It is a negation of everything but Allah whether
in an understanding of existence, purpose, aim or desire. Throughout his
writings, he repeatedly makes reference to the phrase:اللہ
بس ما سوی اللہ ھوس
On a plane of concept and belief, this is an expression of
the idea of whdat ul wajood, the unity of existence but in reference to
Tauhid as a matter of practice, it establishes the concept of Wahdat ul
Maqsood or the unity of purpose. Sultan
Bahoo explains that Humans fulfill their purpose only when their aim or
desire, Talab طلب is of Allah. He
regards all strife and pursuit of the pleasures of this world and the next,
besides the desire to find Allah, to be vain. It must be established here that
this is not a call to asceticism. He clarifies in his book Ainu ul Faqr that the
Human self is like a boat floating on the waters of the world. That is how it
is to travel but to never allow the water to enter the boat itself. This is the
achievement in the practice of Tauhid as Iqbal sees it for the foundation
of ‘world unity’.
Iqbal also states that the expression of the
spiritual basis of life reveals itself in variety and change. The mobility of
these ultimate principles is achieved through Ijtihad an important source
of Islamic law. Before considering what this Ijtihad consists of, it is
important to see why Iqbal believes that the Muslim world has suffered ‘the
Immobility of Islam in the past 500 years’. His first identification is
the conflict that arose with a misunderstanding of Rationalism after the
theological schisms of the Abbasid era. This led to the opposition to
Rationalism to preserve the social integrity of Islam through making the
structure of the legal system of the Sharia as rigorous as possible. Iqbal sympathizes that this
misunderstanding caused the need at the time for doing so but does not present
an alternate recourse to how this balance with Rationalism ought to be
achieved.
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