KARACHI: Some intellectually refreshing papers were read at an important session of an international conference on Allama Iqbal titled ‘Allama Iqbal: Fikri Aur Asri Tanazur’ organised by the Urdu department of University of Karachi on Thursday.

Dr Abdul Wahab Suri presented an interesting thesis on ‘The aestheticisation of thought and the future of Iqbalian studies’ with reference to Iqbal. He said thought shouldn’t be worshipped, it should be understood. Its incoherence and coherence both should be understood as well. It doesn’t happen in our society because we tend to merge thought and person (khayal aur zaat). Thought and person were two different things, because when we merged the two, any attack on the thought was deemed an attack on the person. As a result, a great man’s thought wasn’t understood and its worship began.

“We kill the thought by the application of the process of aestheticisation,” he remarked.

Experts discuss Allama’s verses in the context of contemporary times

Dr Suri said such a practice made us think of author and thought as the same thing. Then we enjoyed that thought and did not use or apply it [to our lives].

Hamza Farooqui in his paper ‘Iqbal ka ahd aur asr-i-hazir’ said the poet had a multidimensional personality. He told us about our past, present and future. Quoting from the poet’s verses, he said Iqbal predicted the two World Wars fought in the 20th century. Mr Farooqui was so immersed in his speech that he didn’t even realise why some students were regularly clapping every time he completed a passage.

Dr Rashid Hameed, director-general Academy of Letters Pakistan, said it was his first time that he was visiting Karachi. He always wanted to come to the city where the father of the nation was buried. He pointed out Iqbal’s ideas and thoughts were with us. Iqbal was the only philosopher whose fikr existed in tangible form in the shape of Pakistan. The problem to which Dr Suri earlier had pointed out, he argued, was the issue of unity. It is up to those who were in parliament to do something about it.

Dr Hameed said in Iqbal’s views Islam and democracy were compatible. Iqbal was critical of Western models of democracy.

Journalist and poet Mahmood Shaam in his address referred to Iqbal’s poem ‘Punjabi Musalman’ in the context of the contemporary sociopolitical situation. One of the verses that he quoted was:

Tahqeeq ki baazi ho tau shirkat nahin kerta
Ho khel mureedi ka tau harta hai buhat jald
He doesn’t partake in matters of research

But when it comes to discipleship, quickly he gives in He said Iqbal sensed these things 100 years back. We need to study Iqbal’s lectures in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. He argued that Muslim leaders in recent times had nothing to do with fikr. Their thoughts were shallow. In the last century, many Muslim countries did get freedom from their colonisers but had there been some proper freedom movements then some sort of a fikri system would have been put in place.

Mr Shaam said we should take Iqbal’s ideas forward. For that to happen we needed to translate into easy Urdu his Khutbaat. It should also be translated into Sindhi, Pashto and Balochi. Today subjects like Islamic system, Islamic state and Islamic economy were discussed. Also, terrorism was an issue. So in such a situation, reading and understanding Iqbal’s khutbaat had become all the more important. Universities could do [translation] that. The universities could also study that in the age of technology what kind of Islamic state they [universities] envisioned.

Mr Shaam said a poet talked about varied things in his poetry. This was the reason that those people against whom Iqbal had written verses now quoted him profusely. Therefore reading his khutbaat would enable us to understand his poetry better.

Sadaf Akbani, who had come from the US, delivered a very elementary speech. She even misquoted one of the most known of Iqbal’s couplets Sabaq phir sadaqat ka…

In his presidential address Prof Dr M. Ahmed Qadri, dean faculty of arts, lauded the speakers’ efforts.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2018