The call of time — Iqbal’s perfect man.
Especially in the present times, times wherein human existence has ceased, and humanity has gone farce, the dissemination of Islamophobia, the defamation and killings of Islamic leaders, the decline of the Muslim regimes is on the common forefront, there emerges the need of Iqbal’s perfect man. In all the vicissitudes of life, Muslims must be firmly rooted and steadfast as are we in highly testing times.
Oft the millioneth lovers, stands out a lover in his ranks, effulgent, not a lover of the world, but the lover of the God. That is who and how is Iqbal’s perfect man (a Mu’min) that is needed in the present times. A Mu’min is the one who’s highly devoted and deeply rooted in terms of spiritual rank. It is he who can create waves in the stillness of the ocean of faith of the Ummah. A man in youth, chest of whom is imbibed with unshakable faith, heart of whom is intoxicated with burning passion, reigned with unconquerable spirit of courage and valiance, soul of whom is shimmering with uncorrupted ego, re-birth of such a Muslim would be bliss as of a sway of cool zephyr in the scorching afternoon of summer, as a blessed morning after a long and dismal night and as the succor to the sufferings of the Ummah.
According to Iqbal, it is in his (Mu’min’s) bountiful responsibility and duty to extirpate evil from the society, revolt and reform against the tyranny, revive and rejuvenate the faith and the rightful conduct amongst the people and no one is more worthy of leadership in the world than him. It is he who can get all the worldly affairs into equipoise, peace and serenity by professing the legacy of the message of the Prophets. He is the Muezzin, with whose Azan, the spark of the lost Imaan is again lit and in the burning passion of the flame a true believer is born. It is by his Azan that in the garden of flowers, a young bud in slumber blooms with the freshness of its Imaan. His Azan is the voice of the firmament, capable of rousing the dead conscience of man alive if instilled with the spirit of Bilal.
A Mu’min is boundless of race, politics and geography and limitless, belonging to no particular place or country, whole universe being is home. Iqbal proclaims,
“God-intoxicated Faqir belongs not to east or to west,
Delhi nor Isfahan nor Samarqand his home.
Boundless is the world of Mu’min,
In all places his home”.
It is said in context to that the whole world belongs to God and a Mu’min being the bondsman of God, thus is the entire universe his home.
Iqbal with his sagacity and astutely penetrating eyes, perceive from the spirit of Quran, that all that is on the earth and the heavens and is contained in them have been but created for a true believer (Vicegerent), the rightful inheritor of the treasures of the world.
Decoding Iqbal’s ideal Muslim, he furthermore had envisioned the picture of the attributes of a Mu’min appertaining to him. It demands the many-sidedness of the personality, adaptive as per the situation but with also some contradictory traits, one challenging the other like subdual and forgiveness, a Mu’min is the embodiment of the Divine attribute of forgiveness.
Though rare and uncommon what Iqbal discovered is not non-existent and only lost. Lost either in the slumber of his own oblivion or lost in the allurements of the world and or in seeking pleasure in his worldly desires. In such pursuits as though of acquiring the pleasures of the world, he has descended to the rank of disgrace in the society. Its majority sublimely immingled with the ordinary and unthinking mass. In short, it is he who is lost that is needed. And every Muslim is encouraged to deeply introspect his lost self, and elate their ranks to Mu’minhood, which is the only solution to all their problems.
Author: Syed Mukhtar Razi.
