Muhammad Iqbal

“ It appears to proceed on the false assumption that the ideal of education is the training of human intellect rather than human will. Nor is this superficial system true to the genius of the Hindus. Amongst them it appears to have produced a number of political idealists whose false reading of history drives them to the upsetting of all conditions of political order and social peace. Gentlemen, you spend an immense amount of money every year on the education of your children. Well, thanks to the King Emperor, India is a free country; everybody is free to entertain any opinion he likes. ”

“ The permanence of the British Empire as a civilising factor in the political evolution of mankind is one of our greatest interests. This vast Empire has our fullest sympathy and respect, since it is one aspect of our own political ideal that is being slowly worked out in it. England, in fact, is doing one of our own great duties, which unfavourable circumstances did not permit us to perform. It is not the number of Muslims which it protects, but the spirit of the British Empire, that makes it the greatest Muslim Empire in the world. ”

“ The ideal of our educated young men is mostly service; and service begets, especially in a country like India, that sense of dependence which undermines the force of human individuality. The poor among us, of course, have no capital; the middle class people cannot undertake joint economic enterprises owing to mutual mistrust; and the rich look upon trade as an occupation beneath their dignity. Economic dependence is the prolific mother of all the various forms of evils. Even the vices of the Indian Muslim indicate weakness of life-force in him. ”

“ But inasmuch as the average man demands a material centre of nationality, the Muslim looks for it in the holy town of Mecca, so that the basis of Muslim nationality combines the real and the ideal, the concrete and the abstract. When, therefore, it is said that the interests of Islam are superior to those of Muslims, it is meant that the interests of the individual as a unit are subordinate to the interests of the community as an external symbol of the Islamic principle. This is the only principle which limits the liberty of the individual, who is otherwise absolutely free. ”

“ Go and see the pale, faded faces of Muslim boys in schools and colleges, and you will find the painful verification of my statement. Power, energy, force, strength — yes, physical strength is the Law of Life. A strong man may rob others when he has got nothing in his pocket; but a feeble person must die the death of a mean thing in the world's awful scene of continual warfare. ”

“ He married the woman himself, indicating thereby that not only a slave could marry a free woman, but also that a woman divorced by him could become the wife of no less a personage than the greatest Prophet of God. ”

“ If fear is the force which dominates man and counteracts his ethical progress, man must be regarded as a unit of force and energy, a will, a germ of infinite power — the gradual unfoldment of which must be the object of all human activity. ”

“ It has been said that Islam is a religion that implies a state of war. Now, there can be no denying the fact that war is an expression of the energy of a nation. A nation which cannot fight cannot hold its own in the strain and stress of selective competition, which constitutes an indispensable condition of all human progress. Defensive war is certainly permitted by the Qur'an, but the doctrine of aggressive war against the unbelievers is wholly unauthorised by the Holy Book of Islam. ”

“ The work of freeing humanity from superstitions — the ultimate ideal of Islam as a community, for the realisation of which you have done so little in this land of myth and superstition — will ever remain undone if the emancipators themselves are becoming enchained in the very fetters from which it is their mission to set others free. ”

“ Similarly, Christianity, as a religious system, is based on the fact of sin. The world is regarded as evil, and the taint of sin is regarded as hereditary to man who, as an individuality, is insufficient, and stands in need of some supernatural personality to intervene between him and the Creator. Christianity, unlike Buddhism, regards human personality as something real, but agrees with Buddhism in holding that man, as a force against sin, is insufficient. ”

“ There is no mediator between God and man. God is the birthright of every man. The Qur'an, therefore, while it looks upon Jesus Christ as the Spirit of God, strongly protests against the doctrine of redemption, as well as the doctrine of an infallible visible head of the church — doctrines which proceed upon the assumption of the insufficiency of human personality, and tend to create in man the sense of dependence which is regarded by Islam as a force obstructing the ethical progress of man. ”

“ The history of Islam tells us that its expansion as a religion is in no way related to the political power of its followers. The greatest spiritual conquests of Islam were during the days of our political decrepitude. When the rude barbarians of Mongolia drowned in blood the civilisation of Baghdad in 1258, and when the Muslim power fell in Spain, and the followers of Islam were mercilessly killed and driven out of Cordova by Ferdinand in 1236, Islam had just secured a footing in Sumatra and was about to work the peaceful conversion of the Malay Archipelago. ”

“ We know that sin, pain, and sorrow are constantly mentioned in the Qur'an. The truth is that Islam looks upon the universe as a reality, and consequently recognises as reality all that is in it. Sin, pain, and sorrow, and struggle are certainly real, but Islam teaches that evil is not essential to the universe. The universe can be reformed, and the elements of sin and evil can be gradually eliminated. ”

“ Give a man a keen sense of respect for his own personality, and let him move fearless and free in the immensity of God's earth and he shall respect the personalities of others and become perfectly virtuous. ”

“ The universe, according to Zoroastrianism, is partly evil and partly good. Man is neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but a combination of the two principles — light and darkness — continually fighting against each other for universal supremacy. ”

“ And, I believe, God punished him not because he refused to make himself low before the progenitor of an enfeebled humanity, but because he declined to give absolute obedience to the Will of the Almighty Ruler of the universe. ”

“ The ethical ideal of Islam, then, is to disenthrall man from fear and thus to give him a sense of his personality, and then to make him conscious of himself as a source of power. The idea of man as an individuality of infinite power determines, according to the teachings of Islam, the worth of all human actions. That which intensifies the sense of individuality in man is good, and that which enfeebles it is bad. Evil is weakness. ”

“ But you will see the reason why certain forms of human activities, e.g., self-renunciation, poverty, slavish obedience which at times conceals itself under the beautiful name of humility, and unworldliness — modes of activity which tend to weaken the forces of human individuality — are regarded as virtues by Buddhism and Christianity, but are altogether ignored by Islam. ”

“ You know that Islam is something more than a creed, it is also a community, a nation. The membership of Islam is not determined by birth, locality, or naturalisation; it consists in the identity of belief. The expression "Indian Muslims," however convenient it may be, is a contradiction in terms, since Islam in its essence is above all conditions of time and space. Nationality with us is a pure idea ”

“ An attempt to discover the reason of this dearth of personalities among us will necessitate the subtle analysis of all the visible and invisible forces which are now determining the course of our social evolutions — an inquiry which I cannot undertake in this lecture. But you will, I think, admit that such personalities are rare among us. Such being the case, education is the only thing to fall back upon. ”

“ The result of the British rule in this country has been exactly the same; and if England continues true to this principle, it will ever remain a source of strength to her, as it was to her predecessors. But are we Indian Muslims true to this principle in our social economy? Is the organic unity of Islam intact in this land? Religious adventurers have set up different sects and fraternities which are ever quarrelling with one another. And then, there are castes like the Hindus. Surely we have out-Hindued the Hindu himself. ”

“ Education, you might say, will work the transformation. Now, gentlemen, I do not put much faith in education as understood in this country. The ethical training of humanity is really the work of great personalities who appear from time to time in the course of human history. Unfortunately our present social environment is not favourable to the birth of such personalities of ethical magnetism. ”

“ These verses of the Qur'an, when read in the light of the famous tradition, "Every child is born a Muslim (peaceful) ," indicates that, according to the tenets of Islam, man is essentially good and peaceful — a view explained and defended in our own times by Rousseau, the great father of modern political thought.
The opposite view, the doctrine of the depravity of man held by the Church of Rome, leads to most pernicious religious and political consequences. If man is essentially wicked, he must not be permitted to have his own way. ”

“ Slaves were set at liberty as a penalty for culpable homicide, and in expiation for a false oath taken by mistake. The Prophet's own treatment of slaves was extraordinarily liberal. The proud aristocratic Arab could not tolerate the social elevation of slaves even when they were manumitted. The democratic ideal of perfect equality, which had found the most uncompromising ideal in the Prophet's life, could only be brought home to an extremely aristocratic people by a very cautious handling of the situation. ”

“ Buddhism: There is pain in nature; and man, regarded as an individual, is evil.
Christianity: There is sin in nature; and the taint of sin is natural to man.
Zoroastrianism: There is struggle in nature; man is a mixture of the struggling forces, and is free to range himself on the side of the powers of good which shall eventually prevail. The questions now are:
What is the Muslim view of the universe and man; and
What is the central idea which determines the structure of the entire system? ”

“ Democracy has been the great mission of England in modern times, and English statesmen have boldly carried this principle to countries which have been for centuries groaning under the most atrocious form of despotism. The British Empire is a vast political organism, the vitality of which consists in the gradual working out of this principle. ”

“ The knowledge of Cromwell's History will certainly create in him a great deal of admiration for the Puritan Revolutionary; but it cannot create that healthy pride in his soul which is the very lifeblood of a truly national character. ”

“ The best form of government for such a community would be democracy, the ideal of which is to let a man develop all the possibilities of his nature by allowing him as much freedom as practicable. The Caliph of Islam is not an infallible being ”

“ I tell you, gentlemen, that I have got greater respect for an illiterate shopkeeper who earns his honest bread, and has sufficient force in his arms to defend his wife and children in times of trouble, than the brainy graduate of high culture whose timid voice betokens death [dearth?] of soul in his body, and who takes pride in his submissiveness, eats sparingly, complains of sleeplessness in [at] night, and produces unhealthy children for his community, if he does produce at all. ”

“ In this country we are living under a Christian government. We must always keep before our eyes the example of those early Muslims who, when persecuted by their own countrymen, had to leave their homes to settle in the Christian State of Abyssinia. How they behaved in that State must be our guiding principle in this country where an overdose of Western ideas have taught people to criticise the existing government with a dangerous lack of historical perspective. ”