Books on Iqbal
By Syed Afsar Sajid
- ‘Gauhar-e-Farda’ … … … … … Dr. Javed Iqbal Nadeem
- ‘Iqbal — SitaroN se Aagay!’ … Haroon Rashid Tabassum
Allama Dr. Muhammad Iqbal as an avant-garde philosopher, poet and jurist has always been a favourite subject of study and exploration by the national as well as international academia. Noted literati Dr. Javed Iqbal Nadeem and Dr. Haroon Rashid Tabassum have lately made a valuable addition to the extant literature on Iqbal with their respective publications titled ‘Gauhar-e-Farda’ and ‘Iqbal — SitaroN se Aagay!’.
‘Gauhar-e-Farda’
Dr. Javed Iqbal Nadeem is an author of many a book on philosophy and is actively associated with a number of philosophical forums both as a member and office bearer. His PhD thesis itself related to Iqbal’s concept of Morality. The present book is intended to study Iqbal’s philosophy in a contemporary perspective encompassing his concepts of ‘Khudi’, of ‘Prayer’, of ‘Morality’, of ‘Mysticism’, of ‘Ishq’, of State’ as a cohesive political entity, of the ‘Zeitgeist’, and of the unity of ‘Thought and Action’, besides his reflections on Kashmir.
Eminent scholars Prof. Fateh Muhammad Malik, Mehmood Sham, Jabbar Mirza, Dr. Abdul Rauf Rafiqi and Allama Abdul Sattar Asim have, in their comments on the book, appreciated Dr. Javed Iqbal Nadeem for undertaking this onerous but productive exercise meant to benefit not only the uninitiated common reader but also the well-informed academic interested in the epistemology of Iqbal’s ideas.
Dr. Javed Iqbal Nadeem writes fluently in an erudite style; his observations and averments in these essays are diffused with scholarship and perspicuity. The title of the book symbolizes the expanse, value and validity of Iqbal’s ideology transcending the barriers of time and space. Prof. Fateh Muhammad Malik recommends that we read the book as a manifesto of the intellectual reawakening of the entire Islamic world including our homeland Pakistan.
‘Iqbal — SitaroN se Aagay!’
Dr. Haroon Rashid Tabassum also, is a veteran Iqbal scholar. The present book is an esteemed creative work as it embodies some thought-provoking essays on various aspects of Iqbal’s philosophy —- like his ‘Faqr’, his firm grasp of semantics, his literariness, his rich repertoire of knowledge and self-awareness, his command of subjects as diverse as linguistics, theology, civics, rhetoric, and psychology, and his position as a devout Muslim thinker and the conceiver of the idea of Pakistan.
Besides an exhaustive authorial preamble covering the core aspects of Iqbal’s ideas as well as poetics, the book enlists academic essays with topics such as the advent of a millennium of new ideas and actions, Iqbal and universalism, hundred years of the publication of ‘Bang-i-Dara’, golden jubilee celebrations of ‘Payam-i-Mashriq’, Palestine and Masjid-e-Aqsa in Iqbal’s ideology, a review of Muhammad Ayub Sabir’s (also a denizen of Sialkot) book viz. ‘Soz-e-Mashriq’, training and character-building in Iqbal’s view, the youth as Iqbal’s ‘Shaheen’, Iqbal’s staunch belief in the Finality of Prophethood of Hazrat Muhammad (SAW), Iqbal’s Pakistan in the 21st century, the Allahabad address and Iqbal’s political vision, Iqbal’s critical and creative consciousness, Dr. Rauf Khair’ (b. 1948-Hyderabad State) as an avid admirer of Iqbal, a review of Tariq Mehmood Mirza’s (a Pakistani diaspora based in Australia) ‘Hayat-o-Fikre Iqbal’, a critical resume of another distinguished Iqbal scholar Dr. Abdul Rauf Khan Rafiqi’s (who hails from Chaman, Balochistan) PhD thesis on ‘Afghanistan may Iqbal Shanasi ki Rewayat’, and an apt critique of Brig. ® Prof. Dr. Waheed-uz-Zaman Tariq’s book titled ‘Iqbal Naqsh-ha’i Haft Rang’.
Dr. Tabassum has carried out an indepth study of Allama Iqbal’s versatile genius as manifested in his philosophy and poetry. As a poet of the East, he advocated a transnational unity of the Muslim Ummah. The author has stressed the need for transformation of Iqbal’s ideas into a practical coalition of social, political and moral codes as envisaged in the Islamic teachings enshrined in the Holy Qur’an. Thus this book can be termed as a compendium of Iqbal’s multi-dimensional personality together with his philosophy and poetic art.
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