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Short answer: not really.
The Allama had a complex, love hate relationship with Sufism.
Sorry Zaid Hamid, Dr. Tahirul Qadri and those many thousands of devotees of the Allama who expect to be whizzed into the stratosphere or the Arsh e Mualla with their copies of Armagahan e Hijaz.
Long answer:
Now first remember the Allama was a great mind, so puny brains like mine cannot even conceive the depth and breadth of his intellect.
AND
He was a true passionate Muslim.
A lot of his poetry is genuinely inspired, not just inspiring
He had quite a few AMAZING spiritual experiences.
He often had Kashf.
He used a lot of Sufi terms in his poetry.
He praises 'the Qalander'
He calls himself a mureed of Mevlana Rumi RA
He had a strong emotional attachment to many Sufi saints: Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Hazrat Mujaddid Alif Sani etc.
He was a lover of the Ahlul Bayt and the senior companions.
He was probably a Waliullah, a friend of God.
He was certainly an agent of God to shake Muslims into action.
Shucks he probably had more of the above than most Sufis.
BUT
He was not really a Sufi.
Please before you chuck your coffee at my blog, consider the alternative, his own admission:
please read Allama Iqbal's 2 decade long correspondence with Hazrat Khwaja Hassan Nizami of Delhi . Nothing and I repeat nothing will make the Allama's relationship to Sufism more clear than the Allama himself in these letters!
For all his devotion, and the fact that many elements of his philosophy are based on Sufism, he did not accept certain fundamental Sufi doctrines, which no true Sufi can afford to deny. In fact Allama Iqbal considered many elements of Sufism Kufr or disbelief, but he did not go to the extent of calling those Sufis Kafir, as the Allama held that they had made "genuine mistakes" in interpreting the Qur'an.
Allama Iqbal admitted that by heart he was a Sufi but his head could not let him accept Sufism. No wonder a great contemporary Sufi Hazrat Maulana Wahid Bakhsh wryly observed that the verse the Allama applied to Neitzsche could be applied to the Allama himself with regard to Sufism:
دل او مومن و دماغش کافر است
Indeed he despised Sufism at times, and 2 fundamental Sufi doctrines in particular:
Predetermination and Wahdat ul Wujood/the Unity of Being. He was also against the concepts of Fana and the Sufi philosophy of the 6 Descents- but that will expand this piece too much.
Now, everyone who has read the Sufi textbooks such as Gulshan e Raz, or Kalabadhi's Taarruf or the Kashf or the Awarif or the Kitab al Hikm knows that predeterminism is a basic foundational tenet of Faith of Sufi Islam. But to Allama that meant quietism, and he replaced it with the Shi'ite belief in Action, filtered though Neitzsche of course, characterized by Allama Iqbal as the "qalander" the man of Love and Action as opposed to the contemplative Sufi. [Later the Allama would enlist Mevlana Rumi RA for this same purpose- quite against what Hazrat Mevlana himself taught].
As for the Unity of Being, there are plenty of articles by great Sufi masters on this site, so suffice it to add that perhaps the Allama contributed to the current academic misunderstanding that Wahdat al Wujud and Wahdat ash-Shahood are 2 opposite views... never mind Hazrat Mujaddid's own clarifications in the later Maktubaat, or what Shah Waliullah and other Naqshbandi followers of Hazrat Mujaddid clarified: the 2 are one and the same.
SO
To sum up, the Allama Iqbal RA was by nature drawn to Sufism. He was a person of tremendous spiritual as well as intellectual stature anyway. However, despite the many Sufi terms and elements of Sufi philosophy in his thought, one must bear in mind his thought also has elements of Salafist Reformism, Shi'ism, German Romanticism, Pan-Islamism, Aligarh Progressivism, Bergsonianism etc... even Akber Alahabadi-style conservatism on many an occasion...
But we must have heroes, and we are men of emotion rather than discernment.
Me included, by the way. But what can I do, I've read the correspondence between Hazrat Khwaja Hassan Nizami and Hazrat Allama. And being a ghissa pitta mureed, I needs must follow the well-trodden path of the Sufis. I'm with the Khwaja on this.
God bless, and sorry for the offence, respected fans of the Allama who would have loved to prove that the beloved Allama was a Sufi.
And God knows best.
5 comments:
I also seem to remember Hazrat Zauqi Shah sahib RA said one shouldn't even possess a copy of the Shikwa if one was a Sufi, and he wrote a critique of Allama's Asrar e Khudi I think... as did Hazrat Suleman Shah Phulwari RA
But I should mention that these same gentlemen also admired Allama Iqbal for many things.
Even our Hazrat Sahib says "Iqbal would have been a great sufi if he followed Sharia' and its tenets".
Your probably right, and Allama would no doubt agree with you.
Kiya Sufi o Mulla ko khabar meray junoon ki; unka sar e daman bhi abhi jaak nahin hai!
Salam,
I believe some would say the same about Rene Guenon, Hossein Nasr, Gai Eaton, Titus Burckhardt etc. I believe it to be a different kind of Sufism, a more intellectual endeavour, drawing wisdom from many resources apart from traditional sources. I too won't call him a Sufi as per the conventional use of the term, but he was still Sahibe Nisbat none the less, as our Hazrat would say. Allah Knows Best. Interesting Article though.. God Bless! :)
Thank you all for the kind comments. I was fearing much worse!
No doubt all you gentlemen point out is true. However, the persons such as Hakim Tirmizi, Hujweri, Junayd, Shaqiq Balkhi, Abi Said abul Khayr, Mevlana, Ghazzali, Bistami who strongly believed in the doctrines I mention [arguably Unity of Being wasn't around in it's later formulation then and similarly the tanazzualat] but anyway all these august buzurgs were quite unambiguous about accepting the concepts of Fana and Predetermination.... elements the Allama considered imports from Manicheanism.
These men [and a hundred others we all could list] were sober and exact in their understanding of their deen. I do not think that they were all mistakenand the Allama correct.
As far as Wahdatul Wujud and the tanazulaat, longtime readers such as chaiwala bhai know well that I have voiced extreme misgivings about them and particularly the tanazualaat in the past. However, since very many great masters post-Imam Ghazzali have held these views, I've had to accept them. I believe Hazrat Dr. Mir Valiuddin's explanation of the tanazulaat is completely aceptable and from that understanding one can reconcile the Sufi view of the Nur e Muhammad with the Qur'an, altho' the Shia view of the Nur e Muhammad [attributed to Imam Jafer Sadiq]- which crops up often in popular Barelvi Sufism also- is definitely Emanationist and an import from either some school of Gnosticsm, eastern like Manicheanism or Western [alexandrian].
Not surprising considering that Abu Muslim like the Qaramta later was really a follower of Mani as many have attested.
Anyway to return to our subject, if the Nur e Muhammad is considered identical with the Light of Prophecy, and is considered created [Haadis] rather than Qadeem, and not confused with the Zaat e Muhammad [upon whom be peace] there is no chance of shirk and the doctrine becomes reconcilable with Islam.
In fact also, we find that it is really a version of the Logos doctrine. And as with the Logos doctrine & the Christians, it is possible to slip into shirk [anti-Arrianism or most christianity] or avoid it as the Unitarians did.
Ironically, perhaps it is Frithjof Schuon, also a heterodox Sufi, who has given the best explanation of the Logos doctrine-in terms of reconciling it with the Qur'an and therefore eliminating the fears of Allama Iqbal which led him to reject the Logos doctrine- when Schuon said pretty much what Hazrat Dr. Mir Valiuddin did when he said that perhaps every nation experiences the Logos through the person of their own Prophets.
God bless, and may Allah keep us all on the Path of His friends, and those whom He has rewarded.. and I certainly don't doubt that the Allama was one of those whom He has rewarded.
There's my olive branch to lovers of the Allama, esp. my dear Sufi brother chaiwala bhai.
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