Though Iqbal RA, our great poet and philosopher, had striven earnestly to reconcile the pure Islamic thought with the modern Western thinking based on science and philosophy, the allegations laid upon him by some for being an advocate of liberal and secular ideals are false; he was at heart nothing but a humbled Muslim, in love with the Prophet Muhammad and the God he talked about. It seems that on one side of his experience, Iqbal tries to rationalize intuitive realities within the diction of the emerging sciences and the modern refurbishing of philosophy, which was being resorted to and enhanced on newly found factual evidences from within nature.
But on the other side, in his Urdu and Persian poetic work, he takes the full liberty of expressing unquestioning and unbounded love for the ragged Prince of Medina, the dusty tracks he treaded upon, and his excellent, non-duplicable exemplar of the deepest meaning of Khudi possible in human-form.
In his work Asrar e Khudi, he dedicates a poem to the explanation of how Love is the basic driving force, that empowers and cultures man from his frail position in the Universe, to a point where he becomes the center of attention for the whole Universe. And in this poem, he focuses on the love of the beloved Prophet Muhammad Peace be Upon Him as the essence of true love and the possibility for the weak undirected ego, to find the clues that would connect it with the Ultimate Ego.
Iqbal explains in the poem, how love has the ability to synchronize Man with the hidden secrets of the universe and beyond, by grabbing the very essence of creation, instead of tumbling upon the inconceivability faced by mere sense-data. And love of this Finest Man (Peace be Upon Him), who possessed the ultimate Khudi possible in human range, is what opens the possibilities, for common people like you and me, of breaking through into worlds beyond matter; he says (translations by Reynold A Nicholson);
By love of him the heart is made strong
And earth rubs shoulders with the Pleiades.
The soil of Najd was quickened by his grace
And fell into a rapture and rose to the skies.
For Iqbal, the love of Muhammad Peace be Upon Him is the very essence of religion, he takes Muhammad Peace be Upon Him and his effects to be the highest markings in temporal reality, adherence to whom will prove to be the gateway to non-temporal realms too;
In the Muslim?s heart is the home of Muhammad,
All our glory is from the name of Muhammad.
Sinai is but an eddy of the dust of his house,
His dwelling?place is a sanctuary to the Ka?ba itself.
Iqbal sees the Prophet Peace be Upon Him, in relation with the Creator. Iqbal deems the Creator, the Ultimate Ego, to be independent of the time-space paradigm, which may only be a minor aspect of his creation; and in the same light, if the Prophet represents the Human Ego at its fullest, then in the pursuit and love of the Ultimate, the Prophets ego starts imitating His, only by His grace that is, therefore rendering the personality of the Prophet to be encompassing all times till eternity;
Eternity is less than a moment of his time,
Eternity receives increase from his essence.
Iqbal harbors great respect for the Prophet, deeming him to be of most extraordinary accomplishment; psychically in control of realms within matter, that are not disclosed to ordinary sight; a personality bestowed with extreme possibilities and yet one who is balancing all things in his person;
In the hour of battle, iron was melted by the flash of his sword;
In the hour of prayer, tears fell like rain from his eye.
When he prayed for Divine help, his sword answered Amen!
Only with the power of Khudi, which is eventually a two-way relation between the Lover and the Beloved, could a man of such simple circumstances as the Prophet, become the pivotal point in the history of humanity; delivering it from darkness into a permanent light of freedom of thought and equality, closing the doors of unquestioned tyranny behind him;
And extirpated the race of kings.
He instituted new laws in the world,
He brought the empires of antiquity to an end.
With the key of religion, he opened the door of this world.
Eventually, Iqbal envisions the Prophet to be the one uniting force that binds a people from one end of the world to another; unity with the Prophet of Mecca, is not unity with a soil, but unity of a brotherhood with the whole machine of the Universe and beyond that with the Hands that bear the threads of all control;
We belong to the Hijaz and China and Persia,
Yet we are the dew of one smiling dawn.
We are all under the spell of the eye of the
cup-bearer from Makkah,
We are united as wine and cup.
We are like a rose with many petals but with one perfume:;
He is the soul of this society, and he is one
We are the secret concealed in his heart.
The holder of a Khudi, enriched with love and the grace of the Beloved, renders it above the bounds of time and space; therefore making the Prophets person a source of inspiration for all seekers of the true Ultimate center of all love, knowledge and provision, for times to come;
Many a Sinai springs from the dust on his path.
My image was created by his mirror,
My dawn rises from the sun of his breast.
My repose is a perpetual fever,
My evening hotter than the morning of Judgment Day:
He is the April cloud and I his garden,
My vine is bedewed with his rain.
It sowed mine eye in the field of Love
And reaped a harvest of vision.
Iqbals love for Muhammad is as pure as any devotion can be, Iqbal does not choose to question the authenticity of a mans words, who has said them standing on the verge of many realizations. Iqbal knows that we are to only question what we can know, but for all other realms that we are unaware of, we can only question with the beggars bowl in our hands;
The soil of Medina is sweeter than both worlds:
Oh, happy the town where dwell the Beloved!
Muhammad is the preface to the book of the universe:
All the worlds are slaves and he is the Master.
