IQBAL'S LAST MESSAGE TO HUMANITY

• Published date: 31 December 2021

The current text is an effort to rediscover Iqbal's message to mankind and to convey his thoughts to the contemporary French reader through the French translations of selected Persian quatrains from Iqbal's Armaghan-e Hijaz (The Gift of Hijaz). In the course of selection of the quatrains to be translated into French, preference has been given to stanzas that introduce and expound upon the basic philosophical theme of Iqbal's concept of khudi. While rendering the quatrains into French, I have been conscious of the fact that the French reader might not be aware of the concept of khudi nor of the associated lexique of Iqbal that helps the reader to comprehend and visualize this concept of khudi. The readers will find a brief comment in footnotes wherever it was felt that the translated lexique in French, though simple and self explanatory in the source language of the interconnected ideas have been interwoven to elaborate the macro concepts of time and space in finitude as well as in infinity.

Iqbal's last Message to Humanity is a sequel to Iqbal's Final Address to God and the Prophet. The message is carried forward by the sequel to give the comprehensible perspective of Iqbal's dialogue with Muslim Ummah, Humanity and the lovers of God. Iqbal draws attention of the humanity to the universal paradigm of human nature and the faculties related to the outward actions and its manifestation. The Muslim Ummah should follow the patterns of God so that they may attain purification of soul through the outward actions including the reflective thought process of human beings. The humanity again is linked up with Prophet Adam (peace be upon him) where humanity becomes connected to the Oneness of God. Iqbal is taking his readers towards the Oneness, Tawheed or what can be called the Ultimate reality of God. The first part deals with the celestial vision and the ways of integration which were taught to humanity through the last Prophet.

As Allah says in Quran “I created the Jinn and humankind only that they worship me”, and in this context some commentators have viewed it as “I was a hidden treasure and I loved to be known, so I created the world”.1 Iqbal explicates that it is very important for every generation to recognise Allah and his message and the ways through which one can connect to Allah. The critique is also offered by Iqbal on the character building role by Pseudo Saint and Mullah in our contemporary society that they have minimised the significance of soul by emphasizing upon the exaggerated ways and have distorted the Islamic philosophy in the macro picture of the universe. Iqbal terms the callous character building by Pseudo Saint and Mullah as a dead wood in his book.

The subtlety of Iqbal's thought is that he pays importance to the recognition of the connoisseur heart itself. Iqbal centralizes the concept of Faqr which has two elements: the one is reason and the other meditation. The two of them, amalgamated, give birth to the quality of Faqr. The practice of Faqr makes your soul freed from the material prospects of life and affirms the Self that is the perspective of Iqbal's seal of human being (insan e kamil). The seal is used in the real sense of Self affirmation.

The current text is an effort to rediscover Iqbal's message to mankind and to convey his thoughts to the contemporary French reader through the French translations of selected Persian quatrains from Iqbal's Armaghan-e Hijaz (The Gift of Hijaz). The first part of this posthumous book of Masnawi style poetry is in Persian and the second part is in Urdu.

Amongst the following five thematic sections of Iqbal's Armaghan-e Hijaz, the first two sections have been dealt with in the previous translation titled Iqbal's final address to God and the Prophet2. This translational research explores the remaining three dimensions as mentioned by Iqbal at the core of the text. The profundity of Iqbal's philosophy can be understood through these three dimensions...