Talk:Muhammad Iqbal

Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya

The paragraph about Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya movement read.

Another influence in his life and his family was with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, to whom he became a great admirer as well as Sir Sayed Ahmad Khan. Iqbal's brother Shaikh Ata Muhammad joined the Ahmadiyya Movement of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad first, and Iqbal made his pledge in 1897. He had defended Ahmadiyya before and after this event.

This is often controvertial issue between Ahmadiyya, Qadians and other Muslim groups, each of whom say that Iqbal was on their side. Here is an excerpt from Allama Iqbal reply to a set articles published by awaharlal Nehru on the Issue of Qadianis.

"The cultural value of the idea of Finality in Islam I have fully explained elsewhere. Its meaning is simple : No spiritual surrender to any human being after Muhammad who emancipated his followers by giving them a law which is realizable as arising from the very core of human conscience. Theologically the doctrine is that : The Socio-political organization called "Islam" is perfect and eternal. No revelation the denial of which entils heresy is possible after Muhammad. He who claims such a revelation is a traitor to Islam. Since the Qadinis believe the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement to be the bearer of such a revelation, they declare that the entire world of Islam is infidel. The founder's own argument, quite worthy of a mediaeval theologian, is that the spirituality of the Holy Prophet of Islam must be regarded as imperfect if it is not vreative of another Prophet. He claims his own Prophethood to be an evidence of the Prophet-rearing power of the spirituality of the Holy Prophet of Islam. But if you further ask him whether the spirituality of Muhammad is capable of rearing more prophets than one, his answer is "No." This virtually amounts to saying : 'Muhammad is not the last Prophet ; I am the last."

Deleted a few lines regarding Iqbal's allegience to Ahmadiyya Movement since the evidence regarding is inconclusive at best. Also removed a line regarding the position of the other branch of the movemnet and their stance on Kashmir since their stance is irrelevant to the topic at hand.--Vonaurum 06:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Grandfather's migration

The article presented one side of the story regarding the migration of his grandfather from Kashmir, added the other side of the story to give a NPOV. --Vonaurum 19:44, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Family

Ramesh Kumar's thesis on Iqbal's ancestry was added to the article which is however rejected by most other scholars. In recent years different conflicting theories have come about regarding the events concerning the conversion of Iqbal's Family. Anyway this is not really relevent to the article at hand so I am going to delete it anyway and stick to the most widely accepted theory on the event. Additionally the theory implies that Sheikh Nur Muhammad was Ratan lal which is extremely unlikely since there is enough documented evidence regarding the involvement of Sheikh Nur Muhammad in religious circles of Sialkot in his youth to discredit the theory.--Vonaurum 06:50, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Promise

There seems to be scant information about the "promise" in sources pertaining to Iqbal and it also violates NPOV.

         "In spite of a promise he made to his father-- that he would not make any profit out of his poetry--he sold copies of them and used the proceeds to supplement his small income."

Persian

The follwoing is incorrect since it implies that writing in Persian is easier than in Urdu. The genre of Urdu poetry is heavily influenced by Persian poetry. Plus Persian poetry is known for using complex or elaborate schemes. The sentence almost degrades the Persian language and hence does not represent NPOV. The main reason for switching to Persian was because it allowed him to reach to a wider audience, namely people in Iran and Afghanistan.

         "While in Europe he also began to write his poetry in Persian, because it was easier to write in than Urdu."

--Vonaurum 03:53, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Worth looking into, but at that time, most Urdu poets also wrote in Persian—and considered it a higher form than Urdu. And I say this as a lover of Urdu.—iFaqeer (Talk to me!) 21:30, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

That is a good point too. Plus Iqbal's own contributions to Urdu were significant (though he did make the conscious effort) in replacing Persian with Urdu as the language of the arts in Colonial India. --Vonaurum 06:54, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Pakistan Movement

Needs more info on his political activities after returning to "India".