Tagheyyur.

The mind of Goethe, The heart of Rumi, The message of the Quran. This was the unparalleled legacy of the poet-philosopher credited with birthing a nation and a state, and at no other time has the world been more ready to embrace his ideas than it is right now.  The story of his mind, and what he taught, as told herein from a new and compelling angle, leads us on a trail of discovery towards a new way of life. You're invited to approach this as a handbook for implementing his life-giving ideas. The above-quoted blurb reflects the spirit in which my new book, Iqbal: His Life and Our Times, is being offered. The book is a tribute to Iqbal by ten sovereign states, since it is being published jointly by Iqbal Academy Pakistan and the Cultural Institute of the Economic Cooperation Organization, which is the successor organization of the RCD and now includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The...

I am talking of millions of men who have been skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes, trepidation, servility, despair, abasement. —Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le Colonialisme The independence movements in colonies and protectorates came into being, not through a return to indigenous values on the part of those concerned, but through the absorption of occidental ideas and ideologies, liberal or revolutionary … the process of modernization – a euphemism for Westernization – far from being halted by the withdrawal, was in fact accelerated. The enthusiasm of the new rulers for everything ‘modern’ was not restrained, as had been the enthusiasm of their former masters, by any element of self-doubt. —Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man The celebrated Algerian psychologist freedom fighter of blacks, Franz Fanon, saw only two parties in the battle between the colonialists and colonized: white and black. We, the brown, had pretty benign colonizers, w...

The lecture 'Islam as a Moral and Political Ideal' was delivered at the annual session of Anjuman Himayat-e-Islam in 1909 and published in The Observer, Lahore, and the Hindustan Review, Deccan, in April and December that year respectively. "The eternal proposition regulating the structure of Islam is that there is a fear in nature and the human being must be liberated from fear and thus become conscious of himself or herself as a source of power; there's no mediator since God is the "birthright" of every human being. "A strong will in a strong body" is the ethical ideal of Islam, completely missing in the Indian Muslim; a great personality is needed for ethical revival of a people. An educational system reflecting its national ideals is the next best option.  Democracy is the most important political value in Islam while two fundamental principles regulating its political structures are that (1) the law of God is supreme, since the authority...