Tagheyyur.

In South Africa there are two million whites against almost thirteen million native people, and it has never occurred to a single black to consider himself superior to a member of the white minority. –  Frantz Fanon The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist who creates his inferior. –  Frantz Fanon (First quote of Fanon really shook our spines to the core. This thought has never occurred to us! We must confess. Ask yourself. The second one is a ‘proven’ psychological fact.) There’s an undeniable existence of self-hatred, self-pity and total disregard for our Way (cultural and above all religious) present in many of us, especially those dazzled by all things ‘western’. Another term for this disease is  Occidentosis.  Speaking of which Jalal Al-i Ahmed writes in his famous  Occidentosis: A Plague from West : “Under [occ...

"Nations are born in the hearts of poets; they prosper and die in the hands of politicians."                                                                                       --Iqbal, Stray Reflections (1910) Our mentor, Mr. Khurram Ali Shafique has deduced after years of his research in Iqbal studies that  Iqbal believed that literature plays the most important role in the life of a nation. In fact, he treated literature like a collective dream which comes true. Therefore, the most courageous and daring stand which Iqbal Studies demands from us is that we insist that if anything is wrong in the world, its ultimate root can be traced in the kind of literature that has been venerated, and if we want to bring any positive change, the first step has to be the repre...

"...how intricately woven literature was in the patterns of the lives of early Muslims. Whether you studied Science, philosophy or religious sciences, literature was always a discipline of study that you grew up with. No wonder Saladin had memorised many  diwaans  of Arabic poetry! It had a role to play in the lives of people.  Adab  played an integral part in the teaching of   adab ! It was during my formal study of literature at the university when I realised how informally literature once made a part of the tradition that I belonged to. Education remained incomplete without it. But all this, my teachers told me, was now history – history of the tradition we belong to. A history, that, sadly, I did not even know till the nineteenth year of my life. And it is my study of literature that has inculcated in me a love for excavating this history. Literature students, after all, have been branded as Romantics (if you know what the word really means) since ti...

For humans, aesthetic needs are as important as basic needs because they feed the soul and help to enhance it. People are always in need of an ideal. The urge to follow some principle, person etc. was built into us. Accordingly , literature is an important aspect of the aesthetic sense and all societies need it as their source of aspirations, ideals, objectives, and visions. Yet, good literature is the kind which makes people think and plan ahead of their time. It offers role models which help to evlove ideas and ideals, and preserve and pass objectives to future generations. Above everything else, it brings together people from different backgrounds to acquire a unity of imagination, if it is equally enjoyable to the initiated and the uninitiated (and this has been a hallmark of all good literature throughout the ages, even though this is denied nowadays by those who uphold a dichotomy between "high" and "popular" cultures). In other words, good literature...

 Principles of Literary Criticism                           The Poets  Translation of Verses 224-227, Chapter 26, the Quran And the Poets― it is those straying in Evil, who follow them:  Do you not see that they wander distracted in every valley? And that they say what they practise not? Except those who believe, work righteousness, engage much in the remembrance of Allah, and defend themselves after they are unjustly attacked. And soon will the unjust assailants know what vicissitudes their affairs will take! "Once at the end of a workshop on creative writing which I conducted in Mauritius, I was asked by an old school teacher, “Can you describe literature in a single word?” I said, “Yes,Quran.” A veteran Muslim poet was also on the panel with me and he hastened to contradict me from the bottom of his heart. He said something to the effect, “The Quran is just a religious b...