Allama Iqbal on women by Naeem Khan CSP

 Allama Iqbal on women  by Naeem Khan CSP

Women are either for Husband/House or Grave( Ghar ya gor). This is the verse in chapter 10 of Javed Nama.  Image shared.

Wujood-e-Zan Se Hai Tasveer-e-Kainat Mein Rang/ The picture that this world presents from woman gets its tints and scents:

Issi Ke Saaz Se Hai Zindagi Ka Souz-e-Darun/ She is the lyre that can impart pathos and warmth to human heart.

Sharaf Mein Barh Ke Sureya Se Musht-e-Khak Iss Ki / Her handful clay is superior far to Pleiades that so higher are

Ke Har Sharaf Hai Issi Durj Ka Dur-e-Makoon / For every man with knowledge vast, Like gem out of her cask is cast.

Makalat-e-Falatoon Na Likh Saki, Lekin / Like Plato can not hold discourse, Nor can with thunderous voice declaim:

Issi Ke Shole Se Toota Sharaar-e-Aflatoon / But Plato was a spark that broke from her fire that blazed like flame.

Her wajood or existence or body or presence serves only for tints,  scents,  colors,  warmth. She can't be intellectual like Plato but can produce children. 

Iqbal denounces woman’s ability to think logically, abstractly and analytically but claims they are biologically nurturing and compassionate creatures who give birth to babies. "Giving birth to a child is not a qualification but a physical attribution," says Dr. Saleem Akhtar.

To Iqbal the ummah’s gender was male. Iqbal’s Shaheen is a Muslim adoption, rather mutation of Nietzsche’s atheistic Superman’, says Nadeem Farooq Paracha.

Iqbal himself practiced what we can call Halala in case of his second wife. However, he was in love with liberal women Atia Faizi. He opposes women education but employs a German nanny for his own daughter. He is Pan Islamist but wants a Kashmiri husband for his daughter. What explains these contradictions. And how do these contradictions reflect in his works?

https://www.newageislam.com/interview/adnan-farooq/in-nietzsche-inspired-iqbal-women-rights-go-missing/d/4492

Who throughout his intellectual life had almost nothing to say to women (or to non-Muslims), in his last volume actually created this specially titled little group of ghazals. It's easy to feel how troubled he was by the aspirations of westernized and educated women, and how he struggled to find a proper place for women in his view of society. Considering how boldly Iqbal urged (male) Muslims to reimagine and remake the world, it's surprising that he was so conservative in his views about gender roles (and apparently encountered such problems in his personal life too). 

Neither pardah nor education, whether it be new or old--

the guardian of the femininity of woman is only man

ne pardah nah taʿlīm naʾī ho kih purānī

nisvāniyat-e zan kā nigah-bāñ hai faqat̤ mard

    

 I too am very sorrowful at the oppression of women,

but it's not possible, the opening of this difficult knot!

maiñ bhī maz̤lūmī-e nisvāñ se hūñ ġham-nāk bahut

nahīñ mumkin magar is ʿaqdah-e mushkil kī kushūd!

  

Nations which give women more freedom than is necessary regret their mistake at one time or another. Nature has imposed such important responsibilities on a woman that if she tries to discharge them fully, she cannot find the leisure to do any other work. Taking her away from her real duties and giving her work which can be performed by a man would certainly be wrong. For instance, making a woman into a typist or clerk is not only a violation of the laws of nature but a regrettable attempt to turn human society topsy-turvy.” (Iqbal)

And then the same Iqbal will say, “The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teaching of the Quran that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.” (Iqbal: “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”)

He was definitely confused. The more you read him the more you will know how confusing and contradicting his thoughts were on different issues.

In Javed Nama, Iqbal depicts the Sphere of Mars as an ideal spiritual democracy where there are no masters and no servants, no beggars and no priests. The only disturbance in this perfect Sphere is caused by the appearance of a European woman who tries to teach women how to become emancipated. The primary reason underlying Iqbal’s desire to limit a woman’s freedom appears to be his belief that this would distract her from the proper execution of her most important responsibility, namely that of taking care of the upbringing of the next generation. 

Translation of - Allama Iqbal-Ek Mehbooba, teen beewiaN, chaar shadiaN

- by Dr. Khalid Sohail

Allama Iqbal and His Women

Translation By Rafi Aamer

Excerpt:

While living with three wives, Iqbal continued his correspondence with

Atiya Faizi. Iqbal's love life was so typical of the life of an

Eastern poet; he couldn't marry the woman he loved and he couldn't

love the women he married.

Iqbal never moved to Europe but he maintained contacts with European

ladies. They used to come over to India and meet Iqbal and Iqbal

showed equal enthusiasm meeting them. After the death of Sardar Begum,

instead of hiring an Indian woman, Iqbal hired a German governess for

Javed and Muneera who used to call her aunt Doris. It seems that Doris

was serving dual purpose of looking after the kids and assuaging

Iqbal's nostalgia about Europe.

As a psycho-therapist, Iqbal's love life came to me as a surprise. I

am surprised to note that The Poet of the East, who had a solution for

every problem afflicting his nation, remained clueless about the

solutions of his own romantic and marital problems. I find it hard to

believe that he got separated from his first wife and their kids after

sixteen years of marriage, that he divorced his second wife based only

on anonymous letters, that he realized that he was deceived only after

he had consummated his marriage with his third wife, and more

surprisingly, that he sought an edict from a cleric and then ignored

the edict before marrying Sardar Begum a second time.

I guess Iqbal must have concluded from these experiences that it was

easier for him to have a successful creative life than a successful

marital life. Words came easy to Iqbal but the answers to the tough

questions of his romantic dilemmas did not. Maybe that is why he

wrote,

Iqbal baRa updeshak hai, mun baton main moh laita hai.

Guftaar ka yeh ghazi to bana, kirdaar ka ghazi ban naa saka.

The following two books by the scholar W.C.Smith provide some

illuminating insights into Iqbal's misogynist mindset:

1. Modern Islam In India, Victor Gollancz, London, 1946

2. Islam In Modern History, Princeton University Press, Princeton,

1957