Iqbal terms

Much above the fear of profit and loss is life!

Now the soul now the surrender of soul is life!

Do not measure it on the scale of today and tomorrow

Eternal, incessantly struggling, ever young is life!

Create your own world if you claim to be among the living

The secret of Adam and the object of Kun fikan is life

Ask the mountain digger for the reality of life

The canal of milk, the axe, the heavy rock is life

In slavery it is choked to a mere trickling brook

And in freedom like the boundless ocean is life

It is manifested by its power of subduing

Though concealed in a body of dust is life

You have emerged from the existence’ ocean like a bubble

In this losing battle your examination is life ¹

This flow of breath is like a sword,

Selfhood is its sharpness;

Selfhood is the secret of life;

It is the world’s awakening,

Selfhood is solitary, absorbed,

An ocean enclosed in a drop;

It shines in light and in darkness,

Existent in, but away from, thee and me.

The dawn of life behind it, eternity before,

It has no frontiers before, no frontiers behind.

Afloat on the river of time,

Bearing the buffets of the waves,

Changing the course of its quest,

Shifting its glance from time to time;

For it a hill is a grain of sand,

Mountains are shattered by its blows;

A journey is its beginning and end,

And this is the secret of its being.

It is the moon’s beam, the spark in the flint,

Colourless itself, though infused with colours,

No concern has it with the calculus of space,

With linear time’s limits, with the finitude of life.

It manifested itself in man’s essence of dust,

After an eternity of a strife to be born.

It is in thy heart that Selfhood has an abode,

As heaven has its abode in the cornea of thy eye ²

Country, is the biggest among these new gods!

What is its shirt is the shroud of Deen

This idol which is the product of the new civilization

Is the plunderer of the structure of the Holy Prophet's Deen

Your arm is enforced with the strength of the Divine Unity

You are the followers of Mustafa, your country is Islam

You should show the old panorama to the world

O Mustafa’s follower! You should destroy this idol

The limitation to country results in destruction

Live like the fish in the ocean free from country

Renouncing the country is the way of the God’s Beloved

You should also testify to the Prophethood’s Truth by similar action

In political parlance country is something different

In Prophet’s command country is something different

The antagonism among world’s nations is created by this alone

Subjugation as the goal of commerce is created by this alone

Politics have become bereft of sincerity is by this alone

The destruction of the home of the weak is by this alone

God’s creation is unjustly divided among nations by it

The Islamic concept of nationality is uprooted by it ⁴

Destroyed is the first and last! Destroyed is the known, the unknown!

Destroyed at last is every work of antique form or new!

But immune from the shafts of time is the work of human hand,

When it has been conceived by impassioned men of God.

Love illumines every act of the men divinely inspired

Love is the essence of life-, love dies not, but death.

Though the tide of’ time rises With mountain waves,

Love itself’ is a torrent, and resists all heaving storms.

In the almanac of love, besides the time that passes,

Are myriad other ages, untold and unnamed.

Love is Gabriel’s breath; love is the Prophet’s spirit;

Love is the apostle of God; love is the Word of God.

It is the passion of love that brightens the rose’s colour;

Love is the purest wine; love is the drink of saints.

Love is the law for the holy; love is the guide for the layman;

Love is the heart’s pilgrim, that visits in a thousand ways.

Love is the lyre that strikes the vibrant chord of life;

Love is the light of life; love is the flame of life. ⁷

TIME IS A SWORD

GREEN be the holy grave of Shafi’i,!

Whose vine hath cheered a whole world ?

His thought plucked a star from heavens:

He named time "a cutting sword."

How shall I say what is the secret of this sword ?

In its flashing edge there is life.

Its owner is exalted above hope and fear.

His hand is whiter than the hand of Moses.

At one stroke thereof water gushes from the rock

And the sea becomes land from dearth of moisture.

Moses held this sword in his hand,

Therefore he wrought more than man may contrive.

He clove the Red Sea asunder

And made its waters like dry earth.

The arm of Ali, the conqueror of Khaibar,

Drew its strength from this same sword

The revolution of the sky is worth seeing,

The change of day and night is worth observing.

Look, I thou enthralled by Yesterday and Tomorrow,

Behold another world in thine, on heart!

Thou hast sown the seed of darkness in the clay,

Thou hast imagined Time as a line.

Thy thought measures length of Time With the measure Of night and day.

Thou mak'st this line a girdle on thine infidel waist;

Thou art an advertiser of falsehoods like idols.

Thou wert the Elixir, and thou hast become a Peck of dust;

Thou wert born the conscience of Truth and thou hast become a lie!

Art thou a Muslim girdle! Then cast of this girdle!

Be a candle to the feast of the religion of the free!

Knowing not the origin of Time,

Thou art ignorant of everlasting Life.

How long wilt thou be a thrall of night and day?

Learn the mystery of Time from the words "I have a time with God.'

Phenomena arise from the march of Time,

Life is one of Time's mysteries.

The cause of Time is not the revolution of the sun

Time is everlasting, but the sun does not last for ever.

Time is joy and sorrow, festival and fast,

Time is the secret of moonlight and sunlight.

Thou hast extended Time, like Space,

And distinguished Yesterday from Tomorrow.

Thou hast fled like a scent, from thine own garden;

Thou hast made thy prison with thine own hand.

Our Time which has neither r beginning nor end,

Blossoms from the flower-bed of our, mind.

To know its root quickens the living with new life:

Its being is more splendid than the dawn.

Life is of Time, and Time is of Life:

"Do not abuse Time !" was the command of the Prophet.

Oh, the memory of those days when Time's sword

Was allied with the strength of our hands !

We sowed the seed of religion in men's hearts

And unveiled the face of Truth;

Our nails tore loose the knot of this world,

Our bowing in prayer give blessings to the earth.

From the jar of Truth we made rosy wine gush forth,

We charged against the ancient taverns.

O thou in whose cup is old wine

A wine so hot that the glass is well nigh turned to water,

Wilt thou in thy pride and arrogance and self-conceit

Taunt us with our emptiness?

Our cup, too, hath graced the symposium

Our breast hath owned a spirit.

The new age with all its glories

Hath risen from the dust of our feet.

Our blood hath watered God's harvest,

All worshippers of God are our debtors.

The takbir was our gift to the world,

Ka'bas were built of our clay.

By means of us God taught the Koran,

From our hand He dispensed His bounty.

Although crown and signet have passed from us,

Do not look with contempt on our beggarliness!

In thine eyes we are good for nothing,

Thinking old thoughts, despicable.

We have honour from "There is no god but Allah."

We are the protectors of the universe.

Freed from the vexation of to-day and tomorrow.

We have pledged ourselves to love One.

We are the conscience hidden in God's heart,

We are the heirs of Moses and Aaron,

Sun and moon are still bright with our radiance,

Lightning-flashes still lurk in our cloud.

In our essence Divinity is mirrored:

The Muslim's being is one of the signs of God. ¹⁰