10/11/2024
Poet & M***i — A Poem on Iqbal Day
By Habib Sulemani
(1)
Cyberspace is a strange place where you can encounter people you'd likely never hear about in real life.
One day, I came across a group of self-styled liberals in a virtual meeting.
They were mocking a notable mullah, sharing his picture dressed in a sherwani, Jinnah cap, and sporting a dyed red beard.
The poor mullah’s prominent teeth became the subject of their amusement.
Their behavior made me uncomfortable.
The mullah was none other than M***i Muhammad Taqi Usmani, a retired judge of the Sharia court, and an expert in Islamic jurisprudence, hadith, and economics.
This intrigued me, leading to search more about him.
Despite my intellectual disagreements, I was impressed enough to post about the M***i on social media.
(2)
While commenting on The Meanings of The Noble Quran, M***i Taqi Usmani’s translation of Islam’s holy book, I wrote on Facebook:
It’s remarkable, especially in its use of English punctuation to mirror the Arabic ones in the English text.
M***i Sahib is fluent in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, English, and Spanish.
(A rare trait among today’s ulema—he may be the only one of his kind in our Islamic Republic.)
Stay blessed, M***i Sahib.
You are a gem of Pakistan.
(3)
While browsing the internet, I found an Urdu poem by M***i Taqi Usmani.
It surprised me, and I shared it on social media with this note:
Friends, if you wish to understand an Islamic perspective, read M***i Taqi Usmani’s books on Islam.
But if you wish to understand M***i Taqi Usmani as a person, and as a citizen of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, read this poem!
(4)
In both appearance and sermons, M***i Taqi resembles a hardline Islamist, a figure from whom the Taliban and other jihadists "draw" inspiration.
Yet, when I analyzed the aforesaid ghazal, M***i Taqi stood alongside Mir Taqi Mir and other classical Urdu poets.
You may ask me: How?
Well, poetry is written privately at home, while sermons are delivered publicly at mosques.
In the ghazal, M***i Taqi speaks of the heart as an organ filled with pain, just as Mir Taqi did in his own poetry…
("God created humans for the pain of the heart," Mir Taqi says, "otherwise, angels were sufficient for worship.")
When M***i Taqi writes about his “wine of ecstasy that even makes angels envious,” he evokes the spirit of Omar Khayyam…
(“I drink wine because it is my solace," as Khayyam says in his Rubaiyat, "Do not blame me, although it is bitter it is pleasant; It is bitter because it is my life.”)
Rather than being labeled a guru of jihadists, he could have become a prophet for those liberals who criticize him without knowing about his poetry.
(After all, the self-styled liberals and progressives revere Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who not only resembled M***i Taqi physically and poetically but was also, like him, born in the UP state of India!)
One couplet reveals why he chose to be a "m***i" publicly and a "poet" privately…
Indeed, for survival, as it's essential to live a double life in the military-run Islamic Republic…
He lives in a country where citizens are killed in the name of blasphemy, and ulema are butchered over sectarian divides…
This is why M***i Taqi invokes Sarmad and Mansur Al-Hallaj — poets who were executed for alleged blasphemy — and writes:
"To trade one's heart before one's head is the first bargain here; it’s not easy to be like Sarmad and Mansur…”
This is the condition of a terrorized top Islamic scholar in the Islamic Republic, run on fuels of lies, corruption, and terrorism brinkmanship...
It's not just M***i Taqi...
Whatever Allama Iqbal has said, particularly in his Persian poetry, remains hidden from the military thinktanks...
His poetic words would qualify him as a target of vigilantes, controlled from behind the khaki curtains...
Had he survived such attacks, the National Poet of the Islamic Republic would surely be in jail on his birthday if he were in Pakistan today!
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November 9, 2024.
NOTE: The translation of Mir Taqi Mir's couplet is by C. M. Naim, while that of Omar Khayyam's is by Edward FitzGerald.
***itaqiusmani
