Imran Khan Claims Inspiration From Allama Iqbal

Rooh-e-Sultani Rahe Baqi To Phir Kya Iztarab
Hai Magar Kya Uss Yahoodi Ki Shararat Ka Jawab?

(No cause of anxiety then, if the spirit of imperialism be preserved
But what’s the answer to the mischief of that wise Jew)

Woh Kaleem Be-Tajalli, Woh Maseeh Be-Saleeb
Neest Peghambar Wa Lekin Dar Baghal Darad Kitab

(That Moses without light, that cross-less Jesus
Not a prophet, but with a book under his arm)

Iss Se Barh Kar Aur Kya Ho Ga Tabiat Ka Fasad
Torh Di Bandon Ne Aaqaon Ke Khaimon Ki Tanab!

(For what could be more dangerous than this
That the serfs uproot the tents of their masters)

Muhammad Iqbal (Urdu: محمد اقبال) (November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938)

Speaking at the recent launch of his book “Pakistan: A Personal History”, Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan referred to Allama Iqbal as the ideological father of the nation, and added that “Iqbal’s teachings have inspired me to a great extent”. In the book, Imran calls Islam a “comprehensive blueprint for how Muslims should live in accordance with the highest ideals and best practices of Islam.”




Analyzing Imran Khan's comments, Indian author and journalist Pankaj Mishra says that Iqbal felt "democracy and capitalism had empowered a privileged elite in the name of the people". It seems to me that "Occupy Wall Street" protesters also appear to be inspired by Iqbal's thoughts about the extraordinary power of the elite in democracy and capitalism as practiced in the West.

In a recent Businessweek piece titled "Islam Offers a Third Way in Pakistan and Tunisia", Mishra compares Imran Khan with the "democratic Islamist" Tunisian leader Rashid Ghannouchi.

Here are selected excerpts from Mishra's article:

"Confronted with extreme inequality and corrupt Westernized elites, many Muslim thinkers had already begun to present Islam as a guarantee of social justice. Setting up the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, Hassan al-Banna advocated the redistribution of wealth, and a crackdown on venal politicians and businessmen.

Like al-Banna, Iqbal believed that the Prophet had transmitted the blueprint for a just society centuries before Marx -- “the wise Jew” -- worked it out in the British Museum. And he remained confident that after the ruling elites of capitalism and socialism had lost credibility, “the message of the Prophet might appear again.”

Iqbal considered the idea of a classless society, in which the rich were custodians rather than owners of property, to be morally superior to socialism as well as capitalism:

Protector of women’s honor, tester of men A message of death for all sorts of slavery Undivided amongst kings and beggars Cleans the wealth of all its filth Makes the rich the custodians of riches What could be greater than this revolution? Not to kings but to God belongs the land.

I have been thinking of Iqbal’s lines in recent weeks as the Islamist democrats of Rashid Ghannouchi’s Ennahdha party triumphed in Tunisia’s first free elections in years, and the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan -- declared by Pew Research Center to be the most popular political figure in Pakistan -- staged a huge rally in Lahore, staking his first serious claim to power."

"Like many leaders and thinkers in Islamic countries, both traveled through secular ideologies and lifestyles -- Ghannouchi as a Nasserite socialist, Khan as a denizen of London’s social scene -- before arriving at a worldview grounded in Islam.

More importantly, their respective countries have stumbled through many failed postcolonial experiments with Western political and economic systems, resulting in wayward elected governments and uneven economic development, before arriving at their current rendezvous with political Islam.

It may seem more understandable that a majority of Tunisians, who have suffered from a secular and kleptocratic despotism, want to experiment with a more Islamic polity. But why would Pakistanis, who felt the coercive power of an Islamic state for almost a decade under the military dictatorship of Mohammad Zia Ul-Haq, want to do the same?

Perhaps because -- and this is not sufficiently recognized -- every generation brings to political life its own ideas, hopes and illusions. Too young to remember Zia’s regime, many Pakistanis invest their faith in the born-again Khan out of disgust with the modernizing military ruler Pervez Musharraf, who was president from 2001 to 2008, and interchangeable civilian politicians Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif, who all share an appalling record of corruption and ineptitude. (Pakistanis are also thrilled by Khan’s unambiguous denunciations of the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone attacks in their country.)

Whether liberal and secular elites like it or not, there are a large number of socially conservative Muslims who wish to see the ethical principles of Islam play a more active role in public life. The mind-numbing division between “moderates” and “extremists” that often passes for profound understanding of Islamic societies in the West simply fails to account for this invisible majority of Muslims, who are unlikely to plump for secular liberalism either now or in the near future.

For many nationalist and reflexively conservative Pakistanis, Imran Khan’s belief that “if we follow Iqbal’s teaching, we can reverse the growing gap between Westernized rich and traditional poor that helps fuel fundamentalism” is not the empty rhetoric it may sound to a Westernized Pakistani."

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Imran Khan's Social Media Campaign

An Indian's View of Jinnah, Iqbal and Pakistan

Culture of Corruption in Pakistan

Incompetence Worse Than Corruption in Pakistan

Clash of Ideas in Islam

Jinnah's Vision of Pakistan

Imran to Obama: Leave Afghanistan

Occupy Wall Street

Iqbal's Poetry

Will American Capitalism Survive?

As the modern system of capitalism faces the most serious challenge of its existence since Adam Smith, the name of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is being regularly invoked by economists, politicians, bankers, and the media. And with good reason. Born in Cambridge, England, in 1883, the year Karl Marx died, Keynes probably saved capitalism from itself and kept Communists at bay. Keynesian Economics advocates the use of government monetary and fiscal policy to maintain full employment with low inflation.

Keynes described Capitalism in the following words: "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

A well-known anti-Semite, Keynes once said, "It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains." As in the past financial crises, powerful Jews on Wall Street and in Washington are being held responsible by many as the culprits of the current economic collapse.

In response to a severe recession or possible depression, Keynes suggested: "The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up." He advocated massive spending by government to stimulate demand when all else fails.

Who was Keynes? Here is how UC Berkeley's Robert Reich described him a few years ago: "A Cambridge University don with a flair for making money, a graduate of England's exclusive Eton prep school, a collector of modern art, the darling of Virginia Woolf and her intellectually avant-garde Bloomsbury Group, the chairman of a life-insurance company, later a director of the Bank of England, married to a ballerina, John Maynard Keynes--tall, charming and self-confident--nonetheless transformed the dismal science into a revolutionary engine of social progress."

Keynes was clearly a very smart man. His ideas of modern Capitalism have created unprecedented wealth and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. And his ideas may still help save capitalism yet again. At least, that is the hope of the Obama administration and the backers of the massive stimulus package of about $800 billion recently passed by the US Congress. However, what Keynes couldn't have imagined are the new heights of avarice and wickedness of the modern political-industrial elite in America that has threatened the very foundations of the system that brought them wealth and power. During the last decade, the behavior of American capitalists and politicians has been unbelievably self-destructive.

Even Alan Greenspan, the icon of modern US capitalism, was forced to show contrition in October, 2008. The former Federal Reserve Chairman told a House committee that the banking and housing crisis is a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami." When asked if his ideology pushed him to make bad decisions, Greenspan said he found a "flaw" in his governing ideology that has led him to re-examine his thinking. There has, however, been no acceptance of any responsibility for the current crisis by the members of US Congress and powerful finance, banking and appropriations committees responsible for overseeing the US finance and economy.

The American economy continues to deteriorate rapidly with the devastating credit crunch and major loss of confidence by consumers, businesses and investors. At this point, tax cuts or just handing out cash to banks or big infrastructure projects or re-regulation are not likely to help hasten economic recovery. The Obama administration will need to take more drastic measures, including nationalization and recapitalization of major banks to ensure that the much needed credit to businesses and consumers starts flowing again. Ideological aversion to nationalization will only delay recovery and take a much heavier toll on ordinary Americans in terms of job losses, home foreclosures and loss of other basic necessities of life.

The problem that some of the the critics of the Obama economic team and their Congressional overseers, derived mainly from the Clinton administration and the hold-overs from Bush-era, point out is articulated well by Nassim Taleb, the author of Black Swan. “We have the same people in charge, those who did not see the crisis coming,” he said recently on CNBC.

The roots of the current crisis can be traced to the Reagan revolution. Beginning in the early 1980s, Reaganomics transformed the United States in fundamental ways. Since the world saw the fall of the Soviet Union and collapse of Communism, the Conservative Republican ideas of less government and more deregulation have continued to change the economic landscape in America and the rest of the world. This revolution has now lasted almost three decades under various US administrations including Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43. The Reagan ideas have also been adopted and preached by international financial institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The continued wave of deregulation engineered and supported by America's predominantly Jewish political-industrial elite has led to the creation and trading of what Warren Buffet describes as "financial weapons of mass destruction". Such newfangled, unregulated financial derivative products as some mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps and other wildly speculative futures and commodities contracts have produced hundreds of billions of dollars worth of personal gains for the financial industry executives and hundreds of millions of dollars in political contributions for American politicians who are now grand-standing as saviors of the American and the world economy.

The fate of many new-comers from the emerging economies of the world is closely tied to the success or failure of capitalism in America. It appears that some of the countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and India, who embraced the conservative American ideas of "economic reform" and "deregulation", may already be too late for the party. However, the European and Asian nations with substantial population of savers and entrepreneurs will recover rapidly and thrive again, as long as they keep their banks and financial institutions on a tight leash. In particular, the world's top creditor nations such as China , Japan and Germany with high savings rates, massive trade surpluses and large central bank cash reserves are likely to come out ahead at the end of the current crisis. Others may not be so lucky. But all the follower nations that have essentially been copying the US model will have to develop their own original ideas with financial systems and economic models to move forward in uncharted waters. Clearly, any new models will require a deep understanding and introspection of what has worked and where has the American capitalism gone wrong.

Related Links:

China's Nuclear Option

Senator Schumer: The Champion of Wall Street on the Hill

Pay to Play is the Name of the Game in Washington

Are Jews Culprits of Collapse on Wall Street?

Keynes on Jews

Democrats and Republicans Share Blame for Financial Collapse

Jewish Network in US Congress

Jewish Power Dominates at Vanity Fair