With the “death of God” western thought and with it man’s perception of himself and life took a precipitous fall. It was in this backdrop that Iqbal introduced his “mard-e-momin”…the self-determined, universe-determining Man; lending fire to his “handful of dust”, freeing him from the spell of word-spinners and the chains of “fate”, the circles of day and night and finally donning him with the wings of Gabriel, restored him to his rightful place in the universe:

You say that man is made of humble clay,
Bound to this world of being and decay.
But Nature in her universal scheme
Has laid her sea’s foundation on his stream.

Iqbal’s Man is not a passive being, not merely a humble receiver. He is the source, the giver, the doer. He redefines himself every moment, and in so doing defines his own universe ….

and that is his only claim to Life:

At every moment he breaks free of the bounds of time and the “sang o khist” of this mortal world…and replenishes himself and his universe with the light of The Truth:

پھونک ڈالے یہ زمین و آسمان مستعار

اور خاکستر سے آپ اپنا جہاں پیدا کرے

زندگی کی قوت پنہاں کو کر دے آشکار

تا یہ چنگاری فروغ جاوداں پیدا کرے

Worlds spring like grain from my handful of clay.
Come share my harvest. Though you went astray
From the highway that leads to God, yet come;
You may find Him in my heart’s wilderness.

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نہ کہیں‌ جہاں ‌میں‌ اماں ملی، جو اماں ملی تو کہاں‌ ملی
مرے جرمِ خانہ خراب کو، ترے عفوِ بندہ نواز میں1

1: Allusion to the Holy Quran 39:53

Say: “O my Servants who have transgressed against their souls! Despair not of the Mercy of Allah. for Allah forgives all sins: for He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful”

The response:

تو بچا بچا کے نہ رکھ اسے، ترا آئینہ ہے وہ آئینہ
جو شکستہ ہو تو عزیز تر ہے نگاہِ آئینہ ساز میں

This is another couplet from the same ghazal. It is one of the most mystical of Iqbal’s ghazals and summarizes the relationship between God and man. Iqbal like many other mystics does realize that man is most likely to fall into error again and again in this world full of temptation. The brokenness of the mirror, which is dear to the Maker, is in part due to the fallen status of Man in the moral sense, but more than that it is the humility of the soul that is bestowed by this repeated falling and the prostration before God which is the natural result in case of a believer…the sincere quest for God’s forgiveness….the acceptance of human fallibility and weakness of will, subservience to the Creator……..and the ultimate complete surrender.

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