Asrar-e Khudi (1915) was Iqbal’s first attempt at presenting a comprehensive statement of his mature philosophy. The fact that it was composed in Persian verse rather than in academic prose was partly due to the poet’s desire for reaching a wider audience in the Muslim world, and partly because the Persian poetic tradition had provided…
The short answer to this question is “no.” At any given moment in time, future exists as multiple possibilities — none of which is set in stone — until one of these possibilities becomes real. At that point, all possibilities other than the actualized one cease to be and an entirely new set of future possibilities arises. These too will…
Included in Asrar-i Khudi, Iqbal’s first book of Persian verse, is a poem titled “Al-Waqt Sayf,” time is a sword. The title comes from a saying attributed to the famous scholar and jurist Imam Ahmad bin Idris Al-Shafi’i (767-820 CE). Iqbal’s poem has three parts. Here I will attempt a paraphrase of the first part of this poem and…