{"id":4,"date":"2014-11-06T16:29:23","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T16:29:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/?p=4"},"modified":"2014-11-06T16:29:23","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T16:29:23","slug":"tree-of-islam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/2014\/11\/06\/tree-of-islam\/","title":{"rendered":"“Tree of Islam”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shikwa\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For this project, I decided to focus on specific lines from Muhammad Iqbal\u2019s Complaint and Answer<\/i> (translated by A.J. Arberry) that described Islam in the metaphor of a tree:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are nations in Life\u2019s garden that have gathered in their fruit,
\nOthers are shared not in the harvest, and are swept by autumn\u2019s gales;
\nMultitudes of trees there stand, some green, some withered to the root,
\nMyriads as yet lie hidden in the womb that never fails;
\nAfter centuries of tending soars Islam, a mighty tree,
\nFruitful yet, a splendid symbol of immense vitality.\u201d (Iqbal 63)<\/p>\n

Even though the poem is rich with many metaphors, I appreciated this one and it stood out to me because I think it captured an important essence of what Iqbal was trying to communicate to the reader. I found that in this section, God is responding to the speaker of the poem, saying that throughout history (Life\u2019s garden), different nations have benefited and been successful and have received \u201cfruits,\u201d meaning success and dominance. These nations are the ones in power, just how the Muslims were once in power in India. And then God says that there have also been nations that have \u201cwithered\u201d and have not had the same success. This is what the speaker believes is the current state of the Muslims now. However, God states that it is again possible for the tree of Islam to once again \u201cachieve immense vitality.\u201d This vitality is made possible by returning to Islam and to correct practice. For earlier in the text, God rebukes the speaker and states, \u201cAre you Muslims? What, is this the way Islam would have you tread?…What relationship of spirit links you to your dead? For the fact that they were Muslims they were honoured in their day: You, who have abandoned the Quran, are spurned and cast away\u201d (Iqbal 56). However, even after admonishing the Muslims in modern day India, there is a possibility for them to regain their previous grandeur if they obey God and follow God the way that it was ordained. God tells them to proclaim that \u201cGod is Greatest\u201d and to be faithful to the path of Muhammad (Iqbal 72). Only then will their tree be able to regrow and become strong and fruitful.<\/p>\n

In the work that I did, we see an outline of India (Pre-Partition, the time when Iqbal wrote Complaint and Answer<\/i>) because it is the land that the speaker (Iqbal) is crying out about and complaining to God about losing power in. Then in the forefront, there is a tree. The tree is created out of Arabic words, the main branches of the tree say \u201cLa ilaha illallah muhammadur rasulullah<\/i> (There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger)\u201d and the leaves say \u201cIslam<\/em>.\u201d I chose the shahada because it is the Muslim statement of faith and Iqbal implies throughout the whole work that it is of utmost important for Muslims of India to go back to following the path of God and the Prophet Muhammad. And if Muslims go back to this belief, they will be able to cultivate the Islam of their ancestors that they have turned away from, hence why the leaves that are beginning to grow are Islam. The \u201ctree of Islam\u201d is in front of India because God promises the speaker if Muslims begin to follow Islam properly again, that they will once again reach the splendor they once had during the Mughal empire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For this project, I decided to focus on specific lines from Muhammad Iqbal\u2019s Complaint and Answer (translated by A.J. Arberry) that described Islam in the metaphor of a tree: \u201cThere are nations in Life\u2019s garden that have gathered in their fruit, Others are shared not in the harvest, and are swept by autumn\u2019s gales; Multitudes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7098,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7098"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions\/8"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/gchavezresponse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}