Salim Mohamed Badat
Together, they form one of the most uncompromising interrogations ever directed at the Muslim Ummah, first allowing it to protest, and then forcing it to confront itself.
Iqbal’s relevance today lies not in poetic nostalgia but in political truth. He understood that a humiliated people often mistake suffering for righteousness and loss for entitlement. Shikwa gives voice to that mistake. Jawab-e-Shikwa demolishes it.
The Wound That Spoke: Context and Courage.
Iqbal wrote Shikwa in 1909, when the Muslim world stood defeated both externally and internally. Colonial rule dominated Muslim lands, the Ottoman Caliphate was collapsing, and Muslim elites were intellectually subdued. The confidence that once carried Islam from Andalusia to the Indus had been replaced with imitation, defensiveness, and spiritual lethargy.
What shocked Iqbal’s contemporaries was not merely the content of Shikwa, but its audacity. In its verses, the Ummah reminds Allah of its past sacrifices, how it shattered idols, challenged empires, crossed deserts and seas to establish divine unity. Iqbal invokes the memory of early Muslims who traded comfort for conviction, life for truth, and power for justice. He contrasts this legacy with the present humiliation of Muslims ruled by those they once surpassed.
The tone is not supplication; it is protest. Iqbal frames the Ummah as asking why those who once upheld tawhid now kneel before material power, while nations without revelation dominate the earth. The implication is dangerous: has history betrayed faith?
This is why Shikwa disturbed religious authorities. But Iqbal was not accusing Allah. He was exposing a psychological state within the Ummah, the confusion that arises when memory outpaces moral reality.
Complaint as Mirror, Not Accusation.
Iqbal’s complaint is carefully constructed. It is rooted in the language of Quranic intimacy, where prophets questioned, pleaded, and argued, not out of arrogance, but out of existential urgency.
Like Job asking why he suffers, or Moses demanding clarity, Shikwa is the voice of a community that remembers covenant but cannot reconcile it with collapse.
The Ummah, through Iqbal, asks why its prayers echo unanswered, why its blood flows cheaply, and why falsehood marches confidently while truth retreats.
The complaint is not about wealth or territory alone; it is about dignity. It is the pain of being irrelevant in a world shaped by others.
That pain has only intensified today. Occupation, sanctions, proxy wars, and client regimes define Muslim geopolitics. Yet Shikwa does not end with despair. It ends suspended, awaiting an answer.
The Divine Response: From Comfort to Condemnation.
Jawab-e-Shikwa, written four years later, is Allah’s response, not in mercy alone, but in justice. The tone shifts immediately. The divine voice does not deny Muslim suffering, but it rejects Muslim innocence.
Iqbal structures the response as a reversal. Where the Ummah boasts of its ancestors, Allah points to its present. Where it claims loyalty, Allah exposes hypocrisy. Where it demands victory, Allah asks for worthiness.
The Ummah is reminded that divine help is tied to moral struggle, not historical memory. The response recalls Quranic principles: Allah does not side with names or lineages, but with those who uphold truth. Faith divorced from action is exposed as empty ritual.
The fire that once animated believers, the willingness to sacrifice, to resist injustice, to stand apart from falsehood, has been extinguished.
Iqbal’s Allah asks, in effect, how a people that fears death can complain about humiliation, how a community divided by sect, ethnicity, and nationalism can demand unity, and how those who imitate their enemies can expect divine distinction.
This is not spiritual abstraction. It is a political indictment.
Islam Reduced to Performance.
One of the sharpest critiques in Jawab-e-Shikwa is the exposure of Islam transformed into spectacle.
Iqbal points to prayer stripped of resistance, Quranic recitation disconnected from governance, and mosques full of bodies but empty of courage.
The Ummah has preserved form while abandoning substance.
The divine response condemns scholars who legitimize tyranny, leaders who invoke Islam while ruling through oppression, and communities more offended by criticism than by injustice. Islam, once a revolutionary force that shattered hierarchies, has been domesticated into cultural identity.
Iqbal is ruthless here. He implies that Muslims have not been defeated by the West alone, but by their own surrender to comfort, status, and fear.
Why This Message Terrifies Power.
If Jawab-e-Shikwa were read seriously today, it would unsettle palaces and pulpits alike. It leaves no room for victimhood without responsibility and no shelter for authority without accountability. It refuses to separate spirituality from politics or faith from justice.
Iqbal exposes the lie that Islam can coexist comfortably with tyranny, that neutrality in the face of oppression is piety, or that slogans can replace sacrifice. He reminds Muslims that Allah’s allegiance is not to flags, borders, or regimes, but to those who embody justice, even if they are few.
This is why Iqbal remains dangerous. He denies both despair and self-deception.
A Personal Reckoning.
Shikwa and Jawab-e-Shikwa are not museum pieces. They are mirrors. Each generation must locate itself within the dialogue.
Do we seek divine aid without moral struggle? Do we curse oppression while benefiting from silence? Do we invoke Islam as identity while living by its negation?
Iqbal teaches that complaint is allowed, but only when one is prepared for judgment. And the judgment is not abstract. It begins with the self.
From Protest to Awakening.
Shikwa allows the Ummah to speak honestly. Jawab-e-Shikwa forces it to listen truthfully.
Together, they chart a path from emotional protest to ethical accountability, from inherited pride to lived responsibility.
The crisis of the Muslim world is not merely geopolitical. It is a collapse of courage, clarity, and conviction.
Iqbal does not promise revival through sentiment or slogans. He demands transformation through struggle.
Allah’s response has already been given.
History waits to see whether the Ummah will answer.
Salim Mohamed Badat
Writer exploring the intersection of faith , politics and justice
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