‘Words are the physicians of the mind diseased.’
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
A recent essay in the press described a case of Obsessive Compulsive disorder encountered in Azad Kashmir. The writer expressed her distress at the entirely ‘biological’ i.e. medical treatment of the disorder by local practitioners leading to poor results and significant harm to the patient. The author, to her credit, attempts to broaden the understanding of the illness utilizing psychotherapeutic methods employed by leading lights in the field of Psychiatry and Psychology including Carl Gustav Jung, Frieda Fromm Reichman and others. However, her analysis lacked a consideration of what might be generically termed ‘environmental’ factors, more specifically the socio-economic and religious factors at work in the genesis of Obsessive Compulsive disorder and other mental illness. The title of this essay comes from an experiment conducted by American Psychologist David Rosenhan in 1972. The experiment tested the validity of psychiatric diagnosis by having a group of normal, non-mentally ill individuals pose as psychiatric patients to gain admission into a psychiatric hospital and also tested the ability of mental health professionals to detect the truly mentally ill from amongst a group of people of people who were not ill. The experiment concluded that it was difficult to distinguish the ’sane’ from the ‘insane’ in that setting. It also concluded that the whole process of diagnosing patients lent itself to ‘massive errors’. read more…
They toasted to progress in Europe’s capitals last week. On Tuesday, the Treaty of Lisbon went into effect, bringing the nations of the European Union one step closer to the unity the Continent’s elite has been working toward for over 50 years. read more…
On Banjara’s second anniversary we are posting a poem read by him back in 2006.
Poem: Hamara Shehar
By Amjad Islam Amjad
Volume: Phir Yoon Hua Read by: Banjara
Three Poems by Allama Iqbal:
A Psychological Interpretation of ‘A Mother’s Dream’, ‘Khizr the Guide’ and ‘Dialogue between God and Man’
Part III.
Muhawaraa Maa Bain Khuda-o-Insan (Dialogue between God and Man):
The third poem in this selection, ‘Muhawaraa maa bain Khuda-o-Insaan’ features one of Iqbal’s favorite styles, a dialogue or interplay between earthly and celestial figures. It also employs one of Iqbal’s favored poetical styles, the Socratic Method (or Socratic Debate), named after the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates, a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate rational thinking and to illuminate ideas. It is a dialectical method, often involving an oppositional discussion in which the defense of one point of view is pitted against the defense of another. One of the most famous examples of this genre is Iqbal’s lengthy poem ‘Shikwah’ or ‘Reproach’ in which Man(representing the Muslim faith) complains to God about the shabby treatment meted out to Muslims by God inspite of the sacrifices that Muslims have made on God’s behalf. The poem, which caused quite a stir when first read by Iqbal in public, is a bold criticism of God’s indifference to a people who feel they deserve better: read more…
An opinion piece by Thomas Friedman poses this very important question: why a cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11? NYT article »
Three Poems by Allama Iqbal:
A Psychological Interpretation of ‘A Mother’s Dream’, ‘Khizr the Guide’ and ‘Dialogue between God and Man’
Part II.
Khizr-e-Rah (Khizr the Guide)
Al-Khizr (Arabic: “the Green One”) is an enigmatic figure in Islam. He is best known for his appearance in the Qur’an in Sura al-Kahf. Although not mentioned by name, he is assumed to be the figure that Musa (Moses) accompanies and whose seemingly violent and destructive actions so disturb Moses that he violates his oath not to ask questions.
Islamic tradition sometimes describes him as Mu’allim al-anbiya (Tutor of the Prophets), for the spiritual guidance he has shown every prophet who has appeared throughout history. In Sufi tradition, Khizr has come to be known as one of those who receive illumination direct from God without human mediation. He is the hidden initiator of those who walk the mystical path and also figures into the Alexander Romance as a servant of Alexander the Great. Al-Khizr and Alexander cross the Land of Darkness to find the Water of Life. Alexander gets lost looking for the spring, but Khizr finds it and gains eternal life. read more…
Three Poems by Allama Iqbal:
A Psychological Interpretation of ‘A Mother’s Dream’, ‘Khizr the Guide’ and ‘Dialogue between God and Man’
Part I.
‘Everywhere I go, I find that a poet has been there before me’
Sigmund Freud
One of Iqbal’s translators, the Scotsman Victor Kiernan wrote ‘Mohammad Iqbal, the ‘Poet of the East’, lived a life of which outwardly there is little to be said and inwardly, of which little is known.’ Works on Iqbal by scholars and academicians would fill up a small library, particularly in Pakistan, where he is revered as one of the country’s founding fathers. He was one of the early proponents of the idea of a separate state for the Muslims of British India, a fantastically improbable idea at the time. His eventual whole hearted support for the idea of Pakistan was surprising considering that one of his early poems ‘Tarana-e-Hindi’ (‘Song of India’), first published in 1904, is still sung and revered widely in India. Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Iqbal that he sang it hundreds of times during his many prison terms for sedition and political activity against the British Raj. Iqbal did not live to see his dream of a separate homeland for India’s Muslims brought to fruition and would, surely, have ‘recoiled in horror’, as Kiernan wrote, had he witnessed the communal blood bath that accompanied the birth of his vision. There are still no accurate estimates of the number of people that perished on both sides of the newly created border but half a million people killed and twelve million made homeless is one estimate. All this came much later though. Before all this was the poetry, page after page of lyrical, melodious poems reflecting on themes as simple as mountains, animals and insects and as exalted as God, Heaven, Angels and everything in between. read more…
