Dr. June McDaniel :
I begin this piece with reference to the last paper I gave to this group, on Kazi Nazrul Islam’s work. In that paper, I spoke of him as a person concerned with the suffering of other human beings, a person of broad love and caring. A month or so after I had given the paper, I received a hostile e-mail message. The writer of the message considered himself to be an expert on Nazrul, and wrote that my interpretation was wrong. He said that Nazrul was a true Muslim, and that Muslims did not care about other human beings, they only cared about God. Therefore, I was wrong in saying that Nazrul cared about humanity.
I believe this writer’s statements misrepresent both the religion of Islam and Kazi Nazrul’s views. But because these views are becoming popular in some areas of the world, I wished to address them.
The Quran is a book with a great emphasis upon social justice, and the way that society should be run. Allah himself is referred to as the Merciful and Compassionate one, and people are told to care for widows and orphans, and to help their neighbours and the poor. This is the reason for the zakat tax. Indeed, compassion for those who suffer is one of the most important bases of religious ethics in all religions. The Prophet Muhammed is called the perfect model for humanity, and he is known for his humility, kindness, and nobility of character. Many stories from his life teach that one should help others, whether or not they are Muslims. To ignore human suffering and oppression is not following Muhammad’s example. Allah breathed his spirit into humanity (Surah 32:9), and in Islamic thought all human beings thus contain a spark of God.
To say that one cares about God in a monotheistic tradition, but can freely ignore what God says and wants, makes no theological sense. And in ignoring human beings, we are ignoring God, whose spirit dwells within mankind.
The idea that individuals do not matter, that only God has value, is also found in modern Christian fundamentalism. However, this idea comes from neither the Quran nor the Bible. In both of these sacred texts, God has great concern about humanity. The literary source of this callousness towards human suffering is actually the nineteenth century ethical philosophy developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which is known as Utilitarianism. This is a atheistic philosophy, which intends the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. However, it has the danger of having people treated as commodities, allowing the sacrifice of individuals for the greater good of the society or nation.
It is most popularly known for the saying that the end justifies the means, and thus it can be legitimate to perform evil acts if they lead to a worthwhile end. People can be killed and kidnapped and tortured, according the religious version of Utilitarianism, if this would lead to a worthwhile group religious goal! People themselves do not matter- only the goals of the group matter!
What I am calling here: Religious Utilitarianism goes against both religious ethics and against revelation. For Islam, why would God reveal His Will to mankind if people were worthless and did not matter? Why would God reveal laws, such as not killing women and children and the elderly, if they are to be violated in God’s own name? To define Islam as a religion that does not care about humanity is to deny the importance of Quranic law, and to deny Allah’s concern with human morality. Religious utilitarianism also twists the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number of people; instead, we have the greatest good for us, whoever that group of the virtuous and saved happens to be. Other human beings and their pain are simply ignored.
While the philosophical justification for (so-called) Islamist violence and ignoring human pain comes from atheist rather than religious souces, its political sources are also atheist. The idea of terror as a tool of the Revolution comes from the Russian anarchists, anti-tzarists, and early communists. It was publicised by Lenin with his October Revolution; he believed in terrifying potential enemies by murder en masse, and killing entire crowds. Later Hitler’s more organised attacks also became attractive, as Nazi propaganda and fugitives spread through French North Africa at the end of World War II (while the Allies focused on liberating France from German domination, they largely ignored its colonies). Thus, some of the people accusing Nazrul of non-Muslim values themselves have values adopted, and twisted, from Western sources.
As for Nazrul, is it accurate to say that he is immune to human pain because he is a Muslim? I would say quite the opposite- he shares the pain of humanity, and bemoans the situations that cause it. This is why he is a poet of both love and revolution. I shall give examples from his poetry of his concerns for the joys and sorrows of humanity.
However, some confusion may arise from the varied meanings of the term humanism. There are several different definitions of the term. It was originally associated with a philosophical and literary movement which developed during the Renaissance in Western Europe, which emphasised the study of the classics, or the humanities. It also represented a rebellion against the rigidity of the church of its day, emphasising the role of the arts and sciences, and having a general emphasis on lasting human values. The traditional definition of humanism emphasises the dignity and worth of all people, a commitment to the search for truth, and faith that people can build a better world. It values art and beauty, as well as personal independence.
However, the term has been redefined and sensationalised by Christian fundamentalists as secular humanism, which is different from traditional humanism. Secular humanism refers to a belief in scientific knowledge rather than religious revelation, and emphasises pragmatism rather than romanticism or idealism. Sometimes it is given political dimensions- as in the one world government and new world order ideas that came from the Bahais a century ago For fundamentalists, secular humanism is equivalent to unbelief, and its concern for morality is ignored- indeed, it is said to be unconcerned with ethics. It is a humanism which has little or nothing to do with the humanities. Indeed, it finds the humanities ultimately irrelevant.
The term humanism can thus be confusing, because it is used to mean very different things in the modern media. In this paper, Nazrul’s humanism refers to the original Renaissance or traditional definition, a concern for lasting human values, and the dignity and worth of all people. We might also note that Nazrul was an excellent twentieth century example of the ideal of the renaissance man, a person who had many skills and abilities. Nazrul was a songwriter, a musician, a director, an actor, a poet, an artist, and a composer. He wrote over 3,500 songs and ghazals, 25 books of poetry, 29 plays and operas, and numerous essays and speeches. He fits perfectly the ideal of a cultured man of many talents.
If we look at themes that are found in traditional humanist writings, there are four important ones that I will list here :
The dignity and worth of each human being
The value of human love, creativity and wisdom
Compassion for human suffering
The desire to contribute to a better world, with less suffering and more tolerance.
These can be found in Nazrul’s writings. For example, on the theme of the dignity and worth of each person he writes :
I sing of equality
There is nothing greater than a human being
Nothing nobler.
He also writes in the poem Human Being of the selfish hypocrites :
Who are they, hating human beings
Yet kissing the Quran, the Vedas, the Bible?
Snatch away those books from them.
The hypocrites pretend [to be] worshipping those books
By killing the human beings who have, in fact,
Brought those books into existence!
All the holy scriptures and houses of worship
Are not as sacred as that one tiny human body.
Human beings have their own divinity, which is largely unrecognised, as he states :
Friend, you are full of greed
With a blinder of selfishness over your eyes.
Otherwise you’d recognize the god
Serving you as a coolie.
In his poem ‘God’, Nazrul speaks of this :
Don’t shudder Hero, don’t be intimidated
By the scholars of the scriptures-
They are not God’s private secretaries.
We all are His manifestation
He is present in us all.
As for our second theme, the value of wisdom and love within the human heart, Nazrul states in ‘I Sing of Equality’:
Open your heart- within you lie all the scriptures
All the wisdom of the ages.
Within you lie all the religions, all the prophets
Your heart is the universal temple
Of all of the gods and goddesses.
He also speaks of the importance of love, in the poem Hazrat Omar
Coming to this world for the Poor, the Downtrodden, the Destitute, Hazrat
Today there is no one to think about human suffering and needs
The rich Muslims are constantly immersed in pleasures and luxury
When will we regain our humanity by loving fellow human beings?
Such love is part of religion, as he says in ‘Eid Mobarak’:
Says Islam, we are all for one another
We are all brothers and shall
Share joy and sorrow equally.
This is not only for members of one religion, but for all people of all religions, as Nazrul states in
There Smiles the Eid-ul-Azha Moon:
Forget your sectarian quarrels today
Welcome all as your dear guests.
Let kind words and sincere love
Be your most precious offerings to your guests.
Love is part of God’s blessings, as he states in ‘Bless us oh Lord’:
Let others love us and let us love others.
Let there be no hatred or malice or physical pain or mental agony.
Let the earth be another paradise oh Lord.
We will explore you in the light of the knowledge your have given
Your strength will aid our work.
On the issue of our third theme, compassion for human suffering, Nazrul is especially articulate. In his poem ‘Coolies and Laborers, he speaks of sharing pain:
And if one human being is hurt, then
Let each of us of the whole humanity feel the pain equally.
If one human being is humiliated, then
Let it be considered humiliation of the whole humanity.
He speaks of the pain of poverty, starvation, insult, illness and death. He says in ‘The Rebel:
I’m the madness of the recluse
I’m the sigh of grief of a widow
I’m the anguish of the dejected
I’m the suffering of the homeless
I’m the pain of the humiliated
I’m the afflicted heart of the lovesick.
In the Nobility of Sorrow (or Life Science) he states :
To feel the pain of others is to realise the nobility of sorrow. There is no motive or selfishness in it. The pain is such that it is felt through the remembrance of one’s own pain. So amazing is the way of the soul that in the empathic realisation of the pain of others there is an intimately felt touch of joy, like a refreshing long stream of a fountain flowing through the heart of a red stone.
It is the same kind of sorrow which the prophets felt through the hearts of global humanity, it is the same realization which elevates human beings to godliness.
On our fourth theme, contributing to a better world with less sorrow and more tolerance, he states that, as the Rebel, he will only rest, when the anguished cry of the oppressed shall no longer reverberate in the sky and air.
He also states:
I sing of equality
In which all barriers and estrangements are dissolved
And in which Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians are united
I sing of equality.
He speaks of Muhammad :
We have forgotten your message of toleration
And have turned instead to religious blindness
Therefore, your blessings no longer shower upon us from heaven
You did not want this disgraceful fighting in the name of religion.
Half the world came to believe in the virtue of toleration,
in your virtue of toleration
But we never learned that toleration, only heard it,
Only heard it in the Quran and the Hadith.
This prejudice and ignoring of suffering has acted as a curse, as he states in
Once again, Hazrat, Send from Heaven the Message of Equality:
Defying your command
We are universally disgraced
We despise the suffering humanity
Yet we say, We submit to the will of God.
He puts this is the specific context of religious war, as he states in ‘If the Flute Doesn’t Play Any More’:
The constant fighting between Hindus and Muslims, animosity between nations, and wars, the inequality between the mercilessly indebted and needy, and the monstrously greedy piling up crores and crores of rupees in the banks– these are what I came to eliminate. Don’t look at me as someone belonging only to the Muslims.,, [but] as a servant of the one and only indivisible God who is above Hindus and Muslims, above all nations and creeds Please think of me as a restless youth who came to this world with a thirst for fulfillment, but it was his departed soul suffering from the pain of unfulfilment who came to you in your dreams and shed tears.
Though Nazrul does not see himself as limited to Islam, it is still a spiritual path with which he identifies himself. As he states:
Allah is my lord, I have no fear
My prophet is Muhammad, whom the world praises.
With the Quran as my trumpet of life, what can terrify me?
Islam is my code of life, and Muslim is my name.
However, he is very disturbed at religious callousness and dishonesty. As he states in the poem ‘Man’:
Hammer away at the closed doors
Of the mosques and temples
And hit with your shovel mightily.
For, climbing on their minarets
The cheats are today glorifying
Selfishness and hypocrisy.
Nazrul describes the better world that he seeks in his poem ‘Resurrection’:
A new world reborn
Is soon to dawn.
These fetters of ancient scriptures
Wrought this utter ruin
On a new foundation
A young world shall dawn
Our rights we shall recover
With the unity of sufferers
All the world over.
As Abu Muhammed Habibullah phrases it, Nazrul had innate catholicity and cosmopolitan humanism. He was theistic, yet he rebelled against the corruption that he found in religion, and was essentially an optimist, who believed in the perfectibility of man as Syed Sajjad Husain states. He wished to fight injustice in the world, and the exploitation of people in the name of God, especially by institutionalised religion.
What are the ideals of Kazi Nazrul Islam? In his own words, he came to argue against inequality, oppression, colonialism, tyranny, religious, moral and political hypocrisy, and religious fanaticism. He was in favour of equality, freedom, justice, love, romance, idealism, unity and peace. He was a man of his own age, but these ideals are universal ones, for people have not greatly changed today from Nazrul’s time. His words are as important today as they were in his own time.
I begin this piece with reference to the last paper I gave to this group, on Kazi Nazrul Islam’s work. In that paper, I spoke of him as a person concerned with the suffering of other human beings, a person of broad love and caring. A month or so after I had given the paper, I received a hostile e-mail message. The writer of the message considered himself to be an expert on Nazrul, and wrote that my interpretation was wrong. He said that Nazrul was a true Muslim, and that Muslims did not care about other human beings, they only cared about God. Therefore, I was wrong in saying that Nazrul cared about humanity.
I believe this writer’s statements misrepresent both the religion of Islam and Kazi Nazrul’s views. But because these views are becoming popular in some areas of the world, I wished to address them.
The Quran is a book with a great emphasis upon social justice, and the way that society should be run. Allah himself is referred to as the Merciful and Compassionate one, and people are told to care for widows and orphans, and to help their neighbours and the poor. This is the reason for the zakat tax. Indeed, compassion for those who suffer is one of the most important bases of religious ethics in all religions. The Prophet Muhammed is called the perfect model for humanity, and he is known for his humility, kindness, and nobility of character. Many stories from his life teach that one should help others, whether or not they are Muslims. To ignore human suffering and oppression is not following Muhammad’s example. Allah breathed his spirit into humanity (Surah 32:9), and in Islamic thought all human beings thus contain a spark of God.
To say that one cares about God in a monotheistic tradition, but can freely ignore what God says and wants, makes no theological sense. And in ignoring human beings, we are ignoring God, whose spirit dwells within mankind.
The idea that individuals do not matter, that only God has value, is also found in modern Christian fundamentalism. However, this idea comes from neither the Quran nor the Bible. In both of these sacred texts, God has great concern about humanity. The literary source of this callousness towards human suffering is actually the nineteenth century ethical philosophy developed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which is known as Utilitarianism. This is a atheistic philosophy, which intends the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. However, it has the danger of having people treated as commodities, allowing the sacrifice of individuals for the greater good of the society or nation.
It is most popularly known for the saying that the end justifies the means, and thus it can be legitimate to perform evil acts if they lead to a worthwhile end. People can be killed and kidnapped and tortured, according the religious version of Utilitarianism, if this would lead to a worthwhile group religious goal! People themselves do not matter- only the goals of the group matter!
What I am calling here: Religious Utilitarianism goes against both religious ethics and against revelation. For Islam, why would God reveal His Will to mankind if people were worthless and did not matter? Why would God reveal laws, such as not killing women and children and the elderly, if they are to be violated in God’s own name? To define Islam as a religion that does not care about humanity is to deny the importance of Quranic law, and to deny Allah’s concern with human morality. Religious utilitarianism also twists the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number of people; instead, we have the greatest good for us, whoever that group of the virtuous and saved happens to be. Other human beings and their pain are simply ignored.
While the philosophical justification for (so-called) Islamist violence and ignoring human pain comes from atheist rather than religious souces, its political sources are also atheist. The idea of terror as a tool of the Revolution comes from the Russian anarchists, anti-tzarists, and early communists. It was publicised by Lenin with his October Revolution; he believed in terrifying potential enemies by murder en masse, and killing entire crowds. Later Hitler’s more organised attacks also became attractive, as Nazi propaganda and fugitives spread through French North Africa at the end of World War II (while the Allies focused on liberating France from German domination, they largely ignored its colonies). Thus, some of the people accusing Nazrul of non-Muslim values themselves have values adopted, and twisted, from Western sources.
As for Nazrul, is it accurate to say that he is immune to human pain because he is a Muslim? I would say quite the opposite- he shares the pain of humanity, and bemoans the situations that cause it. This is why he is a poet of both love and revolution. I shall give examples from his poetry of his concerns for the joys and sorrows of humanity.
However, some confusion may arise from the varied meanings of the term humanism. There are several different definitions of the term. It was originally associated with a philosophical and literary movement which developed during the Renaissance in Western Europe, which emphasised the study of the classics, or the humanities. It also represented a rebellion against the rigidity of the church of its day, emphasising the role of the arts and sciences, and having a general emphasis on lasting human values. The traditional definition of humanism emphasises the dignity and worth of all people, a commitment to the search for truth, and faith that people can build a better world. It values art and beauty, as well as personal independence.
However, the term has been redefined and sensationalised by Christian fundamentalists as secular humanism, which is different from traditional humanism. Secular humanism refers to a belief in scientific knowledge rather than religious revelation, and emphasises pragmatism rather than romanticism or idealism. Sometimes it is given political dimensions- as in the one world government and new world order ideas that came from the Bahais a century ago For fundamentalists, secular humanism is equivalent to unbelief, and its concern for morality is ignored- indeed, it is said to be unconcerned with ethics. It is a humanism which has little or nothing to do with the humanities. Indeed, it finds the humanities ultimately irrelevant.
The term humanism can thus be confusing, because it is used to mean very different things in the modern media. In this paper, Nazrul’s humanism refers to the original Renaissance or traditional definition, a concern for lasting human values, and the dignity and worth of all people. We might also note that Nazrul was an excellent twentieth century example of the ideal of the renaissance man, a person who had many skills and abilities. Nazrul was a songwriter, a musician, a director, an actor, a poet, an artist, and a composer. He wrote over 3,500 songs and ghazals, 25 books of poetry, 29 plays and operas, and numerous essays and speeches. He fits perfectly the ideal of a cultured man of many talents.
If we look at themes that are found in traditional humanist writings, there are four important ones that I will list here :
The dignity and worth of each human being
The value of human love, creativity and wisdom
Compassion for human suffering
The desire to contribute to a better world, with less suffering and more tolerance.
These can be found in Nazrul’s writings. For example, on the theme of the dignity and worth of each person he writes :
I sing of equality
There is nothing greater than a human being
Nothing nobler.
He also writes in the poem Human Being of the selfish hypocrites :
Who are they, hating human beings
Yet kissing the Quran, the Vedas, the Bible?
Snatch away those books from them.
The hypocrites pretend [to be] worshipping those books
By killing the human beings who have, in fact,
Brought those books into existence!
All the holy scriptures and houses of worship
Are not as sacred as that one tiny human body.
Human beings have their own divinity, which is largely unrecognised, as he states :
Friend, you are full of greed
With a blinder of selfishness over your eyes.
Otherwise you’d recognize the god
Serving you as a coolie.
In his poem ‘God’, Nazrul speaks of this :
Don’t shudder Hero, don’t be intimidated
By the scholars of the scriptures-
They are not God’s private secretaries.
We all are His manifestation
He is present in us all.
As for our second theme, the value of wisdom and love within the human heart, Nazrul states in ‘I Sing of Equality’:
Open your heart- within you lie all the scriptures
All the wisdom of the ages.
Within you lie all the religions, all the prophets
Your heart is the universal temple
Of all of the gods and goddesses.
He also speaks of the importance of love, in the poem Hazrat Omar
Coming to this world for the Poor, the Downtrodden, the Destitute, Hazrat
Today there is no one to think about human suffering and needs
The rich Muslims are constantly immersed in pleasures and luxury
When will we regain our humanity by loving fellow human beings?
Such love is part of religion, as he says in ‘Eid Mobarak’:
Says Islam, we are all for one another
We are all brothers and shall
Share joy and sorrow equally.
This is not only for members of one religion, but for all people of all religions, as Nazrul states in
There Smiles the Eid-ul-Azha Moon:
Forget your sectarian quarrels today
Welcome all as your dear guests.
Let kind words and sincere love
Be your most precious offerings to your guests.
Love is part of God’s blessings, as he states in ‘Bless us oh Lord’:
Let others love us and let us love others.
Let there be no hatred or malice or physical pain or mental agony.
Let the earth be another paradise oh Lord.
We will explore you in the light of the knowledge your have given
Your strength will aid our work.
On the issue of our third theme, compassion for human suffering, Nazrul is especially articulate. In his poem ‘Coolies and Laborers, he speaks of sharing pain:
And if one human being is hurt, then
Let each of us of the whole humanity feel the pain equally.
If one human being is humiliated, then
Let it be considered humiliation of the whole humanity.
He speaks of the pain of poverty, starvation, insult, illness and death. He says in ‘The Rebel:
I’m the madness of the recluse
I’m the sigh of grief of a widow
I’m the anguish of the dejected
I’m the suffering of the homeless
I’m the pain of the humiliated
I’m the afflicted heart of the lovesick.
In the Nobility of Sorrow (or Life Science) he states :
To feel the pain of others is to realise the nobility of sorrow. There is no motive or selfishness in it. The pain is such that it is felt through the remembrance of one’s own pain. So amazing is the way of the soul that in the empathic realisation of the pain of others there is an intimately felt touch of joy, like a refreshing long stream of a fountain flowing through the heart of a red stone.
It is the same kind of sorrow which the prophets felt through the hearts of global humanity, it is the same realization which elevates human beings to godliness.
On our fourth theme, contributing to a better world with less sorrow and more tolerance, he states that, as the Rebel, he will only rest, when the anguished cry of the oppressed shall no longer reverberate in the sky and air.
He also states:
I sing of equality
In which all barriers and estrangements are dissolved
And in which Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians are united
I sing of equality.
He speaks of Muhammad :
We have forgotten your message of toleration
And have turned instead to religious blindness
Therefore, your blessings no longer shower upon us from heaven
You did not want this disgraceful fighting in the name of religion.
Half the world came to believe in the virtue of toleration,
in your virtue of toleration
But we never learned that toleration, only heard it,
Only heard it in the Quran and the Hadith.
This prejudice and ignoring of suffering has acted as a curse, as he states in
Once again, Hazrat, Send from Heaven the Message of Equality:
Defying your command
We are universally disgraced
We despise the suffering humanity
Yet we say, We submit to the will of God.
He puts this is the specific context of religious war, as he states in ‘If the Flute Doesn’t Play Any More’:
The constant fighting between Hindus and Muslims, animosity between nations, and wars, the inequality between the mercilessly indebted and needy, and the monstrously greedy piling up crores and crores of rupees in the banks– these are what I came to eliminate. Don’t look at me as someone belonging only to the Muslims.,, [but] as a servant of the one and only indivisible God who is above Hindus and Muslims, above all nations and creeds Please think of me as a restless youth who came to this world with a thirst for fulfillment, but it was his departed soul suffering from the pain of unfulfilment who came to you in your dreams and shed tears.
Though Nazrul does not see himself as limited to Islam, it is still a spiritual path with which he identifies himself. As he states:
Allah is my lord, I have no fear
My prophet is Muhammad, whom the world praises.
With the Quran as my trumpet of life, what can terrify me?
Islam is my code of life, and Muslim is my name.
However, he is very disturbed at religious callousness and dishonesty. As he states in the poem ‘Man’:
Hammer away at the closed doors
Of the mosques and temples
And hit with your shovel mightily.
For, climbing on their minarets
The cheats are today glorifying
Selfishness and hypocrisy.
Nazrul describes the better world that he seeks in his poem ‘Resurrection’:
A new world reborn
Is soon to dawn.
These fetters of ancient scriptures
Wrought this utter ruin
On a new foundation
A young world shall dawn
Our rights we shall recover
With the unity of sufferers
All the world over.
As Abu Muhammed Habibullah phrases it, Nazrul had innate catholicity and cosmopolitan humanism. He was theistic, yet he rebelled against the corruption that he found in religion, and was essentially an optimist, who believed in the perfectibility of man as Syed Sajjad Husain states. He wished to fight injustice in the world, and the exploitation of people in the name of God, especially by institutionalised religion.
What are the ideals of Kazi Nazrul Islam? In his own words, he came to argue against inequality, oppression, colonialism, tyranny, religious, moral and political hypocrisy, and religious fanaticism. He was in favour of equality, freedom, justice, love, romance, idealism, unity and peace. He was a man of his own age, but these ideals are universal ones, for people have not greatly changed today from Nazrul’s time. His words are as important today as they were in his own time.
(College of Charleston, September, 2006, Nazrul Conference, University of Connecticut)
