And that’s what has been wrong all along. Some time ago we started taking our walls too seriously – not just the walls of our classrooms, but also the metaphorical walls that we have constructed around our “subjects,” “disciplines,” and “courses.” McLuhan’s statement about the bewildered child confronting “the education establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules” still holds true in most classrooms today. The walls have become so prominent that they are even reflected in our language, so that today there is something called “the real world” which is foreign and set apart from our schools. When somebody asks a question that seems irrelevant to this real world, we say that it is “merely academic.”
Muslim Academy on 29 Dec 12One of the greatest philosophers of Islam in modern times is Sir Mohammed Iqbal (1877-1938), also called the 'Poet of the East' (Shayar-e-Mashriq). He is the national poet of Pakistan as well as the composer of one of India's most popular patriotic songs (Tarana-e-Hind i.e. The Song of India). His poems, in Urdu and Persian, reflect his philosophy of Islam and his idea of 'the self' (Khudi). Two of his greatest works are 'Shikwa' (The Remonstration) and 'Jawab-e-Shikwa' (The Response). Another great work is 'Tere Ishq Ki Inteha' (The Limits of Your Love). These three poems are addressed to God. The third is an excellent work of poetry in Urdu which captures beautifully the Islamic conception of Divine Love (Ishq). No translation in English, and perhaps any other language, can capture the beauty and depth of this poem and this is but a poor attempt to explain the ten lines of the poem here to the best extent my limited understanding of Iqbal's Urdu poetry allows. The poet writes, "The limits of your Love is what I desire; Look at my naivete, to what I aspire;". What the poet implies here is that Ishq i.e. Love for God has no limits. It can be infinite. Yet, he wants to achieve the unachievable - crossing the limits of Ishq whereas Ishq has no limits. After all, can there be something greater than what is infinite? Thus, so naive and full of love is he that he wants to have more of this love.
