Khudi

blogger doesn't seem to support persian characters yet. this might have been better done with the scanner rather than the camera. hope you can read it.

this is a link to Khudi, Allama Iqbal's poem as adapted by Junoon and set to their "Sufi-rock". (I know people have criticised this version but you don't have to listen. It doesn't stream very well anyway.)


The first two powerful and often quoted lines can be rendered into English in many ways. like:

Endow thy will with such power

That at every turn of fate so it be

That God himself asks of his slave

"Tell me, what is it that pleases thee?" or my own loose:

Strengthen thy will with such power

That at every twist of fate

God himself asks of his slave

"Tell me: what is thy will?"

(Transliterated into English: khudi ko kar buland itna ke har taqdiir se pahle, khuda bande se khud puche: bataa, teri razaa kia hai?)

[And here I found another English-language rendering with:

Make yourself so strong that before writing your destiny, even God asks you “tell me, what is your desire?” (from here)]

Allama Iqbal is undisputedly considered the greatest poet of Pakistan / Muslim British India, writing in Urdu, Persian and English. His magnum opus was the Asrar-e-Khudi (Secrets of Self). Remaining firmly within the Muslim tradition, tending to the Sufi, his philosophy of khudi - self - or Will (in the Crowleyan sense) has echoes of Nietzsche and Goethe. He preferred writing in Persian and considered Rumi his greatest inspiration (the Persian/Afghan poet appears in some of his poems as some sort of muse or presence)...