Perhaps the similarity of the sound of la ilah and lala (=tulip)...

Perhaps the similarity of the sound of la ilah and lala (=tulip), as well as the fact that lala has the same numerical value as the word Allah , e.g., 66, may have enhanced Iqbal’s use of the image in connection with the Imam Husain, whose blood ‘created the meadow’, and who constructed a building of ‘there is no deity but God.

But whereas earlier mystical poets used to emphasize the person of Husain as model for the mystic who through self-sacrifice, finally reaches union with God, Iqbal, understandably, stresses another point: ‘To lift the sword is the work of those who fight for the glory of religion, and to preserve the God-given order.’ ‘Husain blood, as it were, wrote the commentary on these words, and thus awakened a sleeping nation. Again, the parallel with Husain b. Mansur is evident (at least with Husayn b.

Mansur in the way Iqbal interprets him: he too claims, in the Falak-i mushtari in the Javidnama , that he had come to bring resurrection to the spiritually dead, and had therefore to suffer). But when Husain b.

‘Ali drew the sword, the sword of Allah, he shed the blood of those who are occupied with, and interested in, things other than God; graphically, the word la , the beginning of the shahada , resembles the form of a sword (preferably a two-edged sword, like Dhu’l-fiqar), and this sword does away with everything that is an object of worship besides God. It is the prophetic ‘No’ to anything that might be seen beside the Lord.

By using the sword of ‘No’, Husain, by his martyrdom, wrote the letters ‘but God’ ( illa Allah ) in the desert, and thus wrote the title of the script by which the Muslims find salvation. It is from Husain, says Iqbal, that we have learned the mysteries of the Qur’an, and when the glory of Syria and Baghdad and the marvels of Granada may be forgotten, yet, the strings of the instrument of the Muslims still resound with Husain’s melody, and faith remains fresh thanks to his call to prayer.

Husain thus incorporates all the ideals which a true Muslim should possess, as Iqbal draws his picture: bravery and manliness, and, more than anything else, the dedication to the acknowledgement of God’s absolute Unity; not in the sense of becoming united with Him in fana as the Sufi poets had sung, but, rather, as the herald who by his shahada , by his martyrdom, is not only a shahid , a martyr, but at the same time a witness, a shahid, for the unity of God, and thus the model for all generations of Muslims.