The symbols a culture uses reveal its deepest values. Traditional Urdu and Persian poetry was filled with the Bulbul (nightingale), a bird that sings beautifully of lost love and melancholy, often from within a cage. It represented passivity, fatalism, and a longing for a lost past. Iqbal, in a revolutionary act, rejected this symbol entirely.
He offered the Shaheen (the eagle or falcon) – a symbol of freedom, power, vision, and self-reliance. The Shaheen is not a victim; it is a creator of its own destiny. It does not live in a comfortable nest; it inhabits the harsh, high mountains. It does not wait for sustenance; it hunts for it.
This was more than a literary device; it was a new philosophy for creativity. This article discusses what Iqbal’s choice means for 21st-century Muslim artists, writers, filmmakers, and poets. Is our art a passive, nightingale-like complaint about the world, or is it a powerful, Shaheen-like force that seeks to change it? Iqbal’s Shaheen is a challenge to all modern creators to be bold, visionary, and self-reliant in their work.