Complaint and Answer response
The Complaint and Answer was a complicated poem, expressing human aggravation with God, and God’s disappointment in return.
The complaining humans were upset that they were receiving no political power as reward. They felt abandoned by God and saw God as disloyal. I represented this anger as fire in my picture. I used leaves to show the fire because being angry at God feels like a natural response that happens every once in a while, as we humans go through life’s cycles of good and bad, just like the leaves change colors through the natural cycles in weather. It’s okay to be upset and unhappy with your position in life, and this leaves (pun intended) you in a position to reevaluate your actions and choices.
God’s response in the Answer is that they shouldn’t be upset by their lot in life, because they weren’t being good enough Muslims. Had they been trying harder to progress and not gotten stuck on the rituals, things may have been better for them.
“I went to France and saw Islam without Muslims. I went to Egypt and saw Muslims without Islam.”
Iqbal is trying to say that the Europeans and muslims (people who submit) are continuing with progress, whereas the Muslims were falling behind. I represented God’s answer as water coming to take out the fire. He was showing them that this anger was coming from the wrong place, and tried to put out that fire, and direct them to the real problem: their behavior. Iqbal is hoping that the Muslims start acting as they are supposed to, as God’s representatives on Earth, meant to develop themselves to the highest force.