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ḍhānā : 'To break, batter, shatter, throw down, pull down, knock down, raze (a building, &c.), destroy, demolish; to cause to befall, to bring (trouble, &c. upon)'. (Platts p.570)
masīt : '(dialec.) corr. of masjid '. (Platts p.1037)
FWP:
SETS == IDIOMS
MOTIFS == ISLAMIC
NAMES
TERMS == FRESH WORDThe striking vision of (hypocritically?) hyper-religious 'namazis' who 'for the sake of a brick, will destroy the mosque' has echoes than fan out in all directions. It seems to be a proverbial saying, and I thank Zahra Sabri for finding (May 2013) an online citation of it as such, in almost the same words: ek īñṭ kī ḳhāt̤ir masjid ḍhānā . More classically, Irfan Khan has pointed out (May 2013) that in the nūr ul-luġhāt there's an entry for ek īñṭ ke liye masjid ḍhānā , defined as either 'for the sake of a small gain, to accept a very large harm' or 'for the sake of the world, to lose one's faith'. In a related entry on īñṭ ke liye masjid ḍhānā , the dictionary provides the following verse by Atish:
kaun chhīne but ko toṛe barhaman ke dil ko kaun
īñṭ kī ḳhāt̤ir koʾī kāfir hī masjid ḍhāʾegā[who would steal an idol, who would break the Brahmin's heart?
for the sake of a brick, only/emphatically some infidel would destroy the mosque]But while the proverb itself in all its forms uses the standard masjid , Mir has substituted masīt , which helps to turn our minds in a rustic, village-wisdom direction.
It also might seem to evoke the incantatory English proverb 'For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost', and so on, that serves to emphasize the importance of seemingly very small things. But in the present verse the point is that being too attentive to small things (rather than losing or neglecting them, as in the English proverb) damages the interest of the whole larger structure of belief. And it's worth noting that not all 'namazis' are necessarily contemptible, but only a certain subset: those who behave in such 'brick'-focused ways.
As so often, we're left to decide for ourselves what this nit-picking focus on individual 'bricks' might consist of. Does the verse point toward personal aggrandizement? Toward Shia-Sunni tensions, or other sectarian splits? Does it have to do with Sufism vs. strict legalism? With tolerant behavior toward non-Muslims? With indulgence toward Muslims who don't pray regularly?
In fact, it's a shock to come upon this later, and resoundingly anti-clerical, verse in the same ghazal itself, {1112,4}:
hazār shānah-o-misvāk-o-ġhusl shaiḳh kare
hamāre ʿindiye meñ to vuh hai ḳhabīṡ palīt[let the Shaikh do a thousand combings and tooth-cleanings and bathings
in our private-opinion, well, he is a filthy/polluted evil-spirit]How are we to interpret such a polemical-seeming attack? Its directness certainly lessens its poetic effect. The present verse, in its obliqueness and suggestive undecideability, obviously works much better.
Note for grammar fans: In the first line ḍhāte heñge is an archaic form of ḍhāte hoñge . This certainly looks to be a presumptive statement: in normal grammatical usage, it is about what these people 'will presumably be doing' right now (compare 'Right now she will be boarding the plane in Phoenix'). But it could also be made to apply to the actual future: it could be taken to be about what these people 'will be doing' at some future time.