Arabic · noun · People & Roles

Waaiz

वाइज़
said WAA-iz
also written: waiz, vaaiz, waa'iz
Meaning

A preacher, a sermonizer; often the hypocritical moralizer whom the poet mocks.

Literally: the preacher; pulpit-moralist

How Iqbal uses it

The waaiz is the preacher who exhorts from the pulpit — in the ghazal a stock hypocrite who damns the tavern by day and is suspected of slipping to it by night, all sermon and no love. He stands for religion reduced to admonition. Iqbal turns him into the type of the empty cleric whose words have no fire, set against the rind whose silent intoxication is worth more than a thousand sermons; sometimes the poet wishes the preacher himself would taste the wine he forbids.