A Chapter on Muhammad Iqbal from my book, Introduction to World Philosophies: A Chronological Progression.

Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal

1873 – 1938

Poet and philosopher, Iqbal was the greatest versatile genius of the Muslim renaissance in the sub-continent of India and the Muslim world. His writings gave birth to the ideology of Pakistan, a separate state created in 1947 by partitioning India which was under British rule at that time. Iqbal first studied Arabic and philosophy in Lahore, now a city in Pakistan. He then went to Cambridge to study law where he entered Trinity College and studied Hegel and Kant. His passion for philosophy took him to Germany, where he received his doctorate in philosophy. Bergson and Nietzsche among the philosophers of the West had the greatest influence on him. His best-known book is a work of philosophy, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930) in which Iqbal entwined Eastern and Western elements, together with Sufism and traditional concepts, into a single world view of a revived Islam. During this period of his life Iqbal had already been writing great poetry in Urdu, a national language of Pakistan that is widely understood throughout the Indian subcontinent. However, his best poetry is in Persian, and he is recognized as one of the greatest poets in that language.

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, reflecting his main ideas, is encyclopedic. For him philosophy is the recognition of religion as the most perfect form of social consciousness. He says, “Philosophy must recognize the central position of religion and has no other alternative but to admit it as something focal in the process of reflective synthesis.”¹ He never denied the role of science and philosophy in the process of cognition, but was convinced that religion alone is capable of delivering mankind from its plight. He was very much influenced by Bergson’s esoteric views, which he found similar to those of Rumi, but was critical of Bergson’s idea of the élan vital as being unteleogical. Iqbal identifies God as the vital impulse whose creative force is conscious and has an open-ended purpose rather than a predetermined plan. God is the creative consciousness and in Him thought and being are one.

Iqbal’s philosophy and metaphysics were greatly influenced by Rumi, whom he revered as his spiritual mentor. Inspired by Rumi’s concept of the individual, Iqbal developed his philosophy of khudi, “selfhood,” or life of the ego consisting of the experiences, feelings, and volitions of the self. To grasp the nature of khudi it is necessary to cultivate an intuitive insight of what is behind this flux. The activity of khudi is essentially personal and private, just as one’s pleasures, pains, desires, and thoughts are exclusively one’s own. For Iqbal the life of the ego, or khudi, is directive energy; an organic unity of will, perception, and judgment that wills, directs, selects, and creates. It is judged by its aspiration, desires, aims, attitude, and judgments. Iqbal said, “My experience is only a series of acts, mutually referring to one another, and held together by the unity of directive purpose. My whole reality lies in my directive attitude. You cannot perceive me like a thing in space or set experiences in temporal order; you must interpret, understand and appreciate me in my judgments, in my will, attitudes, aims and aspirations.”²

Iqbal said, “The ultimate of ego is not to see something, but to be something. . . . The end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality; it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it. The final act is not an intellectual act, but a vital act which deepens the whole being of the ego and sharpens his will . . .”³ Khudi is the individuality of a man; the higher it is, the more supreme is the selfhood, individuality, personality, and uniqueness. His concept of khudi also reflects Nietzsche’s idea of the Ubermensch―in English Superman―a man of will, capable of heroic living.

Iqbal argued that in God’s creativity many things appear that involve suffering and reflect moral evil. He explicated that to think of life without suffering is to have an unrealistic grasp of the nature of life. For him suffering is a natural phenomenon. Even the immortal soul is not without suffering as it graduates after death to higher forms of struggle. Satan is a mythic figure who stands for resistance, initiating the fall of man as an awakening from consciousness to self-awareness. Iqbal as a monadologist, viewed universe composed of atomic selves, and the more a self is self-conscious, the nearer it is to God.

Iqbal criticized the strong empiricism in Western thought for leaving religious experience out of its account. After all, according to Iqbal, the religious experience has played a vital role in human history. Why should the evolutionist place more weight on the instinctive knowledge of animals than on the higher experiences of the seers, saints, and prophets? If some religious claims based on intuitive experience have proved inadequate, the same can be said of some scientific accounts based on sense perception that have turned out to be false. It is the nature of all the sources of human knowledge to be corrected as their understanding progresses. Although realizing that present-day intellectual deliberations cannot afford to go against scientific assertions, Iqbal argued that it is intuition that can reveal and explain the true nature of material world.

Iqbal’s experience of Europe impressed him very much.  European scientific achievements and cultural and philosophical richness were very exciting for him, but he found the effects of capitalism to be inhumane. This convinced him of the superiority of Islamic values in the preservation of a balanced civilization. In his view a combination of God’s revelation and human experience and achievement was needed. He also found that the achievements of Western science were in part due to Islam. Islamic thought in its interaction with Greek philosophy gave birth to the “inductive intellect” that penetrated Europe via the Muslim universities of Arab Spain and the philosophers of the Muslim world.

Iqbal strongly opposed the European idea of nationalism. As he returned to India he preached a universal Islam beyond national sentiments. He was disturbed by factionalism and the narrowness of traditional dogma in Islam. Iqbal was the only thinker with an Eastern temperament and knowledge of European philosophy who carried Islamic philosophy and traditions with him. Thus a synthesis of three great world philosophies elevated him to become a towering figure in the world, especially in Germany, where famous Orientalist Annemarie Schimmel was one of his main followers. His works have been widely translated into many languages throughout the world. ― MIRZA IQBAL ASHRAF

Notes:

1. Iqbal: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, 1962, p. 2.

2. Ibid., p. 103.

3. Ibid., p. 198.