Muhammad Iqbal
Islam calls for an active, creative self that shapes the world, not for fatalism or withdrawal from it.
Placement
Poet-philosopher of South Asia: a dynamic Islam of the creative self (khudi), against fatalism and world-denying mysticism.
Key ideas
- Khudi (selfhood)
- Reconstruction of religious thought
- Ijtihad (independent reasoning)
Influence
Influenced by 6
Ahmad Sirhindi
influenced by ✓
Iqbal praised Sirhindi’s critical stance towards the Sufism of his time in the Reconstruction (1930) and honoured him in a poem in Bal-i Jibril (1935). M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930), lecture 7; Bāl-i Jibrīl (1935)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Ahmad Sirhindi › 1564–1624
Shah Waliullah
influenced by
In The Reconstruction (1930) Iqbal cited Shah Waliullah’s view that a prophet’s law takes special account of the customs of the people to whom he is sent. M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930); Shah Wali Allah, Hujjat Allah al-baligha
Evidence: AI draft
Shah Waliullah › 1703–1762
Hadi Sabzawari
influenced by
In his doctoral thesis The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (1908) Iqbal presented Sabzawari’s Secrets of Wisdom – the Real as light, the shadow and the not-real as darkness – as recent Persian speculation, though he dated him to the eighteenth century. M. Iqbal, The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (1908), part II
Evidence: AI draft
Hadi Sabzawari › 1797–1873
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
influenced by
Iqbal took up al-Afghani’s call to reawaken and unite the Muslim world and gave him a speaking part in the sphere of Mercury in his Javid Nama (1932). M. Iqbal, Javid Nama (1932), tr. A. J. Arberry (1966); The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930); A. Schimmel, Gabriel’s Wing (1963)
Evidence: AI draft
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani › 1838–1897
Friedrich Nietzsche
influenced by ✓
Iqbal took up Nietzsche’s call for the strong, self-affirming individual in his philosophy of the self (Asrar-i khudi, 1915), but rejected his denial of God. M. Iqbal, Asrar-i khudi (1915), tr. R. A. Nicholson, The Secrets of the Self (1920); A. Schimmel, Gabriel’s Wing (1963)
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Henri Bergson
influenced by ✓
Iqbal took up Bergson’s real duration to describe the self as free creative activity and God’s time as pure duration, and later met Bergson in Paris. M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930; 1934); S. B. Diagne, Bergson postcolonial (2011)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Henri Bergson › 1859–1941
Influenced 3
Fazlur Rahman
influenced ✓
Fazlur Rahman continued Iqbal’s project of rethinking Islam in modern terms, including his call for renewed ijtihad, and discussed his Reconstruction in Islam and Modernity (1982). F. Rahman, Islam and Modernity (1982); M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Fazlur Rahman › 1919–1988
Ali Shariati
influenced
Shariati presented Iqbal as a model Muslim reformer who joined faith, mysticism and political commitment, in lectures collected as We and Iqbal (Ma va Iqbal). A. Shariati, Ma va Iqbal; A. Shariati, Iqbal: Manifestation of the Islamic Spirit (tr. 1991)
Evidence: AI draft
Ali Shariati › 1933–1977
Souleymane Bachir Diagne
influenced
Diagne read Iqbal’s Reconstruction as a philosophy of movement that opens Islamic thought to time, change and an open society. S. B. Diagne, Islam et société ouverte (2001; English Islam and Open Society, 2010); Comment philosopher en islam ? (2008)
Evidence: AI draft
Souleymane Bachir Diagne › b. 1955
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Ibn Arabi
criticised
After Asrar-i khudi (1915) Iqbal criticised the ‘pantheistic’ Sufism associated with Ibn Arabi as dissolving the self; how far this hits Ibn Arabi himself is debated. M. Iqbal, Asrār-i khudī (1915) and letters of 1916–17; A. Schimmel, Gabriel’s Wing, 1963
Evidence: AI draft
Ibn Arabi › 1165–1240
Works
Islam as a dynamic religion of the creative self – read with Bergson and against fatalism.
Position
Iqbal wanted to free Islam from what he saw as centuries of fatalism and world-denying mysticism. At the centre of his thought stands khudi, the self, which is not to be dissolved in God but strengthened through striving, love and creative action. Drawing on Nietzsche and especially Bergson, he understood reality as dynamic and time as creative; the human being is God’s co-worker in a world still unfinished. In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam he called for renewing ijtihad, independent legal and religious reasoning, so that Islam might meet modernity on its own terms. He is regarded as the spiritual father of Pakistan.
Life & context
Iqbal was born in 1877 in Sialkot in Punjab and studied in Lahore, then at Cambridge and in London. In 1908 he received his doctorate in Munich with a study of Persian metaphysics. Back in Lahore he practised law and became famous as a poet in Urdu and Persian. In his Allahabad address of 1930 he outlined a Muslim state in northwestern India. He died in Lahore in 1938.
Further main works
- The Development of Metaphysics in Persia (1908)
- The Secrets of the Self (1915)
- Message of the East (1923)
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