The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Introduction

The book collects lectures Iqbal gave in English in Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh in 1928–29. It appeared in Lahore in 1930 as Six Lectures; the Oxford edition of 1934 added a seventh, “Is Religion Possible?”, written for the Aristotelian Society in London. Iqbal treats religious experience as a source of knowledge and discusses the concept of God, prayer, the human ego and freedom, drawing on the Qur’an and Sufism as well as on Bergson, Whitehead and modern physics. The sixth lecture calls for a renewal of ijtihad, independent reasoning in Islamic law, and discusses the reforms in Turkey. The book is regarded as a key text of Islamic modernism.

Connections

Builds on

• Creative Evolution1907 · Henri Bergson

Taken up in

• Islam and Modernity1982 · Fazlur Rahman
• Islam and Open Society: Fidelity and Movement in the Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal2001 · Souleymane Bachir Diagne