IQBAL: A THINKER, A PHILOSOPHER

INTRODUCTION:

The great Indo-Muslim poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938),

was a man ahead of his time. Regarded as one of the great thinkers of the
Islamic Awakening, a movement which pointed the way towards a regeneration
of Islamic culture, he was born in Sialkot in what was then India and today
belongs to Pakistan.

His major philosophical work was "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in

Islam". It surprises and delights.

RE-THINKING ISLAM:

Like many thinkers of his generation he felt that Islam had suffered for
centuries under an "intellectual paralysis" that had allowed the West to leave it
behind. The task, then, was the reconstruction of religious thought: "The task
before the modern Muslim is, therefore, immense. He has to re-think the whole
system of Islam without completely breaking with the past".

An important prerequisite for this re-thinking is a critical reception of modern

knowledge: "The only course open to us is to approach modern knowledge with
a respectful but independent attitude and to appreciate the teachings of Islam
in the light of that knowledge."

The careful balance here is not accidental. However Iqbal's emphatic insistence
on an independent attitude is something that tends, even nowadays, to be
overlooked. "No people can afford to reject their past entirely, for it is their past
that has made their personal identity. And in a society like Islam the problem
of a revision of old institutions becomes still more delicate, and the
responsibility of the reformer assumes a far more serious aspect".

Birth of Iqbal’s Philosophy:

He was born into an era when there were great changes going on in human
thinking. On the one hand classical physics was giving way to modern physics
and on the other scientific methodology was starting to explore the human
mind. Also during that era great political changes were also taking place
throughout the world. Allama Iqbal, thus, wanted the Muslims of the world to
understand the true spirit of Islam in view of the revolutionary the changes in
the knowledge base of humanity and become united to gain political power for
establishing a model society based on the Islamic principles of equality and
justice.

In “Reconstruction of religious thoughts in islam” Allama Iqbal said that he had

undertaken these seven lectures at the request of the Madras Muslim
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Association and these lectures were delivered at Madras, Hyderabad and

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Aligarh. In these lectures he had met the demand for having a scientific form of
religious knowledge. He had tried to meet this urgent demand by attempting to
reconstruct Muslim religious philosophy with due regards to the philosophical
tradition of Islam and the more recent developments in the various domains of
human knowledge.

Allama Iqbal also pointed out that the time of the deliverance of these lectures
was quite favorable (i.e. 1928, 1929 and 1932) because the classical physics
has learned to criticize its own foundations. This criticism the worldview of
materialism that had been advocated by classical physics had rapidly
disappearing and he predicted that because of this the day is not far off when
Religion and science may discover hitherto unsuspected mutual harmonies.

Allama Iqbal had a vast knowledge of the Quran, the Eastern philosophy and
the western philosophy. Due to this vast knowledge he came to the conclusion
that the modern era started with the proclamation of the prophet hood of
Muhammad (S.A.W) in the 6th century AD instead of 17th century AD, claimed
by most of the western thinkers. According to him,

“The prophet of Islam seems to stand between the ancient and the
modern world. In so far as the source of his (the prophet (S.A.W))
revelation is concerned; he belongs to the ancient world; in so far as the
spirit of revelation is concerned he belongs to the modern world. In him
(the prophet) life discovers other sources of knowledge suitable to its
new direction. The birth of Islam, as I hope to able presently to prove to
you, is in the birth of inductive intellect.”

Iqbal says that according to Quran, the Ultimate purpose of knowledge is to

reach the Ultimate Reality. The ultimate reality as described by the Quran is “
the first and the last the visible and invisible.” This Ultimate Reality can be
reached through the examination of the inner self and the outside world. As
evident from the above verse of Quran, the Ultimate Reality has visible and
invisible aspects. The visible or observable aspect of this Reality is reached
through the study of the observable universe and the invisible aspect of this
Reality is reached through the inner experience of the self.

Based on these views in the Quran, Allama Iqbal delivered seven lectures on
the request of Madras Muslim Association at Madras and Aligarh. These seven
lectures are then completed in a book titled as The Reconstruction of Religious
Thoughts in Islam. The seven lectures included in this book are:

• Knowledge and religious experience

• The philosophical test of the revelation of religious experience

• The conception of God and the meaning of prayer

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• The human ego_ freedom and immortality

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• The spirit of Muslim culture

• The principle of movement in the structure of Islam

• Is religion possible?

In these lectures Allama Iqbal tells us why he felt the need to deliver these
lectures. According to him the religious concepts in Islam needs to be
rationalized and for that we need to understand what is the nature of God,
nature of universe and nature of man according to the Holy Quran. In the
following, a brief review of each lecture is given.

1. KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE:

As Muslims, generally we believe that knowledge comes through two kinds of

experience:

 Normal Experience

 Religious Experience

Modern Western knowledge is based on normal experience only and considers

religious experience as a private affair of an individual that can not be
communicated to others truthfully and so it can not be consider as a source of
knowledge.

Classical (pre historic) approach to Knowledge:

According to Allama Iqbal, the classical approach to knowledge was speculative

on the basis of superficial observation and it disregards experience. This
approach resulted in wrong conclusion about the nature of the universe. In
this approach, certain basic assumptions would be made about the reality of
things and phenomena would be explained and conclusions would be drawn on
the basis of these assumption. No attempt would be made to verify the
assumptions and the conclusions through experience. E.g. Big bang theory,
Darwin theory of life etc.

Quranic approach to Knowledge:

The Quranic approach to knowledge is empirical and as such it is anti

classical. Quran emphasizes experience instead of speculation as the sources
of knowledge. Both on normal as well as religious experience are the sources of
knowledge according to the Quran. Allama Iqbal then gives us a philosophical
explanation of how to understand this approach of the Quran and how to
utilize it for the advancement of human knowledge.
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BASIS OF EXISTANCE:

Philosophically it can be considered that there is an Ultimate Reality that can

be traced to be the basis of everything that exist in this universe.

There are two ways of knowing the nature of Ultimate Reality.

One is the indirect way of reaching the Ultimate Reality that comes through
normal experience. The direct way is provided by religious experience.

a) Normal Experience:

Only normal experience is considered to be the source of modern knowledge

i.e. the basis of knowledge is sense-perception and reasoning.

This experience is the result of studying the diversified finite realities present in
the universe.

Normal experience gives us the disciplines of modern knowledge such as

philosophy, science and technology. Normal experience helps us in reaching
the reality of things and phenomena in piecemeal and thoughts and ideas
generated as a result of this experience can be easily shared with others.

b) Religious Experience:

Religious experience is the result of praying prescribed by a religion if the

commandments of the religion are followed in letter and spirit.

Religious experience helps us see the reality in wholeness through intuition.

Anyone can have normal experience but only a few can have religious
experience and the picture of reality provide by this type of experience can not
be directly communicated to others. Thus most people do not accept it as a
source of knowledge.

Understanding the Ultimate Reality:

Modern knowledge will reach at the same conclusion as authenticated religious

experience pointing to the nature of Ultimate Reality.

Modern knowledge is the ‘bottom up’ approach to understanding the Ultimate

Reality while the religious experience is the ‘top down’ approach to
understanding the Ultimate Reality.

Both of these approaches complement each other for understanding the

Ultimate Reality and advancing the Islamic culture.
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 Conscious experience:

To explain the nature of Ultimate Reality philosophically, we need to critically

examine or analyze our conscious experience of which everyone of us are sure
that it is the most real experience.

This analysis of the conscious experience results in conceiving the Ultimate

Reality as an Ultimate Ego or Self.

An ego or self is an entity in which thought and action are biologically

related to each other.

Characteristics of the Ultimate Ego:

The Ultimate Ego must have infinite creative energy for considering this finite
and the ever changing universe as its behavior.

For displaying the universe as its behavior of infinite possibilities the Ultimate
Ego must also have:

a) Infinite power

b) Infinite knowledge

c) Infinite presence.

Quranic view of Ultimate Ego:

Quran calls this Ultimate Ego as Allah. Quran says that the creative energy of
Allah is infinite. This creative energy is atomic and its essence is spiritual.
Everything in this universe is created as a combination of these atoms.
Existence of these atoms is a quality that God impose on these atoms whenever
He wants to create something.

Degrees of Ego head:

Every atom of God’s creative energy has an ego. Everything in the universe is a
combination of these atomic egos. A human being is the most complex
combination of these atoms and so it possesses the most complex ego head.

As God induct infinite amount of atoms every moment, therefore, the universe
is growing.

Human Being:

A human being is the greatest creation of God and, therefore, he possesses the
most advanced ego among the creations of God.
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For this reason, a human being is chosen by God to be His vicegerent and is
entrusted with the responsibility of a co-creator in this universe.

To fulfill this responsibility, a human being has been given a system of conduct
to follow and advance spiritually to become near to God.

Universe as behavior of God:

The universe can be considered as the behavior of God. The study of the
different aspects of this universe is a form of prayer if done with the view of
seeking nearness to God and helping others to do the same by controlling and
improving the environment.

Daily Prayer:

The daily prayers provides us with an opportunity not to become mechanized

and become salved to our worldly affairs and to remind us of our spiritual self
and thus gives us more freedom to be more creative for improving our
environment and advance the cause of humanity for seeking nearness to God.

Congregational Prayer:

The congregational prayers in Islam provides us with an opportunity to act

together and develop a social environment that would help us to unify the
humanity on the basis of the tenants of Islam and thus to make this world a
place where every individual will have equal opportunity to be creative for
seeking nearness to God.

Conclusion:

So far we have covered the essential philosophical view point of Allama Iqbal
given in his first four lectures regarding the existence of God, universe and
human beings and the relationships among God, universe and human being.
According to Iqbal, we’ll always have to choose religion over philosophy. The
Ultimate Reality according to Quran is Allah who has the Ultimate Ego. This
universe is dynamic and so is God. He is the creator and is constantly busy in
creation. God has given man complete freedom of choice and man is not
restricted by his destiny. Another thing is that mystic experience is not only
possible but is the only way to find the Ultimate Reality. Page6

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