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Introduction

Methodology ( )for study of a personality: Muhammad Iqbal Design of a model () Factors ()

External ()

Internal ()

Political () Sociological () Economic () Cultural () Psychological ()

Dimensions of Iqbal
Philosopher

Poet
Politician

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Iqbals significance:

Positive influence Development of Personality (/) Impact upon society and history Individuality ( )Energetic () Reform ( )of individuals and society
See quote of William James (American Philosopher Pragmatism), p.84

Energetic individuals reform society

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Hegel: German Philosopher (Hegelism dialectical materialism/idealism)

Reform/Revolution/Transformation (//) of society is brought about by individuals

These individuals serve the World-Spirit like ready tools. P.85

See comparison between James and Hegel Munawwar: It is not societies or communities which are historically consequential, it is rather the individuals who by transforming communities become milestones on the highways of human expedition. P. 86

Individuals vs. Societies

Are

reformer, transformers, revolutionaries

Deterministic: Can society produce these individuals OR Indeterministic: Do these individuals develop themselves
Willful
Self-conscious Determined Hopeful

Quranic perspective

Munawwwars perspective on Preordainment (), Predestined ( )and Human Freedom ()

Human beings possess unlimited potentialities () Require guidance ()

If guided Man can do good ( ;)If not, can do evil () Man has freedom to choose, accept, adopt and implement Divine guidance ( ) or not Every man is free to choose belief ( )or disbelief () Thus, every man is a FREE individual

Sending of Prophets ()

Munawwars concept of Man

Historically

significant men CHOSE self consciously and willfully to reform themselves and society

On society
Prolonged

status quo leads to stagnation and deterioration

Positive individuals positive values Negative individuals negative values

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Modernism

Modernism is a movement to reconcile Islamic faith with modern values such as nationalism, democracy, rights, rationality, science, equality, and progress. Islamic modernism is distinguished from secularism by its insistence on the continuing importance of faith in public life; it is distinguished from other Islamic movements by its enthusiasm for contemporary European institutions. The movement emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century as a response to European imperialism, which pitched the Islamic world into crisis, but also in the view of the modernistsoffered solu- tions to the crisis. Inuential early gures included Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (18381897), Muhammad Abduh (1849 1905), and Sayyid Ahmad Khan (18171898). Islamic modernism generated a series of novel institutions, including schools that combined Islamic education with modern sub- jects and pedagogies; newspapers that carried modernist Islamic ideas across continents; theaters, museums, novels, and other cultural forms that were adapted from European models; constitutions that sought to limit state power; and social welfare agencies that brought state power into ever more sectors of social life. Islamic modernism justied each of these institutions as being more consistent with the original spirit of Islam than were the existing institutions of the Islamic world. In some regions Islamic modernism declined in the mid-twentieth century, losing popularity to revivalist and secularist move- ments. Yet it appeared to have revived in the late twentieth century, spurred in part by a dramatic global increase in modern education. Islam and the Modern World , p.456

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Modernity

The European penetration of the Near East and India and the decline of Muslim ascendancy in these regions in the nine- teenth century precipitated the crisis that dened the re- sponses of Muslim intellectuals to European modernity. The key thinkers in the nineteenth century, who continue to inuence contemporary attitudes in the Islamic world to modernity, were the so -called Islamic modernists, such as Jamal al-Din Afghani (18391897), Muhammad Abduh (18491905), and Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (18171898). Although there were some differences between these think- ers, their work was governed by the same project, which was to show that Islam was consistent with the rationality of the European enlightenment and the development of modern science. As such, they argued that there was no fundamental incompatibility between modernity and its narrative of prog- ress, and Islam as a religion. They tended toward a rationalist interpretation of the Quran, in which whatever appeared to be in contradiction to rationality could be interpreted sym- bolically and allegorically. As a consequence of this they argued that the meaning of the Quran was accessible to everyone. In other words, there was no need to rely on the technical and elaborate procedures of tafsir, in which the ulema trained in the traditional Islamic sciences were conversant. These two tendencies in Islamic modernism also reected in part the major impact of print on the Islamic world in the modern period. From the nineteenth century onward, the availability of the Quran in print, and its concurrent transla- tion into local languages, struck at the very heart of the traditional system of the oral transmission of knowledge, in which the charisma of the teacher as a living embodiment of knowledge was crucial. The multiplication of texts through printing made unsupervised reading possible. This in turn meant that it was possible to engage with religious texts without the mediation of the formally trained ulema. These tendencies in Islamic modernism, and the impact of print, lie behind the works of a number of important Muslim thinkers in the twentieth century, in which the engagement with European modernity was a key theme. It is particularly evident in the commentaries on the Quran by Sayyid Abu l- Ala Maududi, the founder of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e Islami. Maududi himself was not a formally trained alim, but it is precisely because of this that his ideas and thought played a crucial role in the development of what is called Islamic fundamentalism. These tendencies are similarly evident in Muhammad Iqbals (18931938) The Reconstruction of Relig- ious Thought in Islam (1934). This work exemplies Islamic modernisms response to European modernity both in its style and its content. It purports to show how the Quran is entirely consonant with the major discoveries of European science, and it is wide-ranging in its eclectic use of European thinkers. Iqbals engagment with the Quran is singular and unmediated by any sense of tafsir in the traditional sense of the word. Islams relationship with modernity has been the dening theme of the work of major Muslim thinkers of the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries. The strategies of interpreting the Quran, and its relocation as a sacred text in the act of individual and unmediated reading, are in fact among the major consequences of the impact of modernity on Islam. However, the role of modernist thinkers as spokesmen for Islam vis--vis European modernity also points to some other features of the impact of modernity on the Islamic world. First, it is clear that there are a multiplicity of Islamic voices engaging with European modernity. This in part is also a consequence of the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 by Ataturk, so that even symbolically there is no single gure- head in the Islamic world. This, together with the undermin- ing of the authority of the formally trained ulema, has meant that there are competing voices for Islam with no clear procedures or authorities to adjudicate between them. Secondly, Islamic engagements with modernity can be read in two overlapping ways. In part, the relationship o

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Islamic thought to European thought is mimetic; that is to say, in the work of Afghani, Abduh, Iqbal, and others, such as the poet Altaf Husayn Hali (18371914), Islam is refashioned into a mirror of European modernity. At the same time, though, Islamic modernism also teases out, generally unselfconsciously, the contradictions in European modernity itself. Islamic engagements with modernity are at times ambivalent, rather than mimetic alone. As such, these engagements can be read alongside the works of European philosophers, such as those of the Frankfurt School and Michel Foucault, who have explored the tensions in modernity, arguing that it is less a narrative of progress than one of repression. Thirdly, nowhere is this ambivalence to modernity more evident than in the attitude to the nationstate demonstrated by the thinkers mentioned above. There is an obvious tension between the modernist attempts to dene a pan-Islamic, worldwide community, theoretically made possible through innovations in technologies of communication, and the fun- damental reality of the nationstate, some with Muslim popu- lations that are hostile to each other. The very attempts by Afghani, Abduh, Iqbal, and others to reinterpret Islamic law as a legal system in keeping with a modern state is indicative of the powerful reality of the nation-state as the organizing principle of the world in the twentieth century. Furthermore, given the fact that the nation-state tends toward monopoliz- ing all sources of authority, as long as it remains in existence, it is unlikely that the ulema will recover the authority they enjoyed in the pre-modern Islamic world. The engagement of Islam with modernity remains open- ended and multivocal. Having said that, it is important to note that no Muslim thinker has argued for rejecting Euro- pean modernity in toto in the way that the famous Indian nationalist leader, Mohandas Gandhi (18691948), tried to do in his lifes work. Although there may be problems regarding the feasibility of Gandhis position, the fact that the possibility of any alternatives to European modernity has not been explored in any depth in Muslim thought is powerful testimony to the sway that European modernity has held over the Islamic world since the early nineteenth century.

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