Iqbal- the 20th Century Reformer

by Ali Shariati

  What does the standard of Ali mean? It means a human being with an Eastern heart and a Western mind. It means a person who thinks deeply and profoundly. It means a human being who expresses a beautiful and splendid love. It refers to a person who is well acquainted with the anguishes of the spirit as well as with the sufferings of life. It means a human being who both knows God and the people. It is a devotee possessing the light of knowledge who burns with love and faith and whose penetrating eyes never allow negligence and ignorance to prevail without questioning the fate of enslaved nations. It is a person who seeks reform, revolution, and change of mental attitudes. As a thinker, he realizes that the spiritless eye of science (according to Francis Bacon) is incapable of seeing all the realities of the universe. He also feels that a love sick heart attains nothing if it is only concerned with asceticism, self-abasement, and purification because a human being affiliated with society and affiliated to life and the material cannot disentangle the ‘self alone. An individual moves with the caravan of society and cannot choose a way separate from it.

  This is why we wish to have a school of thought and action which both responds to our philosophical needs, and, at the same time, develops a thinking being who is accepted by the world, recognized by civilization, and the new culture of the world and not one alienated from us and our rich cultural resources. We wish for a school of thought and action which nurtures a human being who closely is aware of our culture and all of our good spiritual and religious assets, who is not alienated from the times, and who does not live in the 4th or 5th century. We long for it to develop a human being who can think, who has a scientific mind, yet does not remain negligent of the anguish, life, captivity, and hardships of his ummah. We desire the development of a human being who, even if he thinks about the real and material anguishes of humanity and about the present confusions and difficulties of human society or his society, he does not forget the ideal human being or the significance of the human being or the eternal mission of humanity in history and does not lower all human ideals to the level of material consumption.

  All that we seek in these various domains can be seen in Iqbal because the only thing that Iqbal did—and this is the greatest success of Iqbal as a Muslim in an Islamic society in the 20th century—based upon the knowledge he had of the rich new and old culture—was that he was able to develop himself based on the model which his ideological school— that is, Islam, gave. This is the greatest success of Iqbal in an Islamic society in the 20th century.

  We do not say he is a perfect human being. No. We do not say he is a symbolic person. No. He is a personality who had been reconstructed into a complete Muslim person and a perfect Islamic personality in the 20th century after his disintegration. This reconstruction is the beginning point from which we Muslim intellectuals must ourselves begin. We must feel our greatest responsibility to be in reconstructing ourselves and our society. Sayyid Jamal was the first who produced such a feeling of re-awakening: Who are you? Who were you? Iqbal was the first fruit of the seed of the movement which Sayyid Jamal planted in this ummah. The first product is a great model, an example, and our very awakening. As Easterners, we are affiliated to this part of the world. We are connected to this history. We are human beings confronted by nature and the West.

  But what do we mean when we say Iqbal was a reformer? Can reform really save a society from all of its misfortunes, anguishes, and difficulties? Must not a sudden, severe, deep-rooted revolution take place in thought and in relation to society? When we say Iqbal was a reformer, those present, who are familiar with the expressions prevalent among the educated class, think reform means something opposite of revolution in a socio-political sense. Most often when we say reform, we mean gradual change or change in the superstructure and when we say revolution, we mean a sudden, abrupt change in the infrastructure, a total collapse and then total reconstruction. But when in these changes we say that Iqbal was a reformer, we are not referring to the slow and gradual change in society. Our intent is not gradual change or external reform but we use this word in its general sense which also includes the meaning of revolution.

  When we say Iqbal was a reformer or that the great thinkers after Sayyid Jamal are known as being the greatest reformers of the century in the world, it is not in the sense that they supported gradual and external change in society. No. They were supporters of a deep-seeded revolution, a revolution in thought, in views, in feelings—an ideological and cultural revolution. Iqbal, Sayyid Jamal, KawakibI, Muhammad Abduh, Ibn Ibrahim and members of the Maqrib Ulama Association are great men who shook the East in the last one hundred years. Their reforms or, still better, reforming revolutions, stand upon this principle for they believe individual reform is no longer an answer. It is an altogether different matter if reform effects society. A person can no longer think and live in a way which he has chosen himself, nor accept any influence from his age or his society and develop himself into a pure and real human being in a corrupt age and in a degenerate society for if this were to be, social responsibility and commitment would make no sense.

  Chapter Two: Not Deceived by the West

  The Holy Prophet says, “He who has no livelihood has no life in the next world, either.” Moreover, he says, “When poverty enters through one door, religion leaves through the other.” This religion is different from Saadi’s mystical religion: “So what if someone’s stomach be empty!”

  The glory of Iqbal’s work becomes apparent through a social, political, and cultural view of Islam. He has understood the West from close quarters, having become familiar with the civilization, culture, society, and history of the West, yet he escaped from being captured by it.

  Iqbal ascends to the highest intellectual summit in the West and understands the value of European science and technology. He, also, is aware of Iran and its culture. He adopted the tenderness of spirit as well as eloquence and depth of view inferred in Islamic and Iranian culture as are manifested in his literary works.

  Apart from that, the nature of Iqbal’s thought is derived from a nation which is historically and culturally characterized by fineness of sentiments, tenderness of imagination, purity of spirit, idealism of heart, illumination, and inspiration. With such an intellectual background, spirit, and outlook, Iqbal has turned to Islam and he is competent enough to reassemble and reconstruct the dispersed and disintegrated elements of Islamic intellectual schools.

  Muhammad Iqbal epitomizes a multi-dimensional Muslim spirit. Not only does he try to re-assemble and reconstruct the disintegrated members and dimensions of Islamic ideology and the living Islamic body, which had been cut into pieces as a result of political fraud and contradictory philosophical and social attitudes, with each piece being kept by a group and not only did he produce a masterpiece called The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, but his greater masterpiece is in realizing his full and multi-dimensional self, that is, the integration of a total Muslim in his own person.

  He is a valuable, self-made man. How can he develop himself upon the basis of sketches given for a Muslim by Islam? With a revolutionary rebirth, a traditional Indian Muslim, a westernized young man educated in England, a PhD from Munich, a Persian-speaking poet from India, an anti-colonial intellectual in a colony, in short, a person with all these characteristics is converted into a total Muslim and into an Ali-like person of the 20th century. What does it mean to be Ali-like? It means to be a person with all human dimensions rarely found in a single individual. It would be inaccurate to call Iqbal an anti-colonial, progressive leader who happened to be a Muslim.

  With an advanced rational and philosophical view, with the wealth of modern Western philosophy, being in possession of the spirit of illumination and inspiration inherent in the nature of an Indian thinker, by fostering and absorbing the rich, dynamic, and profound gnosticism of the Iranian-Islamic revolution through his devotion to and knowledge of Rumi, his Mathnawi, Diwan-i-Shams and rich Arabic culture, with his comprehensive knowledge about Islamic
philosophies and the evolution of thought, and, particularly, through his deep application, experiment with, and knowledge of the Quran, Iqbal attains a profound world view and a solid philosophical foundation based on Islamic culture called ‘the philosophy of selfhood’ which also interprets man, life, and the universe for him.

  Here Iqbal emerges as a Muslim thinker who is familiar with the modern world’s mode of thought as well as with the philosophical deadlock of our age. On the basis of his religious faith, he can supply answers to us for the collapse of all ethical and spiritual standards and for the present deadlock in the philosophical and scientific thought of humanity. We intellectuals of the Third World, of the under-developed and developing societies, who are suffering from material shortcomings and from social and economic confusion, who are adversely affected by philosophical despair and the instability of our ideological foundation, must seek him out. It is most urgent and very valuable for we who know Islamic philosophy through its two traditional aspects of mysticism and Sufism or through the old intellectual patterns of Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ghazzali and Mulla Sadra or through traditional cliche-type patterns to become familiar with Iqbal’s world view and philosophical attitude.

  Apart from that, Iqbal is an Islamologist. Those who have shelved Islam as a religion without knowing it or who have condemned and rejected it without understanding it and who feel proud of having thus become ‘intellectuals’ and also those who know Islam only through its limited and traditional patterns and are so contented, do not need Islamology. For both those intellectuals and these believers, Islam consists of those things narrated in treatises and mosques, the only difference between them being that the latter group believes in them whereas the former one does not.

  Knowledge about Islam, however, is necessary for those people who do not pass judgment on a school of thought and action unless they know it properly. Consciousness of Islam is vital for those who think and distinguish themselves, for those who do not chose their opinions according to fashion, as though they were dresses, hair styles, and dances, for those who do not sense inferiority if they are not considered to be modern, for those who are neither superstitious nor irrationally anti-religious, and, finally, for the true intellectuals who realize that they should understand their own society, culture, and people’s innermost feelings, that they should become familiar with the history of a large section of civilized nations of the world, that they should understand the greatest civilization in human history, and, lastly, that they should comprehend the true reasons for the appearance of this important movement and the development of one of the greatest religious, intellectual, ethical, political, and social schools in human history.

  Islamology, developed through scientific methods, presented through a great thinker and innovator like Muhammad Iqbal, is a spiritual, social, scientific, historic, and political necessity. It is a kind of self-knowledge because whatever philosophy we hold, we are born and bred in this school and this history. Iqbal is an Islamic, revolutionary thinker and reformer. If we know the value of reformers like Calvin and Luther in the West, if we study the religious reform movement of Protestantism that saved Christianity from rigidity, stagnation, and the declining framework of Catholicism, and if we, also, know what role this movement played in awakening the people and in the development of civilization and power in modern Europe, then, we will come to the conclusion that our present drowsy and rigid Islamic society urgently needs these kinds of Protestant reformers, reformers who are thoroughly acquainted with Islam as well as with society, its anguishes, and requirements. We will, then, also know what principles should be stressed and against which bases and deviations protest should be made.

  Hence, the value of the work and immensity of the role of an Islamologist reformer like Iqbal who knows Islam, who has social awareness, and who is in possession of a progressive, responsible, and anti-colonial spirit becomes clear. Intellectuals of Islamic society will then know how far they need ideas of a man like Iqbal for the fulfillment of their mission, how far he can be taken as an example for Muslim intellectuals,and to what extent knowing him and explaining his ideas to others can be effective in awakening and bringing about a cultural revolution and social consciousness among the Muslim masses.

  Under certain historic and social conditions, a special position-taking can represent all facets of a personality or the essence of a school of thought. To fight against imperialism in a backward colony does not merely represent one’s political tendency. More than that, it shows one’s human personality, the degree of human awareness and common sense, honesty, piety, as well as the validity of an individual’s school or religion.

  A modern European can say: “I am a philosopher or writer or artist or engineer or economist, but I am not a politician. I do not think about political matters but leave them to politicians.” But colonized Africans, Asians, or Latin Americans can never make such a statement. This is because in an advanced and relatively sound society, politics is a specialized field of social activities and there is no need for everybody to feel committed to it. A European can be content with being a writer, a philosopher, or an economist and leave politics to the politicians he and others have elected for this purpose.

  But in a depressed, colonized country, a man cannot evade politics and relegate it only to specialists. Here politics is not responsible for the administration of the country and grappling with special problems but it is an objective, urgent, human, and vital necessity. Here politics means saving a person who is going to drown, taking action to extinguish a conflagration, standing up against a general invasion, and struggling to liberate an enslaved, dying nation.

  Politics in the West means working in a fire station which requires expertise, but in backward and colonized countries, politics means making an effort to extinguish the fire that is consuming the whole of society. Therefore, here it is nonsense to talk about being a fireman, philosopher, painter, priest, teacher, poet, writer, historian, or civil engineer. Backwardness, poverty, social discrimination, and foreign colonialism are not natural and specialized problems of only a particular group in a society.

  Therefore, in Asia, Latin America or Africa, when you speak about an intellectual, a progressive thinker, a moralist, a responsible, and committed philosopher, you are bound to mean an anti-colonist like Allameh Iqbal. Here, it does not make any difference if one is religious or non-religious, philosopher or artist, sociologist or poet. When mention is made of an Islamic, reformist thinker, these characteristics are even more pronounced.

  Islam declares that the objective of all true religions in the course of history is the establishment of equity and justice and the relegation of the government on earth to the abased, enslaved, and deprived people. This is worth thinking about— among the Prophet’s Companions, not a single person can be found who is not an armed mujahid or a practical warrior. Every Muslim is automatically an armed partisan in his life and not only under exceptional circumstances.

  Islam is the only religion that does not restrict itself to preaching but unsheathes the sword to enforce its words. If we were to erect a statue of Islam’s Prophet, he would have a book in one hand and a sword in the other. A true Muslim is never crucified without making an effort.

  Ghulam Ahmad Qadiyani, who tries to found a new Islamic movement in India, does not concern himself with British domination of that subcontinent and even finds this state of affairs useful to prevent the outbreak of Hindu prejudices against Muslims. He also omits jihad from Islam! so he is not only not regarded as an Islamic reformist leader in the eyes of Muslims, but, rather, as a traitor and heretic.

  Iqbal is an anti-colonial personality because he is an informed Muslim. His efforts to liberate India and establish a pure Islamic society, free from British domination, are quite apparent, so much so that many people regard him only as a political personality and as a nationalist liberal, anti-colonial hero in the Indian liberation movement. He attacks imperialism under its various masks.

  At
the same time, to limit Iqbal by calling him a poet would be an understatement. He is the typical, responsible, and attentive artist. Nowadays, there is much talk about responsibility of art, its social commitment, the artist’s unavoidable contact with his time, his field, and artistic creation. Committed literature is the kind that has forcibly put itself at the service of people in order to help them with their struggle against the exploiting and capitalist class, as well as against bourgeoisie domination. Therefore, committed literature in Europe is necessarily anti-class and anti-capitalistic and goes hand in hand with the working class to liberate itself. But in the Third, colonized world, this kind of literature is, above all, anti-colonial.

  What orthodox Marxists cannot grasp is that colonialism (not economy or the form of ownership or means and sources of production) constitutes the cornerstone of a colonized society! No problem can be solved in a colonized society on the basis of Marxist sociology which treats all social problems as subsidiary and supra structural ones, founded on their economic infrastructure. In such societies, all social problems, from economic production to questions of culture, literature, and politics, even the social form or individual concept of religion, must be analyzed in the light of numerous and inconsistent colonial factors. In a colonized country, the infrastructure is colonialism.