Mitya’s Reviews > Muhammad Iqbal: Essays on the Reconstruction of Modern Muslim Thought > Status Update

The more universalized and consistent with Reality a religion is the more successful its ability to inspire socio-political flourishing. Islam is the foundation for a pan-human society. The goal for Muslims is the establishment of a Caliphate, but Iqbal concedes that nationalism dominates, so Muslims should establish powerful modern states, which will be temporary until they form a family of republics

Islam affirms the fundamental goodness of humans, what promotes natural freedom promotes their goodness. To Iqbal, society is driven by force and conflict, force being a spiritual power that drives the evolution of the universe, these evolved forms are unstable, so achieve higher forms of evolution by overcoming conflict. The greatest threat to the development of this individuality is exclusion of the other.

Modern political philosophy is based upon a separation between state and religion, Iqbal disagrees with this. Human experience contains a unity that cannot be divided. The socio-political ideal is the development of human individuality and creative freedoms, society should be composed of ideal individuals.

Iqbal believes in personal revelation when reading the Qur'an, where one is free to discover their own interpretation and the ultimate source of the law within his own consciousness, thus being masters of their own spiritual development. Islam and its laws aren't immutable, but open to individual interpretation. This is how religion may guide its adherents in a post-metaphysical age

There are three stages of history according to Iqbal, 'Faith', 'Thought', and 'Discovery'. Man was ruled by visions of prophets giving ready-made judgements, then closes himself off to non-rational knowledge. Fresh vision is possible through tension of the ego and personal revelation. The finality of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is in no more prophecy needed, since man will be able to think on his own

Iqbal criticises Sufism for its stagnation and ascetism, which moves one to withdraw from active life. Sufism is correct in claiming there are spiritual stages to ascend, but wrong in that there is an end, instead, immortality is continuous action. Heaven and hell are visual representations of an inner fact, hell being man realising his failure to ascend. The nature of thought is purposive.

Key to immortality for Iqbal is that one frees themselves from earlier interpretations of time as serial time, immortality is a matter of intensity not extension which Iqbal calls pure duration. This cannot be expressed in words, for language is shaped on the serial time of our efficient self. The appreciative self perceives this time as duration, correcting the efficient self. This is the religious experience.

Iqbal sees immortality/afterlife in a post-Einsteinian (non-metaphysical) and teleological way, ambiguous enough for individual open interpretation. His interpretation is non-literal, resurrection isn't an external event, but the consummation of a life-process within the ego. Time and space are interpretations which thought has put on the creative activity of the Ultimate Ego, the Qur'an = against abstract universals

Iqbal uses Rumi to privilege love over reason as the human attribute imitating the divine. God, as goal, is the true Neo-Platonic beloved. Love motivates the human to act in search of the beloved. The goal of love in unitive experience remains inarticulate, this self-realised being can ascend to the viceregency of the divine. Hegel fails to find love through reason, Nietzsche is egoism.

Iqbal disliked what he called 'Persianism' and its metaphysics, which was mysticism in pantheism and denial of human agency, preferring instead the "brilliant desert sunshine of Arabia", which is an anti-colonial and pristine space of identity. He dislikes the determinism of Greek thought, and sets aside the monism of the Sufi tradition in favour of affirmation of selfhood