Muslim Nationalism Iqbal’s Synthesis of Pan-Islamism and Nationalism

Abstract

Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was a man of great many ideas
-sublime and serene, dynamic and romatic, provocative and profound.
He was both a great poet and a serious thinker; but in poetic works lies
enshrined most of his thought. It seems rather platitudinous to say, but it
is important to note, that a poet is essentially a man of moods, and enjoys
a sort of poetic license which is scrupulously denied to a prose-writer.
Since a poet usually gives utterance to his reactions to a given situation,
his utterances and ideas need not always be compatible with one another.
Such was the case with Iqbal.
During his poetic career, spanning some four decades, Iqbal had
imbibed, approved, applauded and commended a great many ideas -
ideas which occupied various positions along the spectrum on the
philosophic, social, and political plane. Thus, at one time or another, he
commended or denounced nationalism; propagated pan-Islamism and
world Muslim unity; criticised the West for its materialism, for its cutthroat
competition and for its values while applauding the East for its
spiritualism and its concern for the soul; and condemned capitalism
while preaching “a kind of vague socialism.”’ While, on the one hand, he
steadfastly stood for “the freedom of ijtihad with a view to rebuild the
law of Shari’at in the light of modern thought and experience,” and even
attempted to reformulate the doctrines of Islam in the light of twentieth
century requirements a la St. Augustine, he, on the other, also defended
the orthodox position and the conservatism of Indian Islam on some
counts. Though “inescapably entangled in the net of Sufi thought," he
yet considered popular mysticism or “the kind of mysticism which
blinked actualities, enervated the people and kept them steeped in all
kinds of superstitions” as one of the primary causes of Muslim decline
and downfall.
It is to this aspect of Iqbal that Professor Hamilton A.R. Gibb was
referring when he suggested: ...