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Old Saturday, August 09, 2014
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Default Islam and Modernity

Iqbal in his series of lectures which are collected as the book The Reconstruction of Religious thought in Islam argued that the Shariah needs a complete overhaul keeping in view the modern time. In a chapter called The Principle of Movement in the structure of Islam he explains that Ijtihad is the principle of movement in Islam and it is not just limited to adding on the previously accumulated Shariah but to make a new Shariah keeping in view the modern needs of time. He argues that Shariah is created by men who were legal doctors and their Shariah got crystallized as later legal doctors of Islam closed the gates of Ijtihad. He laments the fact of closing of the gates of Ijtihad and as a result Shariah today has become an anachronism in a modern time. He says that Islam is characterized by a dynamism that it has lost when Shariah doctors closed the door of Ijtihad after the fall of Baghdad. I’ll be quoting out of the chapter The Principle of Movement in the structure of Islam of the book to argue that a secular country is in line with the spirit of Islam.
I am in no way invoking the authority of Iqbal, just putting forth his arguments. As Iqbal himself wrote in the preface of the book:


It must, however, be remembered that there is no such thing as finality in philosophical thinking. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other views, and probably sounder views than those set forth in these Lectures, are possible. Our duty is carefully to watch the progress of human thought, and to maintain an independent critical attitude towards it.


Further, we have to see the context and the historical age when Iqbal wrote this book. His criticism of Europe in the book is justified. He died before the Second World War has started, Europe was in turmoil. Colonialism wasn’t wrapped up and the World didn’t have institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. Neither did we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Europe was embroiled in fascism and war mongering. Even democratic states were involved in colonial projects. That was totally unjustifiable and Iqbal criticized Europe in that respect. If Iqbal would have been alive today he would have seen Europe in a different light. Moreover, there wasn’t even a single mention of the United States. It tells us that the United States wasn’t that important a country in those times.

The failure of the Europe in political and social sciences illustrates the former principle, the immobility of Islam during the last five hundred years illustrates the latter. What then is the principle of movement in the structure of Islam? This is known as Ijtihad.

Here Iqbal asserts that he has discovered a principle of movement in the structure of Islam and that is Ijtihad.

The word literally means to exert. In the terminology of Islamic law it means to exert with a view to form an independent judgement on a legal question. The idea, I believe, has its origin in a well-known verse of the Qur’an - ‘And to those who exert We show Our path’. We find it more definitely adumbrated in a tradition of the Holy Prophet. When Mu‘adh was appointed ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him as to how he would decide matters coming up before him. ‘I will judge matters according to the
Book of God,’ said Mu‘adh. ‘But if the Book of God contains nothing to guide you?’ ‘Then I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God.’ ‘But if the precedents fail?’ ‘Then I will exert to form my own judgement.’


In this text, Iqbal quotes both the Quran and the Tradition in support of Ijtihad. In the following text Iqbal challenges the finality of legislation that is accorded to the recognized schools in Sunni Islam.


These schools of Law recognize three degrees of Ijtihad : (1) complete authority in legislation which is practically confined to be founders of the schools, (2) relative authority which is to be exercised within the limits of a particular school, and (3) special authority which relates to the determining of the law applicable to a particular case left undetermined by the founders. In this paper I am concerned with the first degree of Ijtihad only, i.e. complete authority in legislation. The theoretical possibility of this degree of Ijtihad is admitted by the Sunni`s, but in practice it has always been denied ever since the establishment of the schools, inasmuch as the idea of complete Ijtihad is hedged round by conditions which are well-nigh impossible of realization in a single individual. Such an attitude seems exceedingly strange in a system of law based mainly on the groundwork provided by the Qur’an which embodies an essentially dynamic outlook on life. It is, therefore, necessary, before we proceed farther, to discover the cause of this intellectual attitude which has reduced the Law of Islam practically to a state of immobility. Some European writers think that the stationary character of the Law of Islam is due to the influence of the Turks. This is an entirely superficial view, for the legal schools of Islam had been finally established long before the Turkish influence began to work in the history of Islam.


He calls the finality of the established schools of Fiqh a state of immobility. And he tries to find the causes of this stagnant attitude.

The real causes are, in my opinion, as follows:
1. We are all familiar with the Rationalist movement which appeared in the church of Islam during the early days of the Abbasids and the bitter controversies which it raised. Take for instance the one important point of controversy between the two camps - the conservative dogma of the eternity of the Qur’an. The Rationalists denied it because they thought that this was only another form of the Christian dogma of the eternity of the word; on the other hand, the conservative thinkers whom the later Abbasids, fearing the political implications of Rationalism, gave their full support, thought that by denying the eternity of the Qur’an the Rationalists were undermining the very foundations of Muslim society. Nazzam, for instance, practically rejected the traditions, and openly declared Abu Hurairah to be an untrustworthy reporter. Thus, partly owing to a misunderstanding of the ultimate motives of Rationalism, and partly owing to the unrestrained thought of particular Rationalists, conservative thinkers regarded this movement as a force of disintegration, and considered it a danger to the stability of Islam as a social polity. Their main purpose, therefore, was to preserve the social integrity of Islam, and to realize this the only course open to them was to utilize the binding force of Sharâ‘ah, and to make the structure of their legal system as rigorous as possible.


He attributes this attitude of conservative Ulema to preserve the social polity of Islam against the Rationalists or Mutazilah that resulted in the crystallization of Shariah.

2. The rise and growth of ascetic Sufism, which gradually developed under influences of a non-Islamic character, a purely speculative side, is to a large extent responsible for this attitude. On its purely religious side Sufism fostered a kind of revolt against the verbal quibbles of our early doctors. The case of Sufyan Thaurâ is an instance in point. He was one of the acutest legal minds of his time, and was nearly the founder of a school of law, but being also intensely spiritual, the dry-as-dust subtleties of contemporary legists drove him to ascetic Sufism. On its speculative side which developed later, Sufism is a form of free thought and in alliance with Rationalism. The emphasis that it laid on the distinction of Zahir and batin (Appearance and Reality) created an attitude of indifference to all that applies to Appearance and not to Reality.
This spirit of total other-wordliness in later Sufism obscured men’s vision of a very important aspect of Islam as a social polity, and, offering the prospect of unrestrained thought on its speculative side, it attracted and finally absorbed the best minds in Islam. The Muslim state was thus left generally in the hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of Islam, having no personalities of a higher calibre to guide them, found their security only in blindly following the schools.


Here Iqbal laments that ascetic Sufism absorbed brilliant minds and they gravitated toward spiritualism leaving the state and legislation in the hands of mediocre Ulema who believed in blindly following the recognized schools.

3. On the top of all this came the destruction of Baghdad - the centre of Muslim intellectual life - in the middle of the thirteenth century. This was indeed a great blow, and all the contemporary historians of the invasion of Tartars describe the havoc of Baghdad with a half-suppressed pessimism about the future of Islam. For fear of further disintegration, which is only natural in such a period of political decay, the conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous exclusion of all innovations in the law of Sharâ‘ah as expounded by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because organization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay. But they did not see, and our modern ‘Ulema do not see, that the ultimate fate of a people does not depend so much on organization as on the worth and power of individual men. In an over-organized society the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul. Thus a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people’s decay.
‘The verdict of history’, as a modern writer has happily put it, ‘is that worn-out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.’ The only effective power, therefore, that counteracts the forces of decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals. Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose new standards in the light of which we begin to see that our environment is not wholly inviolable and requires revision. The tendency to over-organization by a false reverence of the past, as manifested in the legists of Islam in the thirteenth century and later, was contrary to the inner impulse of Islam, and consequently invoked the powerful reaction of Ibn Taimâyyah, one of the most indefatigable writers and preachers of Islam, who was born in 1263, five years after the destruction of Baghdad.


Now this is a more credible reason of the three given by Iqbal and his line “Thus a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people’s decay” is true for our present age and attitude of people toward the past age especially our attitude toward the reign of Rightly Guided Caliphs which was an age of conflict and civil war.

Ibn Taimâyyah was brought up in Hanbalite tradition. Claiming freedom of Ijtihad for himself he rose in revolt against the finality of the schools, and went back to first principles in order to make a fresh start. Like Ibn Àazm - the founder of Zahiri school of law - he rejected the Hanafite principle of reasoning by analogy and Ijma ’ as understood by older legists; 15 for he thought agreement was the basis of all superstition. And there is no doubt that, considering the moral and intellectual decrepitude of his times, he was right in doing so. In the sixteenth century Suyëtâ claimed the same privilege of Ijtihad to which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each century. But the spirit of Ibn Taimâyyah’s teaching found a fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd, described by Macdonald as the ‘cleanest spot in the decadent world of Islam’. It is really the first throb of life in modern Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable, directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sanisi movement, the Pan-Islamic movement, and the Babi movement, which is only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism. The great puritan reformer, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, who was born in 1700, studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout the whole world of Islam. He was similar in spirit to Ghazzali’s disciple, Muhammad Ibn Tëmart - the Berber puritan reformer of Islam who appeared amidst the decay of Muslim Spain, and gave her a fresh inspiration. We are, however, not concerned with the political career of this movement which was terminated by the armies of Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha. The essential thing to note is the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion. While it rises in revolt against the finality of the schools, and vigorously asserts the right of private judgement, its vision of the past is wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on the traditions of the Prophet.


Iqbal celebrates Ibn-e-Taimiyah’s and Abd al-Wahhab’s rejection of the finality of schools and their insistence on freedom of Ijtihad but is cautious that their movements too were conservative in their own fashion and their vision of the past is also wholly uncritical which Iqbal did not endorse.


I now proceed to give you some idea of religio-political thought in Turkey which will indicate to you how the power of Ijtihad is manifested in recent thought and activity in that country. There were, a short time ago, two main lines of thought in Turkey represented by the Nationalist Party and the Party of Religious Reform. The point of supreme interest with the Nationalist Party is above all the State and not Religion. With these thinkers religion as such has no independent function. The state is the essential factor in national life which determines the character and function of all other factors. They, therefore, reject old ideas about the function of State and Religion, and accentuate the separation of Church and State. Now the structure of Islam as a religio-political system, no doubt, does permit such a view, though personally I think it is a mistake to suppose that the idea of state is more dominant and rules all other ideas embodied in the system of Islam.


As evident from the last line Iqbal said the structure of Islam permits the separation of Church and State and then he gives his personal opinion that State and religion are interlinked. For that he dabbles in metaphysics.

In Islam the spiritual and the temporal are not two distinct domains, and the nature of an act, however secular in its import, is determined by the attitude of mind with which the agent does it. It is the invisible mental background of the act which ultimately determines its character. 21 An act is temporal or profane if it is done in a spirit of detachment from the infinite complexity of life behind it; it is spiritual if it is inspired by that complexity. In Islam it is the same reality which appears as Church looked at from one point of view and State from another. It is not true to say that Church and State are two sides or facets of the same thing. Islam is a single unanalysable reality which is one or the other as your point of view varies.
The point is extremely far-reaching and a full elucidation of it will involve us in a highly philosophical discussion. Suffice it to say that this ancient mistake arose out of the bifurcation of the unity of man into two distinct and separate realities which somehow have a point of contact, but which are in essence opposed to each other. The truth, however, is that matter is spirit in space-time reference. The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and ideal of such acting. The essence of Tauhid, as a working idea, is equality, solidarity, and freedom. The state, from the Islamic standpoint, is an endeavour to transform these ideal principles into space-time forces, an aspiration to realize them in a definite human organization. It is in this sense alone that the state in Islam is a theocracy, not in the sense that it is headed by a representative of God on earth who can always screen his despotic will behind his supposed infallibility. The critics of Islam have lost sight of this important consideration. The Ultimate Reality, according to the Qur’an, is spiritual, and its life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is secular is, therefore, sacred in the roots of its being. The greatest service that modern thought has rendered to Islam, and as a matter of fact to all religion, consists in its criticism of what we call material or natural - a criticism which discloses that the merely material has no substance until we discover it rooted in the spiritual. There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self-realization of spirit. All is holy ground. As the Prophet so beautifully puts it: ‘The whole of this earth is a mosque.’ The state, according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the spiritual in a human organization. But in this sense all state, not based on mere domination and aiming at the realization of ideal principles, is theocratic.


Iqbal is of course not arguing for a theocratic state. He dabbles in metaphysics for justification of his point and is therefore not very clear in his this assertion. But he argues that law must be changed from the scratch to make them in synchronization with the modern time. One thing that is clear in this assertion is that Islam permits separation of religion and state.

The truth is that the Turkish Nationalists assimilated the idea of the separation of Church and State from the history of European political ideas. Primitive Christianity was founded, not as a political or civil unit, but as a monastic order in a profane world, having nothing to do with civil affairs, and obeying the Roman authority practically in all matters. The result of this was that when the State became Christian, State and Church confronted each other as distinct powers with interminable boundary disputes between them. Such a thing could never happen in Islam; for Islam was from the very beginning a civil society, having received from the Qur’an a set of simple legal principles which, like the twelve tables of the Romans, carried, as experience subsequently proved, great potentialities of expansion and development by interpretation. The Nationalist theory of state, therefore, is misleading inasmuch as it suggests a dualism which does not exist in Islam.
The Religious Reform Party, on the other hand, led by Sa‘id Halim Pasha, insisted on the fundamental fact that Islam is a harmony of idealism and positivism; and, as a unity of the eternal verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity, has no fatherland. ‘As there is no English Mathematics, German Astronomy or French Chemistry,’ says the Grand Vizier, ‘so there is no Turkish, Arabian, Persian or Indian Islam. Just as the universal character of scientific truths engenders varieties of scientific national cultures which in their totality represent human knowledge, much in the same way the universal character of Islamic verities creates varieties of national, moral and social ideals.’ Modern culture based as it is on national egoism is, according to this keen-sighted writer, only another form of barbarism. It is the result of an over-developed industrialism through which men satisfy their primitive instincts and inclinations. He, however, deplores that during the course of history the moral and social ideals of Islam have been gradually deislamized through the influence of local character, and pre-Islamic superstitions of Muslim nations. These ideals today are more Iranian, Turkish, or Arabian than Islamic. The pure brow of the principle of Tauhid has received more or less an impress of heathenism, and the universal and impersonal character of the ethical ideals of Islam has been lost through a process of localization. The only alternative open to us, then, is to tear off from Islam the hard crust which has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on life, and to rediscover the original verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity with a view to rebuild our moral, social, and political ideals out of their original simplicity and universality. Such are the views of the Grand Vizier of Turkey. You will see that following a line of thought more in tune with the spirit of Islam, he reaches practically the same conclusion as the Nationalist Party, that is to say, the freedom of Ijtihad with a view to rebuild the laws of Shari‘ah in the light of modern thought and experience.
Let us now see how the Grand National Assembly has exercised this power of Ijtihad in regard to the institution of Khilafat. According to Sunni Law, the appointment of an Imam or Khalifah is absolutely indispensable. The first question that arises in this connexion is this - Should the Caliphate be vested in a single person? Turkey’s Ijtihad is that according to the spirit of Islam the Caliphate or Imamate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected Assembly. The religious doctors of Islam in Egypt and India, as far as I know, have not yet expressed themselves on this point. Personally, I believe the Turkish view is perfectly sound. It is hardly necessary to argue this point. The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam.


Here Iqbal says that the Nationalist Party which argues for the separation of state and religion and the Religious Reform Party reach the same conclusions. Only their exposition is different. And he also states that the republican form of government which is a democratic form of government is not only completely consistent with the spirit of Islam but is a modern necessity.
In the same paper Iqbal argues for local languages in place of Arabic:

It is clear from these lines how beautifully the poet has adopted the Comtian idea of the three stages of man’s intellectual development, i.e. theological, metaphysical and scientific - to the religious outlook of Islam. And the view of religion embodied in these lines determines the poet’s attitude towards the position of Arabic in the educational system of Turkey. He says:
‘The land where the call to prayer resounds in Turkish; where those who pray understand the meaning of their religion; the land where the Qur’an is learnt in Turkish; where every man, big or small, knows full well the command of God; O! Son of Turkey! that land is thy fatherland!’
If the aim of religion is the spiritualization of the heart, then it must penetrate the soul of man, and it can best penetrate the inner man, according to the poet, only if its spiritualizing ideas are clothed in his mother tongue. Most people in India will condemn this displacement of Arabic by Turkish. For reasons which will appear later the poet’s Ijtihad is open to grave objections, but it must be admitted that the reform suggested by him is not without a parallel in the past history of Islam. We find that when Muhammad Ibn Tëmart - the Mahdi of Muslim Spain - who was Berber by nationality, came to power, and established the pontifical rule of the Muwahhidun, he ordered for the sake of the illiterate Berbers, that the Qur’an should be translated and read in the Berber language; that the call to prayer should be given in Berber; and that all the functionaries of the Church must know the Berber language.


Even a poet can do Ijtihad according to Iqbal, one doesn’t need to be a Mujtahid for that. Later he argues that the verdict of parliament could be equated to Ijtihad.
And here goes the most beautiful lines in defense of a secular country with a distinctive Muslim character inspired by Islam:

The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real - a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle. To her the growing complexities of a mobile and broadening life are sure to bring new situations suggesting new points of view, and necessitating fresh interpretations of principles which are only of an academic interest to a people who have never experienced the joy of spiritual expansion. It is, I think, the English thinker Hobbes who makes this acute observation that to have a succession of identical thoughts and feelings is to have no thoughts and feelings at all. Such is the lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to creating new values. He has passed through great experiences which have revealed his deeper self to him. In him life has begun to move, change, and amplify, giving birth to new desires, bringing new difficulties and suggesting new interpretations. The question which confronts him today, and which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution - a question which will require great intellectual effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative, provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of ‘Umar - the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these remarkable words: ‘The Book of God is sufficient for us.’


Here goes a quote on accusations of heresy by Iqbal where he quotes a European scholar:

The assimilative spirit of Islam is even more manifest in the sphere of law. Says Professor Hurgronje – the Dutch critic of Islam: When we read the history of the development of Mohammadan Law we find that, on the one hand, the doctors of every age, on the slightest stimulus, condemn one another to the point of mutual accusations of heresy; and, on the other hand, the very same people, with greater and greater unity of purpose, try to reconcile the similar quarrels of their predecessors.’


Here Iqbal calls for the renewal of the rules of Shariah and Fiqh despite the danger of invoking the wrath of conservative Ulema

These views of modern European critics of Islam make it perfectly clear that, with the return of new life, the inner catholicity of the spirit of Islam is bound to work itself out in spite of the rigorous conservatism of our doctors. And I have no doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of Islam is sure to rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion that the Law of Islam is stationary and incapable of development. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of Fiqh , which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies; yet I venture to offer a few remarks on the point before us.
1. In the first place, we should bear in mind that from the earliest times practically up to the rise of the Abbasids, there was no written law of Islam apart from the Qur’an.
2. Secondly, it is worthy of note that from about the middle of the first century up to the beginning of the fourth not less than nineteen schools of law and legal opinion appeared in Islam. This fact alone is sufficient to show how incessantly our early doctors of law worked in order to meet the necessities of a growing civilization. With the expansion of conquest and the consequent widening of the outlook of Islam these early legists had to take a wider view of things, and to study local conditions of life and habits of new peoples that came within the fold of Islam. A careful study of the various schools of legal opinion, in the light of contemporary social and political history, reveals that they gradually passed from the deductive to the inductive attitude in their efforts at interpretation.
3. Thirdly, when we study the four accepted sources of Muhammadan Law and the controversies which they invoked, the supposed rigidity of our recognized schools evaporates and the possibility of a further evolution becomes perfectly clear.


Then he goes on to discuss the sources of Islam quite critically. The purpose of this discussion is that Shariah is not fixed, and there is no correct interpretation of Shariah. In fact there is a need of constant re-interpretation of Shariah to suit modern needs. For example, legal doctors of the earlier period put a ban on every kind of interest not just loan sharks. In the present age, there is a need to re-evaluate such principles set forth by early legal experts. Similarly, exposition that Zakat is a kind of state tax is an erroneous interpretation in the present age. As Fasi Zaka in his column stretching Zakat wrote,

Zakat is an obligation that is aimed at the poorest of the poor. At only 2.5 per cent, the burden of taxation put forward by zakat is actually far less than that in most nation-states. Paying alms is one thing, but running the state is entirely another matter.
On 2.5 per cent one cannot build hospitals, run schools and mount a defensive force for the nation, however big or small it may be. The imposition of zakat does not preclude a regular taxation system, yet many people believe it to be so.
It should be obvious, but it isn't. And this is symptomatic of a larger problem in the country, where erroneous assertions gain credibility because there is a fear of anyone who speaks with even a minimum modicum of religious authority.


There is a need to see Zakat as a personal obligation rather than something taken forcibly by the state.
There is also the issue of Polygamy which according to Ziauddin Sardar in his book What do Muslims Believe is solved by Malaysian family law for which a husband has to seek permission from his wife to marry another woman and to prove in the court of law that he will maintain equality which is an impossible condition. Therefore, polygamy is something not consistent with the modern life and instead of these ruses which can be manipulated by people in power has to be done away as in Turkey. Similarly verbal divorce is outlawed and a woman has equal rights of giving divorce to a man. Equality of women to men is also discussed in the same chapter by Iqbal where he argued for similar overhaul. He wrote:

I do not know whether the awakening of women in Turkey has created demands which cannot be met with without a fresh interpretation of foundational principles. In the Punjab, as everybody knows, there have been cases in which Muslim women wishing to get rid of undesirable husbands have been driven to apostasy. Nothing could be more distant from the aims of a missionary religion.


I urge everyone interested to read Iqbal’s chapter in full as it is the most accessible text in his book about metaphysics. The task is to rewrite and have a revolutionary re-interpretation of Islam which 75 years after the death of Iqbal hasn’t been done in his own region and a country that grew out of his own idea. And the most important of all tasks is to have a break with the past and have a fresh start.
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What a brilliant post. I would just like to make two short comments:

1. The book, although I have not read it myself, does seem to take a very daring approach about interpreting Islamic injunctions (in today’s Pakistan, this would have cost poor Iqbal his life along with his family) and can be taken as an excellent manifesto of modern day interpretations of Islam. No wonder it is banned in Saudi Arabia, that country of barbarians who have high jacked Islam. The excerpts you posted are truly marvelous, particularly the one about secular Turkey.

2. But as it happens, we Muslims don’t like to use our heads, you see. We like to blindly follow what is poured in our minds. So intellectual conversations and polite debates are futile. I’m very much glad on the actions of ISIS and I do hope it wreaks complete and total devastation on Middle East, the kind of what Europe saw during the WWII. Perhaps then we would learn the lesson that Europe learned long ago that stubbornly sticking to medievalism is not a very bright idea. Laton ke bhoot, as they say, baton se naheen mante. ISIS zindabad! Khalafat paindabad! Insaniyat gai tail lenay!
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Thanks a lot! I think we both are the modern day Mutazilah (Rationalists)

1- Of course the book is truly a masterpiece and one of its own kind. No other Muslim philosopher and theologian ventured where Iqbal did. The sad part is it is too dense for popular reading. Modern interpretations are badly needed today, much more than Iqbal's time!

2- Reports are there that Caliph Hazrat Abu Bakar Baghdadi has started taking Yazidi slave girls and they will be put up for sale soon. Medievalism zindabad! Verily, he is the scourge of God. I wish the Caliph success and after bouts of ultra-violence he will establish Islamic finance and banking IA brother. Then we will go to Iraq, get ourselves a few slave girls and live there happily ever after. Maybe we should become camel traders in Baghdad. What you say?
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Thanks for sharing such an excellent post. Both Allama Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan were an amazing personalities. I would recommend people to read about the latter in depth as well!
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guess who said this:

18. Fanaticism
All nations accuse us of fanaticism. I admit the charge – I
go further and say that we are justified in our fanaticism.
Translated in the language of biology fanaticism is nothing
but the principle of individuation working in the case of
group. In this sense all forms of life are more or less
fanatical and ought to be so if they care for their collective
life. And as a matter of fact all nations are fanatical.
Criticize an Englishman’s religion, he is immovable; but
criticize his civilization, his country or the behavior of his
nation in any sphere of activity and you will bring out his
innate fanaticism. The reason is that his nationality does
not depend on religion; it has a geographical basis – his
country. His fanaticism then is justly roused when you
criticize his country. Our position, however, is
fundamentally different. With us nationality is a pure idea;
it has no material basis. Our only rallying point is a sort of
mental agreement in a certain view of the world. If then
our fanaticism is roused when our religion is criticized, I
think we are as much justified in our fanaticism as an
Englishman is when his civilization is denounced. The
feeling in both cases is the same though associated with
different objects. Fanaticism is patriotism for religion; patriotism,
fanaticism for country.
19. Patriotism
Islam appeared as a protest against idolatry. And what is
patriotism but a subtle form of idolatry; a deification of a
material object. The patriotic songs of various nations will
bear me out in my calling patriotism a deification of a
material object. Islam could not tolerate idolatry in any
form. It is our eternal mission to protest against idolatry
in all its forms. What was to be demolished by Islam could
not be made the very principle of its structure as a political
community. The fact that the Prophet prospered and died
in a place not his birthplace is perhaps a mystic hint to the
same effect.
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In so far as the evolution of religious ideas is concerned
there are principally three stages in the development of a
community:
1) The Attitude of skepticism towards traditional
religion – a revolt against dogma.
2) But the need of religion as a social force of great
value is at last felt and then begins the second stage
– an attempt to reconcile religion with reason.
3) This attempt leads necessarily to difference of
opinion which may have awful consequences for
the very existence of a community. Difference of
opinion, if not honest (and unfortunately it is
generally not honest), must lead to utter
disintegration. The Musalmans of India are now in
the third stage; or, perhaps, partly in the second
partly in the third. This period in the life of our
community appears to me to be extremely critical;
but I am glad that there [are] forces of a different
nature at work which have a tendency to preserve
the solidarity of the community – though their
influence, I fear, will be only temporary.

if Turkey decides to deregulate prostitution, they just might be in the second stage. but when you speak of secularism you are speaking of the first stage!
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