13th “Friend” Awards for Service to Islam

Muhammad, IDBAL

(1877-1938)

Indian Muslim Thinker, Poet

He was born in Siyalkut, near the Kashmir border in the Punjab province. Although there are different information about his date of birth, he recorded in his doctoral thesis that he was born on 2 Zilkade 1294 (November 8, 1877). His father Nur Muhammad, who was a Sufi mystic, and his mother Imam Bibi had a significant influence on the development of his religious personality. He received his primary and secondary education in Siyalkut; in 189S he took courses in philosophy and law at the Government College in Lahore. Two figures are known to have left lasting impressions on Iqbal during his upbringing. The first of these was Mawlana Mir Hasan, from whose wisdom and guidance he benefited since childhood, and the other was his teacher Thomas Arnold. Arnold recognized Iqbal’s talent and arranged for him to attend Cambridge University (1905). In Cambridge, Iqbal met the famous Hegelian philosopher Mc Taggart and the psychologist James Ward and studied philosophy, especially under Mc Taggart. Meanwhile, he became close to the orientalists Reynold Alleyne Nicholson and Edward Granville Browne. After completing his studies at Cambridge in 1907, he went to Munich, where he earned a doctorate in philosophy with The Development of Metaphysics in Persia , which he completed under the supervision of Fritz Hommel. Iqbal then returned to Lahore and taught English and philosophy at the Oriental and Government colleges for two years. Although he made his living largely as a lawyer, he never considered this work, which he continued until 1934, as his main interest.

The situation in the Islamic world led Iqbal, like other Indian Muslim intellectuals, to the idea that Islamic nations needed a renaissance. In 1922, he was given the title of “sir” by the British administration, but he did not use this title. He was a member of the Punjab Legislative Council from 1926 to 1929. In 1928-1929, he gave lectures on the re-establishment of Islamic thought at the universities of Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh. In 1930, he presided over the annual meeting of the Muslim League of India in Allahabad. The first serious step towards the establishment of the independent State of Pakistan was taken with the ideas Iqbal put forward in the opening speech of this meeting. In 1931, the Second World War was held. He was appointed vice president of the World Islamic Congress at the International Islamic Conference. In 1931, the Second World Conference was held in London to discuss the issue of granting limited freedom of government to the people of India. Iqbal attended the Round Table Conference, where he was in close contact with Muhammad Ali Jinnah. On his way back, he visited Italy and Egypt and participated in the World Islamic Council meeting in Palestine. In 1932, the III. He attended the Round Table Conference and after the meeting he traveled to Paris to meet with Henri Bergson and Louis Massignon. From there, Iqbal traveled to Is pania, where he visited the Ulucami of Qurtuba and prayed in the mosque after obtaining permission with difficulty, which became an unforgettable memory. He wrote a poem about this titled “Masjid-i Kurtuba”. From Spain, he went to Italy and met with Mussolini and asked him to treat the Muslims of North Africa well. In 1933, upon the invitation of King Nadir Shah of Afghanistan, he traveled to Kabul with Suleiman Nedvi and held talks on the reorganization of Afghanistan’s administrative system. Iqbal contracted laryngeal cancer in 1934 and lost his voice, and later his eyesight also weakened. He started having financial problems. Nevertheless, he remained interested in the affairs and future of his people and the Islamic world. He died on April 21, 1938 and was buried at the foot of the minaret of Masjid-e-Shahi in Lahore. Muhammad Iqbal had three marriages and his son from his second marriage, Javid Iqbal, made important efforts to promote his father’s works and thoughts. Muhammad Iqbal is one of the most widely studied, researched and published Islamic thinkers of the last period. An Iqbal Academy was established in Karachi, which has been publishing a journal, Iqbal Review, since 1960. In addition, scholarly meetings are organized in various countries, especially in Pakistan, on various occasions, especially on the anniversary of Iqbal’s death. His grandsons Munib Iqbal and Walid Iqbal continue this work with great care.

Literary Direction: Iqbal made a name for himself in his country as a poet at a young age. “Himalaya”, “Orphan’s Cry”, “Candle and Butterfly”. The main subject of his lyrical poems, mostly in ghazals, including verses such as “Terane-i Hindi”, is India with its nature, people and history. Hence, poems with a patriotic spirit have been of great interest among Muslims as well as other Indians. Iqbal’s writings after his return to his country from Europe are seen to deal with religious and philosophical issues with increasing intensity. After his Urdu poems titled “Shikwa” in 1911 and “Cevab- ı Shikwa” in 1912, he reached the peak of his fame with his long elegy titled Esrar-ı Hôdi published in 191 S, followed by Rumuz-i bi-Hôdi. As a result of his admiration for Mevlana Jalalaluddin Rumi, he wrote both works in Persian in the style of Meşnevi-i Ma’nevi, and although he dealt with philosophical subjects, he managed to preserve the intensity of emotion. Iqbal’s turn to Persian not only allowed him to appeal to a wider audience, but also united him with a long tradition. Iqbal. In his poem Peyam-ı Meşrık, which is considered a response to Goethe’s divan (West-oestlicher Divan), he returns to lyricism. Cavidname, written in 1927, is considered his masterpiece; the Persian-language work is a kind of verse drama. Iqbal says that clarity in poetry is not essential, and even ambiguous elements in poetry can be useful in influencing the world of emotion. But it is possible to characterize his understanding of art as “functionalism”. Art should give life to man and society, strengthen the self, and, like the staff in the hand of Moses, destroy the false and reveal the truth (The Rod of Moses, pp. 60, 73). His poetry has one main goal: To teach Muslims to develop their personalities and regain their strength, both as individuals and as a community.

Understanding Science, Philosophy and Religion: Iqbal saw science, philosophy and religion in close relationship with each other. The conclusions of science are public and verifiable. Thanks in part to science, it is possible to predict and control events. With the constant development of science, people’s views change, and there is a constant process of reconstruction in philosophical and religious thought. Philosophy, as a free research activity, is skeptical of all kinds of authority; its function is to get to the bottom of the judgments and assumptions that human thought accepts uncritically and to uncover the reasons for their formation. According to Iqbal, religion also falls within the field of philosophical research, but philosophy, in making judgments about religion, must acknowledge its central place and recognize its function in the process of thought-based composition. Philosophy, which clings to a rational and intellectual point of view, looks at reality from a distance because it does not want to go beyond the world of concepts while trying to fit all the richness of experience into a system. Religion, on the other hand, gives us the power to make the truth almost melt within us. In the final analysis, philosophy is a theory and religion is a life. Unlike science and philosophy, religion seeks to understand and interpret the whole truth. In order to succeed in this, it has undertaken the task of combining and fusing all the data of human experience. Science tries to capture the observable side of reality, religion tries to capture the essence of reality by making use of these observations. The field of experience interpreted by religion (religious experience) cannot be reduced to any field or data of science. For Iqbal, religion is both emotion, doctrine and activity.

Re-establishment: Iqbal, who had a dynamic and organic understanding of philosophy, thought that it was necessary for Islamic countries to engage in a reestablishment activity in areas such as the individual, society, and theoretical thought. Because religious thought in Islam has lost its dynamism, especially in the last five centuries. In the face of the great developments observed in our time, the re-establishment of religious thought in Islam has become an indispensable task. There are two important phases to fulfill this task: The analysis and criticism of the traditional structure and the reconstruction of contemplation in the light of developments. In this framework, Iqbal criticizes the Islamic tradition and points out the aspects of classical theology and philosophy that are incompatible with the spirit of the Qur’an. In this way, he tries to bring the experiential and rational aspect of revelation back to the forefront. He then turns the same critical gaze to the tasvwufa, stating that he has not been able to come up with anything new by utilizing modern thought and experience, and that he is still continuing his outdated methods. The thinker, who reviews Islamic law and its main principles with the same approach, tries to reinterpret the Qur’an and Sunnah in the light of new developments and needs, and argues that unless the activity of ijtihad is resumed, both Islamic thought and religious life cannot be revitalized.

His Interest in Turkey and Turks: Iqbal, who was interested in the recent troubles of the Turkish nation, expressed this interest as early as 1911 in a poem he wrote for the martyrs of the Tripolitan War. Here, Iqbal is in the presence of the Prophet. When the Prophet asked him what he had brought as a gift, he said that he had brought a gift not even found in paradise and presented the bottle containing the blood of Turkish martyrs to the Prophet. Iqbal praised the Turks as the only Muslim nation that was able to preserve its independence during the colonial period, but he also saw them as having the potential to realize the “Islamic Renaissance”. The role of Turks in the history of Islam and the Tripoli Balkan. 1. Iqbal admired their heroism in the World Wars and the War of Independence and hoped for the future. The abolition of the sultanate and the abolition of the caliphate were also applauded by Iqbal and considered as a courageous jurisprudence within Islam. According to him, among Muslim nations, only the Turks have been able to break free from the lethargy of dogmatism and have made progress in renewing themselves with a consciousness of intellectual freedom. However, although Iqbal wanted to see the developments and Westernization movements that emerged in the following years as a transitional necessity, when he came to the conclusion that this was not the case, he openly criticized them in Javidname and expressed his regret. According to Iqbal, turning to the West with an imitative understanding is to move away from oneself. However, despite all these statements, Iqbal is ultimately ambivalent about the Turks. On the one hand, he criticizes secularization and Westernization, and on the other, he hopes that this process will end with a return to true Islam. As a matter of fact, in response to Nehru’s statement that the Turks had abandoned their religion and embarked on the path of progress, Nehru stated that “the Turks did not give up their religion, on the contrary, they turned towards a truer Islam”.

MEHMET S. AYDIN

(summary of TDV Islam Encyclopedia Muhammad Iqbal article)

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