By: Dr. Uzma Saeed
In a letter to Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum Iqbal wrote, ‘I have spent most of my life in the study of Western Philosophy, and its perspectives have become second nature for me; intentionally or unintentionally I study the facts of Islam from the same viewpoint (Khutbat-e-Iqbal by Justice Javed Iqbal).
The entire focus of Iqbal’s work was on articulating the Western philosophical and scientific insights in terms of customary Islamic discourse in order to persuade his Muslim audience that the change, progress and innovation in religious thought were legitimate and consistent with Islamic principles. Iqbal’s thought was informed by Western philosophical perspectives, developments in natural and cognitive sciences in the West as well as Muslim and Eastern philosophical thought. However, Iqbal never followed the ideas of another thinker or school of thought passively in their entirety. His mind sought a synthesis and he sounded out what he thought was good and relevant from the untenable and outdated ideas of all thinkers whether Eastern, Western, Muslim or Indian. More...