Hazara Islamicus (Dec 2012)
Views of 'Allama Muammad Iqbal on some Religious Concepts: Tawheed, Risalah, Ijtihad, and Ummah
Abstract
The poet-philosopher 'Allama Muammad Iqbal (1877-1938), one of the most distinguished and dominant figures of 20th century, who belonged to generation that was exposed to modern education, is one of those great scholars who have left a legacy behind to be followed by other scholars. He had a profound insight into the holy Qur’an and Sunnah of the Prophet Muammad (PBUH) and had delved deep in the Western thought. His Islamic knowledge and his study of philosophy in the West equipped him with a good access to the sources of both Islam and Western modernism. His approach to Islam is thus on broader basis than that of the traditional theologians and the Western educated Muslims, as seen particularly in his “The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”. In this direction, this paper discusses the views and thoughts, opinions and observations, of Iqbal on four important Islamic concepts viz., Tawheed, Risalah, Ijtihad (and Ijma '), and Ummah respectively. All these concepts are of great importance in understanding Iqbal’s approach to Islam and Islamic fundamental and basic principles.
