Muhammad Iqbal
Perhaps the most important figure in modern Islam,
Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was a mystic and theologian
whose highly original and creative ideas have been widely
influential but have not yet been surpassed.  Much of what he
said is still awaiting the kind of critical examination and
appreciation that could match his own genius.  Known mostly
for his ground-breaking poetry or for his vision of a Muslim
homeland in the Indian Subcontinent, Iqbal deserves to be
taken seriously for many other, and more important, reasons
as well, not only by Muslims but also by anyone concerned
with the nature and destiny of humankind.

While Iqbal did not write any formal exegesis of the Qur’an,
he did succeed in elucidating many subtleties of the Islamic
Scripture both in his poetry and prose.  Just as Jalaluddin
Rumi had earlier translated the wisdom of the Qur’an into
poetic verse so that it could be easily accessible to the non-
Arabic speaking masses, Iqbal has played the same role in the
modern period.

Among his many achievements, Iqbal’s notion of
“reconstruction” stands out as being supremely relevant to
the reform and revival of Islam under the conditions of late
modernity.  Iqbal brought to the fore the urgent need and the
immense significance of developing a new kalam, i.e., of
reconstructing the Islamic philosophic theology in the light of
modern knowledge and of rebuilding the edifice of religious
belief on the basis of newly available scientific data.
Iqbal attempted to demonstrate that the intellectual and
scientific progress that was achieved by European societies
during the last few centuries was actually a manifestation
and unfolding of the Qur’anic spirit.  According to Iqbal, the
birth of Islam was the birth of inductive intellect; it was the
Qur’anic emphasis on observation and experience, as well as
its stress on the concrete and the finite, which gave rise to the
scientific method of inquiry.  The scientific spirit was born as
a result of the imperative by the Qur'an to give up all
superstitious and fanciful beliefs, to rely on the senses and the
faculty of reason for gaining knowledge of the material world,
and to contemplate the physical and natural phenomena
because these are signs of God.  It was under the influence of
such Qur’anic teachings that the inductive method of inquiry
blossomed among the Arabs, before being carried through the
universities in Muslim Spain into Europe, paving the way for
the Renaissance.  It was in this sense that Iqbal saw the
intellectual side of the European culture as “only a further
development of some of the most important phases of the
culture of Islam.”