Iqbal Critique of Western Modernity: Examine Iqbal's Critique of Western Modernity and Its Implications for Muslim Societies

Abstract

This essay is a detailed analysis of how Allama Muhammad Iqbal criticized Western modernity and implicated it with far-reaching consequences on the lives of Muslim societies today. Basing his analysis mainly on The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, as well as his poetry and other works, this study discusses the many-sided interaction of Iqbal with the philosophical traditions of Western modernism and his preoccupation with the spiritually sterile and materialistic aspects of that modernism. Iqbal criticized in several dimensions the materialistic bankruptcy of Western materialism, the exploitative character of capitalist imperialism, the vacuity of secular democracy, and the threats of territorial nationalism. But instead of an all-out denial, what Iqbal recommended was an elaborate dialectical strategy that valued Western scientific and intellectual accomplishments while discarding their philosophical underpinnings, grounded in secularism and materialism. This essay has stated that Iqbal's vision of Islamic modernity was an alternative epistemology, which tried to bring about spiritual ambush with material advancement and would provide Muslim societies with a way to renewal without simply copying or dismissing Western modernity. This paper will show how the modern world has remained pertinent to the intellectual philosophies of its inhabitants by showing the relevance of his ideas to the current circumstances of Muslim world to the modernization process and globalization and the issue of decolonisation of knowledge structures in a detailed textual analysis and contextual exploration of the intellectual milieu of Iqbal, who lived his life during the colonial rule in India.

Key Words: Democracy, Economic Imperialism, Political Thought, Modernity, Human Self