The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam
By Sir Muhammad Iqbal

A landmark series of seven lectures delivered between 1928 and 1929 (first published 1930, expanded 1934), in which the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal reexamines the foundations of Islamic thought — knowledge, revelation, the self, free will, and the spirit of Muslim culture — in dialogue with modern science and Western philosophy. Widely regarded as one of the most important works of twentieth-century Islamic philosophy.

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Excerpt

The Qur'an is a book which emphasizes ‘deed’ rather than ‘idea’. There are, however, men to whom it is not possible organically to assimilate an alien universe by re-living, as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests. Moreover, the modern man, by developing habits of concrete thought — habits which Islam itself fostered at least in the earlier stages of its cultural career — has rendered himself less capable of that experience which he further suspects because of its liability to illusion. The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt, done good work in shaping and directing the evolution of religious experience in Islam; but their latter-day representatives, owing to their ignorance of the modern mind, have become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience.