Excerpts from "Reconstruction of Religious Thought" of Iqbal

it is obvious that iqbal had never seen a proper book of fiqh in islam, let alone read a book on usul al-fiqh.

I have given you some idea of the history and working of Ijtihād in modern Islam. I now proceed to see whether the history and structure of the Law of Islam indicate the possibility of any fresh interpretation of its principles. In other words, the question that I want to raise is– Is the Law of Islam capable of evolution? Horten, Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of Bonn, raises the same question in connexion with the Philosophy and Theology of Islam.

 

shameless kowtowing to the turkish model which in hindsight is a failed model. at least people can now see how iqbal was wrong and his idiotic cheering of the scoundrel ita-turk's model. may the kamalists be wiped off the face of this earth.

The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real– a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle. To her the growing complexities of a mobile and broadening life are sure to bring new situations suggesting new points of view, and necessitating fresh interpretations of principles which are only of an academic interest to a people who have never experienced the joy of spiritual expansion.

 

more:

It is clear from these lines how beautifully the poet has adopted the Comtian idea of the three stages of man’s intellectual development, i.e. theological, metaphysical, and scientific– to the religious outlook of Islam.

 

intellectual slavery:

Let us now see how the Grand National Assembly has exercised this power of Ijtihād in regard to the institution of Khilāfat. According to Sunni Law, the appointment of an Imām or Khalīfah is absolutely indispensable. The first question that arises in this connexion is this– Should the Caliphate be vested in a single person?

Turkey’s Ijtihād is that according to the spirit of Islam the Caliphate or Imāmate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected Assembly. The religious doctors of Islam in Egypt and India, as far as I know, have not yet expressed themselves on this point.

Personally, I believe the Turkish view is perfectly sound. It is hardly necessary to argue this point. The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam.

 

more jahalat:

Centuries ago Ibn Khaldūn, who personally believed in the condition of Qarshīyat in the Khalīfah, argued much in the same way. Since the power of the Quraysh, he says, has gone, there is no alternative but to accept the most powerful man as Imām in the country where he happens to be powerful.

Thus Ibn Khaldūn, realizing the hard logic of facts, suggests a view which may be regarded as the first dim vision of an International Islam fairly in sight today. Such is the attitude of the modern Turk, inspired as he is by the realities of experience, and not by the scholastic reasoning of jurists who lived and thought under different conditions of life.

 

so-called 'great' work of iqbal on islam reads like a google powered essay.

 

http://www.allamaiqbal.com/poet/prose/english/stray.pdf

on pg 24 of pdf, "sir" "allama" says:

on pg 60, the usual inferiority complex-infested apologia of colonials who look up to saab

polygamy is not an evil. it is a Sunnah of the Beloved of Allah.

his apologetic "justifications" for it are nothing other than begging and pleading to saab. we don't need to "justify" Islam to the kuffar. we don't need to tell them if pork causes tape worm. we will not eat it even if it is the healthiest food available.

in these times, this Sunnah needs to be revived, if only with the intention that it is not demonized and called "evil" by maghreb-nawaz juhalaa and that the Muslim culture and traditions are not called as "backwards" and so on. i am not ashamed to say i'm a very fiery advocate for it, yes despite all our societal problems worldwide, be it in the east or the west.

i forget now, but in one risalah of Ala Hazrat, wherein he proves the tafdil of Sayyidina Ghawth Al-A3zdham over Shaykh Ahmad Ar-Rifa3i, Ala Hazrat has cited a saying of the blessed Ghawth where he himself says that he has married 4 pious ladies at different times in life in accordance to Sunnah, and therefore he has completed one Sunnah more than Shaykh Ar-Rifa3i

i admit i don't know much about his life and works, but this "sir" character seems to be very similar to the jamaluddin afghani, and rashed rida types. yes, i don't pay respects to anyone crowned as "sir" by the kafirs. my guards go up.

 

http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction/

 

Nor is there any reason to suppose that the word Jannat (garden) as used here means the supersensual paradise from which man is supposed to have fallen on this earth. According to the Qur’an, man is not a stranger on this earth.

“And We have caused you to grow from the earth”, says the Qur’an.The Jannat, mentioned in the legend, cannot mean the eternal abode of the righteous. In the sense of the eternal abode of the righteous, Jannat isdescribed by the Qur’an to be the place “wherein the righteous will pass to one another the cup which shall engender no light discourse, no motive to sin.”It is further described to be the place “wherein no weariness shall reach the righteous, nor forth from it shall they be cast.”

In the Jannat mentioned in the legend, however, the very first event that took place was man’s sin of disobedience followed by his expulsion. In fact, the Qur’an itself explains the meaning of the word as used in its own narration. In the second episode of the legend the garden is described as a place “where there is neither hunger, nor thirst, neither heat nor nakedness.”

I am, therefore, inclined to think that the Jannat in the Qur’anic narration is the conception of a primitive state in which man is practically unrelated to his environment and consequently does not feel the sting of human wants the birth of which alone marks the beginning of human culture.



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aH: count factual errors in the below paragraph; it is a contiguous one, which i have separated for easy reading:
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Ibn Taimiyyah was brought up in Hanbalite tradition. Claiming freedom of Ijtihād for, himself he rose in revolt against the finality of the schools, and went back to first principles in order to make a fresh start.

Like Ibn Hazm– the founder of Zahirī school of law–he rejected the Hanafite principle of reasoning by analogy and Ijmā‘ as understood by older legists;for he thought agreement was the basis of all superstition. And there is no doubt that, considering the moral and intellectual decrepitude of his times, he was right in doing so.

In the sixteenth century Suyūtī claimed the same privilege of Ijtihād to which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each century.

But the spirit of Ibn Taimīyyah’s teaching found a fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd, described by Macdonald as the “cleanest spot in the decadent world of Islam.” It is really the first throb of life in modern Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable, directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sanūsī movement, the Pan-Islamic movement,and the Bābī movement, which is only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism.

The great puritan reformer, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, who was born in 1700,studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout the whole world of Islam.

He was similar in spirit to Ghazālī’s disciple, Muhammad Ibn Tūmart– the Berber puritan reformer of Islam who appeared amidst the decay of Muslim Spain, and gave her a fresh inspiration. We are, however, not concerned with the political career of this movement which was terminated by the armies of Muhammad ‘Alī Pāshā.

The essential thing to note is the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion. While it rises in revolt against the finality of the schools, and vigorously asserts the right of private judgement, its vision of the past is wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on the traditions of the Prophet.