Mohammedan Thinker

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29070, 5 December 1959, Page 3

Mohammedan Thinker

Iqbal, His Art and Thought. By Abdul Vahid. John Murray. 254 pp.

Sir Mohammed Iqbal has been described as the greatest thinker produced by the Mohammedan world during the last thousand years. A man of great intellectual and spiritual gifts—poet, philosopher, educationalist and politician, it is likely that he will appeal most to the Western world as the one who did so much to liberalise the social thought of Islam.

Iqbal was that the social stagnation of the Muslim world was due to philosophical systems which stressed self-nega-tion and self-abandonment. The over-emphasis on asceticism and renunciation was incapable of sparking off the kind of convictions necessary for the proper ordering of society and the much needed development of industry. Iqbal demonstrated that a practical concern for material welfare was as indigenous to Islam as asceticism and renunciation. Hence, although Iqbal is in the direct mystical tradition of the Sufis, he teaches a more affirmative way* of life which anyone can follow. Love coupled with detachment, courage and tolerance is the backbone of his teaching. Instead of self-adandonment and self-negation Iqbal preaches a gospel of self-reverence, the full and harmonious development of all man’s capacities, a development towards perfection which requires continuous personal effort. Balancing this self-affirmation by individuals is the suppression of that perverse individualism which precludes any collective or concerted action.

Vahid’s study of Iqbal’s poetry and philosophy, the fruit of over 40 years’ work, was originally printed privately in Lahore, in this English edition, which has been revised and enlarged, Vahid traces the development of Iqbal as poet and philosopher, illustrating the account with numerous extracts from literature and from Iqbal’s letters. If it is hard to gain any real appreciation qf poetry in translation, the reader is left in no doubt that this great Islamic figure was. one of the leading thinkers of our time. ‘‘lqbal; His Art and Thought” helps to fill a serious gap in the Western literature on the Mohammedan world.