Iqbal’s views on an ideal society for the growth of an individual

• Main Authors: Abdul Razak, Mohd Abbas, Laluddin, Hayatullah
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IIUM-Today 2024
• Subjects: BL Religion; BPL Islamic education; L Education (General)
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/114120/7/114120_Iqbal%E2%80%99s%20views%20on%20an%20ideal%20society.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/114120/; https://news.iium.edu.my/?p=180180

Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who is famously called the Poet of the East (Shair-e-Mashriq) was a multi-dimensional personality. Somewhat like the polymath scholars of the Golden Era of the Muslims (750-1258), Iqbal seems to be a versatile scholar who had a mastery over many varied disciplines of knowledge. He was a philosopher, barrister, Sufi scholar, statesman, poet, sociologist, educationist, religious reformer and so forth. Appeared on the world stage in the era after the fall of the Moghul Empire in 1858, as a young Muslim scholar, Iqbal, studied the problems of the people living in the East and West. After conducting an in-depth analysis, through his philosophical essays known as, ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ and with the use of poetry, Iqbal the great poet-philosopher prescribed the remedy to rectify the situations he had observed in the East and the West. Like a physician, with his discerning mind, particularly for the Muslim Ummah, he suggested solutions for it to attain its freedom from the European colonial powers. His brilliance in analyzing and suggesting solutions won him the title Hakeemul Ummat (the Sage/Physician of the Ummah). Philosophy and poetry are the two vehicles he used as a means to admonish the masses in the West and East.