Muhammad Iqbal
Muhammad Iqbal
Sir Muhammad Iqbal, widely known as Allama Iqbal, was a poet, philosopher, and politician, as well as an academic, barrister and scholar in British India who is widely regarded as having inspired the Pakistan Movement. He is called the "Spiritual father of Pakistan". He is considered one of the most important figures in Urdu literature, with literary work in both the Urdu and Persian languages...
NationalityPakistani
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth9 November 1877
CountryPakistan
Muhammad Iqbal quotes about
The thought of a limit to perceptual space and time staggers the mind.
It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own.
The Westerners have lost the vision of heaven, they go hunting for the pure spirit in the belly. The pure soul takes not color and scent from the body, and Communism has nothing to do save with the body.
I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.
The standpoint of the man who relies on religious experience for capturing Reality must always remain individual and incommunicable.
Conduct, which involves a decision of the ultimate fate of the agent cannot be based on illusions.
I have never considered myself a poet. Therefore, I am not a rival of anyone, and I do not consider anybody my rival.
I have seen the movement of the sinews of the sky, And the blood coursing in the veins of the moon.
It is the nature of the self to manifest itself, In every atom slumbers the might of the self.
Everything that possesses life dies if it has to live in uncongenial surroundings.
Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny.
It may, however, be said that the level of experience to which concepts are inapplicable cannot yield any knowledge of a universal character, for concepts alone are capable of being socialized.
Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders.
Yet higher religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is essentially experience and recognized the necessity of experience as its foundation long before science learnt to do so.