ABSTRACT
Islam is a religion of reform, not stagnation: that conviction is reflected throughout the essays in this section on the “Essence of Religion.” I conclude this part of the book with a discussion on Muhammad Iqbal, the Indian Muslim poet and philosopher who eloquently advocated the “reconstruction of religious thought” in Islam. Iqbal, who died in 1938, represented the attempt of a generation of Muslim modernists to resist Western modernity with a revitalised Islam. We need to hear that message as much at century's end as at the beginning.
It is fitting that the legacy of Iqbal, a proponent of “Islamic universalism,” is now the common heritage of the Muslim world at large, not just that of India or Pakistan. Indeed, this article was first presented at the 1997 International Symposium on Iqbal held in Kuala lumpur. (It was subsequently published in Al-Nahdah, Volume 17, Nos. 1–2). like many of the essays in this section, it concludes not with a statement of tribute but with a question—and a challenge to Muslims today.
