ABSTRACT

The foundations of a Muslim state in parts of India were laid some time before the formation of "Pakistan". Being late comers in national awakening in India, the Muslim thinkers sought for ways to overcome their limits. One should bear in mind the names of Shah Waliullah (1703-62),36 Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98)37 and Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938),38 among the outstanding Indian Muslim thinkers, as precursors of the reconstruction of Islam from which the content of Pakistan's philosophical roots were developed. Waliullah, whom Iqbal defined as "perhaps the first Muslim"39 who refuted the former interpretations of the Islamic dogma and searched for a "purification", or a reversion to early Islam. This negation of obsolete forms and the desire to return to essentials blended to cause contradictions in Waliullah's philosophy allowing two opposite trends in later Muslim thought to quote him for different purposes.