Reconstruction of Muslim Political Thought by Fateh Mohammad Malik, is a book specifically on Allama Iqbal’s ideas on reconstruction of Muslim political thought. As such, the title can be misleading. The moment one starts reading the book, the imprint of Iqbal’s celebrated work Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam becomes visible.
Fateh Mohammad Malik is a Pakistani scholar of International repute. He was the Rector of International Islamic University, Islamabad. He has also served at Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad as Director Institute of Pakistan Studies. He was also Iqbal Distinguished Fellow at the University of Heidelberg and South Asia Fellow at Columbia University.
Iqbal in Perspective
The book is divided into two Parts. Part-I contains author’s “uncritical” appreciation of Iqbal’s ideas on Nationalism versus Islam, Pan-Islamism, Muslim Democracy versus Muslim imperialism etc. Part-II contains Selected Political Writings of Iqbal.
In part-I, the author records Iqbal’s lament that Muslims were “potentially” but not “actually” the most emancipated people on the earth in spiritual terms given that no fresh revelation was binding on them after the last Prophet. The “original dynamic spirit of Islam” became a victim of stagnation, Iqbal believed, due both to “myth-making Mullah” and the “life-denying and fact-avoiding mysticism”. Iqbal believed, Muslims could learn from the west whatever they had gained for centuries and they had only to return to their own spirit by learning many ideas like “equality, solidarity and freedom” which were the “essence of Tawhid”. Contrary to popular notions created by his poetry, the author quotes Iqbal while discussing his ideas on Islam and imperialism which can unsettle some deeply-held notions…”In its essence, Islam is not Imperialism. In the abolition of the Caliphate…..it’s only the spirit of Islam that had worked out through the Ataturk”. The author negates interpreting Iqbal’s opposition to separation of Islam and Politics as a justification of theocracy. His was neither a case of theocracy nor a pure pagan secularism and as such the author has a word for both the religionists as well as the ultra liberals that this “extremist” interpretation on both sides of the spectrum has practically taken a toll on Pakistan’s ideological foundations. On the other hand, Iqbal approved of Nationalism as a principle of patriotism but denounced its superimposition on Muslims as an overriding principal of loyalty.
Part-II contains selected political writings of the poet-philosopher. In one of his letters to Dr Nicholson, Iqbal appears as an advocate of “discovering a universal social reconstruction” not to “make a case for Islam”. In the letter, he writes that Islam couldn’t be ignored given its egalitarian teachings and a “spirit of unworldliness so absolutely essential to man in his relations with his neighbours” which, he tells Nicholson, Europe lacks and can still learn from Islam.
In Separate Muslim Nationhood in India, while opining on communal relations in India, he implores Muslim politicians not to be “sensitive to the taunt embodied in that propaganda word-“communalism” while maintaining that basing a constitution on the idea of a “homogeneous India” was to “prepare India unwittingly for a civil war”.
In an interview to The Bombay Chronicle titled Pan-Islamism is Pan-Humanism, Iqbal explains his views expressed earlier that “Islam is Bolshevism plus God” and replies that “Islam is a socialistic religion” but is against extremes of both absolute socialism as well as private property. However, the most significant writing in this section is The Principal of Movement in the Structure of Islam which is a part of Iqbal’s famous work Reconstruction. Given its huge significance, the chapter needs a separate treatment.
Conclusion
The author has done a fine job by giving a perspective on Iqbal which was Iqbal’s own contrary to what popular imagination holds. I suggest it for the uninitiated and those students who are fond of Iqbal’s poetry but need to link it with its philosophical underpinnings. That can help preventing Iqbal’s poetry from being misconstrued.
Syed Shafiq Ahmad is a teacher, at Govt Boys High School, Wani Dorusa Lolab
shafiqsyed27@gmail.com