The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is a compilation of lectures delivered by Muhammad Iqbal

Muhammad Iqbal

Sir Muhammad Iqbal , commonly referred to as Allama Iqbal , was a poet and philosopher born in Sialkot, then in the Punjab Province of British India, now in Pakistan...

 on Islamic philosophy

Islamic philosophy

Islamic philosophy is a branch of Islamic studies. It is the continuous search for Hekma in the light of Islamic view of life, universe, ethics, society, and so on...

; it was published in 1930. These lectures were delivered by Iqbal in Madras

Chennai

Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...

, Hyderabad, and Aligarh. The last chapter, "Is Religion Possible", was added to the book from the 1934 Oxford Edition onwards.

In Reconstruction, Iqbal called for a re-examination of the intellectual foundations of Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic philosophy. The book is a major work of modern Islamic thought. It was a major influence on Iranian sociologist Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati

Ali Shariati was an Iranian revolutionary and sociologist, who focused on the sociology of religion. He is held as one of the most influential Iranian intellectuals of the 20th century and has been called the 'ideologue of the Iranian Revolution'.-Biography:Ali....

 and other contemporary Muslim reformers, including Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan is a Swiss academic, poet and writer. He is also a Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Oxford University...

.

Quotes from the book

• ...To have a succession of identical thoughts and feelings is to have no thoughts and feelings at all. Such is the lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically repeating old values...

• ...space, time, and matter are interpretations which thought puts on the free creative energy of God.

• If the aim of religion is the spiritualisation of the heart, then it must penetrate the soul of man, and it can best penetrate the inner man . . . We find that when Muhammad Ibn Tumart—the Mahdi of Muslim Spain—who was Berber by nationality, came to power and established the pontifi cal rule of the Muwahhidun, he ordered for the sake of the illiterate Berbers that the Quran should be translated and read in the Berber language and that the call to prayer should be given in Berber.

• Such is the attitude of the modern Turk, inspired as he is by the realities of experience, and not by the scholastic reasoning of jurists who lived and thought under different conditions of life. To my mind these arguments, if rightly appreciated, indicate the birth of an International ideal, which forming the very essence of Islam, has been hitherto overshadowed or rather displaced by Arabian Imperialism of the earlier centuries in Islam.

• The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that were set free in the world of Islam.

• The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt, done good work in shaping and directing the evolution of religious experience in Islam; but their latter-day representatives, owing to their ignorance of the modern mind, have become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience. They are perpetuating methods which were created for generations possessing a cultural outlook differing, in important respects, from our own

• Hard his lot and frail his being, like a rose leaf, yet no form of reality is so powerful, so inspiring, and so beautiful as the spirit of man.

Chapters

• Knowledge and Religious Experience
• The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience
• The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer
• The Human Ego – His Freedom and Immortality
• The Spirit of Muslim Culture
• The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam
• Is Religion Possible?

Reading

• Iqbal, Muhhamad. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Kitab Bhavan, 2000. ISBN 81-7151-081-7.

Secondary literature

• Raschid, M.S. Iqbal's Concept of God. London: KPI, 1981. ISBN 0-7103-0187-1.

External links

Read online (Warning: Copyright protected in the U.S. until 2025 and in the E.U. until 2009)

• The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Read online at Iqbal Academy Pakistan
• The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Read online at YesPakistan
• Deconstructing Iqbal's Reconstruction
• تجدید فکریات اسلام Read online Urdu translation of The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam at Iqbalcyberlibrary