One of my professors used to get pissed off whenever someone described Iqbal as a "great philosopher". "Do you know what was Iqbal's total contribution to philosophy? Just a PhD thesis", he used to remark.
His poetic genius notwithstanding, I think it would be unfair to call Iqbal a philosopher. His line of thought was more in tune with scholasticsm than "pure" philosophy. He made lot of intellectual summer saults to in his "pious" attempts to reconcile Islamic beliefs with modern Western philosophy. He appears to be an equal opportunity supporter of democracy as well as fascism, Sufism as well as Marxism, nationalism as well as pan-Islamism. These contradictions abound in his works.
Moreover, he leaves lot of thing open to the intrepreation of readers. The way his son, Dr. Javed Iqbal, interprets"spiritual democracy" comes quite close to the "notorious" ideal of secularism. And the way Dr. Israr Ahmed interprets Iqbal's"spiritual democracy", it will take a great leap of faith to call it either "spiritual" or "democracy".
However, considering the suffocating dogmatism prevalent in Muslim society at that time (and even now), his works are still a breath of fresh air. He was undoubtedly an intellectual giant, compared to the trash curned out by Ummah in these times. Some of his ideas were very shocking for "holier than thou" crowd. For the record, his book,"Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam" is BANNED in Saudi Arabia. There's defintely something"dangerous" in his thoughts.
To sum up, he would have done much better if he had circumscribed himself to the only 'p' (poetry) he was good at and not meddled with other p's (politics and philosophy).
Just some random thoughts on Iqbal day!
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