Iqbal, Sir Muhammad

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Iqbal, Sir Muhammad (1876–1938). Indian Muslim poet and philosopher. Iqbal's reinterpretation of Islam in the light of the Sūfī heritage and W. philosophy (especially Bergson's creative evolution) gave a fresh stimulus to Indian Islam. His powerful poetry in Urdu and Persian inspired a new generation of Indian Muslims to shape and improve their condition of life, and was one of the chief forces behind the creation of Pakistan. The salient features of Iqbal's thought are the notion of reality as pure duration, with God and man interrelating dynamically in the universe; and the marriage of intellect and love in transforming humans to a higher being. Of his ten major works, Bang-i-Dara (1924), Bal-i-Jibril (1935), and Zarb-i-Kalim (1936) were well received by educated Indian Muslims. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1928) was a more systematic elaboration of Iqbal's Islamic vision, arguing for a return to ijtihād and the establishment of ijmāʿ through a legislative institution in the reformation of Islamic law.

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