Allama Iqbal's Concept of Nationalism
Allama Iqbal believed that Islam constructed nationality out of the purely abstract idea, a common spiritual aspiration. In Islam the concept of nationality had no material basis like territory, race, colour, language, script or mode of dress. The sense of solidarity among he Muslim peoples really depended on like-mindedness on a certain view of the world and commitment to sacrifice ones life in defense of this ideal.
Allama Iqbal believed that for a Muslim, Islam was by itself nationalism as well & patriotism. According to Allama Iqbal, Islam transcended all blood relationships and al territorial attachments. It demanded exclusively loyalty to Allah and not to Sovereign Loyalty to Allah implied in Iqbal's terms, "loyalty to one's own ideal self. Allama Iqbal clearl mentioned his views about the abolition of the so-called caliphate and the subsequent growt or republican spirit in the Muslim countries at his times that it was a return to the origin purity of Islam. According to Allama Iqbal this development in Muslim countries at his time was the underlying principle of Islam, which was displaced by Arab imperialism, especial after the fourth caliph.
According to his son Dr Javid Iqbal, "he (Iqbal) envisaged an international Islan when he stated that, Islam was neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a common wealth nations which accepted the racial diversity and the ever changing geographical demarcation for reference only, nor for constraining the social horizon of its members. However h believed that for the time being every Muslim nation should concentrate on itself until all we strong enough to constitute a living family of republics by adjusting their mutual rivalries through the unifying bond of Islam. The uniform spiritual ethos in the Islamic work facilitated the political unity of Muslim states. This combination could assume the form of ideal international state or become League of Muslim states, interlinked with one another through treaties pacts or alliances. Politically the 'solidarity of Islam would breakup if th Muslim states were to go to war against each other and religiously it would fizzle out if t Muslim rebelled against the basic principles of Islam."
A well-known orientalist and Iqbalian Prof. Annemarie Schimmel comments the Allama Iqbal's unique Islamic thought that, "one can apprehend Iqbal's whole set of religious ideas as a commentary of the simple words of the creed and Kenneth Cragg doubt right when he thinks that Iqbal's work "represents an attempt to express a new the fundamental of Islamic faith in terms of modern thought," and that he expressed "the meaning the shahada has come to hold for some modern Muslims".
Prof. Annemarie Schimmel further argues, "Indeed Iqbal has built his system-as for as we can call it a closed system upon the principle of tauhid, the acknowledgement of the absolute uniqueness of God which is reflected in the unity of individual life and the unity of religio-political groups."
The new culture finds the foundation of world unity in the principle of tauhid. Islam as a polity is only a practical means of making this principle a living factor in the intellectual and emotional life of mankind. It demands loyalty to God, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, Loyalty to God virtually amounts to man's loyalty to his own ideal nature."
More than a decade before Allama Iqbal, wrote these lines, and he had given the following title to a most important chapter in the Rumuz, that, the ideal of the Muhammadan Ummah (Religio-political community) is the preservation and propagation of Tauhid. This ideal recurs in all his poetical works, down from the Bang-e-Dara to Payam-e-Mashriq and in his prose works. The principles of Divine unity becomes at the same time, a formative factor for the unity of mankind.
Therefore Allama says, "Religion (Islam) was neither national nor racial nor personal but purely human." Unlike Christianity, Islam from the very beginning was founded as a civil society. The legal principles laid down in the Quran like the Twelve Tables of the Romans carried potentialities of evolution through interpretation. Thus there is no duality of sprit and matter in Islam. Its religious ideal and social order is organic to each other. Allama Iqbal believed that Islam constituted a Millat which transcended all artificial barriers of caste, creed, race and territory. As regards the Indian Muslims, they, he held, cannot be assimilated into a Hindu-dominated Indian political nationalism. While advocating the repudiation of the political nationalism, and espousing the 'Cultural Nationalism' based on religion, Iqbal was well-cognizant of the fact that nationalism, as it was understood in the West, demanded an affiliation to a particular territory without having anything to do with the cultural values of the people.
Furthermore, West's aggressive nationalism fostered antagonism, and bad blood among the nations. Even during his lifetime, Iqbal was appalled at the unprecedented mass destruction wreaked during WWI only on the grounds of nationalism.
In contrast, the cultural nationalism describes people as a nation held together by their inwardly-felt sharing of religious and cultural values. Iqbal's cultural nationalism in terms of India was mainly a desire to facilitate his vision of the reform of the existing Muslim social and economic order. This was done by mobilizing masses, at least, in the areas wherein the Muslims constituted a numerical majority. Iqbal, while clarifying the nature of conflict between nationalism and Islam, wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru: "Nationalism in the sense of love of one's country and even readiness to die for its honour is a part of the Muslim's faith; it comes into conflict with Islam only when it begins to play the role of a political concept and claims to be a principle of human solidarity demanding that Islam should recede to the background of a mere private opinion and cease to be a living factor in the national life."
It may be noted here that Iqbal's proposition was that the nationalism was a problem for the Muslims only in those countries where they were in a numerical minority-such India. However, Islam accommodates nationalism in the countries where they were numerically large enough to assert their right to order their individual and collective lives accordance with the decrees of Shariah.
Iqbal in his poem titled "Hussain Ahmad" on the concept of Islam and nationalism launched into a strong condemnation of the thesis of Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani when insisted on territorial nationalism. Iqbal wrote:
"He [Husain Ahmad of Deoband] preached from the pulpit that the Muslim nation can exist by devotion to one's country! How ignorant he is about the teaching of Muhammad Arabi
So, Allama Iqbal proclaimed that western nationalism is the greatest energy of Islam and humankind in general. According to him "spiritual life ought to form the very basic of a political expression. Territorial patriotism is innate in man, yet his belief traditions and cultur has greater significance. Man should live or die for these values rather that portion of land which his soul has developed a kind of temporary attachment. Iqbal's claim to be the foremost Muslim philosopher of the present age rests chief on his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930). Therein he tried "to re-think the whole system of Islam without completely breaking away with the past". Actually, he tried to do what St Augustine had done for Catholicism several centuries ago.
His significance as a poet and thinker apart, Iqbal was also the ideologue of Pakistan To this day, his presidential address to the Allahabad (1930) League session stands out as the intellectual justification for Muslim nationhood in India. Some less known facts regarding the Great DR. Mohammad Allama Iqbal are as follows Arabic language.
In 1897 Iqbal received the Khan Bahadurddin F.S Jalaluddin Medal for excelling in King George the Fifth conferred Knighthood upon Allama Iqbal therefore he was
given the title Sir. The house where he stayed during his stay in Germany has an inscribed metal plat which reads Mohammad Iqbal the National Philosopher, Poet and Spiritual father Pakistan lived here in 1907.
A Street in Heidelberg Germany is named after Iqbal to honour his stay in Germany. In 1977 the Government of Pakistan issued 3000 silver coins of Rs. 100 to commemorate the 100 birth anniversary of Dr Allama Mohammad Iqbal.
Allama Iqbal also received the titles Shair-e-Mashriq, Mufakkir-e-Pakistan, Musawar-e-Pakistan and Hakeem-ul-Ummat. In 1934 he was honoured with a pension after he had completely stopped his law practice due to his ill health. Iqbal on his return from Spain and Afghanistan had developed a strange throat illness which further resulted in various ailments. On 21st April 1938 Allama Iqbal died after suffering from a prolonged sickness in Lahore.
Iqbal was a great intellectual-cum-politician originating from the biggest European empire, the British Empire--the context being of course that half the population of the whole of the British colonial possessions was Muslim after all, and that Indian Muslims (a quarter of the population of British India) were aware of being the demographic centre of the Muslim world. Through Iqbal's 1930 book, Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, which reads very much like an intellectual autobiography, one learns that Iqbal rejected a fatalistic acceptance of colonization by Muslims his own manner, Iqbal was an innovative political thinker, and not just a poet and philosopher, and he desired his fellow Muslims to make a huge effort at reforming themselves in preparation for the big step towards full political independence. In that book of his, we also learn that he supported Atatürk, who definitely endorsed some form of nationalism, the idea of Muslim countries being united through a loose confederation not being incompatible with it.