Imran Khan qouting Allama Iqbal in his book Pakistan: A personal History

1.                   Though Iqbal lived in a historical context that was different from ours in several ways, what he said remains profoundly relevant to us and to our times. In fact, Iqbal’s message is more relevant and important today than that of any other Muslim thinker of the past and present… (Page 319)

2.                   While some famous verses from Iqbal’s poems are often cited in isolation, the core message of his poetry, reflecting his revolutionary spirit, his intrepid imagination and his passionate commitment to justice and the dignity of selfhood, has been excluded from public discourse. (Page 320).

3.                   The decay and decline in Islamic intellectual thought, according to Iqbal, set in five hundred years ago when the doors to ijtihad, a scholarly debate on our religion and its tradition, were closed. (Page 326)

4.                   The third and probably most decisive factor was the Mongols’ destruction in 1258 of Baghdad – the centre of Muslim intellectual life. Had the Mongol hordes not taken over swathes of the Muslim world, our history might have been very different. (Page 327)

 


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