Explain briefly what Iqbal means by each of the following terms and phrases that he uses in his book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam . Note down the page numbers on which you found...

Explain briefly what Iqbal means by each of the following terms and phrases that he uses in his bookThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Note down the page numbers on which you found your answer.

1. prophecy


2. prophetic consciousness


3. inductive reasoning


4. "concrete spirit of the Quran, and the speculative nature of Greek philosophy"


5. "the finite is an idol"


6. "dynamic conception of the universe"


7. "Tauhid"


8. ijtihad


9. "loyalty to God virtually amounts to man's loyalty to his own ideal nature"


10. "the causes of this intellectual attitude which has reduced the Law of Islam practically to a state of immobility"


11. "In Islam it is the same reality which appears as Church looked at from one point of view and State from another."


12. "equality, solidarity and freedom"


13. "Modern culture based as it is on egoism is… only another form of barbarism."


14. "Universal Caliphate"


15. "League of Nations"


16. "liberalism"


17. "a people possessing a self-consciousness of their own."


18. "assimilative spirit of Islam"


19. Ijma


20. "spiritual democracy"

THE LIGIOUS THOUG IN ISLAM BY SIR MOHAMMAD IQBAL OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD I 9 3 4 THE SPIRIT OF MUSLIM CULTURE 'MUKAMMAD of Arabia ascended the highest Heaven and returned. I swear by God that if I had reached that point, I should never have returned.' These are the words of a great Muslim saint, Abdul Quddus of Gangoh. In the whole range of Sufi literature it will be probably difficult to find words which, in a single sentence, disclose such an acute perception of the psychological difference between the prophetic and the mystic types of consciousness. The mystic does not wish to return from the repose of 'unitary experience'; and even when he does return, as he must, his return does not mean much for mankind at large. The prophet's return is creative. He returns to insert himself into the sweep of time with a view to control the forces of history, and thereby to create a fresh world of ideals. For the mystic the repose of 'unitary experience' is something final; for the prophet it is the awakening, within him, of world-shaking psychological forces, calculated to com- pletely transform the human world. The desire to see his religious experience transformed into a living world- force is supreme in the prophet. Thus his return amounts to a kind of pragmatic test of the value of his religious experience. In its creative act the prophet's will judges both itself and the world of concrete fact in which it endeavours to objectify itself. In penetrating the impervious material before him the prophet discovers himself for himself, and unveils himself to the eye of history. Another way of judging the value of a prophet's religious experience, there- fore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message. In this lecture I want to confine myself to the latter alone. The idea is not to give you a description The Spirit of Muslim Culture = 19 of the achievements of Islam in the domain of knowledge. I want rather to fix your gaze on some of the ruling concepts of the culture of Islam in order to gain an insight into the process of ideation that underlies them, and thus to catch a glimpse of the soul that found expression through them. Before, however, I proceed to do so it is necessary to under- stand the cultural value of a great idea in Islam-I mean the finality of the institution of prophethood. A prophet may be defined as a type of mystic conscious- ness in which 'unitary experience' tends to overflow its boundaries, and seeks opportunities of redirecting or re- fashioning the forces of collective life. In his personality the finite centre of life sinks into his own infinite depths only to spring up again, with fresh vigour, to destroy the old, and to disclose the new directions of life. This contact with the root of his own being is by no means peculiar to man. Indeed the way in which the word 'Wahy' (inspira- tion) is used in the Quran shows that the Quran regards it as a universal property of life; though its nature and character are different at different stages of the evolution of life. The plant growing freely in space, the animal develop- ing a new organ to suit a new environment, and a human being receiving light from the inner depths of life, are all cases of inspiration varying in character according to. the needs of the recipient, or the needs of the species to which the recipient belongs. Now during the minority of mankind psychic energy develops what I call prophetic conscious- ness-a mode of economizing individual thought and choice by providing ready-made judgements, choices, and ways of action. With the birth of reason and critical faculty, however, life, in its own interest, inhibits the formation and growth of non-rational modes of consciousness through which psychic energy flowed at an earlier stage of human evolution. Man is primarily governed by passion and instinct. Inductive reason, which alone makes man master of his environment, is an achievement; and when once born 120 The S*rit of Muslim Culture it must be reinforced by inhibiting the growth of other modes of knowledge. There is no doubt that the ancient world produced some great systems of philosophy at a time when man was comparatively primitive and governed more or less by suggestion. But we must not forget that this system-building in the ancient world was the work of abstract thought which cannot go beyond the systematiza- tion of vague religious beliefs and traditions, and gives us no hold on the concrete situations of life. Looking at the matter from this point of view, then, the Prophet of Islam seems to stand between the ancient and the modem world. In so far as the source of his revelation is concerned he belongs to the ancient world; in so far as the spirit of his revelation is concerned he belongs to the modem world. In him life discovers other sources of knowledge suitable to its new direction. The birth of Islam, as I hope to be able presently to prove to your satis- faction, is the birth of inductive intellect. In Islam prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition. This involves the keen perception that life cannot for ever be kept in leading strings; that in order to achieve full self-consciousness man must finally be thrown back on his own resources. The abolition of priesthood and heredi- tary kingship in Islam, the constant appeal to reason and experience in the Quran, and the emphasis that it lays on Nature and History as sources of human knowledge, are all different aspects of the same idea of finality. The idea, however, does not mean that mystic experience, which qualitatively does not differ from the experience of the prophet, has now ceased to exist as a vital fact. Indeed the Quran regards both 'Anfus' (self) and 'Afaq' (world) as sources of knowledge. God reveals His signs in inner as well as outer experience, and it is the duty of man to judge the knowledge-yielding capacity of all aspects of experience. The idea of finality, therefore, should not be taken to sug- gest that the ultimate fate of life is complete displacement The Spirit of Muslim Culture 121 of emotion by reason. Such a thing is neither possible nor desirable. The intellectual value of the idea is that it tends to create an independent critical attitude towards mystic experience by generating the belief that all personal authority, claiming a supernatural origin, has come to an end in the history of man. This kind of belief is a psycho- logical force which inhibits the growth of such authority. The function of the idea is to open up fresh vistas of knowledge in the domain of man's inner experience. Just as the first half of the formula of Islam has created and fostered the spirit of a critical observation of man's outer experience by divesting the forces of nature of that divine character with which earlier cultures had clothed them. Mystic experience, then, however unusual and abnormal, must now be regarded by a Muslim as a perfectly natural experience, open to critical scrutiny like other aspects of human experience. This is clear from the Prophet's own attitude towards Ibn-i-Sayyad's psychic experiences. The function of Sufiism in Islam has been to systematize mystic experience; though it must be admitted that Ibn-i-Khaldun was the only Muslim who approached it in a thoroughly sc' ntific spirit. &ut inner experience is only one source of human d o w - ledge. According to the Quran there are two other sources of knowledge-Nature and History; and it is in tapping these sources of knowledge that the spirit of Islam is seen at its best. The Quran sees signs of the ultimate Reality in the 'sun', the 'moon', 'the lengthening out of shadows', 'the alternation of day and night', 'the variety of human colour and tongues', 'the alternation of the days of success and reverse among peoples'-in fact in the whole of nature as revealed to the sense-perception of man. And the Muslim's duty is to reflect on these signs and not to pass by them 'as if he is deaf and blind', for he 'who does not see these signs in this life will remain blind to the realities of the life to come'. This appeal to the concrete combined 4056 R 122 Th Spirit of Muslim Culture with the slow realization that, according to the teachings of the Quran, the universe is dynamic in its origin, finite and capable of increase, eventually brought Muslim thinkers into conflict with Greek thought which, in the beginning of their intellectual career, they had studied with so much enthusiasm. Not realizing that the spirit of the Quran was essentially anti-classical, and putting full confidence in Greek thinkers, their first impulse was to understand the Quran in the light of Greek philosophy. In view of the concrete spirit of the Quran, and the speculative nature of Greek philosophy which enjoyed theory and was neglectful of fact, this attempt was foredoomed to failure. And it is what follows their failure that brings out the real spirit of the culture of Islam, and lays the foundation of modern culture in some of its most important aspects. This intellectual revolt against Greek philosophy mani- fests itself in all departments of thought. I am afraid I am not competent enough to deal with it as it discloses itself in Mathematics, Astronomy, and Medicine. I t is clearly visible in the metaphysical thought of the Ash'arite, but appears as a most well-defined phenomenon in the Muslim criticism of Greek Logic. This was only natural; for dis- satisfaction with purely speculative philosophy means the search for a surer method of knowledge. I t was, I think, Nazzam who first formulated the principle of 'doubt' as the beginning of all