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Reading group: Iqbal’s Reconstruction, Lecture I (“Knowledge and Religious Experience”)

Hamza Qureshi Fellow
· 5 replies
Faith & reasonIslamicMuhammad Iqbal#iqbal#religious-experience
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The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam began as lectures Iqbal delivered in Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh in 1928–29. They were published in Lahore in 1930, and the 1934 Oxford edition added a seventh lecture, "Is Religion Possible?"

Lecture I sets the agenda. Iqbal argues that religious experience is a genuine source of knowledge, alongside sense perception and reason, and that it deserves the same critical examination. He draws freely on William James, Bergson and Whitehead, and on the Qur'an's repeated calls to observe nature and history. He also criticises al-Ghazali for, as Iqbal sees it, grounding religion in mystical experience because he had despaired of thought.

Let's take two weeks over it. My question for us: is Iqbal's analogy between religious experience and sense perception a strong one, or does it fail at the point of public verification?

5 replies

  1. Layla Haddad

    Fellow

    I'm in. I'll flag in advance that Iqbal's reading of al-Ghazali is, I think, unfair. Ghazali didn't despair of thought; he wrote some of the most rigorous logic and theology of his age after his crisis. But Iqbal's caricature is useful to argue with.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Hamza Qureshi

      Fellow

      Layla, agreed that he's unfair to Ghazali. I suspect it served a rhetorical purpose: he wanted his audience, educated in the colonial university, to see Islam as dynamic, and Ghazali was the symbol of everything he thought had become static.

      Helpful · 3
  2. Arjun Iyer

    Fellow

    James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) is a good companion, since Iqbal clearly read it closely. James's criteria of noetic quality, ineffability and so on are the background to Iqbal's claims. It is fascinating to see a Muslim philosopher use a Harvard psychologist to defend mysticism.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Reza Tehrani

    Fellow

    It helps to remember that Iqbal's doctoral thesis in Munich (1908) was on the development of metaphysics in Persia. He knew the Persian mystical and philosophical tradition from the inside, so his use of James is not a replacement for that tradition but a translation of it.

  4. Sana Mir

    Fellow

    I'm reading along. As a journalist, what strikes me is how much he cares about the public nature of knowledge. He keeps insisting religious experience must be tested by its fruits. That's exactly where your question, Hamza, about public verification bites hardest.

    Helpful · 1

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