The Significance of Iqbal’s Philosophy of Religion and Theology As The Sentient Vision of Life: With Reference To The ‘Reconstruction Of The Religious Thought In Islam’

Abstract

In contemporary Islamic intellectual circles there is a debate that Iqbal was either just a philosopher or he was a theologian and a philosopher of religion also or he was a transcendental thinker of the both arenas. The main theme and objective of this research is to determine the status and reality of this cliché. Though he is well-known for his former position yet his latter status is not unrecognizable. Thus the quest for determining the answer depends largely upon the critical analysis of the dimensions of his intellectual magnitudes and versatility of his interested fields. To bring into light this aspect of his thoughts, it is essential to survey his ideas particularly whatever had been expressed in his Reconstruction of religious Though in Islam. Iqbal’s opus magnum is the bouquet of all beautiful flowers whose fragrance enchants the adherent of all the fields. There are concepts of metaphysics, science religion, theology and mysticism as well. Because all the fields have some overlapping questions and intellectual paradigm of themes thus like a philosopher who had horizontal intellectual approach then he must had touched such nexus of knowledge and must had participated in all the fields. This multidimensional approach toward such over-lapping intellectual approaches becomes the cause of determining the status of a thinker. This research concludes the cliché of Iqbal’s status as a either a theologian or a philosopher.