SIR Muhammad Iqbal’s entire philosophical corpus underpins an ardent striving for humanism to build a better society. Iqbal steadfastly believes in human potential and supports a humane approach towards life. His humanism, thus, comprises a cluster of ideas, including human dignity, freedom, equality, friendship, solidarity, and, in general, human development.
Overall, humanism not only emphasises the centrality of humanity but also its sanctity in this world. It requires the removal of major sources of crimes against humanity: sectarianism, terrorism, war, oppression, exploitation, humiliation, exclusion, discrimination, and the violation of human rights. Despite the unprecedented achievements of science and technology in the age of AI, humanity is facing incessant dehumanisation through various means; for instance, the violation of human rights and genocide in Palestine and in held Kashmir by Israel and India are atrocious crimes against humanity.
Iqbal’s humanism has metaphysical and ethical aspects. Metaphysically, Iqbal posits selfhood to rescue human individuality, which was lost in pantheism largely propagated by Ibn al-Arabi in the Muslim tradition. Iqbal’s selfhood claims that each human is endowed with infinite human potential — rational, creative, moral, political and artistic — which can be developed further.
According to Iqbal, freedom, equality, fraternity, love and dignity are necessary conditions for the development of human individuality. In contrast, repression, inequality, economic dependency, exclusion, exploitation and humiliation thwart development. Significantly, Iqbal anticipated the ‘human development programme’ in the first quarter of the 20th century, which was later developed and advanced by Mahbub ul Haq, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.
Without the use of rationality, no society can progress.
Ethically, Iqbal’s humanism embraces people beyond any racial, cultural, national, or linguistic identity to acquire the moral unity of humanity. In a new year message, Iqbal says, “Only one unity is dependable, and that unity is the brotherhood of man, which is above race, nationality, colour or language”. He adds: “Remember, man can be maintained on this earth only by honouring mankind … until the educational forces of the whole world are directed to inculcating in man respect for mankind”.
At the 2023 Allama Iqbal Memorial Lecture at Oxford University ‘The Geopolitics of Peace in a Post-Western World’, American scholar Jeffrey Sachs stated: “Iqbal … offered the goal of Islam as a message for all humanity, not just a message for the believers. He argued that we need to search for rational foundations in science and Islam.” Sachs rightly endorsed Iqbal’s humanism and his urge for rationality in science and religion. Without the use of rationality, no society can progress.
In Javed Nama, Iqbal articulates: “The status of a human being is higher than the heavens”; “The basis of real civilisation is reverence for humanity”. He again states, ‘Reverence for a human being is humanity; Be aware of the status of the human being; Human beings develop in a firm relationship with each other; “Follow the footsteps of friendship.’ This precisely encapsulates Iqbal’s philosophy.
In the preface to Islam and Open Society, Charles Taylor writes about Iqbal: “It is the voice of a man who has left behind all identitarian rigidity, who has ‘broken all the idols of tribe and caste’ to address himself to all human beings. But an unhappy accident has meant that this voice was buried, both in the general forgetting of Islamic modernism and in the very country that he named before its existence, Pakistan, whose multiple rigidities — political, religious, military — constitute a continual re-futation of the very essence of his thought.” Taylor’s judgement is not false because neither the other Muslim countries nor Pakistan take Iqbal’s philosophy of humanism seriously to promote human equality.
Sectarianism, provincial parochialism and intellectual relativism pose existential challenges for Pakistan. If the challenges are not addressed in time, there will be grave sociopolitical and economic consequences. Political vision, joint commitment and rational decisions are vital to handle the elephant in the room by reforming and strengthening educational institutions, updating madressahs in line with modern education, and promoting dialogue in the public sphere to develop consensus on national and international challenges.
Thus, Iqbal’s humanism needs to be adopted in its true spirit, in theory and practice, to respect human diversity, democratic process, freedom of thought, peaceful coexistence, cooperation beyond borders, human rights, social justice, and particularly, to enhance human development for a progressive Pakistan.
The writer teaches philosophy at the University of the Punjab, Lahore.
Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2025
