Iqbal’s Thought in the West — Its Necessity and Significance

Ladies and Gentlemen,
This gathering of ours is not merely an intellectual symposium; it is, in its deeper essence, a spiritual sojourn. The flame of thought we hold aloft today belongs to a man whose voice cast its radiance across centuries of darkness—a voice whose verse breathed warmth into the hearts of subjugated nations, and whose ideas sent tremors through the grand halls of Western scholarship, compelling new shoots of inquiry to emerge. He is the sage whom the world reveres as Dr Muhammad Iqbal—poet, philosopher, and voyager of the realm of Truth.

In convening today, we contemplate a mind so luminous, a spirit so incandescent, and a philosopher-poet so profound that speaking of him is not merely to recall a chapter of history, but to invoke a charter for the intellectual epochs yet unborn. Iqbal—the poet who lit lamps of hope amid the decline of nations, who shook the hollow foundations of decaying civilisations, and who awakened within the human conscience a reverberation whose echo has not faded to this day.

Iqbal’s greatness does not rest in the simple truth that he stands among the titans of Urdu and Persian letters; rather, it lies in his unifying vision—a rare capacity to weave philosophy, history, religion, politics, civilisation, and spirituality into a single, compelling tapestry. His writings are no mere literary utterances but a summons—a call that rouses the latent potentialities slumbering within the human soul.

He once proclaimed:
؎ ہزار خوف ہو لیکن زباں ہو دل کی رفیق
یہی رہا ہے ازل سے قلندروں کا طریق
A thousand terrors may assail you yet let your tongue remain faithful to your heart;
For such has ever been the way of the free-spirited and the brave.
This is not merely the bold cry of a poet; it is a manifesto for the renaissance of a civilisation.

Why does the West need Iqbal today?
At first glance, the question seems deceptively simple; yet beneath it lies the rumbling of an entire civilisational upheaval. Its answer is not confined to the realms of literature or philosophy alone; it is embedded in the long, troubled arc of human history.

The West—despite its mastery of science, technology, and political dominance—finds itself wrestling with a profound intellectual void, a spiritual disquiet, and a civilisational lightness of being. In such a moment of existential fragility, Iqbal’s voice does not echo like some distant desert wail; it rises rather as a beacon—an illuminated minaret calling humanity back to its primordial essence.

Indeed, to inquire why the West needs Iqbal is to listen to the murmurs of history itself.
There was a time when Europe bore upon its shoulders the weight of Greek thought; then came the long shadow of the Christian Church; and subsequently, science, with imperial confidence, lulled religion into a deep slumber. British imperial might reigned supreme, Germany soared in the realm of philosophy, while France became the laboratory of political doctrines.

Iqbal surveyed this entire intellectual odyssey—not merely observing it, but discerning its very soul. He understood well that the seeds of both Western ascent and Western ruin lay buried

within the soil of its materialism.
He stood, thus, at the confluence of East and West—
a sage who could gaze simultaneously upon both horizons.

Iqbal’s Encounter with Europe
When Iqbal arrived in Europe, the continent was intoxicated by the triumphs of the Industrial Revolution. Man had been reduced to a cog, and the soul relegated to a discarded metaphor. Human worth was measured not by dignity but by profit and power. Freedom was proclaimed from podiums, yet the spirit remained enchained.

Into this atmosphere, Iqbal did not merely step as a traveller; he descended as an interpreter of civilisations. As he observed:
“I did not find the true soul of Europe in its libraries, but in its marketplaces—where man was valued less than the merchandise he sold.”

Again, and again Iqbal lamented that Western civilisation had lost the very idea of Man—that being whom the Qur’ān describes as God’s vicegerent upon earth:
﴿ وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي ٱلْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً ﴾
“And when your Lord said to the angels: Indeed, I am placing upon the earth a vicegerent.” (2:30)

It was this loss that Iqbal diagnosed with prophetic clarity:
؎ ٹھیک ہے تجھ کو پرستارِ مکاں کچھ بھی نہیں
فکرِ انساں ہے مگر تیری نگہبانی سے محروم
You may claim mastery over space, yet you remain estranged from guarding the destiny of Man.
Here Iqbal does not merely critique the West; he offers it a path—a return to selfhood, love, spiritual ascent, and the centrality of the human being.

The West Today: A Civilisation in Disquiet
To understand why Iqbal’s thought is essential to the modern West, three points are indispensable:
Spiritual Vacuum
Civilisational Disorientation
The Solitary Individual and the Existential Crisis
Technology has strengthened the hands of man but weakened his heart.
Science has unlocked the universe but sealed the spirit.
Democracy has granted freedom but withheld purpose.
Capitalism has multiplied wealth but diminished human connection.
Iqbal captured this malaise with surgical precision:
؎ نظر کو خیرہ کرتی ہے چمک تہذیبِ حاضر کی
یہ صناعی مگر جھوٹے نگوں کی ریزہ کاری ہے
The glitter of modern civilisation dazzles the eye;
Yet its craftsmanship is but the delicate inlay of counterfeit jewels.

This is no mere Eastern poet’s rebuke; it is a critique of that very inner crisis which Western scholars today themselves concede—
that the West has progress but no peace,
wealth but no affection,
power but no purpose,
freedom but no spirit.
Iqbal restores the human being to the centre of the cosmos;
he rekindles the soul;
he moralises civilisation;
he reconciles reason with love.
For Iqbal, this crisis is ultimately the crisis of the forgotten human being—and it is from here that the West’s need for Iqbal begins.
He warned:
؎ تمہاری تہذیب اپنے خنجر سے آپ ہی خودکشی کرے گی
جو شاخِ نازک پہ آشیانہ بنے گا، ناپائدار ہوگا
Your civilisation shall one day perish by its own dagger;
For the nest built on a fragile branch can never endure.

When Iqbal penned these lines, Europe was still dressing the wounds of the First World War. Yet today, as the West stands amidst storms of political convulsion, cultural collisions, social disorientation, and the silent desolation of youth’s inner loneliness, his words bear an almost prophetic lustre.
1 — The Cure for Spiritual Thirst
(a) The West’s Spiritual Drought and Iqbal’s Doctrine of the Self)
Having strayed far from religion, the West now finds itself wandering in a desert where reason remains intact, but the heart lies lost. Its estrangement from faith has left the human being solitary and inwardly famished. The decline of the Church weakened the spiritual citadel; philosophy could not replace it; psychology reduced the human being to a laboratory specimen; and art, in its modernist impulse, sought refuge in abstraction rather than reality.

Against this backdrop, Iqbal’s concept of khudī—the Self—enters the Western mind like a fresh, vitalising breeze.
Iqbal laments:
؎ یہی ہے رُخِ خزاں، اور یہی ہے رُخِ بہار
نہ خدا کی جستجو، نہ مجھے اپنی خبر
Whether autumn’s face or spring’s—
Neither the search for God remains, nor knowledge of one’s own self.
And then he offers the antidote:
؎ خودی کو کر بلند اتنا کہ ہر تقدیر سے پہلے
خدا بندے سے خود پوچھے، بتا تیری رضا کیا ہے
Cultivate thy Self to such heights
That before every decree,
God Himself shall ask thee: What is thy desire?
This is no mere verse; it is a response that gathers the scattered anxieties of existentialism into a single, throbbing answer.

Iqbal holds the key to this thirst.
His philosophy of khudī re-establishes the human being at the centre of existence—alive, conscious, and tethered to his Creator.

Thus, Western youth, professors, and thinkers hear Iqbal today with new attentiveness; for when man loses his origin, the first question that rises like smoke from a burning soul is: Who am I?
For such hearts, Iqbal’s words open a new cosmos.

2 — The West’s Social Crisis and Iqbal’s Moral Order
The family has fractured; generations have become strangers to one another; and man, now seeks companionship in machines. Capitalism has drawn the household into the ruthless logic of the marketplace.
Witnessing this, Iqbal warns:
؎ جلالِ پادشاہی ہو کہ جمہوری تماشا ہو
جدا ہو دیں سیاست سے تو رہ جاتی ہے چنگیزی
Be it imperial majesty or democratic spectacle—
If politics divorces itself from faith, tyranny is all that remains.
For Iqbal, a society is built only when the individual is self-aware, rooted in moral foundations, animated by purpose, and spiritually alive. These, indeed, are the four pillars the West desperately lacks today.

The collapse of the family unit in the West is among the great tragedies of modern history. Secularism and materialism have torn the moral fabric; capitalism has turned human beings into mere instruments of utility. In such times, Iqbal offers not nostalgia, but reconstruction—rebuilding society on human, moral, and spiritual lines.
He reminds:
؎ نگاہِ بلند، سخن دلنواز، جاں پر سوز
یہی ہے رختِ سفر میرِ کارواں کے لیے
Lofty vision, eloquent speech, and a soul ablaze—
This is the rightful provision of the leader of any caravan.
This triad is not simply poetic flourish; it is an architecture upon which any civilisation—including the Western one—may be renewed.

3 — Intellectual Resistance Against Imperialism
One of Iqbal’s extraordinary achievements is that he stood before the intellectual citadels of the West and, with remarkable dignity, exposed the fissures within Western thought. He challenged Western intellectual imperialism without rancour, without hostility, without bitterness—speaking instead with serenity, truth, and civilisational poise.
He declares:
؎ نہ ستاروں میں ہے پنہاں، نہ تقدیر میں ہے
جو ہمارے ہاتھ میں ہے، وہ ہماری ہمت ہے
Neither in the stars nor in destiny lies the secret of our fate;
What lies within our grasp is our own resolve.
This was not a call for Asia or Africa alone. Today, even within the West, those communities crushed by capitalism’s iron grip are finding strength in Iqbal’s defiant yet dignified voice.

Iqbal’s Standing in the Western Academy
Wherever one goes—colleges, libraries, conferences—one encounters conversations on Iqbal. It is no surprise that Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne, Berlin, Vienna, and Cambridge now host dissertations, seminars, and courses on him. His poetry adorns Western shelves; his ideas inspire Western minds.

The British scholar Raymond Dawson observed:
“Iqbal is the voice of Eastern revival.”
The German philosopher Annemarie Schimmel remarked:
“He is one of the few poets whose words seem to speak beyond centuries.”
And truly, such a voice is no ordinary voice—it is a melody that traverses eras.

Iqbal did not merely see Europe; he read its mind. He admired its strengths but did not shy from exposing its flaws. He once wrote:
“Europe astonished me with its face, yet I did not remain heedless of its heart.”
Thus, Western thinkers regard him as a critic who was scrupulously just—lavishing neither blind praise nor unfair condemnation.

Iqbal — The Voice That Points to the Future
Today, humanity wields enormous power yet stands bereft of direction. We stand at the threshold of an age shaped by artificial intelligence, genomics, robotics, and nuclear capabilities. The question before mankind is no longer: What can we do?
The question is: What ought we to do?
This is the question the West has not yet answered—
but Iqbal answered it a century ago:
؎ عقل عیار ہے، سو بھیس بدل لیتی ہے
عشق بے چارہ نہ ملا ہے، نہ زاہد، نہ حکیم
Reason is cunning, assuming a hundred guises;
Love, poor love—neither the mystic nor the scholar has yet truly met it.

Iqbal does not repudiate reason; he seeks the harmony of reason and love.
For intellect alone cannot guide civilisation; spiritual consciousness must accompany it.
Here I add, by your permission, a Qur’ānic verse whose essence resonates profoundly with Iqbal’s message:
﴿ أَفَمَن يَمْشِي مُكِبًّا عَلَىٰ وَجْهِهِ أَهْدَىٰ أَمَّن يَمْشِي سَوِيًّا عَلَىٰ صِرَاطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ ﴾
“Is he who walks with his face bowed down more rightly guided, or he who walks upright upon a straight path?” (67:22)

If the West grasps this equilibrium—of intellect wedded to spirit, of power bound to ethics—
then it may not only overcome its present crisis but offer humanity a new horizon.

For Iqbal, true civilisation is born only when knowledge and spirit walk hand in hand.
In this synthesis lies the future of humanity itself.

Iqbal offers the modern West five cardinal teachings—principles not merely for an age, but for the long pilgrimage of civilisation itself.

First, that Man is the very purpose of the cosmos; he is not a stray particle abandoned to the void, but the vicegerent of God upon earth, entrusted with meaning, will, and moral imagination.
Second, that freedom without a transcendent purpose degenerates into ruin, and liberty severed from ethics becomes but a polished illusion—fair to behold, yet hollow within.
Third, that science is indeed indispensable, yet its surest compass is the spirit. A civilisation armed with science but denuded of spiritual anchorage is like a ship empowered by mighty engines but deprived of a rudder—a peril to itself and others.
As the Qur’an declares:
﴿أَلَا بِذِكْرِ اللَّهِ تَطْمَئِنُّ الْقُلُوبُ﴾
“Verily, in the remembrance of God do hearts find their rest.” (Qur’an 13:28)

Fourth, democracy without ethics is but a nuanced deceit; capitalism and socialism alike remain maimed without a conception of man at the centre. Capitalism unrestrained descends into tyranny, and socialism without liberty sinks into a subtler bondage.

Fifth, that life is the name of constant becoming—of movement, striving, discovery, renewal; an unending ascent, a ceaseless evolution. For Iqbal, life is not a static inheritance but a task, a summons, a perpetual rising.
It is in this spirit that he proclaims:
؎ ستاروں سے آگے جہاں اور بھی ہیں
ابھی عشق کے امتحاں اور بھی ہیں
“Beyond the stars lie realms yet undiscovered;
And Love has many trials still to come.”

This is a message to the West: progress has not reached its terminus; its direction, not its velocity, is the true question of the age. These lessons are the inheritance of every civilisation, yet the West stands today in greater need of them than any other. For the first time in its history, its intellectual vanguard openly confesses:

The West stands at a crossroads. It has acquired science, yet not tranquillity; freedom, yet not belonging; wealth, yet not affection; power, yet not purpose. Iqbal is the very name of that purpose. He returns man to his rightful centrality; he breathes life back into the spirit; he restores ethics to civilisation; he shows reason and love how to walk hand in hand.
Once more he reminds:
؎ ستاروں سے آگے جہاں اور بھی ہیں
ابھی عشق کے امتحاں اور بھی ہیں
—a declaration that the journey of progress is far from over, but its compass must be set aright.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Iqbal is not merely the poet of the East, nor is his thought the private inheritance of Muslims alone. He is a poet of humanity. His gaze is not confined to the misted horizons of the earth; it extends to the vast architecture of the heavens.
His anguish is global; his vision, cosmic; his message, timeless.

The hour has come for the West to recognise Iqbal not merely as the “Voice of the East,” but as an “Architect of the Human Future.”
Let us close with a few of his verses—verses that are less poetry and more revelation of destiny:
کھول آنکھ، زمیں دیکھ، فلک دیکھ، فضا دیکھ
مشرق سے اُبھرتے ہوئے سورج کو ذرا دیکھ
اس جلوۂ بے پردہ کو پردوں میں چھُپا دیکھ
ایّامِ جُدائی کے سِتم دیکھ، جفا دیکھ
Open your eyes—behold the earth, the heavens, the boundless air;
Gaze upon the sun rising from the Orient’s rim;
Contemplate how this unveiled splendour veils itself behind its own radiance;
Witness the cruelties of days of separation, and the rigours of love’s long exile.

And elsewhere he commands:
؎ نیا زمانہ، نئے صبح و شام پیدا کر
خودی میں ڈوب کے ضربِ کلیم پیدا کر
Fashion a new age—summon new dawns and new dusks into being;
Plunge into the depths of the self, and from its crucible forge the thunderbolt of Moses.

And then this thunderbolt:
؎ اگر ہو عشق تو ہے کفر بھی مسلمانی
نہ ہو تو مردِ مسلماں بھی کافر و زندیق
If Love be present, even unbelief is touched with the grace of faith;
But if Love be absent, then even a professing Muslim is but a heretic and a wanderer astray.

The West today stands in dire need of these very truths—and Iqbal is the name of that truth. This is not merely the wisdom of the earth; it is the counsel of the heavens. And perhaps that is why the West has never needed him more than it does at this moment in history.