Muhammad Iqbal Quotes on God
Muhammad Iqbal, the philosopher and poet regarded as the spiritual father of Pakistan, sought a renewal of Islamic thought about God, and the quotes gathered here reflect that project. Iqbal held that God is known through experience rather than abstraction: God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts, and the immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. He dramatised the difference between rational and existential certainty in a dialogue of Head and Heart, in which the heart's conviction that God exists outruns the categories of the philosopher. For Iqbal the encounter with God energises the human self, or ego, in its dynamic engagement with the world. Drawn from his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam and his shorter writings, these passages present God as the living reality met in experience and known through the awakened self.
Quotes
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Attributed to Muhammad Iqbal:
“The mind that is most alive is the mind most in contact with God.”
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Attributed to Muhammad Iqbal:
“Islam is not a finished system; it is a continuous engagement of the believing self with the world.”
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Attributed to Muhammad Iqbal:
“The reconstruction of religious thought is the proper labor of every generation of Muslims.”
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“The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience .”
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1930), p. 14 -
“My forefathers were Brahmins . They spent their lives in search of God. I am spending my life in search of Man .”
Educational Thinkers [1] -
“Heart – “It is absolutely certain that God does exist.” Head – “But, my dear boy! Existence is one of my categories, and you have no right to use it.” Heart – “So much the better, my Aristotle!””
Stray Reflections -
“Every land which belongs to God is our land.”
As quoted in Islam and Nationalism, Dr. Ali Mohammed Naqvi. Variant: "All land belongs to Muslims, because it belongs to their God." in : JPRS Report: Near East & South Asia, 93067 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1993 [2]