IQBAL P

Here is a highly informative yet accessibly-written introduction to the life and works of the writer and political thinker Muhammad Iqbal (1877?1938) who as President of the Muslim League played a vital role in the birth of Pakistan and is revered today as its spiritual founder. In discussing Iqbal's thought and analyzing his poetry and prose at some length Mir suggests that Iqbal represents a paragon for modern Muslims caught as they are between tradition and modernity. Iqbal's attempt to integrate Islamic and Western elements in his intellectual artistic and political lives makes him a figure that Muslims may respect and emulate since he declared his passionate loyalty to the religion of Islam while at the same time differentiating between the eternal or essential and the historical or incidental in the Islamic tradition. About The Author: Mustansir Mir Director of the Center for Islamic StudiesYoungstown State University Ohio.