Islam and Open Society Fidelity and Movement in the Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal

In the atmosphere of suspicion and anger that characterizes our time it is a joy to hear the voice of Iqbal both passionate and serene. It is the voice of a soul that is deeply anchored in the Quranic Revelation and precisely for that reason open to all the other voices seeking in them the path of his own fidelity. 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 refutation of the very essence of his thought. But we all need to hear him again citizens of the West Muslims and those from his native India where a form of Hindu chauvinism rages in our times in a way that exceeds his worst fears. Souleymane Bachir Diagne has done all of us an immense favor in making this voice heard once again clear and convincing. Charles Taylor Professor McGill University Quebec Canada