Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) was a distinguished poet, philosopher and statesman of South Asia. His ideas played a vital role in the movement to establish Pakistan, where he is revered as the country's spiritual founder. In this informative, accessible discussion of Iqbal's life and work, in particular his poetry and prose, Mustansir Mir presents him as an exemplary modern Muslim thinker.

Iqbal combined a declared loyalty to his faith with a readiness to embrace modernity. Convinced that religion and science were mutually reinforcing, he urged Muslims to reconstruct their tradition in the light of recent developments in all fields of knowledge. As this timely study shows, Iqbal's commitment to integrating elements from Islamic and Western traditions makes him worthy of serious attention from students of religion, philosophy and other fields, and of particular relevance to the pressing concern to define common ground between those two traditions.

Author

Mustansir Mir, Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the Center for Islamic Studies at Youngstown State University, Ohio, is the author of Tulip in the Desert: A Selection of the Poetry of Muhammad Iqbal (2000).

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