Journal of Religious and Political Practice

ISSN: 2056-6093 (Print) 2056-6107 (Online) Journal homepage: http://tandfonline.com/loi/rfrp20

Muhammad Iqbal, Stray Reflections: A Notebook

of Allama Iqbal

Irfan Ahmad

To cite this article: Irfan Ahmad (2016) Muhammad Iqbal, Stray Reflections: A
Notebook of Allama Iqbal, Journal of Religious and Political Practice, 2:3, 359-360, DOI:
10.1080/20566093.2016.1222737

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1222737

Published online: 07 Oct 2016.

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 Journal of Religious and Political Practice   359

References
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New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Cohn, Bernard. 1996. Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Dillon, Michael. 1996. Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought. London:
Routledge.
Dirks, Nicholas, ed. 1992. Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 2006. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (ed. Robert Louden with an
introduction by Manfred Kuehn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, Immanuel. 1992. Lectures on Logic (translated and edited by Michael Young). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Shohat, Ella, Robert Stam. 2014 [1994]. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London
& New York: Routledge.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1997. “Eurocentrism and Its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science.” Sociological
Bulletin, 46 (1): 21–39.

Irfan Ahmad
Institute for Religion, Politics & Society, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia
© 2016 Irfan Ahmad
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1222736

Stray reflections: a notebook of Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Iqbal, edited by

Javed Iqbal, Lahore, Sang-e-mīl Publications, 2014, xxxix + 161, 13 plates,
ISBN: 9789693527346

Notwithstanding the differentiation Gary Morson (2003) makes

amongst aphorism, dictum, maxim, hypothesis, witticism,
parable, thought, Stray Reflections, a title chosen by the author
himself, is probably a synthesis of all. Written as a diary, it began
on 27 April 1910 and continued only for a few months.
Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938), poet-philosopher of India,
returned from Europe (with the degree of doctorate) in 1908 to
undergo an acute existential unrest, as evident in his letters to
Atiya Begum. A year later this unrest flowered into the most
known of his poems: “The Complaint and Response to It” (shikva,
javab-e-shikva). Given its genre, as well as temporal specificity,
Stray Reflections certainly doesn’t constitute Iqbal’s final thoughts. To many readers, some
of its entries are already outdated – for instance, his views on women’s education (p. 124).
Most, however, invite readers to think and imagine in realms as diverse as art, poetry,
philosophy, politics, religion and more. The first entry is: “Art is a sacred lie”. The third
one reads: “Human intellect is nature’s attempts at self-criticism”. To the question of
whether he believed in the existence of God, Iqbal mused that neither he himself nor the
questioner knew what “believe”, “existence” and “God” meant. Iqbal saw Hegel’s philosophy
as “an epic poem in prose”. On the continued relevance of metaphysics, he held that “the
practical in all its shapes drives me back to the speculative”. In the current climate, the
following is probably apt: “Fanaticism is patriotism for religion; patriotism, fanaticism for
country”. Moving to poetry, Iqbal remarked: “Matthew Arnold defines poetry as criticism
of life. That life is criticism of poetry is equally true”. Let me mention a few more. “The
Jewish race has produced only two great men – Christ and Spinoza”; “The French orientalist
[Ernest] Renan reveals the essentially religious character of his mind in spite of his
360   EDITOR’S CHOICE

skepticism”; “Power touches falsehood, and lo! It is transformed into truth”; “Suffering is
a gift from the Gods in order to make men see the whole of life”; “Sin has an educative
value of its own. Virtuous people are very often stupid”; “There is something of the plant
in the lazy mind; it can’t dance”; “[Democracy] makes the illegal and the wrong identical
in meaning”; “A prophet is only a practical poet”; “All the wonderful book-lore in your
library is not worth one glorious sunset on the banks of the Ravi”; “‘Think of the Devil
and he is sure to appear’. This is equally true of God”; “The psychologist swims, the poet
dives” and “Philosophy ages, poetry rejuvenates”. The final one is: “Flattery is only
exaggerated good manners” (page numbers for quotes are respectively: 1, 3, 5, 11, 22, 25,
37, 80, 92, 103, 109, 114, 120, 126, 131, 135, 137, 143, 158).
The editor’s introduction is helpful for the non-specialists, except that the continued
mobilization of Iqbal for the cause of Pakistani nationalism is inaccurate, though under-
standable for the “needs” of the Pakistani state .

Reference
Morson, Gary. 2003. “The Aphorism: Fragments from the Breakdown of Reason”. New Literary History,
34(3): 409–429.

Irfan Ahmad
Institute for Religion, Politics & Society, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne,
Australia
Irfan.ahmad@acu.edu.au
© 2016 Irfan Ahmad
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20566093.2016.1222737