AN ENQUIRY INTO

NIETZSCHE’S CONCEPT
OF SUPERMAN AND
IQBAL’S ILLUSTRATION
OF PERFECT MAN
Nietzsche and Goethe both praised the Prophet

by Akbar AhmedNovember 9, 2020

When Friedrich Nietzsche ran to stop the brutal owner of a horse from thrashing it mercilessly in
Turin, Italy, and threw his arms around the animal crying, “I understand your pain,” it gave us an
extraordinary insight into his character and mind; more than his usually convoluted philosophic
utterances. Nietzsche, who blithely declared to the world, “God is dead” could not bear the
cruelty to the animal. While the image of Nietzsche is that of a world-class philosopher grappling
with esoteric philosophic insights into the human condition and forever engulfed in controversy,

1
this account reveals to us his sensitive nature that would have made the great Jain sage Mahavira
proud. This episode also triggered his mental breakdown from which he never recovered.

Ten years later in 1900, after living in a vegetative state, he was dead. Ever since his breakdown
he had been in the care of his sister. They had grown apart and had very different ideas about life
and politics. She not only made her own edits to his work at will but after his death projected and
distorted her brother’s thought in alignment with her own pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic prejudices.
She had migrated to Paraguay to attempt to create a colony of like-minded right-wing Germans
and falsified her brother’s ideas and ideology to curry favor with the Nazis. She even entirely
fabricated numerous letters that she published in his name. This was morally reprehensible but
she was doing thriving business in Nazi Germany. So impressed was Hitler by her loyalty that he
attended her funeral. Nietzsche scholars have condemned her “criminally scandalous” forgeries
(David Wroe, “‘Criminal’ manipulation of Nietzsche by sister to make him look anti-
Semitic,” The Telegraph, January 19, 2010).Nietzsche’s Übermensch.
Nietzsche – A Mind like a Dark Cave
Nietzsche’s mind was like a vast, dark, and dangerous cave. In it dwelt flying creatures with
sharp teeth. There were also those wondrous ones with luminous eyes conveying compassion and
kindness. To enter the cave was an adventure and one never knew what would come flying at
you. Take the matter of slavery. Nietzsche made several comments on slavery which are
unacceptable to us. There is simply no excuse for the dreadful and disgusting institution of
slavery. Nietzsche’s supporters cannot exonerate him by citing illustrious figures like George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson and arguing that even the founding fathers of the greatest
Western democracy owned slaves so the institution of slavery at that time was somehow
excusable. They cannot also brush away this information because it comes in fragments from
obscure notes of dubious sources and was perhaps influenced by his sister who was busy
distorting his work over which he had little control. Nor can the supporters take his references to
the Greeks whom he admired and argue that because they had slavery it was somehow
acceptable. To me it is likely that Nietzsche’s fragments on slavery reflect his broader
philosophy on the subject and he stands condemned. There is much to be explored and
researched for the scholar in Nietzsche’s writing. But those entering the cave must do so with a
strong torch and a stronger heart.

2
 Nietzsche, Image: Friedrich Hartmann , Public Domain, wikimedia.

Nietzsche is without a doubt considered one of the greatest of Western philosophers and
certainly one of the most controversial. From his bushy Groucho Marx mustache and eyebrows
to his statement declaring God dead, Nietzsche seems to invite controversy and comment. One of
Nietzsche’s concepts is that of the Übermensch, a superior man, a beyond man or superman who,
through his being, justifies the very existence of the human race. It is one of his most famous,
and in the wrong hands, as we will see below, notorious concepts. It comes from Nietzsche’s
celebrated magnum opus, Thus Spake Zarathustra. In the novel, Zarathustra, the
protagonist, retreats to the mountains at the age of thirty to seek knowledge and wisdom. Ten
years later he has achieved his aim. His heart is overflowing with wisdom and love, like a bee
with an abundance of honey, in Nietzsche’s words. He now wishes to share what he has gathered
with humanity. On the way down from the mountain he meets an old man who predicts the
people would not accept his message except with hatred and ridicule. People were miserable and
although they lived in an advanced material society and indulged in base pleasures, they were
still miserable. In spite of their condition, they rejected the wise man’s offer to share his wisdom.
In the end they chased him away with their hatred and ridicule. Nietzsche, like the protagonist of
the book, sets out to share his wisdom and love. And like the protagonist, Nietzsche also meets
with ridicule and hatred.
The process whereby man progressed to Superman, according to Nietzsche, began with one’s
will to do so. Between animal and Superman was man and man had to aspire to become

3
Superman. To move beyond man, he had to aspire to the next stage of “creative evolution.” He
was called the last man because that was the last stage before he could become Superman. It was
different from Darwinian mutations and biological combinations with no aspirational aspects.

In terms of those people who had qualities of Superman, Nietzsche gave his own personal list.
They included Goethe, Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Montaigne, and Voltaire. It is a list that most
Europeans could identify with. Indeed, for Nietzsche, Goethe is probably the closest a human
being can be to the idea of Superman.

The ideal qualities of the Superman, Nietzsche wrote, were “Caesar with Christ’s soul.” For
those surprised to find Napoleon on the list, it is worth pointing out that others saw these figures
as Superman too. For example, for Hegel, the eminent German philosopher, Napoleon was the
very embodiment of the modern state and “the Absolute” or “the world-soul on horseback.” The
Duke of Wellington famously said that Napoleon’s presence on the battlefield was the equivalent
of 40,000 soldiers and a similar remark was made of Saladin, who we could call a Muslim
Superman, at the time of the Crusades.

Examining the qualities of Nietzsche’s Supermen figures we may deduce some broad
characteristics: they have a sense of destiny; something is driving them to spread their message
and understanding to the world. They are generally protective of the weak and the vulnerable and
concerned about the minorities. They are inclined to see the big picture and are not so concerned
about minor things that may occupy other people. They are bold and independent in their
thinking which often causes opposition and controversy. Their actions have an impact on distant
places and into the future of which perhaps even they are not aware. Because they are
extraordinary in their lives and aspirations, they are often lonely even though surrounded by
followers and admirers. They find followers rather than companions. They often spend time by
themselves, retreating to isolated caves and mountains. They are brilliant in their strategic
choices and moves. They are not always successful and since they are creating new ideas and
challenging old ones, they often suffer a backlash that may even cost them their lives in the
process. Even after they die, they cross time and space and remain alive in the imagination of
their followers. As Nietzsche’s list of his own figures who approached and approximated the
Superman is subjective and personal, each one of us is entitled to drawing up our own list. It is
an exercise to be recommended as it will tell us as much about ourselves as our society.

When Nietzsche’s Zarathustra went up the mountain seeking a species of Superman, he did not
quite appreciate that they were in plain sight all along. Indeed, the concept of the Superman is
not new. We have examples from the past going back several thousand years of figures who
could justifiably be called Superman, from Moses, who parted the sea, turned his staff into a
snake that ate up the Pharaoh’s snake, and climbed a mountain to talk to God, to Jesus Christ,
who walked on water and gave life to a corpse. There are other figures such as the Holy Roman
Emperor Frederick II who brought the different religions and communities in his empire closer
together through scholarship and in mutual respect. In Hindu mythology we have examples of
ancient heroes performing superhuman feats. Most societies have their own towering figures that
they view as supermen—or superwomen. So, while among Christians, Jesus is the ultimate

4
Superman, among Hindus it is Lord Ram, among Buddhists Lord Buddha, and so on. Plato’s
philosopher-king was a prototype Superman and Alexander the Great was seen as an early Greek
version of the Superman. Earlier in Nietzsche’s century, Thomas Carlyle had written his
celebrated On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History which was similar in scope to
Nietzsche’s Superman idea and included several figures such as the Prophet of Islam, Rousseau
and Napoleon that could over-lap with those on Nietzsche’s own list.

“Insan-i Kamil”: The Prophet as the Muslim Superman

For Muslims, the figure of the Superman is represented by the Prophet of Islam. The Quran
stated that God created man to be God’s vicegerent on earth; a super superman if you will. The
high status and expectations of man are inherent in Islam’s theological vision and philosophic
understanding of the nature of man. That philosophic vision is suffused with the notions of
compassion and mercy. This potential in man finds its ultimate expression in the Prophet of
Islam, the model and example for Muslims to aspire to. God’s greatest attributes are derived
from his two most popular names—Rahman and Rahim—Compassionate and Merciful and as
he is the Messenger of God the Prophet is described in the Quran as a “mercy unto mankind.”
The Prophet is known in the Islamic tradition as Insan-i Kamil or the Perfect Man, the equivalent
of the Superman, and he is also called Khayr ul Bashr, or the best of mankind.
There are indeed interesting parallels between Nietzsche’s Superman and the Perfect Man in the
Islamic tradition as personified by the Prophet. Is there a more direct relationship between the
two concepts? Did the way that Muslims conceive of the Prophet of Islam, in turn, influence the
construct of Ubermensch or the Superman? If so what are the intellectual links to possible
sources that we can trace? The clues are many although some are admittedly weak. Yet it is
worth exploring some of the connections which may heighten our understanding of both
concepts and their similarities.

5
 Goethe Image: By Joseph Karl Stieler / Wikimedia

Nietzsche may have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by the Islamic notion of the
Perfect Man through sources such as Goethe, his number one exemplary role model for
Superman. While Goethe wrote his devotional poem in honor of the Prophet called “Mahomet’s
Song” at the age of 23, at age 70 he publicly declared he was considering “devoutly celebrating
that holy night in which the Quran in its entirety was revealed to the prophet from on high.”
Goethe’s comments on Islam have led to speculation about the extent of his commitment to the
faith, for example, in the following verse: “If Islam means, to God devoted/ All live and die in
Islam’s ways.” In fact, Goethe himself sometimes wondered if he was actually living the life of a
Muslim, writing, when announcing the publication of his poetic work West-Eastern Divan, that
the author “does not reject the suspicion that he may himself be a Muslim.”
No Muslim can be unmoved by Goethe’s poem, “Mahomet’s Song,” dedicated to the Prophet of
Islam, whom he calls “chief” and “head of created beings.” Goethe had intended to write a
longer piece in which Hazrat Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet and himself a
Superman figure as a great scholar and warrior, was to have sung the poem “in honor of his
master,” but the project was never completed. “Mahomet’s Song” is a powerful expression of the
desire to discover unity in the universe while searching for the divine. Goethe uses the metaphor
of an irresistible stream that flows down from the mountains to the ocean, taking other streams
along with it. Here are some verses from the poem:

6
“And the streamlets from the mountain,

Shout with joy, exclaiming: ‘Brother,

Brother, take thy brethren with thee,

With thee to thine aged father,

To the everlasting ocean,

Who, with arms outstretching far,

Waiteth for us…

And the meadow

In his breath finds life.’”

Nietzsche followed Goethe in his admiration for the Prophet of Islam. Nietzsche compared the
Prophet to Plato, one of the foundational figures of Western civilization. For Nietzsche, Plato
“thought he could do for all the Greeks what Muhammad did later for his Arabs.” Muslims, who
have been fascinated by Greek philosophers like Plato, have invariably seen the Prophet of Islam
as the philosopher-king that Plato dreamed of and the Muslim community, as in the example of
the early settlement in Medina, as the realization of Plato’s ideal City. Nietzsche also followed
Goethe in his admiration for the great Persian poet Hafiz. Nietzsche wrote a poem extolling the
heroic virtues of Hafiz including the fact that Hafiz was a “water drinker”—along with
Christianity the drinking of alcohol was one of Nietzsche’s bugaboos about Europe. In Thus
Spake Zarathustra, Zarathustra is referred to as “a born water drinker.” The poem Nietzsche
wrote in honor of Hafiz is entitled “To Hafiz: Questions of a Water Drinker.” It is worth
reminding the reader that Islam forbids the drinking of alcohol and Muslims are thus
quintessential water drinkers.
In spite of the potential for research, the interest in Islam of Goethe and Nietzsche has been
relatively unexplored and even neglected. There are many dissertations waiting for the diligent
researcher in this field. Most Germans, who acknowledge Goethe as the Shakespeare of the
German language and the classic Renaissance man, do not know about Goethe’s enthusiasm for
Islam, which lasted his entire life. Bekir Alboğa, the secretary general of Germany’s largest
Islamic organization, the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), when
interviewed for my project Journey into Europe in Cologne, described Goethe as “a brother to
me,” and “a great thinker with a great affinity for Islam.” Goethe “wrote a wonderful poem about
our Prophet,” he said, referring to “Mahomet’s Song.” Alboğa complained that in Germany the
Islamic dimension of Goethe’s work is ignored, if not intentionally suppressed. As for the subject
of Nietzsche and Islam that too remains largely uncharted territory. (For a detailed discussion of

7
attitudes to Muslims in contemporary Europe see my book Journey into Europe: Islam,
Immigration and Identity, 2018).

Nietzsche, Islam, and Christianity

We have further interesting connections in the relationship of Nietzsche to Islam. Like
other German philosophers such as Hegel and Goethe, Nietzsche too sought to understand the
meaning of life and the place of the human in existence. The ultimate aim was to discover the
path to a fulfilled and even contented life. In the process, like the other philosophers, Nietzsche
found himself highly critical of the philosophic and ideological structures that dominated Europe
and blamed them for the misery of ordinary people. Nietzsche therefore attacked the Christian
church and the state. To him, both were sources of oppression. The church had failed to provide
happiness on earth to its followers and therefore its rituals were meaningless. While Christians
outwardly acted out the rituals of Christianity and religion, they had lost their conviction in the
faith. It was this context that prompted Nietzsche to pronounce the sentence that gave him instant
notoriety declaring the death of God. As for the state, Nietzsche was an early critic of Otto Von
Bismarck, the architect of the German state, which would go on to become the embodiment of
the modern state. Nietzsche warned of the centralizing and tyrannizing tendencies of the state
which inevitably would show hostility towards ethnic minorities. Nietzsche the philosopher was
an iconoclast: both church and state were corrupt and corrupting. In this sense, Nietzsche was
ahead of his time and even predicted what was to come in Europe.

Nietzsche attempted to fill the vacuum by arguing for the ideal of Superman. For him, wisdom
and love are key to understanding Superman. When a person realizes their human potential and
fulfills it, they are able to move away from the “herd morality” of Christianity and religion to
become a Superman. It is noteworthy and could strike the uninitiated as eccentric, that while
dismissing Christianity, Nietzsche appears to be constantly praising Islam. For Nietzsche,
Christianity and Islam have a perverse relationship in the sense that while he demeans and shows
contempt for the former, he turns towards the latter and elevates it. It is a tension within
Nietzsche that is not resolved.

For Nietzsche, Muslims are noble and he describes them as “manly,” “life-affirming,” and
“honest” (the first adjective is from his 1895 book The Antichrist). Nietzsche even points to the
“warlike” qualities in Islam. In fact, there are over 100 references to Islam in Nietzsche’s work.
Islam is simply everything that Christianity is not. He is so enamored of Muslims that in a letter
to a friend he ponders relocating to Muslim lands in North Africa. The scholar Ian Almond
wrote, “it is difficult to resist the tempting hypothesis: that had Nietzsche’s breakdown not been
imminent, we would have seen a work dedicated to Islam from his own pen” (“Nietzsche’s Peace
with Islam: My Enemy’s Enemy is my Friend,” German Life and Letters, 56:1, January 2003, p.
51).
Nietzsche blamed Christianity in The Antichrist for the elimination of the advanced civilization
of Muslim Spain and the Crusades: “Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient
civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The

8
wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed
more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down.” If there is any
doubt as to his position regarding the two religions, Nietzsche himself dispelled it in The
Antichrist: “There should be no choice in the matter when faced with Islam and Christianity. War
to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”
There are also parallels in the manner in which the idea of Superman is revealed in Thus Spake
Zarathustra and the history of early Islam. As in the case of the Prophet, Nietzsche’s protagonist
in Thus Spake Zarathustra ascends a mountain, acquires knowledge at the age of 40—the age at
which the Prophet received his Quranic revelation—and comes down from the mountain with
wisdom and love to share and faces hostility and cynicism. In fact, this pattern reflects not only
the broad outline of the early days of Islam but that of many Biblical prophets.
It is worth noting that two of Nietzsche’s Supermen, Goethe as well as Napoleon, expressed their
admiration for Islam. Napoleon in Cairo dressed in Arab robes, spent time with Sheikhs from Al
Azhar, said he had become a Muslim, and even took a Muslim name. Nietzsche, like Wagner,
also praised the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, calling him a “genius” and celebrating the
fact that he fought the papacy while seeking “peace and friendship” with Islam.

This raises the question as to why Islam impresses Nietzsche so much. I have explored the
answer at some length in my book Journey into Europe in which I argued that traditionally some
European scholars and philosophers cast Islam and its tribes in the classic romantic mold of
Rousseau’s “noble savage.” To them the Muslim tribesman, the Berber in the deserts, or the
Pashtun in the mountains, had escaped the deprivations of modernity and preserved their natural
and original nobility. This was particularly true of German scholars, who, as I explain in Journey
into Europe, thought of themselves as belonging to a kind of tribal society going back to
Germany’s status as the frontier of the Roman Empire and celebrated the work of Tacitus who
wrote of the German tribes of that time. Thus, German scholars were more likely to respect other
societies that they deemed worthy and had characteristics that reflected German self-perception.
They increasingly set the German people, ethnicity, language, and religious interpretation against
the central authority of the Catholic Church based in Rome in forging a distinct German identity
and often displayed a concurrent fascination and appreciation for Islam and Islamic culture.
Figures like Dürer, Goethe, Wagner, and Nietzsche reflected this larger world-view, which I
called the historical German “soft spot” for Islam.
Nietzsche was thus a genuine admirer of a civilization that he knew very little of. In the
nineteenth century Islam was going through a difficult period of its history and it had not yet
emerged from colonization. It was dominated by often ignorant and decadent rulers and there
was chaos and corruption in its societies. Yet Nietzsche and many others romanticized it seeing
instead the uncorrupted noble savage. Through such Orientalist eyes the Islamic world though
seen as barbarous and anti-modern was yet a praiseworthy society. We see this tendency
continuing in Europe as modernity developed into the next century. By the time of Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World written some 30 years after Nietzsche died, the most “normal”
character is John who is widely called a “savage” and lives outside the bounds of the totalitarian
World State.

9
Nietzsche and Iqbal
Perhaps the most celebrated direct relationship of the concept of the Insan-i Kamil or the Perfect
Man and the Prophet to Nietzsche was highlighted by Allama Muhammad Iqbal, the revered
“Poet of the East.” Iqbal had arrived from British India for his studies at Cambridge University
where he was enrolled at Trinity College, after Nietzsche died in 1900. A brilliant student of
philosophy, Iqbal very quickly absorbed the leading philosophers of the time including
Nietzsche.
Iqbal’s own work reflected Nietzsche, albeit with a more religious dimension linked to Islam, to
the extent that he was accused of plagiarism, a charge that has stayed with him long after his
death. Iqbal believed that through the understanding of religion, Man could develop his potential
to become the Perfect Man, in short Superman—a Superman whose mind ranged across the
cosmos: “Sitaron sey aagey jehan aur bhi hein!/ Abhi ishq key imtihan aur bhi hein” –“There
are many worlds beyond the stars!/ And many more tests of love”.
Iqbal notes that God himself in the Quran made man in the image of the divine as a vicegerent on
earth, a phrase used in the Quran. Man could aspire to the heights set by the Perfect Man, the
model of the Prophet, and Iqbal exhorted his readers to do so. We see the religious dimension in
Iqbal’s understanding of self-betterment in the last lines of what is Iqbal’s arguably most famous
populist poems, “The Complaint” and “The Answer to the Complaint.” The latter poem has God
clearly informing man in the last verses that as long as he is faithful to the Prophet of Islam then
everything belongs to him. “Ki Muhammad say wafa tu nay to hum teray hain/ Ye jahan cheese
hay kia luh o kalam teray hain”—“If you are faithful to Muhammad, than I am yours./ Why do
you ask for this universe? I will give you the secret to knowledge.” Iqbal thus acknowledged the
legitimacy of Superman while also his connection to God. Whatever Nietzsche thinks of the
matter, for Iqbal man cannot break that link from and to God.
Iqbal acknowledged Nietzsche in his short poem “Hakeem Nietzsche” or “Learned Sage
Nietzsche” and mentioned him in his celebrated poetic work Payam e Mashriq or “Message of
the East” (1923), a response to Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan. About Nietzsche Iqbal sighed,
“His heart is that of a believer’s but his brain that of an infidel’s.” For Nietzsche, religion
represented the “herd mentality” and needed to be rejected. For Iqbal, religion was the door to
explore the mysteries of the universe and man’s place in it, thereby finding salvation. While the
thrust of Nietzsche’s thinking is to attack the structure and thought of Christianity, and thereby
implicitly the notion of God, Iqbal is moving in the opposite direction.

10
Sign for the street Iqbal-Ufer in Heidelberg, Germany, honoring Iqbal Image: By Smasahab /
Wikimedia

Although Iqbal had been intellectually engaging with Western philosophers like Goethe, his
tone with Nietzsche was different to the one he used for Goethe. Nietzsche’s lack of spirituality
for Iqbal casts the German outside the pale. Iqbal is almost cruel in his denunciation of
Nietzsche. He accuses Nietzsche of plunging a dagger into the heart of the West and says that his
hands were soaked with Christ’s blood. Had Nietzsche been alive, Iqbal wrote, I would have
taught him how to be a decent and moral person.

There was another dimension to the relationship between the two philosophers. The charge that
Iqbal’s thought was too close to Nietzsche’s for comfort could have accounted for Iqbal’s
bitterness towards Nietzsche. It was as if he was somewhat wary of him and was attempting to
push him away. Perhaps Iqbal was sensitive to critics suggesting he had borrowed the concept of
the Superman to create the concept of the Perfect Man. Iqbal went to great lengths to distinguish
his concept of the Perfect Man from that of Nietzsche’s Superman. Iqbal stated emphatically, “I
wrote on the Sufi doctrine of the Perfect Man more than twenty years ago, long before I had read
or heard anything of Nietzsche.” His Perfect Man could not be perfect without a strong spiritual
component.

Still, commentators picked up the similarities. We see this in wide-ranging commentary from the
novelist E. M. Forster’s review of Iqbal’s Asrar-e-Khadi, “Secrets of the Self,” in 1920 to Omer
Ghazi who in 2018, ignoring the high respect Iqbal enjoys in Pakistan as the national poet, used a
scattershot approach to accuse Iqbal of virtually everything under the sun: “his poetry is filled

11
with racism, anti-semitism, jingoism, communal hatred, hyper-nationalism, religious fanaticism,
anti-intellectualism and calls for bloodshed.” The title of Ghazi’s article, published in Heartland
Analyst, was “Why Allama Iqbal needs to be condemned, not celebrated.” In the long list of
items that deserve condemnation, the author claims, “Iqbal later plagiarized his whole idea of
Mard-e-Momin [the Perfect Man] from the philosophy of Ubermensch put forth by the same
Western Madman decades ago.”
Forster in his review was less direct, hinting in his typically cultured way, that Iqbal may have
taken his concept of the Perfect Man from Nietzsche while acknowledging Iqbal’s “tremendous
name among our fellow citizens, the Muslims of India.” “What is so interesting,” Forster writes
of Iqbal, “is the connection that he has effected between Nietzsche and the Quran. It is not an
arbitrary or fantastic connection; make Nietzsche believe in God, and a bridge can be thrown.”

Forster’s discussion of Iqbal here fits in to his larger pattern of treating Muslims with affection,
even with reverence. Whether describing the Mughal emperor Babar or Sir Ross Masood, the
grandson of Sir Syed Ahmed, to whom he dedicated one of his most popular novels, A Passage
to India, or indeed the lead character in that novel, Dr. Aziz, his affection for Muslims is
apparent.
For me, the argument of who first discovered the concept of a Superman or Perfect Man is really
a non-argument. It is perhaps the concept and title of Superman that really catches the
imagination. Neither Nietzsche’s Superman nor Iqbal’s Perfect Man are original concepts. There
is a long list of supermen in Western culture that Nietzsche would have known of, as noted
above. As for Iqbal, his concept of the Mard-e-Momin or the Insan-i Kamil is a concept deeply
embedded in Islamic literature and Iqbal himself refers to Rumi and other mystics who write of
the Insan-i Kamil. From the very origins of Islam, the Prophet of Islam has been cast in the mold
of the Insan-i Kamil. Indeed, it has been the ambition of every great Muslim poet to write a
tribute to the Prophet in precisely these terms.
Nietzsche’s declaration that God was dead was also not entirely original. European philosophers
had been arguing for the supremacy of science without which they felt there could be no progress
and therefore they needed to put away the idea of God. In effect Marx had already pronounced
God dead when he declared religion to be the “opium of the people.” Darwin had posed a secular
and godless explanation for evolution and before him Napoleon had indicated he did not believe
in a specific God though in a general sense he went along with spirituality. While Nietzsche’s
declaration that God was dead was not entirely original, what is interesting is his suggestion of
taking the blame in his use of “we” for the death of God in his following sentence, “and we have
killed him”.… he has “bled to death under our knives.” Indeed Nietzsche describes God, which
in this context would also include Jesus Christ, as the “holiest and mightiest of all that the world
has yet owned.” This hints at a certain guilty sentimentality for killing off God that has perhaps
escaped his critics. While Nietzsche constantly attacks Christianity, his respect for Jesus is clear,
as seen in his statement published in The Will to Power, “What is wrong with Christianity is that
it refrains from doing all those things that Christ commanded should be done.”

12
 Muhammad Iqbal Image: By Iqbal Academy Pakistan

If my premise is correct that Nietzsche may have consciously or subconsciously borrowed

aspects of his Superman from the notion of the Perfect Man through sources like Goethe then it
changes the nature of the debate between Iqbal and Nietzsche. Iqbal wants to pull the German
closer to Islam; but Nietzsche is not really resisting. He has declared that God is dead but at the
same time he is constantly praising Islam and at the center of Islam is the notion of God and the
Prophet of Islam; together they form the primary declaration of the Islamic faith.

Iqbal’s treatment of Nietzsche raises some pertinent questions which lie beyond the scope of this
article. The first question is: are only faithful and practicing Muslims eligible to become Perfect

13
Man? Nietzsche’s own concept of Superman had no such restrictions. Why did Iqbal fail to see
the yearning for Islam in Nietzsche? Was it a methodological failure or mere human petulance?

Nietzsche’s Legacy
It is Nietzsche’s misfortune that in a profound sense his reputation was compromised by the
admiration Hitler and the Nazis had for him. Ironically Nietzsche was long dead when Hitler
came to power; his mental collapse began the year Hitler was born in 1889. In any case,
Nietzsche’s aversion to the Nazi kind of mentality was well known and is explicit in his work.
Nietzsche’s philosophic position was diametrically opposed to the rigid certainties of the Nazis.
Nietzsche’s ideas, like “the will to power,” make abundantly clear he rejects “certainties” and
“absolutes” while emphasizing his ideas were merely “interpretations.” As he lay stricken in bed
in a state of mental collapse it was his sister who successfully projected him as a Nazi
sympathizer by distorting his image. Hitler even visited the museum she ran in her brother’s
name and photographs were taken of the occasion. By attending her funeral Hitler consolidated
the status of her brother as a German icon in the Nazi era; it also forever damned Nietzsche in
the eyes of those who loathed Hitler. It was difficult to reconcile the man on the mountain
in Thus Spake Zarathustra who had gathered love and wisdom to share with humanity with the
vile philosophy of hatred and violence promoted by the evil ideology of the Nazis.
In spite of Hitler and the Nazis embracing it enthusiastically, the concept of the Superman, as we
have seen, is not that of hard-eyed and chiseled-jawed muscular young men in jackboots
searching for members of the minority, but one of self-fulfillment and betterment. Decades after
Nietzsche’s death, it was the word—Superman—that to the arrogant Nazis seemed to fit like a
glove in their demented dreams of world conquest and racial superiority.

It is interesting in the context of what transpired in Europe in the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries to examine some of Nietzsche’s warnings for us that resulted in his promotion of
Superman. He had warned against the state that takes the place of God as it will enslave us. It
was “the coldest of cold monsters.” Remarkably he predicted the rise of the socialist centralized
states and the violence that they would create. Nietzsche saw Bismarck’s vulgar “blood and soil”
politics as a harbinger of things to come. He condemned the Prussian statesman who unified
Germany in 1871 for cementing his power by stoking nationalist resentments and appealing to
racial purity.

It was the beginning of a period of great transformation in Europe. There was a debate about the
future of the continent, and Nietzsche perceived a shift into a form of “petty politics” of the sort
pioneered by Bismarck. Nietzsche hoped for a grand unification of Europe, a transnational
politics in which high culture and art could thrive. What he witnessed instead was more
fragmentation, more nationalism, more tribalism. Nietzsche developed frameworks to analyze
these transformations that could help us think differently about the unraveling we are seeing
today in Europe and North America.

Nietzsche’s influence has been, and remains, far and wide. Intellectuals have written about
Superman, for example George Bernard Shaw in his 1903 play Man and Superman. In the 1930s

14
two young American Jewish men with an East European background created the comic book
character Superman who went on to become one of the most successful comic book characters of
all time. This Superman wore the colors of the United States, red and blue, and like the nation
was the champion of justice and fair play. He was described as, “Faster than a speeding bullet!
More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.” Two other
young American men, Leopold and Loeb, who in the 1920s planned the “perfect crime” by
murdering a younger weaker boy in Chicago to establish their superiority, Jack Kerouac, who
mentions Nietzsche in the first paragraph of On the Road, and Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, the
American professor who in 2012 produced an academic book, American Nietzsche, which
dramatically recasts our understanding of American intellectual life and puts Nietzsche squarely
at its heart, were all in one way or another influenced by Nietzsche. Mom, the American TV
series, had an episode called “Nietzsche and a Beer Run” featuring a romance with a muscular
fireman who has a Ph.D in philosophy and the heroine. I was struck by Nietzsche’s entry into
American pop culture even though there was the underlying running joke of the improbability of
a philosopher as a hot fireman. Luc Ferry has been in the forefront of French scholars in
engaging with Nietzsche and attempting to contain his influence on French philosophers. Their
efforts are framed in philosophic terms: “To think with Nietzsche against Nietzsche.”
Perhaps the best methodological approach to the discussion of Superman is not to be distracted
either by abstruse philosophic debates or to see him in relation to the DC Comics hero but
instead to return to Nietzsche. His aim was to urge mankind to become the best that we as human
beings can aspire to, the finest, ultimate version of ourselves. Superman is something that is
within us and something that we in the future can become.

The Superman in the Age of the Pandemic

We are now confronted with a serious crisis in the coronavirus pandemic which has attacked
humanity. I believe that in this environment we need to remind ourselves of the concept of
Superman which gives us an important perspective and tools we may use to rise to meet the
current challenge. It also provides us with a kind of model of leadership we need.

Having rejected the tyrants of the twentieth century, the Hitlers and Stalins, why should mankind
turn to Superman now? Let us look at the United States, the most powerful and economically
prosperous nation in the world when the pandemic hit early in 2020. It is well to keep in mind
that one American is dying every minute of the virus, around a thousand Americans are dying
daily, and as of writing this piece in mid-August there are about five million cases and over
160,000 have lost their lives. So far, no vaccine has been discovered.

But we do not need Superman to work in the laboratory as a medical researcher. We need
Supermen because we wish the wise and the compassionate to guide us in these terrible times, to
give us hope as we know they transcend ordinary politics. They are especially needed as symbols
because traditional leadership has proven a dangerous failure. People are disillusioned by their
leaders who they see as out of touch, corrupt and incompetent. We need them as studies show the
majority of people, in America, for example, are suffering from mental health problems such as

15
depression and thoughts of suicide. The pandemic has made people short-tempered and easily
angry; it has promoted violence. Societies desperately need figures that are unimpeachable and
can unite and inspire. People seek compassion and wisdom.

Discarding ideas of the stereotypical Superman as a muscular bodybuilder, we have some

remarkable candidates in our own age. These would approximate to the classic definition of
Superman as laid out by Nietzsche. We have President Jimmy Carter, the late John Lewis, and
the current chief medical advisor to the US government, Dr. Anthony Fauci to name three. Each
one of them in their own way has contributed to society and helped make it better, aspiring
towards something beyond itself. Each one of them faced challenges and resistance. But in spite
of the hurdles, they faced they provided moral clarity, moral leadership, and an example
that brings out the better angels in us. In that sense, they are aspirational figures. There are also
public intellectuals whose reach extends beyond the borders of their countries—Professors
Rajmohan Gandhi in India, Noam Chomsky in the United States, and Dr. Haris Silajdzic in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, for examples. There are outstanding religious figures: in the United
Kingdom, we have figures like Dr. Rowan Williams and Lord George Carey, both former
Archbishops of Canterbury, and Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the UK, and in
Eastern Europe, there is the former Grand Mufti of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr. Mustafa Ceric.

During the pandemic, we have seen a tendency for large sections of society to fall back to
traditional faith. It gives them a sense of belonging, a feeling of being part of a bigger family and
a community and it also provides certainty in an uncertain time. It provides this even when
miracles do not happen and those who fall ill and even die cannot avert the disaster by
prayer alone. In spite of the limitations of religion to perform miracles, people still cling to what
is familiar and it gives them comfort. In the same way, the Superman idea allows communities to
look up to its leaders and be inspired by them. The problem is that we live in an age where
nothing is hidden or kept secret for long so that no leader, however retiring or modest, can
escape the destructive attention of the media. Sooner or later the searing cynicism of the media
and its iconoclastic eye will spot the weaknesses in individuals and then proceed to tear down
those it may have built up only recently. That is why Superman today would find it very difficult
to remain a Superman and our own choices indicate how difficult it is for Superman to survive.

While the fact that Brad Pitt, one of Hollywood’s most glamorous stars, played Dr. Fauci
confirms the good doctor’s popularity in American contemporary mythology, Fauci is also not
only attacked by those on the right but by Donald Trump, the president of the US himself. This
has generated an avalanche of hatred against Fauci and he has had to hire security to protect
himself and his family. That hostility is the fate of Nietzsche’s Superman. It is also a fact that
when this ugly Covid-19 virus finally lifts, and with it the current crop of so-called leaders who
stand exposed as hollow and corrupt, societies will desperately need to turn to those they can
trust for guidance and wisdom. Perhaps then it may be the time of Superman.

16