Rethinking Islamic Studies Muhammad Iqbal’s Philosophy as Decolonial Critique

Author: Asad Dandia

Abstract

The challenge of “decolonizing” knowledge in the academy is one that is contemplated by all those working to undo the epistemic violence inaugurated by colonial modernity and sustained by its postcolonial transmutations. The process itself raises questions about resources, methodologies, and conclusions. What does it mean to undertake a decolonial approach in one’s research? How can one submit a decolonial gesture without falling into either the trap of intellectual nativism on one side or reinscribing the colonial on the other? What does decoloniality look like both in terms of methodology as well as epistemology, and how can it help us in advancing new forms of knowledge? These questions are particularly resonant in Islamic Studies. Islam—perhaps unlike any other intellectual tradition among the Enlightenment’s Others—looms large over the western imagination both as a foreign object of exoticism and as a specter of barbarism. Caught between various binary concepts (religious/secular, traditional/modern, etc.) as the archetype of one or the foil of another, the study of Islam in the western academy, with some notable exceptions, has yet to fully shake off its colonial vestiges.

This thesis is a meditation by a student of Islamic Studies over what it means to think more capaciously about decoloniality as it concerns modern Islamic thought. Toward this endeavor, this thesis will aim to make a decolonial intervention in the field through an investigation of concepts drawn from the work of a modern Muslim thinker, Muhammad Iqbal (1877—1938), as a starting point. I argue that the philosophy of Iqbal functions both as an internal critique of the Islamic tradition and as a subversive site for thinking about the decolonial in the academy by defying the easy categorizations that have arrested our intellectual imaginations. Rather than framing Iqbal as a “Muslim modernist” or as the intellectual forefather of Pakistan (as the literature has mostly done), I look to his thought independently of these posthumous labels, showing how engagement with the Islamic tradition on its own terms can offer new analytical tools for understanding modern Muslim subjectivity, and how this subjectivity can bring to the fore epistemologies that have hitherto been unexplored.

The introduction will set the terms of the discussion with a critical literature review that will trace and interrogate prevailing methodologies and the epistemological assumptions that undergird inquiries about Islam as an object of analysis, examining their strengths and weaknesses. The following chapters will then explore specific concepts as analytical tools for my decolonial gesture. Chapter 1 will explore Iqbal’s construction of selfhood, arguing that it challenges selfhood as constructed both within the Islamic tradition and as constructed by the Enlightenment. Chapter 2 will explore consciousness, demonstrating that consciousness for Iqbal was neither restricted to theological conditions nor material conditions, but incorporated and defied both. Chapter 3 will look at time, arguing that Iqbal’s conception of time was neither linear nor cyclical, but regenerative. The aim of each chapter will be to demonstrate that Iqbal, as a decolonial thinker, was able to critique the terms set by colonial modernity without resorting to an intellectual nativism nor by reinscribing the colonial. By bringing Iqbal into conversation with thinkers both classical and contemporary, I show how scholars can engage creatively and critically with the Islamic tradition in ways hitherto unexplored, opening up new horizons for understanding Islamic thought and its place in the world.