Iqbal

Submitted by Katyayan Seraph (India), May 21, 2014 at 04:08

Dear Mr. Pipes,

Islamism's difficult dalliance with democracy isn't exactly new. A whole gamut of its conflicted emotions vis-a-vis democracy can be found in the writings of Allama Iqbal, aka Mohammed Iqbal, a Muslim poet in undivided India before 1947 and an ideological forebear of separatist Muslim identity that justified the creation of Muslim Pakistan. Your concluding observation, "tactical and temporary" is on the money. Islam has cyclical politics. Crisis leads to some form of introspection, with the stray genuine call for reform, which goes too far in the other direction, which leads to a crisis of identity, which leads to a call for going back to the roots, which leads to some self-proclaimed Mujaddid springing to centre-stage, which leads to renewed fervour, which leads to a backlash, which leads to a crisis, which leads to......It goes on and on. It's how Islam is.

Always an admirer,
K

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