Bergson, Iqbal, and the Concept Of Ijtihad

Abstract

This chapter presents the trajectory of Muhammad Iqbal, “founding father of Pakistan” and an important reformist philosopher of Islam, examining the connections between Bergsonian philosophy of creative evolution and becoming-individual and the Iqbalian aim of a reconstruction and revivification of Islamic thought founded on the notion of the human ego working as collaborator with God in its own realization. For Iqbal, this vision of Islam as an open system of thought able to evolve and accommodate newness—as opposed to models of strictly fixed juridical knowledge and judgment—is centered in the concept of itjihad. This concept, in turn, is at the heart what makes this renewed Islam a viable structure for the organization of the new nation he worked to bring about.