Contemporary Interpretations of Iqbal's Thought in the Twenty-First Century: Renewal, Identity and Global Problems

اکیسویں صدی میں فکرِ اقبال کی عصری تعبیرات: تجدید، شناخت اور عالمی مسائل کے تناظر میں

Abstract

Twenty-first-century scholarship increasingly reads Muhammad Iqbal not only as a thinker to be explained but as a resource for present problems. This article examines six studies published in 2025–2026 that make Iqbal "contemporary" in different ways: as the architect of a new kalam through the Reconstruction; as the reinterpreter of Sufism in Gulshan-i-Raz-i-Jadid; as an educational philosopher set against behaviourism; as a political theorist of Muslim unity in diversity; as a critic of globalization; and as a foreseer of current global events. The study groups these readings into three modes—reconstructive, applicative and predictive—and asks how each move from Iqbal's text to the present. It finds that reconstructive readings remain closest to Iqbal's own writings, while applicative and predictive readings gain immediacy at the cost of textual grounding, historical context and engagement with counterarguments. The article argues that a contemporary interpretation must do three things: locate Iqbal's statement in its own text and time, explain the mechanism by which it bears on a present problem, and acknowledge the limits of that transfer. Without these steps, the effort to keep Iqbal relevant risks turning interpretation into commemoration.