Chapter I · The Fifth Paragraph
5. The Quran’s purpose
Book page 11
The fifth paragraph (page 11) turns to the purpose of the Quran, and compares Islam with early Christianity on how spiritual life relates to the world.
The People
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
Germany’s greatest literary figure and the author of Faust. He took a serious interest in Islam, and his West-Eastern Divan (1819) was inspired by the Persian poet Hafiz.
Johann Peter Eckermann (1792–1854). Goethe’s assistant in his last years, who recorded his talk in Conversations with Goethe, the source of the remark on page 11.
The founder of Christianity. Iqbal means Jesus, and the “insight” he describes recalls the saying “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
The Ideas
Religion and civilization (page 11). Spiritual life on one side, and the world of law, society, politics and material progress on the other. They conflict because they pull in different directions, and they attract because each needs the other.
Independent content for spiritual life (page 11). Something for spiritual life to rest on that does not depend on outside forces. Iqbal used nearly the same phrase for Ghazali in the third paragraph.
Iqbal’s text
Read the paragraph now. The small numbers in the margin are the book’s page numbers.
11The main purpose of the Quran is to awaken in man the higher consciousness of his manifold relations with God and the universe. It is in view of this essential aspect of the Quranic teaching that Goethe, while making a general review of Islam as an educational force, said to Eckermann: 'You see this teaching never fails; with all our systems, we cannot go, and generally speaking no man can go, farther than that.' The problem of Islam was really suggested by the mutual conflict, and at the same time mutual attraction, presented by the two forces of religion and civilization. The same problem confronted early Christianity. The great point in Christianity is the search for an independent content for spiritual life which, according to the insight of its founder, could be elevated, not by the forces of a world external to the soul of man, but by the revelation of a new world within his soul. Islam fully agrees with this insight and supplements it by the further insight that the illumination of the new world thus revealed is not something foreign to the world of matter but permeates it through and through.
How Iqbal Uses Them
He states the Quran’s aim. Its main purpose is to awaken a higher consciousness of a person’s relations with God and the universe, which keeps religion tied to the question of knowledge.
He calls a European witness. After urging Muslims to examine Europe independently, he quotes one of Europe’s greatest minds, who says no system can go farther than this teaching.
He finds common ground with Christianity. Both religions face the conflict and attraction between religion and civilization. Iqbal agrees with Christianity that spiritual life is raised by a new world within the soul.
He adds what he takes to be Islam’s insight. The light of that inner world “permeates” matter. This reverses the ladder pictured in the first part of this guide, where matter sits farthest from the source. Many Christian thinkers would say the Incarnation already does this.