Seeing, Knowing, Believing: Iqbal on Faith in the Modern World

Abstract

Iqbal saw an intimate relationship between the modem crisis of faith and modernist epistemology. Hence, as a solution, he tried to articulate an epistemology that meets the critical rigour of modem philosophical and scientific thinking. It also attempts to account for the reality and verity of religious experience as the most subtle and reliable source of knowledge. Iqbal's proposed epistemology is rooted in the Qurʿanic narrative and the interpretation of this narrative by the "more genuine schools of Sufism." He combines the insights garnered from a study of these "religious" sources with his first-hand understanding of modem philosophic and scientific thought to recover and represent an understanding of “knowledge” that is a companion, not an adversary to "faith."