NATIONALISM ON THE HORIZON: ALLAMA IQBAL'S CRITICISM OF WESTERN NATIONALISM

Abstract

The shallow appeal of the Western development spellbound the Muslim world momentarily. Patriotism was one of those items imported to the domain of the Muslim legislative issues, which got careless belief because of both Muslim scholastics and laymen the same. Allama Iqbal, the appreciated Muslim ideologue, having delved profound into the corpus of the western way of thinking, came brutally out in judgment of the Western Territorial Nationalism naming it a delusion, which had welcomed the humankind near the precarious edge of demolition. He was especially annoyed by the visually impaired aping by the Muslim universe of the Western Territorial Nationalism around whose neck Iqbal saw draping the dots of hostility, government, and skepticism. Taking to his idyllic shafts he cautioned the Muslims to monitor themselves against this fiendish blight. As a substitute for the Western patriotism, he set forward the possibility of "Social Nationalism" that attracted the heavenly assent sum from the Holy Quran, and the Sunnah. In contrast to the western patriotism, which was separated from the moral and otherworldly components, and was predicated upon the insignificant establishments, the social patriotism looked for the unification of the humanity based on the loftiest ideal of Islam. Iqbal argued enthusiastically for universalism, and a sort of 'Class of the Muslim nations'.