Islam Offers Panacea for Most of Modern Ills

Abstract

Modern civilization is marked by over intellectualism and excessive rationalism. It is generally believed that reason is the most reliable faculty for knowledge and life. As a result of this excessive reliance on intellect and reason, Iqbal says, ... the modern man has ceased to live soulfully, i.e., from within. In the domain of thought he is living in open conflict with himself; and in the domain of economic and political life he is living in open conflict with others. Modern approach, a close and critical study would reveal, is one- sided as according to it perceptual experience is the only genuine and concrete experience. In the field of philosophy it has given rise to systems like positivism, empiricism and logicalism; no place is left for intuitionism and spiritualism. In the field of morality it has given rise to “labelism” and other “external” theories of good and bad, right and wrong. Morality has been reduced to business honesty in the West, while sex-morality has been almost relegated into the background, the result being that human society is going to face an unprecedented catastrophe in future. In fairness to the West, however, Iqbal regrets that both East and the West are one-sided. The West makes a distinction between matter and spirit which is insurmountable following the legacy of thinkers like Rene Descartes. They also make a distinction between ideal and the real. As Iqbal says, ‘With Islam the ideal and the real are not two opposing forces which cannot be reconciled. The life of the ideal consists, not in a total breach with the real but in the perpetual endeavour of the ideal to appropriate the real with a view eventually to absorb it, to convert it into itself and to illuminate its whole being’.