The Objective Validity Of Religion To Modernity And Iqbal

Abstract

With the dawn of modernity and hubris of science and technology, Europe came to
believe that reality is that carries in its folds an irrefutable evidence of its existence. So,
religion on account of the lack of an empirical truth stayed untenable to the Cartesian
mindset of Europe. Modernity to him was a departure from the age of mythos to the age
of logos. Reason stayed sole arbiter of truth with Descartes’ proposition that “reason can
stand on its own without Revelation”. Thus Europe either said goodbye to the religion or
relegated it to the private life. Though this approach descended into secular educational
institutions of the Muslim World via colonial rule with its peculiar approach to knowledge
and succeeded in sowing the seeds of skepticism about religion, yet with the inspirational
leadership of Syed Jamal al-Din Afghani religion became a potent force against European
imperialism in the Muslim world. Following the legacy of Afghani Iqbal took the plunge
to formulate the restatement of Islam as a pragmatic social proposition responsive to
modernity. In Western epistemology no idea was more foreign to Modernity andEnlightenment than the idea of Revelation. Iqbal presented the case of religion in terms
of the current stock of philosophical ideas with the plea that knowledge-scientific or
religious- seldom can afford independence from concrete experience. In fact religious
man stands in greater need of eliminating the alloy of illusions from his experience than
the scientist, the mystic seeker who too if not ceases his quest is bound to hug the
Ultimate Reality. This paper is based on qualitative research and tends not only to bring
into bold relief the objective validity of religion but establishes that in face of modernity-when life has become so complex and problems have multiplied manifolds, modern man
stands in greater need of religion than the man of primitive society or medieval era.