Re: Was Iqbal pro sufism?
Alĥaq makes the claim that Iqbal started his career as a free thinker with “Sufi inclinations,” then radically changed his position after his return from Europe.87Dates of publication of the works cited in this write-up do not support this claim. As demonstrated Iqbal at the beginning of his career considered mysticism as a system of verification88 while towards the end of his career he emphasized the importance of mystic experience as the discovery of the ego of its ultimate nature. This experience is not a “conceptually manageable intellectual fact; it is a vital fact…that cannot be captured in the net of logical categories.”89 For him this experience is the product of an active engagement with ones environment rather than a withdrawal from it. It is the product of effort and struggle, of ego-sustaining activities rather than world-negation. It would therefore be more appropriate to maintain that Iqbal did not reject Sufism, but rather aimed at its reformation. This was due to the different need of the time. To examine his views out of the context of his times is to do an injustice to him.
And,
wikipedia…Classical Sufi scholars have defined Sufism as “a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God”
Iqbal was not limited to Sufism, He wrote Shikwa, and then Jawab -e Shikwa. He did not suggest to disconnect ourselves from world, but to encourage and pointed out our flaws…
It is easier to sit in one room and think about Allah and purify hear and soul, but letting know the real situation with reasonable argument is more than Sufism…