←IndexThe Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Lecture 4: The Human Ego — His Freedom and Immortality

Section 9 of 13

Destiny, fatalism, and Spengler's misreading

Section summary

In brief

Iqbal confronts Spengler's charge that Islam is 'a complete negation of the ego' by distinguishing two radically different kinds of fatalism: the higher fatalism of strong personalities who vitally embrace life's creative necessity, and the degrading fatalism of Qismat that historically paralysed Muslim civilisation. The latter, he argues, was the joint product of philosophical error, Umayyad political expediency, and a diminishing life-impulse — and he draws a devastating parallel with Hegel and Comte, whose philosophies served the same legitimating function for modern capitalism.

Section 8 concluded the freedom argument by recasting prayer as the ego's periodic escape from mechanism — the recovery of its directive power against the mechanising forces of daily life. But a powerful objection remains: does the Qur'an not teach destiny (Taqdīr)? And if it does, is Islam not, as the German historian-philosopher Oswald Spengler claims, 'a complete negation of the ego'? Section 9 confronts this objection — one of the most consequential misreadings of Islam in modern Western intellectual history — and in the process develops a distinction between two radically different kinds of 'fatalism' that is essential to Iqbal's entire project.

The section advances through two connected but distinct movements. First, Iqbal reinterprets the Qur'anic concept of destiny by drawing, paradoxically, on Spengler's own distinction between two modes of appropriating the world: the intellectual (understanding reality as a system of cause and effect) and the vital (the absolute acceptance of life's necessity as an evolving, creative whole). Īmān, Iqbal argues, is not passive belief but 'living assurance begotten of a rare experience' — the vital appropriation of reality that only strong personalities can achieve. The unitive experiences of Islamic history — Ḥallāj's 'I am the creative truth,' the Prophet's 'I am Time,' ʿAlī's 'I am the speaking Qur'an,' Bāyazīd's 'Glory to me' — are not the ego's negation but its supreme affirmation. In the higher Sufism, unitive experience is 'not the finite ego effacing its own identity by some sort of absorption into the infinite Ego; it is rather the Infinite passing into the loving embrace of the finite.' The fatalism implied in this attitude is not weakness but 'life and boundless power.'

Second, Iqbal acknowledges the historical reality: 'a most degrading type of Fatalism has prevailed in the world of Islam for many centuries.' But he insists on diagnosing its causes rather than accepting it as the authentic expression of Islamic teaching. The degrading fatalism arose from three converging forces: philosophical thought that conceptualised God as a transcendent first cause operating on the universe from without, political expediency by the Umayyad dynasty that used divine decree to justify tyranny and atrocity, and the gradually diminishing force of the original Islamic life-impulse. Iqbal draws a devastating parallel with modern Western philosophy: Hegel's rationalisation of the actual and Comte's organic functionalism have served precisely the same legitimating function for the capitalist status quo that fatalistic theology served for Umayyad despotism.

This section is architecturally essential. It addresses the single most common Western criticism of Islamic thought (that Islam breeds fatalism) and the single most widespread internal malaise of Muslim civilisation (the acceptance of passivity as piety). By distinguishing the higher fatalism — the ego's confident acceptance of its creative destiny — from the degrading fatalism — the ego's surrender of agency to political and theological convenience — Iqbal reclaims the Qur'anic concept of destiny for the philosophy of the active, self-directing ego.

Original text

It cannot, however, be denied that the idea of destiny runs throughout the Qur'an. This point is worth considering, more especially because Spengler in his Decline of the West seems to think that Islam amounts to a complete negation of the ego.³³ I have already explained to you my view of Taqdīr (destiny) as we find it in the Qur'an.³⁴ As Spengler himself points out, there are two ways of making the world our own. The one is intellectual; the other, for want of a better expression, we may call vital. The intellectual way consists in understanding the world as a rigid system of cause and effect. The vital is the absolute acceptance of the inevitable necessity of life, regarded as a whole which in evolving its inner richness creates serial time. This vital way of appropriating the universe is what the Qur'an describes as Īmān. Īmān is not merely a passive belief in one or more propositions of a certain kind; it is living assurance begotten of a rare experience. Strong personalities alone are capable of rising to this experience and the higher 'Fatalism' implied in it.

Napoleon is reported to have said—'I am a thing, not a person'. This is one way in which unitive experience expresses itself. In the history of religious experience in Islam which, according to the Prophet, consists in the 'creation of Divine attributes in man', this experience has found expression in such phrases as—'I am the creative truth' (Hallaj), 'I am Time' (Muhammad), 'I am the speaking Quran' (Ali), 'Glory to me' (Ba Yazid). In the higher Sufiism of Islam unitive experience is not the finite ego effacing its own identity by some sort of absorption into the Infinite Ego; it is rather the Infinite passing into the loving embrace of the finite. As Rumi says:

'Divine knowledge is lost in the knowledge of the saint! And how is it possible for people to believe in such a thing?'

The fatalism implied in this attitude is not negation of the ego as Spengler seems to think; it is life and boundless power which recognizes no obstruction, and can make a man calmly offer his prayers when bullets are showering around him.

But is it not true, you will say, that a most degrading type of Fatalism has prevailed in the world of Islam for many centuries? This is true, and has a history behind it which requires separate treatment. It is sufficient here to indicate that the kind of Fatalism which the European critics of Islam sum up in the word Qismat was due partly to philosophical thought, partly to political expediency, and partly to the gradually diminishing force of the life-impulse, which Islam originally imparted to its followers.

Philosophy, searching for the meaning of cause as applied to God, and taking time as the essence of the relation between cause and effect, could not but reach the notion of a transcendent God, prior to the universe, and operating upon it from without. God was thus conceived as the last link in the chain of causation, and, consequently, the real author of all that happens in the universe. Now the practical materialism of the opportunist Umayyad rulers of Damascus needed a peg on which to hang their misdeeds at Karbalā, and to secure the fruits of Amīr Muʿāwiyyah's revolt against the possibilities of a popular rebellion. Maʿbad is reported to have said to Ḥasan of Baṣra that the Umayyads killed Muslims, and attributed their acts to the decrees of God. 'These enemies of God,' replied Ḥasan, 'are liars.'³⁶ Thus arose, in spite of open protests by Muslim divines, a morally degrading Fatalism, and the constitutional theory known as the 'accomplished fact'³⁷ in order to support vested interests.

This is not at all surprising. In our own times philosophers have furnished a kind of intellectual justification for the finality of the present capitalistic structure of society. Hegel's view of Reality as an infinitude of reason from which follows the essential rationality of the real, and Auguste Comte's society as an organism in which specific functions are eternally assigned to each organ, are instances in point. The same thing appears to have happened in Islam. But since Muslims have always sought the justification of their varying attitudes in the Qur'an, even though at the expense of its plain meaning the fatalistic interpretation has had very far-reaching effects on Muslim peoples. I could, in this connexion, quote several instances of obvious misinterpretation; but the subject requires special treatment, and it is time now to turn to the question of immortality.

← Previous

8. Prayer as escape from mechanism

10. Immortality — metaphysical and ethical arguments

Original text

'Divine knowledge is lost in the knowledge of the saint! And how is it possible for people to believe in such a thing?'