Allama Iqbal’s Critique of Western Democracy

Abstract

The shallow glamour of the western democracy hipped up a kind of intellectual hysteria in the Muslim world. Inspired by the skin-deep allure of Western institutions, the Muslims rushed into the indiscriminate importation of liberal ideas to their home countries.   Democracy was one of those ideals to have held the Muslim academia, and laymen alike spellbound. Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, a distinguished poet, and Muslim philosopher, having dug deep into the realm of western philosophy, admonished his co-religionists to guard themselves against democracy characterizing it as an infernal bane, and a mirage which had in its garb the Caesarean, and tsarist despots masqueraded as democrats. It offered nothing else but ‘old wine in new bottles’. What was more, it was wholly stripped of an ethical, and spiritual orientation whereby it was rendered superficial, and suicidal. Also, it left the most vital affairs of human life to the vagaries of uncouth, and untamed masses who lacked even a bit of wisdom to judge their own good, let alone the collective good of the society. As a substitute for the western democracy, Allama put forward the Quranic ideal of “Spiritual Democracy”. He termed it a genuine democratic order in which he felt no qualms about exploitation, manipulation, and loot. This paper attempts to weigh the contemporary democracy from the perspective of Iqballian philosophy of spiritual democracy.
Keywords: Democracy, Allama Iqbal, West, Spiritual Democracy, Islam.