From Self to Self-ness: A Reading of Muhammad Iqbal’s Khudī as a Moral-Ontological Vision A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Religious Studies University of Virginia by Shifa Amina Noor Charlottesville, August 2020 Acknowledgements biʾsmi llāhi l-raḥmāni l-raḥīm. In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. I am grateful to God for bringing me this far, and pray to Him alone, to carry me forward. I am grateful to everyone who has made this dissertation possible, and also those who have cherished me along the way. I am so grateful to everyone on my committee, in particular, my adviser, Prof. Charles Mathewes, whose fairness and patience with someone like me has been a blessing. Thank you for being gracious and capacious, and giving me the tools, and reading, thinking, and writing habits, to be able to bring to light, such important aspects of Iqbal, in a novel way. I am grateful to Prof. Peter Ochs for providing me with nurturing insights that aided me, before and in my project. I am grateful to Profs. Shankar Nair and Mehr Faruqi, for their patience, time and valuable comments. I cannot be thankful enough to my parents, Drs. Iram Bashir and Adalat Khan, who made the luxury of reading and writing, a possibility for me. To parents, one tries to be thankful in constant actions, rather than words. I am also totally indebted to my loving aunt, Kanwal Bashir, whose strength, reliability, and intense care, made my time in Virginia feel like home. I pray for my departed grandfather, Muhammad Bashir, who always made education a family priority. I pray for my dear grandmother, Amina Bibi, who was a woman of sheer power and joy, whose stubbornness I inherited, and who was among those who are blessed to go to God, smiling. I am very grateful to an extraordinary person, Liz Smith, who had no reason to be so kind, and so genuinely invested, in me. Without her frank and unabashed concern to make sure that I always met every deadline, I would not have reached this stage. I am also thankful to Dennis, for the many feasts, and to Liz Smith’s wonderful mom. I cherish my teacher, and now, someone extremely close to me, and someone who considers me a “colleague” and “co-inquirer”, Dr. Basit Koshul, more than words can convey. Such words sound clumsily out of place in an academic dissertation, but, rarely, academic environments can indeed generate relationships which are of the entire person. God can do what He wills. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Sources of Selfhood: Paths to Understanding Iqbal’s Vision of Khudī ...............16 Chapter Overview .......................................................................................................................16 I. Why Intelligibility? .............................................................................................................16 i) Reasons related to Religious Ethics ...............................................................................17 ii) Reasons related to Iqbal’s vision of khudī .....................................................................20 iii) Reasons related to Iqbal’s “narrative capacity” ..........................................................23 II. Helpful Articulations about the “Self” as Moral Concept.................................................26 i) Mahmood and the Individual Person ..............................................................................26 ii) Taylor, and “Self” within the Universe ........................................................................29 iii) Asad and the “Societal Self” as “Space” .....................................................................31 Chapter Conclusion ....................................................................................................................35 Chapter 2: Iqbal’s Self-Described Functions within his Tradition .........................................37 Chapter Overview ......................................................................................................................37 I. Tradition: Four Elements and Roles, as per Iqbal ...............................................................39 i) Iqbal’s Uncritical Obedience Towards Canon ...............................................................40 ii) The “Critical Student” Function ....................................................................................46 iii) Rūmī as “Master”: Between Canon and Critical Student? ...........................................48 iv) Iqbal’s Function as a Socially Rousing Voice ..............................................................49 II. Some Trends in Iqbal Studies: Minimization, Omission and Conflation ........................54 i) Minimization of Iqbal’s Self-Construal..........................................................................55 ii) Omitting the Elements of Iqbal’s Self-Construal ..........................................................56 iii) Conflating the Elements of Iqbal’s Self-Construal ......................................................58 iv) Seminal Exceptions ......................................................................................................61 Chapter Conclusion ..................................................................................................................64 Chapter 3: Iqbal’s Vision of Khudī, and Nature .......................................................................65 Chapter Overview ......................................................................................................................65 I. Key Theological Concerns for Understanding Khudī .........................................................66 i) “Static” and “Anti-Individualistic” Theologies ..............................................................67 ii) Divine Creativity ...........................................................................................................69 II. The “Structure” of Iqbal’s Natural Vision .........................................................................72 i) Ontic Esteem of the Universe .........................................................................................74 ii) Ontic Dynamism of the Universe ..................................................................................77 II. Moving Towards Moral Dimensions .................................................................................82 i) Natural Obedience and Exemplarity ..............................................................................82 ii) Divine Love ...................................................................................................................88 Chapter Conclusion ...................................................................................................................89 Chapter 4: Khudī, and the Human Individual ..........................................................................91 Chapter Overview ......................................................................................................................91 I. Iqbal’s Moral Anthropology ...............................................................................................91 i) Fear and Love .................................................................................................................92 ii) Three (Morally Nourishing) Features of Love ..............................................................94 II. Moral Formation ..............................................................................................................100 i) Education/Cultivation of Khudī ....................................................................................100 ii) “Obedience”/ “Itāʿat” ...............................................................................................102 iii) “Self-Control”/ “Ḍabt-i nafs” ....................................................................................105 iv) “Divine representation”/ “Niyābat-i ilāhī” ................................................................108 v) “Personal Immortality” ................................................................................................112 Chapter Conclusion .................................................................................................................115 Chapter 5: Iqbal’s Vision of Khudī, and Society .....................................................................117 Chapter Overview ....................................................................................................................117 I. Descriptive Dimensions ....................................................................................................118 i) History, and Finality .....................................................................................................118 ii) Society, even pre-finality, is non-monolithic ..............................................................119 iii) The societal self is more than the sum of individual selves .......................................121 II. Normative Dimensions ....................................................................................................122 i) Society and Individual: Mirrored Moral Formations ...................................................123 ii) The Societal Self Depends on the Prophetic Individual