اقبال کا نظریہ ملت و قومیت

Iqbal’s Concept of Millat and Nationalism

Abstract

Nationalism is an idea that promotes the interests of a particular group of people who have shared characteristics of different values and aim to gain and maintain sovereignty over its homeland through self-determination and self-rule and who unite to build a single national identity. In the case of Iqbal, nationalism takes it different shape in which it abolishes materialistic cultural and geographical nationalism and sees the western imposed and influenced nationalism as a threat to Islamic state which would shrink its boundaries and would give rise to an issue which Islam struggled to abolish and erase from the day one. Iqbal’s nationalism is not geographically earth rooted though it advocates and promotes the concept of ‘Millet’ and ‘Nationalism’ as unity-in-diversity given any shape, size and place of the people’s inhibiting land even if they are geographically disconnected. This article will evaluate the Iqbal’s, Islamic and general concept of nationalism and will highlight the key feature of them by comparing and contrasting their ideas.