Allama Iqbal remains omnipresent in Pakistan’s national life, yet his philosophy finds little reflection in how the country is governed, educated and lived. While his poetry is recited and ideas celebrated, intellectual independence, self-respect and purposeful action remain elusive. His intellectual journey from Sialkot and Lahore to Cambridge and Munich exposed him to influential philosophical traditions. At Government College Lahore, Thomas Arnold shaped his thinking, while his 1908 doctorate from the University of Munich deepened his engagement with science, reason and modern philosophy, alongside growing concerns about Muslim intellectual stagnation and political subordination.

At the heart of Iqbal’s philosophy was khudi or selfhood. Far from individual arrogance, it represented the cultivation of human potential through knowledge, discipline, courage and purposeful action. In Asrar-e-Khudi (1915), he argued that individuals and societies could achieve greatness only by developing their own intellectual and moral capacities, rather than relying on imitation or dependence. For Iqbal, selfhood was not passive acceptance of circumstances but the ability to question, struggle, create and shape one’s destiny.

Closely connected to khudi was Iqbal’s concept of ijtihad, the continuing exercise of independent reasoning. In his lectures on the reconstruction of religious thought in Islam, he challenged the intellectual stagnation that occurs when inherited interpretations become unquestionable. He saw no inherent........

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