Zulfiqar Ali Shirazi
Allama Muhammad Iqbal emerged as a major Muslim thinker on nationhood during a period of profound political and intellectual upheaval in British India, when the Western concept of the territorial nation-state was becoming a norm and anti-colonial movements embraced nationalism. For Iqbal, however, nationhood could not be reduced to territory, race, ethnicity or language. His poetry and philosophy consistently show that a true nation must rest on shared spiritual purpose and moral agency, not merely on borders or secular nationalism.
The drift of Iqbal’s thought on the nation-state from territorial patriotism to identifying the global Muslim community as one nation became evident in his writings in the first decade of the last century. Scholars later concluded that Iqbal considered religion as the most enduring basis of collective identity and that, unlike territorial nationalism, Islam offers a longer and deeper continuum of social order.
This distinction that a nation is a spiritual-moral community united by faith, memory and ethical ideals, while the state is merely an administrative structure tied to territory, shaped Iqbal’s political theory. Western nation-states fuse both concepts, but Iqbal insisted they must remain separate. His concept of nationhood defined unity through moral commitment rather than soil, and his concept of selfhood extended to be a collective moral will and historic purpose of a nation. As Iqbal rejected Western nationalism for being territorial, secular and spiritually hollow, several major Western thinkers advanced theories that directly contradicted his moral vision of nationhood. Max Weber viewed the state as a power structure defined by its monopoly on force, opposing Iqbal’s belief that political authority must serve an ethical purpose. Ernest Gellner tied nationalism to industrialisation and mass culture, dismissing the spiritual foundations that Iqbal saw as central to a civilisation’s identity. Benedict Anderson’s idea of nations as “imagined communities” born out of print capitalism denied any metaphysical basis, clashing with Iqbal’s concept of nation as a historically rooted, value-driven collective. Karl Popper promoted an individualistic “open society,” rejecting cultural cohesion and contradicting Iqbal’s emphasis on shared moral consciousness. Similarly, Kenneth Waltz’s realist view of states as strategic actors in an anarchic world, alienating morality from politics, is the very opposite of Iqbal’s purpose-centred political philosophy. Charles Tilly’s portrayal of states formed through war-making and coercion also stood at odds with Iqbal’s belief that communities flourish through ethical, intellectual and creative renewal.
Samuel P. Huntington, writing at the end of the twentieth century, further intensified the divide between Western political thought and Iqbal’s philosophy by predicting a world fractured into hostile civilizational blocs. His “Clash of Civilisations” thesis, introduced in 1993 and later expanded into a book in 1996, directly opposes Iqbal’s call for dialogue, moral cooperation and spiritual uplift across cultures. Huntington views cultural differences as strategic fault lines requiring management, whereas Iqbal sees them as opportunities for renewal, learning and shared ethical progress. While Huntington interprets global affairs through fear, competition and inevitable rivalry, Iqbal offers a creative and value-driven framework entrenched in human dignity and civilizational harmony. In a world where modern crises transcend borders, Iqbal’s vision provides a far more robust alternative than Huntington’s rigid blocs, as it emphasises shared moral imagination and collective responsibility over confrontation. A large number of Western scholars have treated the nation-state primarily in terms of power, territory and conflict, overlooking the moral foundations that Iqbal regarded as essential for any lasting polity. As a result, the post-World War II system, despite institutional and economic integration efforts, failed to prevent global fragmentation, ideological extremism and humanitarian crises, courtesy of the lack of spiritual and ethical dimensions. This neglect allowed racial supremacism, populist nationalism and cultural alienation to simmer underneath, precisely validating Iqbal’s warning that political orders built without moral purpose cannot sustain.
Today’s world, marked by refugee flows, stateless populations, ideological radicalisation, climate-driven insecurity, digital disinformation and widening global inequalities, reveals a flawed territorial understanding of political belonging, manifesting the failure of the Western model. This is where Iqbal’s perspective offers untapped value. His insistence that nations must be rooted in moral responsibility rather than land alone provides a framework for international cooperation that prioritises shared human values over hard borders. Global institutions can benefit from adopting aspects of his vision by building alliances based not just on geopolitical interests but on justice, dignity and mutual empowerment.
