Constructing Pakistan - pg. 137

This is how the narrative of Indian Muslim nationhood finds different expressions. While the early exponents of the Muslim cause desperately needed to create a space for the Muslims within the hegemonic project of the empire, during the terminal stages of the freedom struggle, one important strand of national struggle is focused primarily on cleansing the Muslim consciousness of the residual effects of the hegemonic negotiation of the Western system. Both Iqbal and Mawdudi represent the struggles of two such reformers in retrieving and articulating a Muslim identity separate from the Hindus but also in difference to the in identity-forming imperatives of the British hegemonic project.

Iqbal and Mawdudi are both aware of the pitfalls of purely Western secular nationalism and are skeptical about it. For them Islam must form the basis of everyday life in an Islamic state and must not be reduced to the affair of the individual. It is this public nature of Islam as a way of life that forces the Muslim scholars of this particular path, for there were dissenting views, to make it imperative for the Muslims to seek a separate, autonomous nation-state. Hence, while Iqbal articulates a grand vision of the nation, Mawdudi, highly influenced by Iqbal but also the more conservative of the two, illustrates the tactical details of the Muslim nationalistic vision.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 129

In his second speech, Iqbal is even more confident of his vision and completely aware of the prevailing charged political climate on the question of Muslim nationhood. He begins by putting forward his own idea of nationhood as opposed to the Western concept:

Politics have their roots in the spiritual life of man. It is my belief that Islam is not a matter of private opinion. It is a society, or if you like, a civic church. It is because present-day political ideals [...] may affect its original structure and character that I find myself interested in politics. I am opposed to nationalism as it is understood in Europe [...] I am opposed to it because I see in it the germs of atheistic materialism, which I look upon as the greatest danger to modern humanity. Patriotism is a perfectly natural virtue and has a place in moral life of man. Yet that which really matters is a man's faith, his culture, his historical tradition. These are the things which, in my eyes, are worth living and dying for, and not the piece of earth with which the spirit of man happens to be temporarily associated.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 120

Overall, Iqbal's idea of Muslim identity is trans-historical and trans-national; he sees the Western concept of the nation-state as a divisive force against the Islamic concept of a larger Muslim ummah

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 118

According to Ahmad Mian Mukhtar: 'Iqbal had studied Islamic Sufism deeply including the original writings of all great Sufis. But he had noticed certain un-Islamic practices in Sufisn and was opposed to these unIslamic influences':

This Neo-Platonism is an altered version of Plato that one of his followers (Plotinus) presented as a religion. In Muslims this was spread through Christian translations and became a part of Islam. In myopinion this is strictly un-Islamic and has no relationship with the Qura'nic philosophy. The edifice of Sufisn is based on this Greek absurdity.