MUHAMMAD IQBAL
(Sir Muhammad Iqbal)
This is one of the early calls for a partition of India which was to be so disastrous after the Second World War. The “free Muslim state of states” turned out to be Pakistan where they have been fighting amongst themselves about how much Sharia would prevail.
Arguments against the Partition of India at the time centered around the poor economic viability of a separate Muslim state. However Iqbal and others placed the cultural issues in the forefront. They eventually prevailed.
Kamal Attaturk had radically reformed Turkey into a secular state with many modern European elements. To this day Turkey is the only predominantly Muslim populated state which is a modern, industrial democracy.
Sir Muhammad Iqbal was a South Asian Muslim writer, philosopher, and politician, whose poetry in the Urdu language is among the greatest of the twentieth century, and whose vision of a cultural and political ideal for the Muslims of British-ruled India was to animate the impulse for Pakistan. He is commonly referred to by the honorific Allama (from Persian علامه ʻallāma, "very knowing, most learned".)
