Here is a highly informative yet accessibly-written introduction to the life and works of the writer and political thinker Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), who as President of the Muslim League played a vital role in the birth of Pakistan, and is revered today as its spiritual founder. In discussing Iqbal's thought, and analysing his poetry and prose at some length, Mir suggests that Iqbal represents a paragon for modern Muslims, caught as they are between tradition and modernity. Iqbal's attempt to integrate Islamic and Western elements in his intellectual, artistic and political lives makes him a figure that Muslims may respect and emulate, since he declared his passionate loyalty to the religion of Islam while at the same time differentiating between the eternal, or essential, and the historical, or incidental, in the Islamic tradition.

Mustansir Mir is Professor of Islamic Studies and Director of the Center for Islamic Studi Youngstown State University, Ohio.