Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muhammad Iqbal

The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century marked a pivotal transformation in Catholic Christianity in Europe. Spearheaded by Martin Luther (d. 1546), the movement challenged the Pope’s supreme authority, criticized the sale of indulgences, and advocated justification by faith and grace alone. The Reformation led to profound changes across Europe. Luther’s teachings symbolized reform within religious tradition, aiming to eliminate rigid orthodoxy. Similarly, they inspired Muslim modernists seeking comparable reforms in response to modernity. These reformers valued Reformation ideals, emphasizing individual interpretation of religious texts, the separation of religious and worldly realms, and the exclusion of religious scholars from political authority. Reformers like Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī admired the Reformation’s impact on Christianity and saw himself as a Luther within Islam. Muhammad Iqbal analysed the possibility of a Reformation-like movement in the Muslim world in his 1930 Allahabad Address and poetry. This article describes the Protestant Reformation and Luther’s theology, highlighting its relevance to and impact on Muslim modernist thought. It focuses on al-Afghānī and Iqbal, exploring the idea of a Luther-like figure in Islam to enact similar reforms.