April 25, 2025
Time:
2:30 pm
Faculty Lounge, VC Office, LUMS
The Gurmani Centre for Language and Literature invites you to join an insightful panel discussion on Iqbal Revisited – Exploring the Legacy, Paradoxes, and Relevance of a Poet-Philosopher for Today. This panel brings together a diverse range of scholars to engage with the intellectual legacy of Muhammad Iqbal (1877 – 1938), whose ideas continue to inspire contemporary thought.
We will explore Iqbal’s complex contributions to religion, philosophy, and ‘the human condition’ through a series of talks. From the idea of recovering Iqbal as a poet to the intricate paradoxes of his reform strategy, the event aims to deepen our understanding of Iqbal's intellectual journey, his dialogues with Western philosophy, and his relevance in today’s globalised world. The talks will also reflect on personal experiences of engaging with Iqbal’s work, highlighting the challenges and rewards of uncovering its truth in our current age.
To register for the event, please click here.
Session 1: 2:30–4:15 PM
- Dr. Syed Noman Ul Haq
The Lost Verse: Recovering Iqbal Dr. Nauman Faiz
Reform as Paradox: Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religion and Science- Dr. Sevcan Öztürk (Online Participant)
Iqbal through Kierkegaard: Action, Communication, and Faith
Session 2: 4:30–6:15 PM
- Khurram Ali Shafique (Online Participant)
In Search of Iqbal: A Personal Journey Through the Challenges of Uncovering His Truth Dr. Saida Mirsadri (Online Participant)
The Relevance of Iqbal TodayDr. Feyzullah Yılmaz
Nietzsche and Iqbal: Navigating the Crisis of Nihilism and the Quest for Meaning
About the Speakers:
Syed Noman Ul Haq is currently the Executive Academic Advisor to the Chairman of the Board of Governors at the University of Lahore. He previously served as Professor of Liberal Arts at IBA Karachi and has also taught at Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, LUMS, and Habib University. He studied at University College London and Harvard University. He contributed to The New Cambridge History of Islam and edited the complete poetic works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. His recent works include a study of Hallaj’s Kitāb al-Ṭawāṣīn (Daniyal) and Towards the Pebbled Shore (Folio). He also writes regularly for Dawn newspaper.
Khurram Ali Shafique is a leading scholar of Iqbal Studies and the founder of the online Iqbal Studies Centre, Marghdeen. He received training from Jordanhill College, Strathclyde University (UK) in 1990 and has authored Iqbal: An Illustrated Biography (2006) and Iqbal: His Life and Our Times (2014). A three-time recipient of the Presidential Iqbal Award, he served as a research consultant with the Iqbal Academy Pakistan (2003–2015). He has presented his work internationally, including at Cambridge, Oxford, and Warwick, as well as in Iran, Mauritius, Hong Kong, and India.
Saida Mirsadri is a Research Associate at the Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues (CTSI) at the University of Bonn, Germany. She earned both her Master’s and PhD degrees in the Philosophy of Religion from the University of Tehran, Iran. In her PhD dissertation, she presented a novel response to the problem of evil, drawing on Muhammad Iqbal's metaphysics. Her research interests include the problem of evil and critiques of theodicy discourse, modern theologies, eco-feminism, and process theology.
Sevcan Öztürk received her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Manchester and pursued postdoctoral research at Paderborn University. She is currently an Associate Professor of philosophy of religion at the Social Sciences University of Ankara, Faculty of Theology. She is the author of Becoming a Genuine Muslim: Kierkegaard and Muhammad Iqbal, published by Routledge. Her broader research interests include theological and philosophical anthropology as well as ecotheology from comparative perspectives.
Nauman Faizi is an Associate Professor of Religion at LUMS. His research interests include philosophy of religion, hermeneutics, semiotics, and modern Islamic thought. He is the author of God, Science, and Self, which analyses modernist Islamic thought by examining Muhammad Iqbal's The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. He is currently working on early 20th-century South Asian Muslim Modernist thought as a site that takes the world as severely broken and in need of urgent repair.
Feyzullah Yılmaz is a BARD Fellow at the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He completed his PhD in Political Science at Sabancı University in Istanbul, Turkiye in 2016, with a dissertation entitled Overcoming Nihilism Through Sufism: Muhammad Iqbal, His Philosophy, and Political Theology. His articles were published by the Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies and Open Philosophy. From 2018 to 2024, Feyzullah Yılmaz worked as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Sabahattin Zaim University in Istanbul.
