Emancipation as submission: Muhammad Iqbal, storytelling and critical theory

In this chapter, I study the concept of emancipation as one of the core ideas of critical theory. I trace how, with the changing material conditions, critical theory could not articulate the conditions of possibility for emancipation. I then introduce the thought of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, the revolutionary philosopher-poet from the East and use one of his poems, as a form of storytelling, to articulate his idea of emancipation as submission, his concept of khudi and its three dimensions. As an empirical illustration of Iqbalian ideas, I present a short case study of Akhuwat, an Islamic microfinance organization in Pakistan. This case shows how Iqbal’s theologically inspired idea of emancipation liberates man from oppressive conditions through psychological empowerment and creates agency when none would be thought to exist from a material perspective of critical theory.