“The spirit forms personality, enlightens and transfigures the biological individual and makes it the concrete fullness of life ... The community too readily recognises what belongs to the world of matter, meanwhile being blind to the reality of the spirit. It sees in men only the shadow of real personality, namely the material individuality. The consequence is that the person is enslaved to the social body.”

When Iqbal said that in a democracy persons were 'counted' and not 'weighed' he was drawing attention to the fact that society takes note of 'individuality' which is a material fact but not of 'personality' which is a spiritual fact.

In an essay entitled Islam as a moral and political ideal, Iqbal stated “Democracy ... is the most important aspect of Islam regarded as a political ideal”; and added that “there is no aristocracy in Islam”. For him, the two basic propositions underlying Muslim political constitution were one, that the law of God is absolutely supreme. Authority, except as an interpreter of the law, has no place in the social structure of Islam. Islam has a horror of personal authority. We regard it as inimical to the unfolding of individuality. Two, the conviction in the absolute equality of all members of a community.

Iqbal remained highly critical of states which considered themselves democratic but engaged in political, economic, social and psychological exploitation of disadvantaged peoples within or outside of themselves. However, to him real democracy was an integral part of his belief in tauhid (oneness of God) upon which he built his thought.

To Iqbal the principle of tauhid implied the equality of all human beings created by one God. Iqbal believed that “the essence of tauhid as a working idea was equality, solidarity and freedom” — principles that many today would consider essential characteristics of a democratic society.n

The writer is professor emerita at the University of Louisville, US, and a scholar of Islam and Iqbal.

rshass01@gwise.louisville.edu

HOW much should you care about where you sit at a daily press conference?

Quite a lot, judging by the unseemly scramble that is now going on to fill an empty place in the front row of the White House briefing room. The seat was vacated earlier this week by Helen Thomas, who made an abrupt departure having provoked a storm of protest by calling on Israel to “get the hell out of Palestine”.

No sooner was Thomas out of the door than the battle began over who should take her place, which Ed Chen, a Bloomberg reporter, described as being like “musical chairs in elementary school ... except it has the cut-throat viciousness of a snake pit”.

Thomas, who in recent years worked for the Hearst group of newspapers, sat in the centre seat in the front row of the briefing room, right under the nose of Robert Gibbs, press secretary to Barack Obama.

Gibbs has a way of calling on questions from reporters in order of their seniority, as reflected in their position in the room. First he turns to the front row, where Thomas sat and which also seats the big three TV networks ABC, CBS and NBC, the cable TV news channel CNN and the agencies AP and Reuters.

By the second row things are already getting a bit second cousin. There's the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, titans among newspapers but under the shadow of television.

And by the time you get to the seventh and last row of seats, you are a nobody. Cheryl Bolen, a reporter for BNA, complained to the Wall Street Journal that since she joined the briefings last October Gibbs had not once invited her to ask a question.

Frontrunners to take Thomas's place are Fox News, which would give a new rightwing flavour to the proceedings, and Bloomberg. But that would just be to propagate the status quo, argued political blogger Andrew Sullivan. “Why not allow bloggers in the front row? We'd sure make the awful, smug, useless Gibbs less comfortable.”

— The Guardian, London