Conscience, ḍamīr (ضمیر) and Muhammad Iqbal’s concept of ‘khūdī’ (خُودی).

خُودی کو کر بلند اتنا کہ ہر تقدیر سے پہلے
خُدا بندے سے خود پوچھے بتا تیری رضا کیا ہے۔ [1]

Raise thy Selfhood (khūdī) so high that before each (taqdīr) dispensation,

God Himself may ask thee what thy wishes are.[2]

Is there a similar concept of conscience in Islamic philosophical thought? I will begin to answer this question by initially looking at modern and traditional Arabic semantics of the word conscience. I will then explore a modern understanding of the ‘inner-self’ – khūdī, a concept expounded by Muhammad Iqbal, a Poet philosopher and the thought behind the creation of Pakistan. Again, I will begin exploring the semantics of khūdī and by explaining what khūdī is not and how it contradicts the ṣūfī notion of self-denial. Thereafter I will explicate khūdī from…