Life & Wisdom Quote by Muhammed Iqbal

Iqbal is quietly detonating a common assumption: that religion’s best function is to keep society polite. In this line, he shifts the center of gravity from public order to private destiny, insisting that the real drama of religious life is evolution of the self (the “ego”) rather than the maintenance of a decent “social fabric.” The phrasing is deliberately hierarchical. “Ultimate purpose” and “far more important” are not invitations to balance competing goods; they’re a rebuke to any faith reduced to etiquette, civic glue, or moral policing.

The subtext lands hardest in the word “evolution.” Writing in an era when Muslims in British India were negotiating colonial modernity, reform movements, and the prestige of Western science, Iqbal borrows a modern term to argue for an inner, spiritual development that is dynamic, strenuous, and future-facing. The ego here isn’t selfishness; it’s khudi, his signature idea of an intensified self that gains strength through disciplined freedom, creative action, and proximity to the divine. That makes “present environment” sound small, even trapping: society is the current climate, not the horizon.

There’s a provocatively individualist edge, but it’s not libertarian. Iqbal isn’t excusing social irresponsibility; he’s warning that moral conformity can become a substitute for transformation. A community can look “healthy” while its members remain spiritually inert. Religion, for Iqbal, is supposed to produce people whose inner growth eventually reshapes history, not people trained merely to behave.