Lenin in Allah’s court: Iqbal’s critique of Western capitalism and the opening up of the postcolonial imagination in critical management studies

Abstract

One manifestation of the Eurocentrism present in postcolonial critical management studies is its failure to engage with Muslim critiques of Western capitalism on their own terms. In this article we seek to address this deficiency by introducing the thought of Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938)— one of the most influential thinkers in the postcolonial Muslim world. We do a close reading of three of Iqbal’s poems that are considered among his most representative and poignant critical reflections on Western capitalism and its imperialistic presence in the Global South. This close reading generates the major contribution of this article which is an alternative critical narrative on Western capitalism that is characterized by theocentrism and embodied love. We argue that this is a distinct way of critiquing Western capitalism which allows us to better recognize the provincial (i.e. Western) character of postcolonial critical management studies.