Abstract: Perhaps the most important Muslim thinker of the twentieth century, the Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) was also a noteworthy critic of modern nationalism in its territorial and populist form. Arguing against what he famously called nationalism’s ‘idolatry’ of blood and soil, Iqbal proffered Islam as the ideal form of ethical solidarity for humanity at large. Scholars have debated the extent to which Iqbal’s work either introduced elements of Enlightenment (or post-Enlightenment) thought into Islam from figures like Hegel and Nietzsche on the one hand, or represented an attempt to recover an authentic tradition from scripture and premodern Muslim thought on the other. Sidestepping these apologetic and counter (if not quasi-) orientalist narratives, this talk proposes that Iqbal’s reconstruction of Islam’s religious thought also synthesized ideas from internal and external neighbours beyond the West. Specifically, it focuses on the decisive if untimely importance of a ‘Persian’ notion of spirit and a ‘Hindu’ notion of action to his post-national thinking, one that ultimately sought to surpass binaries like East or West and tradition or modernity.