Iqbal knew Nietzsche's work well, and the resemblance is easy to see at first glance. Both men despised mediocrity, comfort, and herd-thinking. Both summoned a higher kind of human being. Iqbal's Mard-e-Momin — the complete self — has been compared to Nietzsche's Übermensch ever since.
But Iqbal himself rejected the equation, and the difference is the whole point. Nietzsche's superman is grounded in the will to power, in self-assertion, in a universe Nietzsche had emptied of God. Iqbal's complete self is grounded in love, in faith, in a living relationship with the divine. Nietzsche's man rises over others; Iqbal's rises in order to serve them.
Iqbal's verdict on Nietzsche was generous and exact: a man who had the heart of a believer and the mind of an unbeliever — who saw clearly that the modern world was sick, but, having lost God, had no medicine to offer. Iqbal took the diagnosis and refused the despair. That is why his strong self is never cruel: its strength exists to be spent, not wielded.