| 17 April 2004 | Saturday | 26 Safar 1425 |
Silence of the lambs
The Islamic world, in the twenty-first century, faces numerous challenges: economic, social and political. However, it is the force of economic challenges that is likely to wield stupendous impact on Islamic countries as they move towards complete integration into the global economy. The Islamic states would need to adopt radical policies for restructuring their economies within a minimum timeframe, so as to meet these challenges effectively.
It is a paradox, however, that against the background of myriad challenges, Muslim jurists, economists and thinkers remain intensely engaged in unending controversies which relate to the question: What is an Islamic economy? Considering the wide divergences in the interpretations about the nature and structure of the Islamic economy, there is an urgency to resolve these controversies by outlining the Islamic economic system in a definitive, unequivocal and all-embracing perspective.
The Quran and the Sunnah are the primary sources of Islamic Shariat, which provide us with the basic guidelines and help identify an Islamic economic system. Accordingly, an Islamic economy could be defined as "the welfare economy characterized by full employment of human and non-human resources, broad based distribution of income and wealth, critical pursuit of self-reliance, and freedom from all form of corruption, exploitation and iniquity".
The economic system, according to Islamic precepts, has to avoid the extremes of pure "laissez faire" capitalism as well as those of absolute collectivism as envisaged under Marxism.
The Islamic economic path is therefore a middle of the road charter combining the synergies of private entrepreneurship and profit motive with the provisions of social justice and egalitarianism to be pursued by the public sector.
The principal feature of an Islamic economy, as defined above, is its exclusive orientation towards the welfare of the masses. The end-product of all economic activity in the Islamic state is the betterment and well-being of the people.
The politico-legal framework and the socio-economic policies must ensure that the system of production of national wealth and its distribution is geared towards the "maximum happiness of the maximum numbers".
Analogously, concentration of wealth within fewer hands, feudalistic modes of land ownership, monopolies and cartels in the industrial and commercial enterprises, oligopolistic deals and transactions are by definition repugnant to the Islamic spirit of equality and universal well-being.
In an Islamic economy, the state has to play a critical but multi-dimensional role in building socio-legal institutions which would provide the enabling environment for vigorous pursuit of the goals of economic growth and social welfare. In other words, the state has to act as a catalyst of development as well as promoter of common well-being.
It would be one of the constitutional responsibilities of the Islamic state that no individual and no household lives below the poverty line at a given point of time. This way, the state would provide a practical demonstration of translating into reality the well-known saying of the Holy Prophet (PBUH): "It is highly probable that poverty may lead to kufar (non-belief)."
All forms of poverty being unIslamic, the Islamic state must pursue the objective of eliminating poverty through well-defined programmes and policies of full-employment of the available labour force, enactment of minimum wage levels in the agricultural, industrial and commercial sectors, providing universal literacy and free access to basic and higher education, and extension of basic health facilities and standards. The primary aim of these policies is to realize the full potential of every human being in terms of creativity and productivity.
Alleviation of poverty being one of the overriding considerations in the Islamic economic system, any serious mismatch between the available financial and physical resources and the demand thereof both at the family and the national level, has to be avoided.
For that reason, any excessive demand for resources, which emanates from burgeoning growth in population and which directly contributes to the phenomenon of poverty, could be met through conscious control of the unwarranted increase in population. Consequently, planned parenthood as well as limits on the size of the family would be consonant with Islamic precepts and practices.
The edifice of an Islamic system has to be built on the foundations of "Adal" as is clearly ordained in numerous verses of the Quran. To illustrate it is proclaimed in Sura Al-A'araf: "Say: My Lord has commanded Justice."
In Sura Al-Nisa, the significance of justice as the cornerstone of Islamic social and economic system is highlighted as following: "God enjoins that you render to the owner what is held in trust with you and that when you judge among people do so equitably. Noble are the counsels of God, and God hears all and sees everything."
As a corollary to the pursuit of the Islamic objective of social justice through a broader sharing of the sources of national income and wealth, the policies of Islamization of the economy need to focus on drastic land reforms as a minimum first step.
There being no place for absentee landlordism in Islam, a ceiling which could ensure a "reasonable living" for each farming household would be reflective of the Islamic spirit of brotherhood and equality.
The reforms in land-holding would be followed by anti-monopoly and anti-cartel measures in the industrial-cum-commercial fields. These reforms which aim at a wider distribution of industrial assets and means of production are a sine qua non for creating an egalitarian society which ensures returns commensurate with effort and labour.
In Islam there is no place for wasteful expenditure, ostentatious living, palatial and unproductive structures or non-essential and non-priority projects. Islam discourages the building of pyramids that make a small contribution to national output and welfare but add preponderantly to financial liabilities and social costs.
The planned process of development would assign priority to those sectors and industries that can make a maximum contribution to productive capacities and reduce dependence on external sources.
Such industries are those of iron and steel, heavy and capital goods, chemicals and petro-chemicals, engineering industries including auto-manufacturing, electronics and machine-making etc. The iron and steel industries are of pivotal importance in an Islamic economy as the Qur'an in Sura Al-Hadid states: "and we have endowed (you with) iron, which is a source of immense fear as well as benefits for the people."
Once the capital goods industries are set up on a wider scale, based on modern technology and applied sciences, the whole production frontier encompassing industries for intermediate goods and consumer goods would shift outwards. The capital goods industries so developed would also meet the needs of national defence and external security.
The Quran through its numerous injunctions has condemned and rejected all riba-based dealings and transactions. Hence one of the distinguished features of an Islamic economy when placed in juxtaposition to other economic systems such as western capitalism and Marxist socialism, is its absolute emphasis on the removal of all riba-related modes and practices such as corruption, exploitation, usury, rent-seeking and unequal exchange. By eliminating riba in all dealings in business, governance, trade and industry, Islam presents a viable, equitable and just economic system.
The prevalent notion that elimination of interest from the financial system is a pre-requisite of an Islamic economy is the outcome of gross misinterpretation of the Quranic verses on riba. Interest being the price paid for the use of capital or simply the rate of return on capital is virtually ineliminable from the economic system.
The concept of transacting capital without ensuring it a return is unnatural, irrational and contradictory. Consequently, all attempts in Islamic countries to purge their economies of the norm of interest have only led to a zero-sum game involving the re-emergence of interest in diverse guises such as "mark-up", "profit rate", "profit-loss sharing", "commission", "fees", "premium", "dividend", "service charges", "real rate of return", "real productivity ratio", "profit-sharing ratio" and so on.
The proposals of replacing the interest-based banking by a system akin to mudharba-cum-musharka or profit-loss sharing, would not only undermine the existing financial system but would open up new vistas of unchecked exploitation of common savers and investors and may turn out to be more unIslamic than is generally believed.
For one thing, the progress made so far in evolving the profit-loss sharing as the basis of Islamic banking provides a clear testimony that under such a system, the role of the central banking as well as the monetary policy is completely undefined and misconceived.
The Mudharba-Musharka approach may have a limited use to mobilize funds but as a mechanism to replace "credit creation" and "financial intermediation" as principal functions of interest-based banking, it is too naive and unpractical to capture the complexities and intricacies of the modern financial system.
The universality of Islam stems from its explicit rejection of all modes of corruption, exploitation and injustice at all tiers of social and economic activity. In the global context, the Islamic framework does not compromise with any element of exploitative, hegemonistic and imperialistic dispensations. For that reason, Islam has an appeal for the entire humanity to enjoy common well-being under its riba-free economic system.
Silence of the lambs
Education is not a funeral or a wedding that one would require the services of a maulvi sahib to perform the rites. Strictly speaking any good Muslim can be handy at these formal events. In a Muslim society the priestly class is a redundancy created by the ignorance of the general populace.
We cannot have our education supervized by a product of general ignorance. For religious training though which essentially consists in teaching the child to read Quran Shareef and learning to say the prayers, the services of a kindly maulvi or mullani can be acquired to conduct the studies at home.
This used to be the general practice in the subcontinent which continued up until the time the strange and odd term, Islamization, became the national mantra and religion was driven out of the homes into the schools. From a way of life Islam became a subject.
The consequences are there for all to see. In less than two decades we have joined the ranks of the corruptest societies on earth where it would be hard to collect a busload of men who spoke the truth and lived honestly.
But now what has this got to do with literature, which, even in our society where we have a strong tradition of wisdom sans knowledge (the wise man in all Munnu Bhai plays is the village idiot) is still education's end product.
Literary people who are used to treading the soft ground and bleating when they should be roaring cannot ignore what is happening in the seats of learning. More than anyone else it is the writers and the scholars, in whatever discipline they might be, who have to concern themselves with the educational issues. Their silence is inexcusable.
Society needs their enlightened opinion on the content of reading materials for schools and colleges. It is a grave and horrendous mistake that the education bureaucracy takes its guidance from ignorant politicians and the political pulpit, which are both nearly totally devoid of scholarly men in their ranks, since by tradition the Islamic theologians and thinkers work quietly and do not participate in public affairs at all.
It is theirs, not of the priests in politics, whose advice should be sought in matters relating to teaching of Islamiyat, not biology or the binomial theorem. This is not to suggest that these latter fall outside the realm of Islam which we claim to be the deen-i-fitrat.
All existence is God's blessed realm that Muslims are enjoined to seek knowledge of. There is nothing unIslamic about any part of this knowledge. The sciences seek to know the laws that govern the physical world.
Their sanctification by introducing scriptural verses is proof positive of the pathetic ignorance of our religious leadership and the shallowness of the little knowledge of Islam that they possess. It is not hard to imagine that the great majority of our clergymen are not capable of conceptualizing that numbers and letters all have a divine origin.
It is a serious matter. Writers, scholars and educationists and all the people who have anything to do with "ilm" should break their silence and express their enlightened opinion in this matter openly and boldly so that the education minister doesn't have to apologize and beat a hasty retreat from the correct path.
The political priests must be told that not everyone in this land regards them as the Faith's sole champion. They may be God's vicergents in their seminaries, not outside.
The other important issue is the distortion of history to glorify Islam and demonize followers of other religions. It should not be difficult for anyone to understand that fabrication of lies is not permitted by any religious ethics. No ideology can be sustained on false premises.
After all what is the purpose of education? Is it to prepare a crop of Mujahids to conquer the neighbouring countries or to prepare individuals who can think rationally and use their minds creatively and work for building a healthy society.
For this the children need to be taught facts. That will teach them to be realistic in life. To think that a society bred on half truths, illusions and faulty perceptions of the obvious can continue to function in a world governed by the inexorable force of reality is to live in a fool's paradise and prepare for oneself the kind of doom the Taliban next door did and met before our eyes.
There were no writers among them, and indeed no poets and painters. The only reform they could think of to Islamize education was the locking up of institutions of learning and barring girls from going to school.
Believe it or not a great many people on this side of the porous border were and still are contemplating similar plans. What stands in their way is the legacy of Bhittai, Bulleh Shah, Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Sir Syed, Hali, Hasrat and Jinnah himself, the echo of whose clear words still rings. It should not be allowed to die down. The intelligentsia should help turn up the volume of this cry in the wilderness.