Contents

Preface ..............................................................................................................................................3
I: The Framework................................................................................................................................5
1. Developing an Islamic World View ..........................................................................................12
II: European History, Revised .............................................................................................................21
1. European History: Lessons for Muslims ...................................................................................22
2. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Project ............................................................................36
3. Failures of Modernization Theories.........................................................................................38
4. European Transition to Secular Thought .................................................................................41
5. The Subaltern’s Tale ..............................................................................................................44
III: History of Colonies and Colonization .............................................................................................46
1. The Ways of the Eagles ..........................................................................................................47
2. Our Traditional Educational Systems.......................................................................................52
3. Thoughts on Education and Character Building .......................................................................54
4. Confidence building and tax reforms.......................................................................................57
III: Emergence of Market Economies ..................................................................................................60
1. The Market Economy and Its Limits ........................................................................................61
2. Markets Versus Society ..........................................................................................................68
3. The Pursuit of Wealth ............................................................................................................70
4. The War Against the Poor ......................................................................................................72
5. The Value of Human Lives ......................................................................................................73
6. The Power of Ideas ................................................................................................................74
IV: Consequences of Free Markets .....................................................................................................76
1. Anti-Poverty Policies and Anti-Poor Philosophies.....................................................................77
2. Policies for growth.................................................................................................................84
3. Economics: The Vacuum Cleaner Effect...................................................................................86
4. The Current Crisis in Economics ..............................................................................................88
4.1 Part I: Twentieth Century Economics ........................................................................................88
4.2 Part II: Historical Roots ............................................................................................................89
4.3 Part III: The New Millenium......................................................................................................90
5. Failures of Development Strategies ........................................................................................91
6. Social Revolutions in the West................................................................................................93
V: Pathways to Progress....................................................................................................................96
1. Re-building an Islamic Society.................................................................................................97
2. On Islamic Economics .......................................................................................................... 113

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 3. Changing the World......................................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
4. The Path to the Future ......................................................................................................... 117
5. Building Character to Build Nations....................................................................................... 119
6. Little Miracles...................................................................................................................... 120

2:257 Allah is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths of darkness He will lead them forth into
light. Of those who reject faith the patrons are the evil ones: from light they will lead them forth into the
depths of darkness.

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Preface
The global dominance of Western civilization has led to the spread of values antithetical to Islam.
The dominant worldview implicit in Western education incorporates many ideas explicitly rejected by
the holy Quran. Without conscious realization, the vast majority of educated Muslims assimilate these
views, which create great difficulties in understanding the true message of Islam.

The message of Islam revolutionized the world. The illiterate, uncultured, and even savage Arabs were
transformed into world leaders, who changed the course of history, and created a civilization which
lasted for a thousand years. The event is unparalleled in the world history, and testifies to the power of
the message of Islam. The question is: does this message have the same power today as it did 1400
years ago?

While nobody denies the miracle accomplished by Islam, Western thinkers say that the message was
suitable for the simple times of old, and is only marginally relevant for the complex modern world we
live in. Most Muslims echo this sentiment. They feel that if Islam had anything of value to offer, Muslims
would not be in the extremely poor conditions, which exist throughout the Islamic world while the path
to progress lies in acquiring Western ways of thinking and knowledge developed in the past few
centuries.

Our thesis is that the actual message of Islam has been lost. This is in accordance with the prophecy of
our Prophet that Islam came as a stranger, and will become a stranger. Islam is not a theory, ideology, or
philosophy, but a way of life. This way of life no longer exists today. The distinctive political structure of
Islam bears no resemblance to any political structure in Islamic societies today. The distinctive Islamic
approach to markets is not reflected in markets anywhere in the Islamic world. Currently prevalent
methods of education throughout the Islamic world do not reflect the methods introduced and
practiced by our Prophet Mohammad Sallalaho Alaihe Wassalam. Islamic institutions for public welfare,
health, care of widows, orphans and travelers have become defunct. There is virtually no dimension of
life in which we can see Islam being fully practiced, as urged by the Quran:

2:208 O you who have attained to faith! Surrender yourselves wholly unto God

The message of Islam is as fresh, vital, and relevant today as it was 1400 years ago. The path to progress
lies in incorporating the teachings of Islam in all dimensions of our daily lives, both individually and
collectively. These teachings led the Arabs to revolutionize the world, and have exactly the same
potential today. There is no deficiency, shortcoming, or incompleteness in the message of Islam, which
is Allah’s greatest gift to mankind.

5:3 This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor upon you, and have chosen for you
Islam as your religion.

Islam is sufficient for the guidance of all mankind today, as it was 1400 years ago. To come to this
understanding requires a radical paradigm shift from the worldview developed by Western education.
Paradigm shifts are hard to accomplish because they involve a difficult process of unlearning.

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We use our worldview to examine and analyze every idea that is presented to us. Genuine Islamic ideas
are in conflict with many Western concepts which are accepted and absorbed by us without arguments
for being foundations of the Western worldview. If we examine them one by one, we will reject them
one by one as they all conflict with our prior understandings. They only make sense when tak en
together as a whole, where they cohere and support each other, and provide for a radically different
way of looking at the world we live in, and the meaning of our lives. It is very difficult to suspend our
beliefs, and abandon an existing worldview, but this is a prerequisite to examine and understand a
radically different alternative.

The modus operandi of the movement of Tableegh (preaching Islam) is helpful, perhaps even
indispensable, for this purpose. Since our daily lives are far from Islam in all dimensions, it creates an
artificial atmosphere where it is possible to make the effort to live 100 percent according to the
teachings of Islam. This experience permits one to make sense of the teachings of Islam in a way that is
not possible on a purely intellectual level. The movement itself wisely refrains from intellectualizing, as
that would create unnecessary resistance and conflict. This collection of essays is addressed primarily to
those who have gone through this experience. Those who have not are strongly encouraged to spend
some time in the path of Allah. These essays provide an intellectual framework for understanding the
experience of Tableegh, which shows how Islam is as vital and revolutionary today as it was 1400 years
ago.

The first essay sets out the Islamic notion of man and the objective of human creation highlighting the
basic purpose of life, contrasting it with the Western view of life. The second essay discusses certain key
dimensions of the alternative worldview fostered by Islam. Subsequent articles elaborate one or more of
these dimensions. Most of these articles are reprints of earlier publications.

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I: The Framework

A traditional Islamic education system develops an Islamic outlook to life but does not
prepare the student to assimilate developments over the past three or four centuries, in
particular Western knowledge. A modern Western education system inevitably entails
absorption of a secular worldview built into the framework of Western sciences. The
implicit assumptions of superiority of Western knowledge and civilization are very
damaging to faith. For Muslims, there is a dire need to develop an Islamic approach to
understanding recent history and developments in Western physical and social sciences.
Many have attempted the “Islamization of Knowledge,” but have failed to address a
central objective of this project, namely the development of an Islamic worldview. This
paper outlines the necessary requirements for developing an Islamic worldview.

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Islamic Notion of Human Beings

Man is the Vicegerent of Allah. All revelations guide man to believe in the Supreme Power and make
this knowledge beneficial for his spiritual development. Islam as revealed to Muhammad (PBUH) gave
new dimensions to the relationship between man and Allah. According to the Divine teachings that were
revealed to Muhammad (PBUH), to be "Allah’s Servant" Abdullah is the highest rank that man can
achieve.

The relationship between Man, angels and Satan clarifies the status of man among creatures and his
very special place as Allah’s vicegerent as stated in the Holy Quran:

Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth. They said: "Wilt Thou place
therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood? Whilst we do celebrate Thy praise and
glorify Thy holy Name. He said, "I know what ye know not" (HQ 2:30). And behold, we said to the
angels: "Bow down to Adam:" and they bowed down: not so Iblis: he refused and was haughty: he was
of those who reject Faith" (HQ 2:34).

And He taught Adam the names of all things" (HQ 2: 31)

The verse points to what made Adam qualified for being Allah’s Vicegerent on earth. Allah has been
supporting Adam and his children by continuous revelations and guidance, yet the ability to discern
between the truth and illusion, and to uncover the embedded knowledge needs a great deal of work
from Adam's children. Their ultimate achievement is to be in the rank of Servant of Allah, so they can be
in complete serenity and security:

The potential of being Allah’s servants was given to the children of Adam. Therefore, this potentiality
puts a great responsibility on the human beings' shoulders. They should follow the Path of Allah,
surrender to His Divine Law and prepare themselves to be His servants. The Western leaders do not
realize these responsibilities because of disbelief in Allah’s.. If the man realizes his true responsibilities
on earth, which are placed on him as being the vicegerent of God, the majority of people will not be in
this miserable state.

Islam places very high value on human life. The indiscriminate killings of people and bombings on
Muslim countries by west are indicators of low value they have for human life and dignity and the
overriding influence of materialistic approach where control of resources is more important than human
lives and values. If Islam is practiced in letter and spirit, the life of every human being will have value.
The people will not be slaughtered like animals. Also every human being’s life will have equal value.
If one person is killed in west, there is such a big hue and cry while millions die in Muslim countries and
nobody cares as if their lives are not as precious as the lives of westerners. This discrimination violates
the basic tenet of Islam that killing of one person is like killing of the whole humanity.

The Quran says that “We ordained for the Children of Isra`il that if any one slew a person - unless it be
for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole humanity: and if
any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the whole humanity. Then although there came to them
our messengers with clear (guidance), yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses
in the land. (5:32)

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In fact, those who think that lives of Muslims have no value because they are poor and illiterate and
human beings of lesser quality are forgetting that they themselves are at the lowest level of existence
following the lowest level desires. The blind pursuit of materialistic goods and desires kill the sublimity
and fineness inherent in man due to breathing of Allah’s spirit into man and develops and promotes the
lower self of human beings. God says that: “Heavens and Earth contain Me not, but the heart of my
believing servant contains Me”, used by Al Ghazali in Ihia Ulum Al Din. This makes those human beings
superior who believe in Allah even though they are poor and illiterate.

As the vicegerent of Allah, Islam asks Muslims to engage with the world as a means of achieving inner
spiritual transformation. The struggle to create a just, cooperative and caring community, and the
Islamic institutions which support such a society, will also bring about changes in individuals that are
required by Islam. Islamic teachings provide a set of principles on which Muslims are exhorted to base
their lives. Muslims as vicegerent of Allah are supposed to follow these principles and n orms which
provide goals towards which all Muslims are expected to strive, both individually and collectively.
These principles are as follows:

Productivity: In general, Muslims should be productive and earn enough to cover their sustenance.
Muhammad Akram Khan (1989, p. 3-4) cites sayings of the Prophet (peace be on Him) praising those
who make an effort to earn a living for themselves and their dependents. Earning less than one’s needs
necessarily makes one dependent on others. The act of begging or aski ng others is, however, very much
disliked and discouraged in Islam. At the same time, neither is too much engagement with the world, in
the form of earning more than necessary, recommended. The best form of sustenance is to earn just
enough for one’s needs. Needs are defined sufficiently broadly in Islam that one is not commanded to
lead an austere and ascetic lifestyle; the Quran (7: 32) states that “Say: Who has forbidden the beautiful
(gifts) of God which He has produced for His servant and Taayyibat (things clean and pure) (which He
has provided) for sustenance?”

Spending on others: Islam puts tremendous emphasis on infaq or spending in the path of Allah. Kahf
(1992) writes that “infaq means giving away for the betterment of society and its members (including
the giver and his family).” More than 150 verses of the Quran encourage spending on others. One of the
verses is: “By no means shall ye attain righteousness unless ye give (freely) of that which ye love” (Quran
3: 92). One of the Hadeeth states: “The creatures are all dependent on Allah, and the most beloved by
Him are those who are most beneficial to His dependents.” Knowing the propensity for avarice, greed
and love of hoarding within the hearts of men, spending is encouraged first on one’s i mmediate family,
second on neighbors, and then in a widening circle of responsibilities. Such spending can be compulsory
or voluntary. Compulsory categories include the zakat and some similar requirements. There is also an
obligation for community responsibility where, if needs are not met, spending becomes obligatory for
all.

Equality: Islam carries a very strong message of the equality of all human beings before Allah.
Superiority comes only from closeness to Allah. The Prophet (peace be on him) gave an example of a
poor man who, because of his relationship to Allah, was much more important than a world full of rich
men. Islam inculcates generosity, compassion and concern for others. An important principle of Islam is
the emphasis on the dignity of the poor. This is to be contrasted with class-based attitudes that
associate superiority and inferiority with social group or wealth. In Islam, several measures are taken to
ensure that the poor are not treated disrespectfully in the process of charitable givi ng.

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The Quran (2: 262) commands Muslims not to reduce their charity to naught by saying hurtful words,
indeed, it is better not to give than to give abusively: “Those who spend their substance in the cause of
Allah, and follow not up their gifts with reminders of their generosity or with injury for them, their
reward is with their Lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” Similarly, Quran (70: 24) states
that the poor have rights in the wealth of the rich.

Moderation: Quran (25:67) commands Muslims to be moderate in spending and not to pursue
ostentatious and luxurious lifestyles. Some sayings of the Prophet (peace be on him) recommending
simplicity are given by Muhammad Akram Khan (1989). At the same time, asceticism is not encouraged.
A man who was disheveled and in rags was told by the Prophet (peace be on him) to display the wealth
that Allah had given him.

In general, Islam prefers equality in lifestyles for all people and encourages feed, clothing and housing
their subordinates in the same style as they do themselves. Loans for stylish consumption (and thus the
credit card-based consumer culture) are against the Islamic ethos and spirit.

Prohibition of envy: Islam prohibits Muslims from envying others and teaches strategies to prevent
envy.

The Prophet (peace be on him) taught us to look at people less fortunate than us in worldly affairs, so
that one feels thankful for what one has. The Quran (4: 32) states: Hence, do not covet the bounties
which Allah has bestowed more abundantly on some of you than on others. Men shall have a benefit
from what they earn, and women shall have a benefit from what they earn. Ask, therefore, Allah [to give
you] out of His bounty: behold, Allah has indeed full knowledge of everything. Making others envy u s,
via conspicuous consumption, is also prohibited in Islam.

The rich should conceal their riches to prevent envy. The Quran 4: 32 encourage the poor not to envy
the rich, but to be content with their lot. True richness is that of a heart with a generous disposition...
From Thorstein Veblen (1924) to Robert E. Lane (2001) and Layard (2005), many have identified envy as
an important source of waste and unhappiness in capitalist economies.

Compassion: The development of compassionate feelings for others is stressed in Islam. The Quran (9:
128) says about the Prophet (peace be on him) that “heavily weighs upon him (the thought) that you
might suffer, full of compassion and mercy towards the believers.” In another verse (21:107), the
Prophet (peace be on him) is described as being “Mercy for all mankind.” The Quran (59:9) praises those
who feed others while being themselves hungry: “who love all that come to them in search of refuge,
and who harbor in their hearts no grudge for whatever the others may have been given, but rather give
them preference over themselves, even though poverty be their own lot.” The second rightly guided
caliph of Islam, ―Umar b. Khatab ate coarse bread, because he felt ashamed to eat refined bread when
not all of the public has the means to do so.

The Islam teaches man to lead his life based on above mentioned principles, which are the highest
standards of morality, but because of man’s ability to mischief, continuous revelations came in order to
correct man's way and to teach him about how to live in harmony with himself, and with his fellow
humans, and with nature, which is to be in harmony with the Divine Order. In other words, those
revelations taught him how to follow the pure nature of Creation so that he can reach the rank of being
Servant of Allah.

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The animals just follow their desires and are oblivious of the rights of other creatures. The notion of the
survival of the fittest, which is prevalent in the west and also in the animal world, is rejected by Islam
through ordaining the protection and financial and physical care of the weak and poor. The concept of
the might is right as displayed in the invasion of various countries by western countries because they
had military might is totally rejected by Islam. Islam teaches man to prepare himself for Allah by
focusing on how to climb the ladder to achieve being His Servant. The Quran states:

O thou man! Verily thou art ever toiling on towards thy Lord - painfully toiling - but thou shalt meet
Him" (HQ 84:6).

Prophets present a model of such a struggle. When they were prepared, the truth prevailed, and the
Heavenly Guidance came to enlighten humankind’s way. It all starts from man’s sincere request and his
work for it. It is that part of man, the secret of life that God endowed him with, and which is called in the
Holy Qur’an “the Trust” Al Amanah. The Quran states:

We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the Mountains; but they refused to
undertake it, being afraid thereof: but man undertook it; - he was indeed unjust and foolish"
(HQ: 33:72).

The humanity has badly betrayed the Trust that Allah endowed man with by creating chaos, shedding
blood and spreading misery for other human beings. The west has played a very big role in doing so.
The westerners have not only betrayed the Trust granted to them by Allah, but also they betrayed
humanity and even themselves by shedding innocent blood and creating Fitnah (chaos) in the world.

The spiritual refinement and purification of heart are integral parts of Islamic teachings in stark contrast
to focus on materialistic pursuits in the west. Islam grants a very high status to man as the vicegerent of
Allah. Human beings are either capable of realizing the sublime potentialities that were given to them,
or lose them. It is the challenge that human beings have to face while on earth. However, when we opt
for the right path to develop our God-given talents and begin to fully make use of the potentialities
bestowed upon us, we start climbing the ladders to supremacy. The more constructively we make use of
those potentialities, the better we become compared to other creatures. We can ascend to the ranks
that no angel has reached.

The Quran says that:

"So my Servant is still trying to get closer to me by all means till I love him. If I loved him I would be his
ears with which he hears, his eyes with which he sees, his hands with which he works, and his legs with
which he walks".

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Islamic Viewpoint of Goal of Human Creation

Those who remember Allah (always, and in prayers) standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and
think deeply about the creation of the heavens and the earth, (saying): "Our Lord! You have not created
(all) this without purpose, glory to You! (Exalted be You above all that they asso ciate with You as
partners). Give us salvation from the torment of the Fire. (Surat āl ʿim'rān).

Allah has not created human beings in vain but there is a greater purpose of life in Islam than commonly
understood. The sublime purpose of human life is to attain closeness to Allah through spiritual
development and purification of heart. This life is not an end in itself but means to the end. This world is
a place where crop of good deeds is sown and the benefits are reaped in the life hereafter. The people
in the West have forgotten the real purpose of life due to their total involvement in worldly pursuits and
mundane affairs. They take this life as an end itself and do not look beyond it as they say that there is
only one life to live and enjoy it to the fullest extent.

The west has made lot of material progress and are far more advanced in terms of income, technology
and possessions of material things but neither they understand the sublime purpose of their creation
nor they are willing to come out of the materialistic trap to pursue it. The pursuit of wealth, careers,
worldly fame and glory have entrapped them and they just cannot get over this spell.

Islam tells us that the Spirit, which derives from Allah, is a reality that possesses, in some measure , all
the Divine attributes. It represents a link, a relation and connection to Allah. Remember, it is only after
this Spirit is breathed into Adam that Allah orders the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam. It is
only after this receiving of the Spirit that Adam is given knowledge of the names of all things.
The Spirit then manifests in some manner, in some measure, the characteristics, attributes or names of
Allah. It is luminous, alive, subtle, unseen, knowing, unified etc. The body on the other h and, being
composed of a low type of matter (clay), has a lack of the luminous divine attributes - instead it
represents that aspect of a human, which “inclines towards the earth, and follows vain desires” (Qur’an
7:176). So spirit and body do not have a common measure but represent opposite ends of a spectrum -
one is like a breath from Allah who is Unique, who is One. The other is from the material world, which is
characterized by multiplicity and dispersion.

Those who glorify spirit by doing good deeds of highest order find themselves closer to Allah. While
those who promote the low type of matter-the body, they develop extreme love for this world and
follow their vain desires. The secular western culture is the typical example of supremacy of vain desires
and strong inclination towards this mundane life. While Islam teaches human beings to purify hearts and
do good deeds which require highest standards of morality in order to get God’s closeness and in order
to become his friends.

The nafs (self) is what makes humans human. It unites two disparate worlds in one location and through
this makes it possible for man to draw near to Allah. It is with the unique nature of this nafs that Allah
created the first human and then its mate of a similar nature, and from these two come all other human
beings, all carrying this nafs with all its latent potential within themselves. This is the nature with which
mankind has been created - as a creature capable of knowing Allah through fulfilling the capabilities and
the potentials Allah has placed within him.

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The Qur'an delineates three levels for the nafs (the self). In sura 12:53, it mentions the nafs ammara
( the commanding self) which is the level where the people in the West exist. Nafs ammara consists of
a conglomeration of wants, desires, impulses, habits, fears, angers, appetites, tendencies and an ego.
The secular world of the west is imprisoned by ever increasing wants, desires, impulses, fears, revenge
and too big an ego.

The blind pursuit of all these vain desires and boosting of ego have resulted in disastrous consequences
for this world. The utter chaos and destruction, the indiscriminate murders of millions of people in the
various Muslim countries are due to the pursuit of these vain desires mentioned above.

Allah says in Quran: “But if they hearken not to thee, know that they only follow their own desires: and
who is more astray than one who follows his own desires, devoid of guidance from Allah? For Allah
guides not people given to wrong-doing. (HQ: 28:50).

Contrary to the predominance of nafs ammara in the Western world, where anything or everything is
justified in order to fulfill vain desires, the Islam speaks of (Sura 75:2) the nafs lawwama (the blaming
soul) and taming the nafs. This is the level at which an inner jihad (struggle) is taking place within the self
- the person has become aware of a higher and deeper reality and struggles to control his impulses and
those actions and desires, which hurt the humanity. This is the stage of the active jihad - the greater
jihad by which the lower self is subdued and the higher potentials within a person are opened up. It
manifests itself in both inner and outer forms of striving and struggle.

The person struggles with turning his inner self and his worldly life towards a new form of living - one
that is immersed in a larger, truer vision of the nature of Reality - a Reality of which the material reality
is only a small portion. Here the person begins to realize the truth of the covenant that was made with
Allah before the person's existence on this earth - and he struggles (he performs jihad) in an attempt to
make himself true to this covenant. This is the covenant in which Allah brings before Himself in a place
outside of time all the souls of the children of Adam who will ever be born and asks them "Am I not your
Lord" - and they answer "Yes". After the acknowledgement of this covenant, they are born into the
world at their destined time and place - Qur'an 7:172)

Sura 89:27 speaks of the nafs mutma'inna (the soul at peace). This is the level at which, as the Qur'an
says, the person witnesses Allah’s signs on the horizons and within his own nafs (his own self). His own
self (nafs) becomes a place where His signs are disclosed and manifested. It is said that Allah manifests
himself in the silences of the soul - so westerners who are always distracted and busy with the internal
noise of desires, passions, distractions, revenge and egotism etc. do not become truly conscious of Allah.
They do not reach a point of internal quietude (of peace) and thus they never experience the subtle.
And the Qur'an describes Allah as "The Subtle, the Aware". Just as the depths of a pond become invisible
when the surface water is in constant rough motion, their own depths become invisible when they are
in constant agitation and commotion due to their worldly desires.

In fact the rat race in the West has made them forget the real purpose of life and the covenants they
made with Allah. On the contrary, Quran is the constant reminder to Muslims of the purpose of their
creation and the covenants they made with God in addition to teaching them the highest standards of
morality and good deeds, which if practiced can convert this world from the place of suffering to a place
worth living.

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1. Developing an Islamic World View

Published in The Lahore Journal of Policy Studies, Vol 1, No. 1, Jan 2007.

Problem Statement: Western education is secular in outlook, skirts around moral issues central to
Islam, and denies the idea that God is an active agent in human history. It is also highly Eurocentric,
taking the key events in human history to be the Industrial Revolution in England and the French
revolution, for example. It is built on a materialistic philosophy, stressing the primacy of physical objects
over intangibles such as values, ideals and morals. Such a worldview is incompatible with Islam, which
teaches us that the most significant event in human history was the twenty three year mission of our
Prophet Muhammad (s.a.w.) during which he conveyed the message of Allah, the creator and sustainer
of the Universes, to all human beings. This Islamic worldview is fostered by traditional Islamic education
systems, such as those of the madrassahs’s in Pakistan. These traditional educational systems are not
adequate for modern needs, however. Their main failing is that they do not offer a coherent and
integrated world view, which fits all historical, political, and technological developments into a unified
perspective. However, this is just a reflection of the failure of the Ummah as a whole to cope adequately
with the crisis created by losses on the battlefield, economic, and other fronts due to an alien civilization
with values radically different from our own. Our goal in this paper is to spell out the outlines of an
Islamic worldview, which is capable of taking all modern developments and the recent history of the
Ummah within its purview.
Spiritual & Psychological Aspects: I would like to suggest that the biggest challenge is a lack of
confidence among Muslims, created by the shock of defeat and the continuing stagnation in the Islamic
world. In fact, Islam has a worldview, which can comfortably encompass all developments, and has the
capacity to meet this shock as has been demonstrated in the past after the fall of Spain, and the sack of
Baghdad. A precondition for undertaking and completing the intellectual exercises to be outlined is a
strong faith, which can only be developed by spiritual training given to the companions of our Prophet
(s.a.w.) One aspect of this training relevant for our present purposes is described in a Hadeeth as
follows. Two men passed by the Prophet (s.a.w.) and his companions, and he asked them to compare
the two. The first was a rich Kafir, and was held to be an honorable man esteemed in the community.
The second was a poor Muslim, with no social standing. The Prophet rejected the common view
according to which the rich person would have been declared superior, indicating that the poor Muslim
had much higher standing in the eyes of Allah than a whole world full of the first kind of person s. A
precondition for intellectual revolution is spiritual understanding that the most ignorant Muslim with
faith has a treasure of knowledge more valuable than a world full of Einsteins, Galileos, and Newtons
etc. Since these preconditions, relating to the heart and soul, cannot be adequately addressed on a
piece of paper, we move on to the intellectual aspects of the worldview that we need to create, foster
and teach as the backbone of an Islamic education system.
Muslim Methodology Conflicts with Western: Two ideas must be central to any Muslim view of history.
One is that God is in full control and all events which occur, they occur only with the will of Allah. No one
other than Allah has the power to shape history. The second is that God responds to the moral behavior
of mankind, and Muslims in particular, in shaping historical events. This denial of the effectiveness of

12
material causes and invocation of God as an active agent in history is directly opposed to Western
methodological assumptions, and will cause distress to many Muslims who see Islamic education as a
suitable mix of Western and traditional Muslim education. Nonetheless, it is not possible for us to
compromise on this issue – we simply cannot accept a methodology, which forbids us to invoke Allah as
an explanatory factor, indeed the prime cause, of all historical events.
Western Concept of Progress: One of the central unifying themes of Western education is the idea of
progress: In all areas, mankind was backward, and has been progressing. It is often added that
perfection has been achieved by the European civilization and all other races will eventually reach this
stage through the process of development. Indeed, the classification of Europe as developed and others
as underdeveloped suggests that we will eventually become like them as we progress (see Nisbet’s
History of the Idea of Progress, for example). This picture, and all that it implies, are so pervasive that it
will be hard to find Muslims who do not in some way or the other subscribe to at least some aspects of
this concept. For example, if asked to describe golden periods in Islamic history, Muslims will mention
the intellectual and scientific achievements at Baghdad and Granada. It is only on reflection that we
realize that the golden age of Islam was the time of the prophet (“Khairul-Quroon Qarni”). This most
perfect society was achieved only for a short period of time, and since then there has been only decline
(punctuated by occasional periods of progress, for sure). Thus the Muslim worldview is dramatically
different from the dominant Western one. However, in order to sustain this worldview we need our
own analysis of history. It is impossible to use conventional Western texts for this purpose. It is at this
point that we have the key difficulty for an Islamic education, within or without a traditional madrassah.
There do not exist texts written from an Islamic perspective , which make sense of (that is, provide a
coherent and meaningful perspective on) all historical, political, and technological developments of the
past few centuries. In developing a strategy for Islamic education, this is the critical area for work: we
need to develop texts which assimilate recent World history within an Islamic perspective. It is worth
noting that this is a more ambitious project than the “Islamization of Knowledge,” which seeks to modify
Western knowledge to make it compatible with an Islamic perspective.
Islam Centered History: Even though there do not currently exist texts that are fully suitable, there is a
large amount of work, which could serve as a satisfactory basis for what we seek to do in creating an
Islamic worldview. The most important work, which I am aware of, is that of Syed Abul Hassan Ali
Nadwi. In particular, his early work on “The Rise and Fall of Islam and its impact on the World,” is an
excellent start for our project. This book traces the theme that Islam was responsible for a human-
centered and civilized worldview, which brought benefits to all human beings. With the decline of Islam,
materialistic values came to the fore, to the loss of all humans. The current prevalence of materialistic
values, where it is considered acceptable to kill hundreds of thousands of human beings for financial
considerations, and Machiavellian political considerations prevail over moral issues, is due to the decline
of Islam. This is a broad theme, which has only been sketched briefly in the book. Developing it fully will
require hundreds of scholars to trace the implications and work out the theme in many different
particular historical contexts. An early example of the kind of work that is needed is provided by a
number of biographies of Salahuddin Ayyubi (by both Muslim and Christian authors) ,which show that
the moral values and standards of conduct of the Muslims were substantially superior to those of the
invading Christian Crusaders, regardless of their relative technological capabilities. The three volume

13
work entitled “The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization,” by Charles Hodgson
provides an excellent sympathetic outsiders view, which does much to debunk the traditional Euro
centrism and provides an analysis of history in terms much more sympathetic and favorable to an
Islamic worldview. We quote from the first few paragraphs:
Muslims are assured in the Quran, „You have become the best community ever raised up
for mankind, enjoining the right and forbidding the wrong, and having faith in God.‟ Earnest men
have taken this prophecy seriously to the point of trying to mould the history of the whole world in
accordance with it. Soon after the founding of the faith, Muslims succeeded in building a new form
of society, which in time carried with it its own distinctive institutions, its art and literature, its
science and scholarship, its political and social forms, as well as its cult and creed, all bearing an
unmistakable Islamic impress. In the course of centuries, this new society spread over widely
diverse climes, throughout most of the Old World. It came closer than any had ever come to uniting
all mankind under its ideals.
(Omitted material) Those who have undertaken to rebuild life in Islamic terms have
ventured on an enterprise with a high potential reward – that of winning through to the best that is
open to mankind; but with correspondingly great risks of error and failure.
Muslims have yet to implement the Quranic prophecy fully in all its implications. But they
have perennially renewed their hopes and efforts to live the godly life not only as individuals but as
a community. In every age, pious Muslims have reasserted their faith, in the light of new
circumstances that have arisen out of failures, and also of successes of the past. The vision has
never vanished, the venture has never been abandoned; these hopes and efforts are still vitally
alive in the modern world. The history of Islam as a faith, of the culture of which it has formed the
core, derives its unity and its unique significance from that vision and that venture.
The idea that the Muslim civilization is a venture to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, to enjoin
good and forbid evil, and that this is an ongoing enterprise with its successes and failures, can easily
form the backbone of an alternative vision of history. Whereas the history of civilizations has been a
story of the search for power and wealth, Muslims stand out as unique in their quest to establish justice
in accordance with God’s will on Earth. To establish this, it would be necessary to go into a deeper
analysis of Muslim civilizations and their successes and failures. It would be crucial here to avoid the
mistake of identifying civilizations with their rulers and studying lives of kings instead of that of ordinary
citizens. Due to various quirks in European history, the idea of the nation-state as a central concept and
driving force emerged with great power in the past century – this has led to a popular conception of
history as being a history of rulers of states, or kings. For Islam, we must realize that the Islamic history
will focus on the religious lives of the people, and the best exponents of this life would be the Ulema
and the Mashaikh, as well as the intellectual struggles associated with religion. Kings and their Islamic
behavior or lack of it would only be a peripheral issue. Again, there exists substantial literature, which
can be pressed into service regarding this issue. The task necessitates pulling anecdotes of Muslim
struggles for establishing justice on Earth into a coherent and integrated story, which portrays these
struggles as a continuous struggle over the centuries. An excellent example of the type of work needed
is “Islamic Renaissance in South Asia 1707-1867: The Role of Shah Wali Allah and His Successors,” by M.
A. Ghazi. This book portrays the efforts of the Muslims as part of continuous and sustained struggle. As
proper for an Islamic history, the religious leaders and Muslim intellectuals and the struggle for Islam is
given primacy, and the kings and traditional historical topics are viewed as secondary adjuncts. Also
important is that the defeats of Muslims are treated as local and temporary setbacks to our long term

14
historical goals. Thus these setbacks necessitate reflection and reconsideration of our strategy, rather
than being a source for despair and demoralization. These themes need to be stressed in all Muslim
approaches to history. Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi has laid the foundations for this type of work in his
“Tareekh-e Dawat Aur Azeemat,” explaining the struggles of various leading personalities in trying to
bring about reforms within the Islamic civilization.
Muslim Struggles Against Oppression: In addition to the stories of our religious leaders, it is also
necessary to show the popular struggles of Muslims for freedom all over the world in the past few
centuries. In this dark period, there have been many unsung heroes in our struggle against many
oppressive forces. It is sad that our own history textbooks, written in the post-Colonial period, do not
present a picture of the worldwide struggle of Muslims against colonialism. Rather they paint the same
picture favorable to colonialists, and essentially benign to British rule, which replaced despotism and
unenlightened rule. In addition to stories of Muslim heroes (here again a start has been made by a
number of biographies of Syed Ahmed Shaheed), we need to have a re alistic history of colonialism. The
flattering self-portrait of Western Civilization, with a depiction of colonization as a noble effort to spread
the benefits of their advanced civilization to primitive peoples, needs to be questioned. There exist a
number of realistic histories, which show the enormous amount of racism, cruelty, barbarity,
opportunism and exploitation that characterized colonialism. For example, Global Rift: The Third World
Comes of Age by L. S. Stavrianos gives a good account of the history of colonialism. A Peoples History of
the USA by Howard Zinngives an excellent account of the U.S history, debunking the standard self-
serving myths associated with this subject. Numerous other texts of this type are available. Vilification of
the West is a rather common theme among certain classes of educated and uneducated Muslims. The
psychology of this is to compensate for our own inferiority complex generated by centuries of losses by
knocking down the West. This category of analysis (which has superficial resemblance to the texts under
discussion here) is based on shallow caricatures of the West, which promotes hatred, and generates
obstacles to genuine understanding and further dialogue. Our objective would be to achieve a realistic
picture of the West, painted with sympathy, accuracy, and understanding. Instead of a one-sided
caricature, we would attempt to achieve a three dimensional view, portraying the history of the West as
a struggle between forces of good and evil, much like those, which occurred in our history. While
debunking flattering portrayals of superior civilization of the West, we would avoid demonizing the West
as the ‘Great Satan,’ seeking instead to achieve a realistic and humane understanding of their strengths
and weaknesses.
Non-Muslim Struggles Against Oppression: Another category of literature and history, which needs to
be assimilated into the Islamic worldview is the so-called postcolonial literature. This gives an account of
the effects of colonialism on the people colonized from the perspective of the colonized. The
psychological consequences of the trauma resulting from colonization are similar across the world.
Studying this literature would give deeper insight into our own history, and our reactions to
colonization. An excellent example of this genre is Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, written by an
American Indian who gives an excellent account of the cruelty and oppression of the Americans against
Red Indian tribes struggling to preserve their culture and way of life.

15
Critical Evaluation of European Dominance: Some important themes need to be stressed as the
background within which more detailed studies of the West by Muslim scholars need to be done. The
first theme would be the savagery of the West – throughout their history; they have been more or less
continuously at war with each other. Indeed, the idea of ‘Europe’ as a united entity emerges ONLY in
reaction to the threat of Islam during the crusades. If this could be contrasted to the (relative) peace
which prevailed within the Islamic World, it would serve as an apparent cause of why Western sciences
of war progressed much faster than ours. The second theme is the highly racist worldview, which
despite efforts, is difficult to overcome. This theme is rarely treated within European accounts of their
own history, perhaps because they are justifiably ashamed of it. Nonetheless, it is easily accessible, and
plays a very important role in the world history. European cultural centers never developed a
cosmopolitan culture like those of the numerous centers of Islam. As a result, they continue to have
doubts about whether others of different shapes and colors are fully human. On different occasions,
court decisions in England and USA declared Red Indians, Blacks and Australian Aborigines as being less
than human. Indeed, it was permissible to hunt them like wild animals. This racism needs to be
highlighted because it has had a monumental impact on history. British colonies with majority of whites
(like USA and Australia) developed along lines parallel to the mother country, while those with different
races were brutally exploited and not allowed to develop. Similarly, the stark developmental differences
between the US colonies of Florida, Cuba, and Haiti are likely due to the racist factor. The third
important theme is the decline of morality as a consequence of the rejection of Christianity in the West.
Again there is a large amount of material available on this issue. On the whole, Western writers are
inclined to view this process favorably and paint it in terms of liberation from restrictive ways of thinking
based on (Christian) superstitions. However, there are some who see that general immorality, breakup
of families, teenage pregnancy, drugs and violence are all consequences of this process. Some texts
relevant for these purposes are: The De-Moralization of Society, Humanity: a moral history of the
Twentieth Century, and A Distant Mirror as well as many others. Most of the necessary material for an
Islamic view is readily available; however it does need to be re-written from an Islamic perspective.
Conflict of Science & Religion in West: How should we fit in advances in science and technology into the
general picture? This is the most important topic, where it is necessary for us to depart substantially
from Western views. Western views on the importance and relevance of science are deeply affected by
the origins of science in conflict with Christianity, as illustrated by Galileo for example. Some
contemporary elementary Western textbooks state that men invented religion to explain the occurrence
of natural phenomena (like rainfall, thunder, etc.). With the development of science, factual knowledge
replaced the religious superstitions. This account ignores the fact that religion is concerned mainly with
the moral domain – an area about which science is and must be silent. Due to the fact that science and
religion are concerned with different domains (the positive and the normative, respectively) with little
overlap, there is no natural conflict between them. Special circumstances in West, detailed by Catholic
historian Hans Kung in “Does God Exist?” led to conflict, avoidance of which would have been beneficial
to both parties according to Kung. Since science emerged as the victor of this conflict, the scientific
outlook blended with its anti-religious bias permeates all Western education and thinking. This is of
great importance and relevance to those of us seeking to benefit from Western developments within an
Islamic framework. The full significance of this cannot be spelled out in detail here.

16
Loss of Faith in West: It is critical to realize that the loss of faith in the West was a consequence of the
moral bankruptcy of the upper echelon of the Catholic Church. The crisis caused by openly flaunted
moral corruption of a sequence of Popes (which involved living extremely luxuriously, legitimizing
bastard progeny, selling pardons for sins to raise money for supporting lavish lifestyles, etc.) has been
termed ‘the most momentous event in the history of Europe.’ (See Barbara Tuchman’s March of Folly).
This directly led to the rise of the Protestants, who attempted to preserve their faith while breaking
from the corrupt Catholic Church. The other reaction, complete rejection of faith, eventually prevailed.
This loss of faith, termed ‘death of God’ by Nietzsche, has been immensely consequential. It has led to a
glorification of science and scientific knowledge (as a replacement for religious knowledge). Since
morality is outside the realm of science, morality was gradually expunged from scientific knowledge. The
loss of faith led to the emergence of positivism, the philosophy that only what can be observed by the
senses exists, as the dominant philosophy of the twentieth century. It also led to the emergence of a
determinist point of view, which suggests that the world is organized as a machine and runs purely
according to deterministic laws. Denying the tremendous capabilities for change in human beings leads
to a mechanical social science, this is not alive to the possibilities of change. From the Islamic point of
view, (Lqd Khalaqnal Insana fi Ahsan-e Taqwim) human beings have tremendous potential. The purpose
of our existence is to achieve this potential to rise higher than the angels. This emphasis on humans and
transformation of human beings (which was the great task accomplished by our Prophet s.a.w.) is
central to the message of Islam.
Causes of Muslim Decline (Western Explanations): For over a century, affluence and power have been
concentrated in the West, while Muslim countries have been afflicted with poverty and powerlessness.
Discovering the cause of this historical pattern is a problem of central importance, since remedies
depend crucially on the diagnosis. Western thinkers have offered their own explanations for this
pattern. The once widely accepted racist explanation (that whites are intrinsically superior to non-
whites) has been more or less discarded; nonetheless, it continues to play an important role in the
undercurrents of modern thought, and continues to be advocated by a small but significant minority (for
instance The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray). More sophisticated western explanations revolve
around the ‘three revolutions’ in Europe: The revolt against God (already discussed), the revolt against
Kings (epitomized by the French Revolution) which led to the emergence of democracy, and the
Industrial revolution or the triumph of machines against nature. Intelligentsia i n Muslim countries who
accept these western explanations would be forced to advocate democracy, development of science
and technology, and the renunciation of religion as the only path to progress. In fact, there is small but
vocal minority, which advocates the first two steps very strongly, and the third step in a soft-spoken way
to avoid difficulties with the Muslim populace, which remains deeply committed to Islam throughout the
Muslim World.
Eastern Explanations: Every political leader (as well as every significant intellectual) in the East has had
to take a stand on the causes of Muslim decline – the course of action and the goals to be advocated
and struggled for depend directly on this diagnosis. Ataturk thought that the European culture was the
source of European superiority. He therefore passed laws enforcing adoption of European dress and
introduced theater and dancing into Turkey. Romanization of the Turkish script effectively cut off the
Turkish people from their historical roots. Widespread translation of European novels and secular

17
indoctrination in compulsory Government schools has led to a deeply divided society. The conflicting
values of Islam and the imposed European ones have led to social problems of tremendous magnitude
in Turkey. In the case of British India, the British aristocracy felt that their superiority lay in the liberal
and classical education they received. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan accepted this diagnosis and advocated a
liberal British style education for Muslims as a cure for the ills of the Ummah. The scorn of the
aristocracy for the working classes was reflected in the rejection of Engineering and Technical Education
in the original syllabus at Aligarh. It is worth noting that around the same time the Turks were learning
to dance and translating European novels, Japanese students were studying Engineering and
Mathematics, and translating all technical, scientific and mathematical literature in English into
Japanese. Since both started at ground zero, their current position is a good way to evaluate the relative
effectiveness of their strategies.
Islamic Explanations: An Islamic worldview must reject purely materialistic explanations of Western
dominance. Even if science and technology are the apparent causes of Western superiority, we must ask
why Allah T’aala chose to give the West this knowledge and did not choose this for the Ummat. The
example of the Battle of Hunain shows that Allah T’aala punished Muslims by an initial defeat when they
looked towards superior numbers as a guarantee of victory. This is a clear lesson that attention to
material causes without looking at the underlying cause – namely whether or not the help of Allah is
with us – is a source of the displeasure of Allah T’aala. All explanations compatible with an I slamic
worldview require us to look at the condition of Ummah and ask what are the most significant failings,
which have caused us to lose the help of Allah? In fact, there is a large number of explanations, which
are compatible with an Islamic worldview and the issue is one which is deeply divisive among Muslims.
Indeed, groups adhering to one Islamic explanation have sometimes considered other groups to be
outside the pale of Islam. The main categories of explanations are the following – each has many
variants, which we need not detail here:
1. It is a religious imperative for Muslims to re-establish the Khilafah, failing which the help of
Allah will not be with us.
2. It is a religious imperative for Muslims to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth (that is,
create an Islamic state with the rule of Shariah).
3. It is a religious imperative for Muslims to invite all mankind to Islam; failure of the Ummah
in performing its collective responsibility has led to the current state of affairs.
4. The spread of Bid’ah and the abandonment of pure Islam has led to widespread shirk of the
hidden as well as the apparent variety. This coupled with abandonment of Jihad is
responsible for the sorry state of affairs of the Muslims.
5. Closing of the gates of Ijtihad by the Ulema, and their resistance and opposition to adoption
of modern ideas led to stagnation and decline of the Ummah. In particular, we need to
acquire science and technology of the West to progress.

For the purposes of developing an Islamic worldview, it is not necessary to take a stand on which of the
above (or a number of other variant views not mentioned above) is the correct explanation for the
Muslim decline. It is sufficient to realize that all Muslims agree that it is the failure of Muslims to adhere

18
to Islam that is the root cause of Muslim decline. Also, all Muslims agree that Bid’a should be eliminated,
Dawah is necessary, Jihad is farz, and establishment of Khilafat and enforcement of Shariat are essential
goals. Disagreements exist as to the correct strategy and the sequencing in which we should approach
these goals. Allah T’aala loves unity among the believers and disunity will cause us to lose the help of
Allah. The project of establishing the Islamic worldview as a viable competing alternative to the existing
European materialistic and atheistic worldview is a large project, which requires the co-operation of all
Muslims. Our enemies and Shaitan have successfully exploited differences among Muslims to our
disadvantage. We should concentrate on the areas of agreement (which are very large) and do not allow
our hearts to be clouded against fellow Muslims for minor disagreements (which Shaitan magnifies and
presents to us as very large). This will be essential for the purpose of developing a united alternative
worldview to the prevailing dominant Western one.
Science and Technology: The biggest obstacle to developing a Muslim worldview is not the Western
challenge, but the Muslims who have been affected by Western views. Muslims agree that renouncing
religion is not needed, but most feel that we do need science and technology, as well as democracy to
progress and reach Western levels of development. However, when we look at the training that our
Prophet (s.a.w.) provided to his companions, we find that it was entirely spiritual and religious. This
training enabled the companions to conquer two technologically advanced empires within thirty years.
Armed with materialist preconceptions, one might think that such conquests would require introduction
of new weaponry, battle tactics, or at least an industrial and economic base, but we do not find any such
material cause within the training of the companions. Examination of this and other episodes in the
Muslim history, as well as the corpus of religious knowledge, strongly suggest that if Muslims turn their
attention to those A’amal, which will attract the pleasure of Allah s.w.t., they will be rewarded by
worldly benefits such as the science and technology or other causes of conquest. Since this line of
reasoning goes strongly against the prevailing wisdom in the Muslim world, let us add an alternative way
of reaching the same conclusion. Consider the recent defeats in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some have
considered it as a conclusive proof of the necessity of acquiring technol ogy. Yet it seems abundantly
clear that had the Muslims presented a united front, all of the technological dominance of USA would
have been insufficient to achieve the victory. Thus instead of taking these events as proving the
importance of technology, we can equally well take them to be proof of the need for unity among the
Muslims. That disunity leads to loss is supported by the Quran and can form part of an Islamic
worldview. An Islamic worldview must give primacy to spiritual and moral factors over material ones. It
is easily possibly to trace Muslim decline to decline in morals among Muslims. Similarly, moral factors
such as concern for the poor can be traced as the source of the ascendance of the Europeans. Such
analyses would be useful to develop within the perspective of an Islamic worldview. The issue of the
relative priority of science and technology in a program of reform for the Islamic world is too complex to
discuss in detail here. It will be treated in a separate paper dealing with priorities for Muslim education.
Conclusions: It should be obvious that this is a vast project, but one which is essential for the Ummah.
Within the broad framework sketched above, there is room for substantial variations and even conflicts,
just as within the Western worldview there is room for many competing and hostile ideologies (like
Communism and Capitalism). The unity of the Islamic worldview lies giving primacy to Allah as the cause
of all causes, and of giving moral and spiritual aspect a central position, and only secondary importance

19
to material and physical aspects. Because a coherent worldview of this type has not yet been developed,
Muslim children read texts which indoctrinate them to the European worldview. This can lead to loss of
faith at worst, and many conflicting and contradictory notions at best. It is essential to infuse an Islamic
worldview into an Islamic education. To put matters in terms of an action plan, here is what we
recommend:
One of the biggest obstacles to developing an Islamic Worldview is the desire of Muslim
intellectuals to ensure that the West is included among the audience for their views. There is no doubt
that there is a dynamic, strong and living intellectual tradition in the West. Currently, this is the
touchstone for Muslim intellectuals. If a piece of writing is publishable in a Western Journal, then it is of
high quality. If it is not, then it is of dubious quality. There is some merit to this point of view – Western
journals have rigorous refereeing standards and garbage typically does not get by the refereeing process
(although there are exceptions). On the other hand, Eastern journals typically lack such standards and
therefore publications are of extremely uneven quality. Nonetheless, the only way forward is to develop
our own media and discourse. It is impossible to develop a genuinely Islamic Worldview, which has the
approval of the West. We must learn to have faith in our own traditions and continue the deep and
sophisticated dialogue and reflections initiated by our prominent but currently neglected intellectuals
like Ibn-e-Khaldun, Ghazali, Shah Waliullah, as well as several more recent figures who have continued
the work in these traditions while incorporating Western insights.
Bibliography

Brown, D. (1971) Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West (New York
Henry Holt Publishing Ltd.)
Ghazi, M. A. (2000) “Islamic Renaissance in South Asia 1707-1867: The Role of Shah Wali Allah and His
Successors”
Herrnstein, R. (1994) The Bell Curve: Intelligence & Class Structure in American Life (Free Press
Publishers)
Himmelfarb, G. (1995). The De-moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf).
Kung, H. (1980) Does God Exist? (Doubleday Publishing Ltd.)
Nisbet, R. A. (1993). History of the Ideas of Progress (New York Transaction Publishers)
Stavrianos, L. (1981). Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age (New York: William Morrow).
Tuchman, B. (1985) March of the Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (Ballatine Books Ltd.)
Tuchman, B. (1994) A Distant Mirror: 15th Century (Random House Publishing Ltd.)
Zinn, H. (2003) A People’s History of the United States (Perennial Classics)

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II: European History, Revised

Western social science is based on an interpretation of European history, which places

Europe at the center stage of the globe. This picture is highly misleading, as has been
recently recognized. The term “Eurocentric History” has been coined to describe the
biases in this European worldview. To counteract these biases, it is necessary to present
alternatives to the dominant views. This is done in a series of short essays in this section.

21
1. European History: Lessons for Muslims

1. Introduction

A dramatic transition in ways of thinking took place in Europe between the sixteenth and the eighteenth
century. Tawney (1930) describes this transition to secular ways of thinking as follows:

The theory of a hierarchy of values, embracing all human interests and activities in a system of which the
apex is religion, is replaced by the conception of separate and parallel compartments, between which a
due balance should be maintained, but which have no vital connection with each other.

An essential ingredient of secular thought is the idea that there are spheres of human life and
intellectual effort, which are not connected to religion. Islamic teachings match pre-modern European
thought that religious considerations are of paramount importance in all spheres of life. In dramatic
contrast, the eighteenth century European thought treats social, political and economic thought without
reference to religion or the spiritual aspirations of man. Tawney (1930) has documented this revolution
in thought, and also provided the complex and subtle historical details of how it came about in England.

Since then, secular thought has come to dominate the world, influencing the thinking of all across the
globe. Religion has been virtually driven out of the public sphere. Removal of religious barriers against
greed, hedonism and individualism has led to
 Social catastrophes: breakdown of families and community.
 Political calamities: immoral wars conducted for control of resources.
 Environmental disasters: pollution, global warming, destruction of species and forests, all for the
sake of multinational profits
 Financial Crisis: Ponzi schemes, large scale speculative gambling, and fraudulent practices
encouraged by putting greed above all social considerations.

More recently, the harmful effects of relegating spirituality and morality to a personal and private
choice have become obvious for all to see. An effort is being made to reintroduce religion, spirituality
and morality into debates and intellectual arenas from which they have been long excluded.

Our goal in this article is to review some neglected and forgotten aspects of European history, which led
to this transition from religion based thought to secular ways of thinking. As Western education has
become widespread throughout the Islamic world, some aspects of secular thinking have also become
widely accepted by Muslims. Secular thought is clearly incompatible with Islam, which is a complete
religion and provides guidance in all spheres of life. Maulana Syed Abul Hassan Ali Nadvi has highlighted
the conflict between Islam and Modernity taking place all over the world in Islamic societies.

Our object is not to present a comprehensive or balanced picture of this European history, which has
been done by many authors, in many books, from many different angles. Instead, we will highlight
certain ingredients, which are especially important to Muslims in the struggle to resist the
encroachment of secular thought into Islamic societies. In particular, we will put stress on those
teachings of Islam, which create barriers against replication of the European history of loss of faith.

22
2. The Corruption of the Christian Clergy

The chain of events leading to the modern secular world was set in motion by what Barbara Tuchman
has called “the most momentous event in the history of Europe ” in her book The March of Folly. This is
the corruption of a sequence of Popes in the sixteenth century, which led to the rise of the Protestants
and the Reformation. The following quote about Pope Alexander VI, who purchased his Papal Office
(a sin called simony often legislated against by the Roman Catholic Church without much effect),
illustrates some aspects of this corrupt behavior:

The already corrupt Papacy reached perhaps its ultimate depths during the reign of Rodrigo Borgia, who
was elected to the papacy in 1492 … and who assumed the name Pope Alexander VI. (When) Borgia …
became pope, myth and legend quickly rose up around his family. Alexander VI had four acknowledged
children, three males and one female. Alexander VI was himself known as a corrupt pope bent on his
family's political and material success, to an even greater extent than Sixtus IV had been. It was no
secret that Alexander VI's oldest son Cesar, was a murderer, and had killed many of his political
opponents.
[http://www.pbs.org/empires/medici/medici/families.html]
Political power wielded by Popes led to countless actions more worthy of Machiavelli than of spiritual
leaders, representatives of God on Earth. The famous saying “Power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely,” was coined in response to wrongdoings of Popes. It is worth noting parenthetically
that 1492 was laden with events, which changed the course of history. This was the year the Muslims
finally lost their last foothold in Spain, and also the year in which Columbus sailed to discover the
Americas. All three of these events continue to have significant impacts to this day. Some of the effects
of the corruption of the church have been listed below:
Since the middle of the 15th century discontent with the state of the church was widespread:
 The wealth of the church had led to spiritual shallowness and demoralization of the clergy. In
Germany, every 9th inhabitant was a member of the clergy. Though the church officially
demanded for celibacy of the clergy, most clergymen had more or less clandestine sexual
relations with women. Once even an illegitimate son of a pope was elected as pope.
 High clerics (bishops, abbots, canons), often delegated their pastoral duties to uneducated
vicars to have more time for a luxurious life or at best for studies.
 A tendency to transform the churches instruments of salvation into legalism and profit: the
personal confession to a priest (with spiritual guidance) had been turned into a system of
preaching torments of hell, imposing severe penitence and selling indulgence.
 Scholastic theology had become a sterile repetition of formulae and this affected also divine
services for the population.
[http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/reformation-switzerland-calvin.html]
Widespread discontent with the Catholic Church set the stage for the success of the revolt against it led
by Martin Luther. Pope Leo X used the sale of indulgences to finance a massively luxurious rebuilding of
Rome replete with statues and other artistic accompaniments. In particular, those who gave alms to his
favorite project, the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, would have their sins forgiven.

These “indulgences” exacted money from the simple-minded among the faithful by promising them
perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next. The false doctrine and scandalous
conduct of the "pardoners" were an immediate occasion of the Protestant Reformation. The aggressive
marketing practices of Johann Tetzel in promoting this cause provoked Martin Luther to write his
Ninety-Five Theses, protesting against what he saw as the purchase and sale of salvation.

23
 In Thesis 28, Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings a soul
from purgatory springs". The Ninety-Five Theses not only denounced such transactions as worldly but
denied the Pope's right to grant pardons on God's behalf in the first place: the only thing indulgences
guaranteed, Luther said, was an increase in profit and greed, because the pardon of the Church was in
God's power alone. Luther was excommunicated, but his ideas became popular and led to the
Reformation, a landmark event in European history.

From this first step in the process by which Europeans lost their faith in God, and abandoned their
religion, we can derive several important lessons, reinforcing the message of the Quran and Hadeeth.

2.1 Need for Separation of Religious and Temporal Leadership.

Many Muslim authors have regretted the split between the religious and temporal leadership that
occurred at the end of the golden period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. The example of the Catholic
Church is a reminder that power corrupts, and it takes men of very high integrity to be able to resist this
corruption. If temporal and spiritual leadership are combined within a man of insufficient integrity, this
could cause damage to the faith of the people, with consequences tremendously worse than lack of
temporal power in the hands of the religious. People without sufficient spiritual training who are given
religious authority will inevitably exercise this authority for worldly gain. Descriptions of Fir’on and
Qaroon show the corrupting effects of power and money. The temptation to sell faith for money is
described in the Quran:

َ‫اس َوال‬ َ ‫ِين أُو ُتو ْا ْال ِك َت‬

ِ ‫اب لَ ُت َب ِّي ُن َّن ُه لِل َّن‬ َ ‫ّللاُ ِم ي َثاقَ الَّذ‬ ّ ‫َت ْك ُتمُو َنه َُوإِ ْذ أَ َخ َذ‬
ً ‫ُور ِه ْم َوا ْش َت َر ْو ْا ِب ِه َث َم نا‬ ‫ه‬ ُ ‫س َما َي ْش َترُو َن َف َن َب ُذوهُ َو َراء‬
‫ظ‬ َ ‫َقلِيالً َف ِب ْئ‬
ِ

3:187 AND LO, God accepted a solemn pledge from those who were granted earlier revelation [when He
bade them]: "Make it known unto mankind, and do not conceal it!" [143] but they cast this [pledge]
behind their backs, and bartered it away for a trifling gain: and how evil was their bargain!

The cause of the crisis which eventually led to rejection of religion in Europe was the sale of indulgences
to finance luxurious lifestyles and projects for reconstruction of Church buildings on a magnificent scale.
Seen from a distance, the “sale of indulgences” seems like an obvious and gross violation of religious
teachings. It is important for Muslims to realize that this is not true. The issue in question is very
delicate. The Quran states (11:114) Lo! Good deeds annul ill deeds. ‫ت‬ ِ ‫ت ي ُْذ ِهب َْن السَّـ ِّي َئا‬
ِ ‫إِنَّ ْال َح َس َنا‬

There is a recommendation in a hadeeth to do a good deed after doing a bad deed so as to remove its
evil effects. Since spending in charity is a highly recommended good deed, it is a perfectly valid
recommendation to a sinner that he should spend money on good to compensate for any sin (that he
confesses to). As religious authorities, we may be able to evaluate the different uses for charity and
recommend one use, such as spending on madrassahs or perhaps a particular madrassah, as the best
use of charity at this time. This is exactly the logic that was given by Church authorities to justify raising
money for spending on Church projects.

In accordance with the Hadeeth that “Innamal A’mal bil niyyat” – the value of actions depends on the
intentions – a recommendation to spend can be judged only according to the intention with which it is
made. The delicacy of such issues is brought home by Ali r.a. refusal to kill the man who had spit in his
face, because his anger had mixed up a personal intention with a purely religious one. This is a warning
for those who seek power and prestige for Muslims as a means to the spread of Islam.

24
 To do this, one must have enough self-knowledge and self-control to recognize the tricks of the Nafs and
to resist them. Seeking power for oneself is not a recommended course of action, and as an Ummah we
must find ways of giving power to those who have the extraordinary Taqwa displayed by Ali r.a. to be
able to differentiate between pure and impure intentions. How this is to be done is a question that we
need to consider, but it is clear that western mechanisms of elections and democratic institutions do not
take these considerations into account and cannot be adapted to our purposes.

2.2 Preferring Simple Lifestyles to Luxury

The immediate cause of the revolt against the Catholic Church was the sale of indulgences to finance
luxurious construction. Today the Muslims are also engaged in the pursuit of luxurious lifestyles, even
though this has been very harmful to us on many occasions in history. The DolmabahçePalace was built
between the years 1843 and 1856 under the order of the Empire's 31st sultan, Sultan Abdülmecid, at a
cost of five million Ottoman gold pounds, the equivalent of 35 tons of gold. Fourteen tons of gold in the
form of gold leaf were used to gild the ceilings of the palace. Heavy interest based foreign loans were
taken by the Khalifa for this enterprise. When these debts could not be replayed, Europeans demanded
and obtained substantial amount of financial control over the Ottoman Empire. Details are provided in
Blaisdell (1929) European Financial Control in the Ottoman Empire. This was a very important element
in the eventual demise of the Empire and the abolishment of the Khilafat.

Currently, the western media are promoting the pursuit of luxurious lifestyles as the object of life
throughout the Islamic world. This poisonous message, which is infiltrating the minds of Muslims, is in
stark contrast to the simplicity in lifestyle, which is the ideal of Islam. The lifestyle of the Prophet s.a.w.,
who is the perfect model for all of us, was extremely simple. He rarely had a second pair of clothing,
apart from the one he wore, which was patched in many places. He did not eat his full two times in a
row, and months would pass without a fire in his kitchen. This simplicity was maintained throughout his
life, even though he received huge gifts on many occasions, which he distributed to the poor and the
needy. His example was followed by Abu-Bakr and Umar, who are unparalleled in their combination of
worldly rule with extreme simplicity of lifestyle.

One important feature of simplicity is to live in a way so as not to provoke envy or jealousy. One of the
reasons for which Qaroon was condemned was because he paraded his wealth to the envy of his nation.
Muslims are commanded to dress and feed their slaves as equals. Those who have more than their
neighbors are told to share their blessings or else consume the extra concealing it from others so as not
to cause envy. The Islamic spirit of moderation in consumption is perfectly expressed in

َ ‫َيا َبنِي آدَ َم ُخ ُذو ْا ِزي َن َت ُك ْم عِ ندَ ُك ِّل َمسْ ِج ٍد و ُكلُو ْا َوا ْش َربُو ْا َوالَ ُتسْ ِرفُو ْا إِ َّن ُه الَ ُيحِبُّ ْالمُسْ ِرف‬
‫ِين‬

(7:31) O CHILDREN of Adam! Beautify yourselves for every act of worship, and eat and drink [freely], but
do not waste: verily, He does not love the wasteful!

The prohibition of wastefulness (Israf) and unnecessary expenses (Tabzeer) together with the
recommendations of spending money over and above our needs for the sake of Allah would go a long
way towards solving the problems of Islamic societies.

25
2.3 The Worst of all Creatures

European history shows the importance of good behavior by the religious leaders. Bad conduct of
religious leaders damages the faith of the people. This brings out the importance of the following
Hadeeth:

A certain sahaabee of the nabee sallal-laahu `alayhi wa sallam asked him: "Who is the worst of all
creatures?" He answered: "Don't ask me questions about bad things, but ask me questions about good
things. The worst of all creatures are the guilty scholars" (i.e. those who do not practice what they say).

Corruption of their religious leaders was the first of a long sequence of events, which eventually led to
the loss of faith in God among the Europeans. In many areas of European history, we see that the
transition between the good and the evil is gradual, and takes place in a series of small steps, each one
of which appears permissible, or only a minor change. This brings out the importance of vigilance,
recommended in Ahadeeth, which ask us to stay away from the boundaries between the Haram and the
Halal.

In the past, madrassahs used to provide spiritual training in addition to intellectual and scholarly
training. Nowadays this tradition has been largely abandoned and the spiritual training has been left up
to the student, on his inclination and option. We need to bring back the spiritual training and make it an
essential and central component of a religious education. Producing Ulema without taking any steps to
ensure their training in the lines of Zikr, Taqwa, Khushoo’, Ikhlaq violates the spirit of Islamic teachings,
since the central teaching of our Prophet s.a.w. was along these lines. There are many active
movements in the Islamic world, which aim to develop faith or Eeman; in addition to traditional Sufi
orders, the Risale-Noor movement of Said Bediuzzaman Nursi, as well as the movement of Tableegh and
Dawah, which is the largest grassroots movement in Islamic history.. It is important to note that Eeman
is the base, and that development of good conduct, etiquette, social relations, and spiritual
development require further training for which we will need to look back at our traditions and revive
institutions and methods developed for this purpose by our ancestors. This is in accordance with the
following passage from Fazail-e-Amal:

Says the nabee sallal-laahu `alayhi wa sallam in another Hadith: "Knowledge is of two kinds: one, which
remains on the tongue only and does not affect the heart and so is in fact an accusation from Allah; and
the other, which penetrates into the heart and revives the spirit: that is indeed useful." What we mean
to say is that a Muslim should not acquire only that knowledge, which concerns the formalities, but also
the spiritual knowledge, which would purify his heart and enlighten his brain; otherwise it would be a
cause for questioning on the day of qiyaamah as to how far it was acted upon.

Of course schools and madrassahs are the secondary sources of education, especially when it comes to
moral education. The primary education takes place at home. It is essential to impart moral training
(Terbiyyah) at homes to a much greater extent than is currently being done. To combat the flood of
immorality being imparted by the western media, it is essential for us to take steps to introduce the
teachings of Quran and Hadeeth in every Muslim household on a regular basis. Special courses for
newlyweds need to be designed to train them to bring up children in the light of Islamic teachings. Many
different Islamic groups have carried out many different experiments as attempts to protect their
children from the harmful effects of the prevailing environments. We need to compare notes and
evaluate different techniques to select good ones and compile instructions for those who are starting to

26
worry about this problem. It will take concerted group effort to comply with the Quranic command:
66:6 O ye who believe! Save yourselves and your families from a Fire.

3. Rejection of Traditions and Formation of Sects

Martin Luther’s criticism of corrupt practices of the Roman Catholic Church was motivated by the
intention of reform, and a return to earlier and purer forms of Christianity. Pope Leo X declared 41
articles of Luther's teachings as heretical, and Luther's books were publicly burned in Rome. Eventually,
Luther’s excommunication from the Catholic Church led to a split in Christendom, with far reaching
consequences for Europe and for the whole world. Some of the key ideas that we need to look at from
this history are summarized in the passage below:

Martin Luther (1483-1546) stands in history as one of those unique forces, an individual
who by force of will and by his ideas changed the world fundamentally. There are
several ironies incumbent on Luther's pivotal role in history: 1) he doesn't really
represent a break with the past, but rather a flash point where ideas and trends, which
had been smoldering in Europe for several centuries suddenly blazed aflame; 2) Luther
initially saw himself as a great reformer of the Catholic church, a simple monk who
thought the force of his ideas would single-handedly redirect the Leviathan of the
church; in the end, however, he divided Christianity into two separate churches and that
second division, Protestantism, would divide over the next four centuries into a near
infinity of separate churches; 3) finally, Luther (and all the other reformers) saw
themselves as returning Christianity to its roots, they believed that they were setting the
clock back; in reality, their ideas irreparably changed the world and pushed it kicking
and screaming, not into some ideal past, but into the modern era.

From: “World Civilizations: An Internet Classroom and Anthology,” webpage on Martin Luther
(http://wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/LUTHER.HTM) by Richard Hooker (1996).

Note that Luther started out with the intention to reform the Church, and ended up splitting it and
eventually destroying the basis of faith in Europe. Of special importance to Muslims are two of the
concepts, which were central to Lutheran theology in permitting a reformulation of Catholic teachings:

1. “sola scriptura” making the Bible the sole measure of theology, previously, the Scriptures had been
seen by some as the pinnacle of a hierarchy of sacred texts, and on par with the oral traditions of the
Church.

2. “sola fida” or justification by "faith alone." Luther's first writing was The Sermon on Good Works, in
which he argued that good works do not benefit the soul; only faith could do that.

The rejection of the (Catholic) tradition as a source of religious knowledge had serious consequences.
The tradition serves to anchor possible interpretations of texts. Without this anchor, texts can be given a
vast variety of interpretations. Initial disagreements between the early reformers like Luther and Zwingli
made it clear that the inner eye of faith does not serve to resolve disputes nearly as easily as a fixed
tradition and a process. The varied possibilities for interpretation of texts manifested themselves in the
eventual split of the Protestants into a “near infinity” of churches.

27
3.1 Unity in Diversity

The formation of many different Protestant sects and their battles with each other over small
theological issues was a very important cause for the loss of faith in Europe. This brings out clearly the
importance of the Islamic tradition of tolerance for dissent, so that conflicting opinions may
simultaneously be held to be acceptable Islamic solutions to a given problem.

42:13 The same religion has He established for you as that which He enjoined on Noah - the which We
have sent by inspiration to thee - and that which We enjoined on Abraham, Moses, and Jesus: Namely,
that ye should remain steadfast in religion, and make no divisions therein.

A tradition named “Ilm-ul-Ikhtilaf” which is an Islamic way of handling conflicts of opinion has no parallel
outside of Islam. This is acceptance of the idea that there are more than one right opinions about a
given religious issue. Useful discussions of Islamic source materials on tolerance of dissent are given by
Shaikhul Hadeeth Maulana Mohammad Zakariyya Kandehlvi (1938) in his book, Al Ai’tdal fil Maratib ar-
Rijal and in Hujjat-ullah-ul-Balegha by Shah Waliullah (1750, conclusion of Part I). From the beginning,
the Quran takes a very broad minded attitude – Allah T’aala promises to guide us to his ways, plural, in
the Ayat cited earlier in the introduction indicates multiple ways that could be right. He promise a good
end to “Christians, Sabeans, Jews,” if they believe and do good deeds. The Prophet s.a.w. indicated that
differences were a blessing for the Ummah and that all of the Companions (despite their differences)
were rightly guided, so that following any of them would be sufficient for salvation. He also indicated
that the Scholars who made a ruling on a controversial matter would receive one blessing if they made a
mistake, and two if they did not. Muslims who give up and concede the argument to the other party,
even though they believe themselves to be in the right, are promised palaces in Heavens.

All of this led toa situation where Muslims were broad minded and generous in their acceptance of
disagreement. The attitude was that while there was one unique truth, we humans were fallible in our
attempts to understand and no one is more fallible than myself. This humility permits tolerance of
diversity. This was displayed in the emergence of four pathways – Hanbali, Malaki, Shafi’ee, and Hanafi –
all of which accept the others as correct despite major disagreements on many issues. In a similar way,
there are substantial disagreements among the different orders of Tassawuf, but none claims unique
access to the truth. This is in stark contrast with European and other cultural traditions, where small
disagreements have led to the formation of sects and resulted in major battles.

The role of tradition in maintaining unity also becomes clear from the European history. If we take the
view that the Quran and Hadeeth and the light of faith are enough for us, and discard the tradition of
Islam, as represented by sayings and writings of the scholars during the 1400 years between now and
the early prophetic era, we will go astray. One consequence of trust in the promise of God that:

15:9 Behold, it is We Ourselves who have bestowed from on high, step by step, this reminder? [9] and,
behold, it is We who shall truly guard it [from all corruption].

is that the truth is circumscribed by the opinions of the elders. That is, we cannot come up with a valid
interpretation of the Quran that has not been held by anyone in the past 14 centuries. Even though
there is huge range and diversity in the opinions of our elders, there is no room to deviate entirely
outside these bounds as the West has done. If on the other hand, we claim to directly interpret the
Quran and the Hadeeth, and disregard the tradition, then the number of variant readings that is possible
will be extremely large, and the possibility of going astray correspondingly large. This methodology,

28
advocated by some modern Muslims, could provide the basis for fragmentation and formation of sects.
In addition, the idea that the Hadeeth and the Quran are enough for us shares the attitude of contempt
and disrespect that modern Western scholars have towards Islamic traditions. In effect, we are saying
that the deep and complex intellectual traditions, and fourteen centuries of Islamic scholarship are of no
value, and can be completely ignored. Such a position can only be taken by those who are in fact
ignorant of these intellectual traditions.

3.2 The Ummah as One Body

The maintenance of unity among Muslims is a religious obli gation of paramount importance, as
indicated by many verses and Ahadeeth. It was realized very early by Muslims that this unity could not
be achieved on the condition that everyone should agree on all major issues of importance. Therefore,
they learned to create unity without seeking agreement on all theological issues.

8:46 And pay heed unto God and His Apostle, and do not [allow yourselves to] be at variance with one
another, lest you lose heart and your moral strength desert you. [50] And be patient in adversity: for,
verily, God is with those who are patient in adversity.

The history of Europe shows the importance of unity. Disunity among scholars is exploited by those who
are against religion to discredit religion as a whole. There are many occasions when enemies of Islam
have created and utilized divisions among Muslims to achieve victories. Islamic republic’s within Russia
were separated into nationalities, and were given different cultures, histories and languages using a
deliberate Russian policy to create divisions among Muslims. Differences among scholars were exploited
to discredit the Islamic faith and seduce Muslims away from Islam into communism.

The Quran and Hadeeth warn us against such tactics. According to the Hadeeth, this Ummah is like one
body, and the whole body feels pain if any part is hurt. Differences and conflicts between Muslims
destroy the faith like the fire burns up dry wood, or the razor shaves off the hair. Great emphasis is
placed on sila-rahmy, or maintaining connections with relatives. The best of conduct is to behave well
and be kind to others even when they behave badly and are unkind to us.

3.3 Love and Tolerance

The horrifying example of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (to be described in the next section), where
vast numbers of innocents were slaughtered for no reason other than religious differences created a
precedent, which has had vast ramifications throughout the European history. This is in stark contrast
with the deep love our Prophet s.a.w. had for all of mankind, as the Quran proves:

35:8 Is he, the evil of whose deeds is made fair seeming unto him so that he deemed it good, (other than
Satan's dupe)? Allah verily sanded whom He will astray, and guide the whom He will, so do not kill
yourself with sorrow for them.

His concern to save all human beings from the rigors of the hellfire was so great that he ignored all cruel
treatments to Muslims and his own self, and gave love in return for hate. The example of Vahshi r.a. is
amazing. The man who chewed the liver of the beloved uncle Hamza, was assiduously courted by the
Prophet of Allah and converted to Islam eventually. This was even though seeing him was such a painful
reminder of past events that the Prophet requested Vahshi not to come in front of him when he came to
visit.

29
Historically, Islamic civilizations have displayed much greater tolerance and provided much greater
freedom to minorities as compared to those provided by the West. In particular, the concept of
allowing minorities personal law that is separate from the overall law of the state arguably achieves a
level of freedom for subcultures that is greater than currently available in the West. Western traditions
of intolerance and persecution of minorities were directly responsible for the rise of secular thinking in
the west. In stark contrast, Islamic traditions of tolerance created culture of peaceful coexistence among
Jews, Christians and Muslims in Spain. In The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians
Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, Menocal (2002) writes about how tolerant Muslim
rulers created a culture of “philosophers, of poets whose work inspired Chaucer and Boccaccio, of
weeping fountains, breezy courtyards, and a long-running tolerance profoundly rooted in the cultivation
of the complexities, charms and challenges of contradictions. The Spanish recon quest of 1492 ended
this era of tolerance, and initiated repression of Judaism and Islam. Ultimately, tortures and the
Inquisition was used to force all remaining Muslims to convert to Christianity. Western historians have
recognized the achievements of the Muslims in this field; for example , Toynbee (1951) wrote: “The
extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of
Islam. In the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this
Islamic virtue … of tolerance and peace”.

Travellers through the Muslim world have often recorded their experience of hospitality; see One
Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travellers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage by Wolfe
(1998). For example, Malcolm X. (1965) found in his travel experience “a spirit of unity and brotherhood
that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-
white…” While these traditions of love, tolerance and hospitality have been considerably weakened by
the onslaught of modernity, enough remains to build them up again. The importance of doing so is clear
from the European history, which shows that violations of these traditions is a good way to drive people
away from the faith. We must strive to recreate the traditions of love, which the Quran tells us is a gift
from God more valuable than all the treasures on the Earth:

(8:63) and (moreover) He hath put affection between their hearts: not if thou hardest spent all that is in
the earth, couldst thou have produced that affection, but Allah hath done it: for He is Exalted in might,
Wise.

4. Religious Wars in Europe

The historical details below are a condensed version of Lecture 6: Europe in the Age of Reli gious Wars,
by Steven Kreis (2002):
(Available at: http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture6c.html :)

The Reformation smashed the medieval synthesis and destroyed the unity of the Christian matrix.
Between 1560 and 1715, Europe witnessed only thirty years of international peace. The latter half of the
sixteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century brought about one of the most
passionate and calamitous series of wars that Europe had ever experienced. The growing division
between Christian churches in Europe led to a series of armed conflicts for over a century. Protestants
and Catholics shed each other's blood in prodigious amounts in national wars and in civil wars. The final
result of these struggles was the overthrow and execution of Charles I in England in the middle of the
seventeenth century, an historical earthquake that permanently changed the face of Europe.

30
On August 24, 1572, the day before St. Bartholomew's Day, royal forces hunted down and executed over
three thousand Huguenots, including Coligny, in Paris. Within three days, royal and Guise armies had
hunted down and executed over twenty thousand Huguenots in the single most bloody and systematic
extermination of non-combatants until World War II as witnessed by the European history. The St.
Bartholomew Massacre was a turning point in both French history and the history of the European
Christian church. Protestants no longer viewed Catholicism as a misguided church, but as the force of
the devil itself. No longer were Protestants fighting for a reformed church, but they suddenly saw
themselves fighting for survival against a Catholic church whose cruelty and violence seemed to know
no bounds. Throughout Europe, Protestant movements slowly transformed into militant movements.

By the mid-1580's, the Catholic League was in control of France and, after Henry III attempted to attack
the League in 1588, the League drove him from Paris and embarked on a systematic massacre of non-
combatants that rivaled the earlier St. Bartholomew's Massacre.

Henry of Navarre, as next in line to the throne, became King of France as Henry IV (ruled 1589-1610).
Henry understood that the only way that France would find peace is if it were ruled by a tolerant
Catholic king, so on July 25, 1593, he rejected his Protestant faith and officially became Catholic. On
April 13, 1598, Henry IV ended the long and tiring religious wars in France by proclaiming the Edict of
Nantes. This Edict granted to Huguenots the right to worship publicly, to occupy public off ice, to
assemble, to gain admission to schools and universities, and to administer their own towns.

The year 1556 saw the accession of perhaps the most important monarch of the sixteenth century:
Philip II of Spain (ruled 1556-1598). Of all the monarchs of Europe, Philip was the most zealous defender
of his religious faith and his energies in pursuit of this defense greatly changed the face of Europe. Philip
sent the Duke of Alba with an army to quell the Protestant revolt in the Netherlands in 1567. Alba
imposed a tribunal, the Council of Troubles, to question and sentence heretics (Protestants). The Dutch
called this council the "Council of Blood," for it managed to publicly execute thousands of people before
Alba was forced out from the Netherlands.

Philip finally decided to invade England after the execution of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. On
May 30, 1588, he sent a mighty armada of over 130 ships to invade England. The Armada contained over
25,000 soldiers and the ships gathered for the invasion in the English Channel south of England. In
practical terms, the defeat of the Armada was a temporary setback for Spain. The 1590's saw impressive
military victories for the Spanish. However, the defeat of the Armada was a tremendous psychological
victory for European Protestants. Spain represented the only powerful military force that threatened the
spread of Protestantism; when even the mighty Spanish navy could be defeated by an outnumbered
English and Dutch fleet, Protestants everywhere were reinvigorated in their struggles against Spain and
the Roman church. By the end of the seventeenth century, Spain was no longer a major player in the
power politics of Europe.

With the exception of the English civil war, the last major war of religion was the Thirty Years’ War. It is
fair to say, however, that this war was as much about politics as it was about religion. Just as the
Palatinate was fanatical about the spread of Calvinism and Protestantism, so Bavaria was fanatical about
the spread of Catholicism and the Counter-Reformation. When Frederick IV, Elector of the Palatine,
formed a defensive league with England, France, and the Netherlands in 1609, Maximillian, Duke of
Bavaria, formed a Catholic League. In 1618, the relationship between these two regi ons erupted into
war; this war would outdo all the other previous religious wars in terms of extent and destruction. The
Thirty Years War was, perhaps, the first World War fought in Europe, for nearly every state in Europe

31
became involved in the war in some way or another. The sheer amount of casualties and human
destruction made this war the most calamitous and disastrous war of the European history before the
nineteenth century. The Thirty Years' War was a terrifying war whose destruction was only matched by
the First and Second World Wars. The land was destroyed and cattle slaughtered -- all of which was
made worse by a re-visitation of the plague. The Holy Roman Empire lost one quarter of its inhabitants
and its fragmentation into hundreds of small states delayed economic recovery as well as any hope for a
unified Germany. And during the English Civil War of 1640-1660, the English beheaded their king in
1649. All of these conflicts were inspired by religious differences owing to the Reformation, and all of
these conflicts had political, economic and social ramifications.

4.1 The European Mindset

These events created a deep and lasting impression on the European mindset. One of them was the idea
that religion is the source of “all” wars. The reality is that many of the so called ‘religious’ wars had
political motives behind them. Political leaders would switch sides and alliances would be made across
religious lines on political grounds. At the same time, some of the wars were motivated by religion. The
Europeans generalized their experience to all religions, not understanding that these were specific
features of Christianity and its development in Europe that were responsible for their difficulties. The
Islamic experience with religion and war has been entirely different, but Muslims trained in the West are
taught in a way to believe that Islam has also been the source of conflicts and wars throughout history,
though this is contrary to the fact.

Another important consequence of perpetual warfare in Europe has been a mindset that contact
between any two groups of people must be hostile. This idea is present in countless works of fiction as
well as respectable academic works in Europe. The most recent example is the “Clash of Civilizations” by
Huntington. The idea that two civilizations can meet, learn from each other, trade, enjoy benefits of
mutual friendship simply does not occur to Huntington and similar scholars in the European tradition. It
is assumed that war, conflict and attempts by one to dominate the other must result from contact as
this is the lesson of European history. The contrast with Muslim commands for courtesy and good
behavior towards those not of our faith could not be greater. The Quran commands us to seek common
grounds with the non-believers, to argue with them in the best of ways (kindly, with courtesy and
respect):

Also the Hadeeth state that the Prophet s.a.w himself will be the advocate for the unbelievers in
disputes in which Muslims are unjust to them. In Europe, warring facti ons each of which claimed that it
was on the right path and killed others without mercy, led to weariness with religion among the masses.
This created the basis for widespread agnosticism and atheism in Europe. An illustration of the hatred
for religion created by these events is given below:

In November 1793, atheism reached its zenith, with its mockery of the rites of the church. On the tenth
of November, the commissioners of the Convention dressed up an ass in sacerdotal habit, and loaded it
with the symbols of Christianity, and tied the Old and New Testaments to its tail. It was then led in mock
procession by two sans culottes bearing a sacred cup, out of which they gave the animal sacramental
wine to drink. Arriving at their destination, the crowd piled books of devotion into heaps, and burned
them to ashes amid blasphemous shouts. A prostitute was enthroned as the Goddess of Reason, and
received adoration from the National Convention..."

Such an event could not be contemplated anywhere in the Islamic world, even today.

32
4.2 The Rules of War

The extreme cruelty of the religious leaders of Europe to co-religionists with different views has left a
deep impress on European minds, and continues to influence their worldviews and policies to this day.
Alfred McCoy has documented the evolution of the European tradition of torture of heretics (including
Muslims and Jews), which started with the Inquisition. He describes the CIA manual for torture (The
Kubark Manual) as “the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries.”
This manual describes techniques developed by ‘scientific’ research on mental patients funded by the
CIA. These methods, used in Al-Gharaib and GuantanamoBay, are in stark contrast with Islamic rules for
Jihad. Unlike the European idea that “All is fair in love and war,” Jihad is a religious duty, and subject to
strict Islamic rules from the earliest times. The most important of these were summarized by Abu Bakr
r.a., in the form of ten rules for the Muslim army:

Stop, O people, that I may give you ten rules for your guidance in the battlefield. Do not commit
treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a
woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which
are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who
have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_military_jurisprudence

Islamic traditions were established by the magnificent precedent of the Prophet s.a.w. who upon the
conquest of Mecca, forgave bitter enemies who had caused tremendous harm as well as tortured large
number of the early Muslims. Many Muslim conquerors have followed this precedent, based on the
Quranic teaching to be fair and just even to our enemies:

Q5:8 O ye who believe! stand out firmly for Allah, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of
others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to piety: and fear
Allah. For Allah is well-acquainted with all that ye do.

The idea that the ends justify the means, used to justify torture, mass killing of civilian innocents, and
other atrocities in contemporary wars, is a continuation of a long European tradition dating back to the
era of religious wars. This idea has never been part of Islam. Ameer Mu’awiyah recalled armies from a
surprise attack, planned for immediately after expiry of a peace treaty, when the religious scholars ruled
that this was not permissible in Islamic law. Bulgarians temporarily occupied Edirne during the First
Balkan War (March 1913) after a siege of six months. Even in dire circumstances with compelling
necessity, the ruling of Islamic law that the property of the non-Muslims could not be seized for
purposes of defence was obeyed punctiliously by Muslims under siege. No other nation can produce
parallel examples.

It was very late in their history that the Europeans came to the realization that there should be rules
even in war, and codified them in the Geneva Convention. Even now, this Convention is honored more
in the breach than in observance, and extensive violations are documented for USA, UK, France and
other European countries. Fanning flames of hatred against enemies is a common element of their
strategy of war; witness the current treatment of Islam in the West. Our current problem is succinctly
summarized by a beautiful scene from the movie “The Lion of the Desert”. When a young man insists on
mistreating a European captive as revenge for injustices done to Muslims, Omar Mukhtar responds by
saying “They (Europeans) are not our teachers.” Unfortunately, we have allowed the West to become
our teachers. Colonization by the West has destroyed Islamic traditions and culture, and even the

33
memories of these traditions have been lost in contemporary Islamic societies. Muslims trained in
western universities and armies have learnt the lessons of hatred and cruelty to enemies, and have done
things which are alien to our traditions and history. In particular, torture of prisoners and murder of
innocent non-combatants is against Islamic law. Massive effort is required to throw off the shackles of
mental slavery of the colonial era, and recreate the ideals of the Quran as a living reality in Islamic
societies.

4.3 Islamic Standards of Justice

The failure of character of religious leaders in Europe was a key element in the loss of faith suffered by
Europeans. In particular, it was oppression, cruelty, and injustice against opponents that led Europeans
to believe that faith did not suffice as a guarantor of justice, and led them to develop the “rule of law” as
a secular alternative. The European heritage in this area goes back to the era of gladiators, where
combat between champions was used to settle the issue of which of the two parties was on the right.
The same spirit remains in operation to this day, as several recent high profile trials demonstrate that
those with the wealth for expensive lawyers can literally get away with murder, as in the O. J. Simpson
case. A panel of lawyers unanimously agreed that a lawyer defending a male client known to be guilty of
rape nonetheless is obliged to destroy the reputation of the female victim if this is the best possible
defence. All agreed that justice is an incidental by-product of an adversarial struggle between opposing
parties.

Again, Islamic teachings stand in stark contrast to western traditions. Muslims are required to bear
witness, even if it is against their own self, and kith and kin:

Q4:135 O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves,
or your parents, or your kin, and whether it is (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both.
Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest ye swerve, and if ye distort (justice) or decline to do justice,
verily Allah is well- acquainted with all that ye do.

Western traditions do not aspire to these high standards; the Fifth Amendment of the U.S gives people a
constitutional right to abstain from bearing witness against themselves. The challenge facing Muslims is
to prove the truth of the Quranic teachings by translating it into a living reality in Muslim societies.

5. Conclusions

59:2 He it is who turned out of their homes, at the time of [their] first gathering [for war], such of the
followers of earlier revelation as were bent on denying the truth. [1] You did not think [O believers] that
they would depart [without resistance] - just as they thought that their strongholds would protect them
against God: but God came upon them in a manner which, they had not expected, [2] and cast terror
into their hearts; [and thus] they destroyed their homes by their own hands as well as the hands of the
believers. [3] Learn a lesson, then, O you who are endowed with insight!

The Europeans destroyed their own faith with their own hands, and have suffered tremendously in
consequence, as described briefly in the introduction. In this essay, our goal was to discuss the process
by which the Europeans lost their faith in Christianity, and to learn lessons relevant to Muslims today .

The humiliation of defeat has led Muslims to a deep seated inferiority complex, exacerbated by Western
accounts of their own superiority. To overcome this, it is essential to examine western history from a

34
religious point of view. The secular narration of western history, which is the dominant one, misses
crucial ingredients of the story. The failings of religious leaders in the west led to the development of
many western ideologies, which are directly opposed to religious teachings. By examining these issues,
we learn the importance of certain Islamic teachings relating to justice, fairness, unity, tolerance and
love for each other as well as all human beings, as a key to maintaining a society of the faithful. Since
these secular western ideologies are in wide circulation and being assimilated by Muslims, an
examination of their history also serves to expose their roots in anti-religious thought, and protect us
from their influence.

The teachings of Islam are at a level of excellence, which is much higher than that which the West
currently aspires to. As long as they remain on our books and history, but not in our lives and hearts,
they are a source of embarrassment rather than pride. The challenge, which faces the Ummah today, is
to translate the teachings of Islam into a living reality. We make the struggle to bring this about, with
trust in Allah that He will guide us to His pathways. We conclude with the prayer that Allah T’aala may
grant us the strong faith, which forms the basis for His friendship and that He may guide us from the
darkness into the light:

Allah is the friend of those who believe, leading them from darkness into light.

35
2. The Dark Side of the Enlightenment Project
Published in Turkish Daily News, Monday, Nov 26, 2007, Jakarta Post on Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008 --
with a lively discussion attached and published in The News, (Pakistan) on Monday, May 12, 2008

An extremely important element in the current thinking and psychology of Europeans is the
“Enlightenment Project” undertaken by majority of European intellectuals. Achievements of Newton,
Galileo, and many other prominent scientists created a dramatic impact on the mindset of Europe. A
few simple laws could lay bare the secrets of the movements of the stars, and a few observations could
upset centuries of belief in the central place of man (and his planet) in universe. Imagine what progress
would be possible if these principles of utilizing observations and facts, and building upon them in the
light of reason, were applied on a much larger scale. Enlightenment thinkers were inspired by fantastic
achievements of science, and technology. They thought that application of the scientific methods in all
areas of human thought would lead to a radical improvement in the human condition. All social
problems such as wars, famines, disease, and misery were due to traditions and superstition (that is,
Christianity). Opposing tradition, establishment, encouraging fresh and innovative ways of thinking, and
subjecting all ideas to the iron test of reason would lead to the improvement of the human race, and to
'moral progress'.
The first and second world wars came as a shock to believers in the Enlightenment project. The
scale of violence, barbarism, and cruelty of Europeans to others was easily equal to the worst
happenings in the ‘dark’ and unenlightened times before the triumph of reason. Centuries of diligent
study and application of scientific methods to shape minds and construct societies did not appear to
have improved human beings judged as humans. Blind faith in progress through application of science
was tempered by a dark dose of reality. Warnings that the Enlightenment project might not turn out so
well on the human front had been present all along, but the few naysayers had been ignored by the
enthusiastic mainstream. Hume had clearly stated that moral values could not be discovered or
established by the scientific method. Everyone saw that morals, integrity and honesty were necessary
for civilization. Religion, custom and tradition form the basis for morality. Enlightenment thinkers felt
confident that they could find alternative basis for a superior morality on the solid foundations of facts
and reason. The far-sighted Nietzsche saw much more clearly than his contemporaries the implications
of the rejection of religion as superstition, and the magnitude of the task facing the Europeans in
constructing an alternative basis for morality, and human behavior. He described this in the parable of
the madman who claimed that “We have killed God” – meaning that we Europeans have lost faith in
God. He goes on to say that this tremendous news has not yet reached the ears of men, even though
they did the deed themselves. That is, the full implications of loss of faith have not been absorbed by
European intellectuals, who continue to believe that rational foundations for morality can be found. The
implications of living without any basis for morality have not been absorbed.

The twentieth century can be viewed as a report card for the Enlightenment project. As recorded by
philosopher and ethicist, Jonathan Glover in his book: Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth
Century, the report is not good. Violence, murders, atrocities, destruction of entire cities, and large

36
masses of innocent people using deliberately cruel methods, has been done on a scale never before
seen in the annals of history. Glover writes that the challenge of Nietzsche, to find an alternative basis
for morality, has not been met, although he continues to be optimistic that a solution may be found.
Many authors have written books and articles on the decline of morals in the West, which has been
extremely rapid in the last fifty years. As a small but significant illustrative example, consider the affair of
Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Only twenty years prior to this event, similar scandals could and did bring
down governments and terminate political careers. However, with the erosion of moral values, this
affair was dismissed as a personal quirk, which was so widespread in the society that it would be
hypocritical to chastise the leader too severely for it. According to contemporary conceptions of
morality, this is a trivial personal matter, and to take it seriously is the sign of a narrow minded prude.
Clinton’s affair is the butt of many jokes and limericks it would be improper to cite here in a public
forum. Nonetheless, there is a very serious dimension to this affair. If the wives of the Western world
leaders cannot trust them to keep their promises, and to not deceive them, then who can trust them?
Surely, it is not the case that a person is compartmentalized so as to behave with integrity in public
affairs, and not in his personal affairs.
For us living in the Muslim world, there are some very important lessons to be learned from this history
of the Enlightenment project. Those of us who have absorbed the lessons of the West have learned to
consider tradition and religion as inferior to reason and observation – this lesson permeates all Western
thinking, literature, and other media.

The fact is that the science and religion occupy different spheres, and experience shows that science
offers no guidance on moral affairs. Physics can lead to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and also provide atomic
power. Biology is capable of genetic manipulation of crops to enrich multinationals at the expense of the
masses, and is equally capable of providing substantial increases i n production to feed the starving. We
are living in a world, which has lost its moral bearings, at least partly as an outcome of commitment to
Enlightenment principles. The law of the jungle prevails in the international arena. Any country with
sufficient power can invade, capture, occupy, and kill innocents in large numbers without even the
pretext of a moral justification. Our Islamic tradition offers strong moral guidance, which is becoming
more and more a desperate need of the hour.

37
3. Failures of Modernization Theories
Published in Pakistaniat: A Journal for Pakistan Studies Vol 1, No 2. 2009 11/11/2008:
Jakarta Post with title: From the Rubble of Modernization:
Choosing Our Own Pathways to Progress, Friday, Nov. 30, 2007 inTurkish Daily News,
Thursday June 5, 2008 in The News:

Pride resulting from global dominance and spectacular scientific and technological developments led
Europeans to believe that the West was the most advanced and developed of all societies. Other societies
were primitive and under-developed. As these other societies matured and grew, they would follow the
same stages that were followed by the West, and eventually become like modern Western societies. Early
thinkers like Comte described the stages in growth from primitive society to modern ones in a ‘logical’
sequence. The enterprise of colonizing the non-European world was painted in bright terms as being part
of the “White Man’s burden” of bringing enlightenment, good government, science, technology and other
benefits of Western civilization to the rest of the world. Until the 60’s modernization theorists, like
Parsons and Rostow echoed these sentiments, regarding Westernization as a desirable and inevitable
process for the rest of the world. The goal of this article is to discuss some of the difficulties, which led to
substantial reconsideration of these naïve views. Current views (for example, Development as Freedom by
Amartya Sen) are much more complex and diverse, and generally more respectful of other ancient
civilizations in the world.
The first problem with the modernization theories is the deeply racist worldview embedded in them.
The Dred-Scott decision in the USA declared that blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and
altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior
that they had no rights, which the white man was bound to respect." Australian aborigines were hunted
like animals by the British. Lord Cecil Rhodes declared that "I contend that we are the finest race in the
world and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those
parts that are presently inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings; what an
alteration there would be if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence ... “He became the richest
man in the world at the time by fully exploiting those ‘despicable specimens of human beings’ in the
British colonies. While explicit and open racism has largely been abandoned in modern times, remnants
of these racist views still persist. There is debate at the highest levels in the USA as to whether or not
Muslims can self-govern! See “Bush Cites Racism in Remarks On Iraq” in Washington Post, Saturday,
May 1, 2004. Nobel Prize winner Watson has suggested that differences in development levels may be
explained by genetic endowments. Harvard professor Bell maintains that non-white races have lower IQ
than whites.
A second problem with modernization theories is that it has become abundantly clear that high
sounding moral ideas have served as a cover for very low and despicable purposes. In King Leopold’s
Ghost, Adam Hoch child documents the extremely cruel, oppressive and exploitative treatment meted
out to Africans, which resulted in the death of 4 to 8 million in the Belgian Congo alone. In the name of
bringing them the benefits of European civilization, King Leopold's officials used extremely harsh
methods to force the locals to collect rubber. To teach the locals Western work ethics, the Belgians took

38
wives and children hostage and kept them in subhuman conditi ons until their African husbands fulfilled
their quotas. Soldiers would torture, chop off hands, or kill the inhabitants if they faltered in their work.
All of these policies were promoted and advertised as Christian charity for the benefit of the natives.
Similar policies are also currently in operation. According to testimony of high-placed officials like Paul
O’Neill, Alan Greenspan, and Henry Kissinger, the Iraq war was planned for the control of the vast oil
resources of Iraq. However, the White House vehemently denies this view, and alleges high motives like
the desire to bring democracy to Iraq. While every U.S soldier killed is counted, no one counts the
millions of inferior lives destroyed by the Iraq war.

The vast amount of torture, arbitrary killings of civilians, destruction of Iraqi infrastructure and entire
cities, and the resulting miseries of the populace, have surfaced in alternative media, but only
occasionally break through to the mainstream media in USA.A third problem with modernization
theories is that they have failed to deliver results. All across the world, “structural adjustment
programs” (SAPs) were designed and implemented by expert economists to help improve economic
performance. Even proponents from IMF and World Bank now widely acknowledge that these policies
have been failures. Critics, including Nobel Laureate Stieglitz, claim that these SAPs are a major cause of
poverty all over the world. Under General Pinochet, the Chilean economy was turned into a laboratory
experiment in free market economics by the “Chicago boys.” Advice from Nobel Prize winning
economist Milton Friedman followed strictly for several years resulted only in lackluster growth and
continued high unemployment.
Faith in the miracles of the free market led only to disappointment and failure when “shock treatment”
was applied to the Russian economy. Pressure by U.S economists for financial liberalization led directly
to the East Asian crisis. Throughout the world, numerous vigorously pursued programs for
modernization and development along Western models have only led to chaos, cultural conflicts, and
confusion.
The idea that Western models are perfect in all areas, including social, cultural and economic, leads to
the dominant role of foreign expert advisors in development. These experts need to know nothing about
local conditions, customs, traditions, because all of these are just obstacles in the path to progress. They
come to a country knowing the solutions in advance, and give advice on how to move from exis ting
patterns to Western ones in the shortest possible time.

The havoc wrecked by this disregard and ignorance of local issues has been very well documented by
Mitchell in The Rule of Experts. Studies of successful models for development (post-war Germany, Japan,
communist Russia, East Asian Tigers) show that the strategies used there were often in opposition to
those recommended by conventional economics. World Bank economists writing about The East Asian
Miracle admit that in most of these economies, the government intervened systematically, through
multiple channels, to foster development. Despite these systematic violations of neoclassical
prescriptions for development, these countries achieved the highest rates of productivity growth and
fastest development seen at that time in the historical record.

39
Lessons from studies of successful development strategies are abundantly clear. Each such country has
developed by disregarding foreign advice, and developing its own strategies. Self-reliance, self-
confidence, trust, cooperation and methods adapted to local conditions and culture have been crucial to
success. Slavish imitation of Western models and an inferiority complex are the biggest obstacles to
progress. Cultural conflicts due to modernization, created by one segment of society opting for Western
ways and another holding to traditions, have prevented the social harmony and unity necessary for
progress.

40
4. European Transition to Secular Thought

Published in The News (Pakistan) on Friday, Oct 24, 2008, with title: Not Just Europe

Future historians writing on the basis of official U.S documents would be convinced that the USA
selflessly invaded Iraq to bring benefits of democracy and civilization to a barbarian nation, and to
protect the entire world from weapons of mass destruction possessed by a mad dictator. They would
not pick any clue in these documents to the fact that the war destroyed the lives of millions of Iraqis so
that the USA could control their oil.
For the past few centuries, people of European origin have been telling us about the wonderful effects
of the modernization of Europe. The other side of the story is not well known. The self-centered and
self-glorifying point of view of Europeans, which completely disregards the problems and difficulties of
modernization, is implicitly absorbed by anyone who consumes their literary, cinematic o r other
intellectual or social products – a category to which virtually every reader of this column belongs.
Earlier, Henri Pirenne showed how the attempt to picture themselves at the center stage of history at all
times has led Europeans to a substantially distorted understanding of the world civilizations, their close
interrelationships, dependency and balances, and their contributions to weaving the fabric of global
history and society. Many recent books show how Eurocentric bias has led the West to clai m the
achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, universities, capitalism,
individualism and science. Efforts of such scholars have led to the understanding that much of our
common stock of wisdom about human beings and their history in the past few centuries is
"Eurocentric."

One of the central themes of the European view of the world is the idea that the whole world was in
darkness and ignorance, and the dawn of the age of reason first occurred in Europe. The term "Age of
Enlightenment" was used by the 18th century European writers, who were "convinced that they were
emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and
respect for humanity. The period is also often referred to as the Age of Reason." This led to the "White
Man's Burden" to take his civilization and powers of reasoning to ignorant people living in darkness all
over the world. This picture of the world history, which ignores the presence of many ancient and
advanced civilizations, is embedded deeply into Western intellectual traditions.
All non-Europeans who acquire a Western education automatically imbibe this story, which results in an
exaggerated respect for Western traditions and an inferiority complex about one's allegedly savage and
primitive ancestors.
In fact, the story of the Western transition to a secular system of politics and thought is not, as we are
told, a story of the triumph of reason over superstition. The emergence of secular thought in the West
was a consequence of the moral bankruptcy of the upper echelon of the Catholic Church. In The March
of Folly, by Barbara Tuchman, the crisis caused by the openly flaunted moral corruption of a sequence of
Popes (which involved living extremely luxuriously, legitimizing bastard progeny, selling pardons for sins

41
to raise money for supporting lavish lifestyles, etc.) has been termed "the most momentous event in
the history of Europe." Tuchman has documented how this directly led to the rise of the Protestants,
who attempted to preserve their faith while breaking from the corrupt Catholic Church. The Protestants
split into several different Christian sects and factions, which fought among themselves as well as with
the Catholics. The intolerance of these sects for each other, and battles, carnage, oppression and
injustice, all carried out in the name of Christianity, convinced Europeans that religion could not serve as
a basis for ordering a society.
Even religious leaders realized that social harmony required principles, which could be agreed to by all
members of the society without invoking controversial and conflicting religious principles. Secular
thought developed due to the lack of character among religious leaders of Europe, and aimed at
development of higher character by using reason and factual knowledge instead of religion. The
Enlightenment thinkers hoped to create a more humane and just society, which was free from poverty,
wars and social evils of all kinds.
Have the hopes of the enlightenment thinkers been borne out by subsequent history? Religion provided
the basis for morality, which has gradually become weaker and weaker in Europe. The consequences of
this weakening of moral forces in the Western civilization have been noted by many authors, and are
visible for all to see.

For example, Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book “The De-moralisation of Society: From Victorian Virtues
to Modern Values”, has documented the increase of violent crimes and illegitimate childbirth as a
consequence of the decline of Victorian concepts of morality in England. The resulting breakdown of the
family in Europe and the USA has led to an epidemic of social disorder. The Social Justice Foundation in
England has documented how the children of single parents are likely to have poor outcomes in terms of
education, mental health, drug abuse and criminal offending.

Julie Reuben, in her book The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the
Marginalization of Morality, shows how a university education was aimed at developing character in
students up until early twentieth century. However, this mission was abandoned by modern universities
in favor of providing a purely technical education, without any spiritual or moral guidance. The results
have been disastrous as students learn how to build bombs, but nothing about ethics of killing. About
the Nazi gas chambers used to burn millions of innocent men, women and children, Holocaust scholar
Franklin Little writes that "the credibility crisis of the modern university arises from the fact that the
death camps were not planned and built by … illiterates, ignorant savages, but was by-products of one
of the best university systems in the world. In The Brightest and the Best, David Halberstam has
documented how graduates of the best universities ran the Vietnam War on the pattern of an efficient
business, with callous disregard for human suffering. Much of Vietnam became, in essence, a free-fire
zone -- more than one million civilians died as "collateral damage" in the mass bombings and napalming
-- and atrocities and massacres were common. Villages were torched and destroyed in order to "save"
them, in the famous words of a US major. The then Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara now repents
his role in that slaughter, and urges America's leaders not to repeat a similar history in Iraq.

42
With the widespread breakdown of family values, and the abandonment of the moral mission by
universities, children growing up in Europe and the USA have no place to learn ethics and morality. In
single-parent families, children do not know their fathers, and do not experience the warmth and love of
their working mothers. In addition, Hollywood and T.V promote highly immoral lifestyles; for example,
people who murder innocent civilians for money are portrayed as normal, decent, loving and kind
human beings in Mr and Mrs. Smith and many other similar movies. This has resulted in monstrosities
such as the public statement in a CBS "Nightline" TV interview by former US secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright that it was acceptable to killhalf-a-million Iraqi children to achieve objectives of US
policy. She has a vastly better public relations team than Genghis Khan and Hitler, whose names have
been blackened forever in history for far lesser crimes.
Widespread promotion of Western values by the media and unthinking imitation by our leaders and
elite is putting some of our most important institutions at risk. Western family structures have been
destroyed by pursuit of wealth, careers, luxury and individualistic pleasures at the expense of
commitment, sacrifice and loyalty. The point of this article is to argue that we must be discriminating.
Certainly we must learn from the West, but we need to distinguish between their failures and successes,
and avoid the former while adopting means to acquire the latter.

43
5. The Subaltern’s Tale
Published: 06-12-2010 (Express Tribune)

Despite overwhelming superiority in firepower and strategic advantage in their attacks on unsuspecting
beasts of the jungle, hunters manage to emerge as heroes in their tales about the trophies hanging on
their walls. An African proverb explains that until the lions have their own historians, tales of the hunt
will always glorify the hunter.

For the past few centuries, people of European origin have dominated the world. Nearly all the stories
being told about the world in this era glorify them, and celebrate their conquests. In Orientalism, one of
the most influential books of the twentieth century, Edward Said showed that European imperialism and
colonization of the rest of the world permeates all aspects of their literature and thought. A disturbing
implication is that the idea of European superiority is implicitly absorbed by anyone who consumes their
literary, cinematic or other intellectual or social products – a category to which virtually every reader of
this column belongs. Deep and valuable insights about ourselves emerge when we try to get past these
blinds.

One of the central themes of the European view of the world is the idea that the whole world was in
darkness and ignorance, and dawn of the age of reason first occurred in Europe. It is a sign of the
weakening of European hegemony that strong evidence against this thesis is now emerging. In The Theft
of History, Jack Goody documents how Europeans borrowed and adopted inventions of other
civilizations, and claimed them as their own. The Incas were master botanists and created maize by
cultivating and cross breeding inedible and poisonous plants. Their inventions continue to feed the
planet. Muslim discoveries in mathematics, cartography, heliocentric astronomy, physics, optics,
pharmacopeia and surgery have been largely suppressed, and European imitators have been put forth
as originators of these ideas in current histories.

The one-sided tale of European power naturally creates an inferiority complex among the vanquished.
For example, a while ago, an article published in Dawn stated that the British brought concept of public
education to the subcontinent. In fact, research by historian, Leitner reveals that British rulers crippled
and destroyed the indigenous educational systems of Punjab beyond hope of revival. Evidence of
embarrassment and shame about our ancestors, heritage, traditions, and nationality is easily found in a
broad spectrum of writings of Pakistani authors. On the basis of an incident where two men were
beaten to death in front of spectators, a columnist for the Express Tribune recently proclaimed that we
are a nation of cockroaches; comments on this column are almost uniformly admiring and agree. In
Germany, millions of innocent civilians including large numbers of women and children were burned
alive in ovens scientifically designed by engineers for this purpose. As the award winning sociologist,
Zygmunt Bauman has shown in his book, Modernity and the Holocaust, this occurred with the
knowledge, cooperation and tacit consent of large numbers of the German population. Yet I do not
know of Germans who call themselves cockroaches.

44
The project of telling the story from the point of the view of the vanquished has been named “Subaltern
Studies,” and has made a lot of progress in India, but not as much in Pakistan. It is encouraging that
what we used to call the Mutiny of 1857, our children study as the War of Independence. However,
substantial additional effort is needed to overcome a deep seated inferiority complex, which makes us
seek foreign experts for solutions to domestic problems.

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III: History of Colonies and Colonization

A European worldview not only exaggerates European superiority, it also degrades

accomplishments of other civilizations. Due to this education, Muslim children grow up
believing that science, rational thought, good governance via democracies, and all other
wonders of modern civilization were invented by Europeans. This creates a deep seated
inferiority complex, exhibited in lack of self-confidence, embarrassment and shame
about our ancestors, history, and culture – as demonstrated by Salman Rushdie for
example. The antidote is to replace the “White Man’s Burden” view of colonization, by
the history of the ruthless exploitation that actually occurred in the process. This is best
illustrated by considering the recent American conquest of Iraq. The White Man’s Burden
is the official statement of the White House that the invasion occurred to bring
democracy to Iraq and to protect the Iraqi people and the whole world from Weapons of
Mass Destruction in the hands of a crazy dictator. The ruthless exploitation view is that it
occurred to get control of the vast oil resources of Iraq. A second essential component is
to highlight the stories of heroic struggles against the west, the successes, and the
accomplishments that have all been suppressed in Western accounts. This portion
collects some essays related to these themes.

46
1. The Ways of the Eagles
Wo faraib khorda shaheen, jo pala hay kargason mein –usay kya khabar ke kya hai, raho rasme shahbazi
(Iqbal)

The deluded Eaglet, brought up with the crows, How can he know the ways of the high flyers?

Published in The News: Not Just Europe, 2008 Friday, December 19, 2008. Jakarta Post: Social
Movements: Lessons from European History

Suppose that Iraqi children learnt the story of the invasion and occupation of Iraq in schools run by
Americans. They would learn of the heroism and bravery of the US troops, who made great sacrifices to
bring freedom and democracy to Iraq. They gave their lives, and spent trillions in order to educate and
civilize the savage terrorists who lived in Iraq. They would learn to admire the US for their humanity,
civilization, and technology, and hate their ancestors for their barbarism, terrorist ways, lack of
education, and most of all, lack of appreciation for the American culture. They would reject as enemy
propaganda stories of US destruction of millions of lives and billions worth of infrastructure in their
greedy quest for control of the rich oil resources of Iraq.
Growing up in Pakistan, we receive an education designed (by Macaulay and followers) to create a class
of people who would be the intermediaries between the British rulers and the ruled natives. They are
indoctrinated through an education system to be “Indians” only in appearance -- they have complete
belief in the good intentions of British rule and the philosophy of 'the white man's burden', thus making
the task of ruling this vast country easier. They would, without question, believe that the British were
there for the uplift of the Indian people from centuries of ignorance and backwardness. Over a period of
time, they would associate all British things with superiority -- their physical appearance, their attire,
their language, their culture, their religion. This beautifully designed system was to be self -perpetuating
– the indoctrinated would be the rulers, and would control the education system to create more people
like them.
While we have achieved independence in form, mentally we are still enslaved by a deeply ingrained
inferiority complex vis-à-vis the West. To cure this, we must develop and tell our own history. In bits and
pieces this process has begun, as in the replacement of the term “Mutiny of 1857” by the “War of
Independence”. The dramatic change of point of view required for this change of terminology is one
that needs to be applied on a much larger scale. This essay is an attempt to continue this healing
process. It would be impossible to do justice to this project in this short space. I intend only to outline
and sketch the dimensions along which we need to reconstruct our history. The stories we tell about our
past are extraordinarily important in shaping our identities and in determining the goals worth striv ing
for.

India was looted, not developed, by the British Raj: Tales of the fabulously wealthy India attracted
explorers (like Columbus) from all over the world. India had well developed institutions for the provision
of justice, education, health, and social security. Indian textiles and other industrial products were
exported to many destinations all over the world. Taxation was not burdensome, and recognized by the

47
citizens as necessary for peace and security. Both citizens and rulers had a clear understanding of their
mutual responsibilities towards each other. Localized institutions functioned effectively without
reference to central government, and kings were well aware that their wealth was tied to the prosperity
of their citizens. As a result, the average citizen was not much concerned about the fortunes of the kings
and empires. The populace failed to resist or unite against British invaders, under the mistaken
impression that they would be essentially benevolent like other kings. Subsequently, many people from
many walks of life wrote letters of appeal in vain to British Queens and Kings. Unfortunately, unlike
previous kings who had supported the public against cruel and corrupt administration, the British were
firmly on the side of the “Raj,” and had no concern for the welfare of the public.
Effects of British Racism: At the time of colonization, Europeans did not consider non-whites to be human
beings. For example, Australian aborigines were hunted like animals, and the Dred Scott decision in the
USA declared that blacks were "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white
race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man
was bound to respect." Even now, there is debate at the highest levels in the USA as to whether or not
Muslims can self-govern! Nobel Prize winner Watson has suggested that differences in development levels
may be explained by genetic endowments. Harvard professor Bell maintains that non-white races have
lower IQ than whites. This deeply embedded racism has had tremendous consequences in terms of the
ruthlessness with which non-whites have been treated by colonizing whites. By machinations, deceit,
treachery, good luck, superior weaponry and related war technology, the British managed to acquire
control of the entire country. Initial foothold in India was supported by production and sale of opium in
India and China. European double standards continue to this day as sales of harmful drugs and chemicals
are banned in the West and promoted in the East for profits. British consolidation of power following the
conquest of Plassey was so rapacious that one third of the entire population of Bengal died of starvation
and famine. Millions of pounds of yearly profits were sent to England without concern for welfare of the
inferior beings in India.
Educational Systems: There exist numerous testimonials to the excellence of educational systems of India
prior to the colonial times. In The Last Mughal, Dalrymple quotes a contemporary account of pre-colonial
India that “He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education
equal to that of a prime minister. … After seven years of study, the young Muhammadan … (is the eq ual of)
… a young man raw from Oxford. ” These educational systems were supported by a culture, which valued
learning and provided many forms of financial support to scholars so that all could obtain an education
without any payment. Indians were especially skilled at mathematics, logic, and philosophy; the great
mathematical genius of Ramanujan did not come from a void, but from indigenous intellectual traditions.
A deliberate British policy of denigrating traditional learning, denying jobs to scholars, d egrading the
Ulama, and seizing financial resources meant for provision of education, led to the destruction of the
educational institutions, which served the country. This has led to widespread illiteracy and ignorance in a
land once famous for its scholarship, and one which attracted many students from distant lands in search
of wisdom.

48
Health Systems: Health care was provided via a number of systems of medical knowledge based on
experience of local doctors. Precious medical knowledge based on centuries of experience was passed
down via a system of apprenticeship. Health care was an honorable profession entered into for the service
of mankind. The Western idea of using medical knowledge and medicines to make money from the misery
of others was considered immoral. Development of an inferiority complex and depreciation of all
indigenous knowledge has led to the near extinction of many of these schools of medicine. Destruction of
local institutions for healthcare has led to lack of access to basic health care for vast portions of the
population. The Chinese system of acupuncture has received a boost in its fortunes after its effectiveness
was recognized by Western doctors. Similarly, some attention is now being paid to preservation of local
knowledge systems in India and Pakistan.
Justice: Justice was provided by local panchayats, which were effective and efficient in settling disputes
and allowed everyone, rich and poor, equal access to justice. The British destroyed these institutions
and replaced them by our current system of courts and lawyers. Because of the typically lengthy and
elaborate proceedings, and the expense and remoteness of these from the average citizen, justice
became effectively inaccessible to the populace. There was no way to handle problems except by
bribing local representatives of British imperial power. Forces of poverty created by huge tributes paid
to the colonizers, desperation, and lack of access to legal means for resolving problems led to the spread
of corruption in the land of honest and hospitable people with high levels of integrity.
Social Welfare: Because of strong religious injunctions for charity, Muslims even today give away much
more of their incomes to the poor than other comparable communities. There were a large number of
Awqaf, which provided for a huge variety of social needs of the community. Care of orphans, widows,
travelers, as well as people in need, together with provisions for education and health, food and water,
all were catered to by voluntary organizations funded by the Muslims in the form of perpetual trusts.
These institutions formed the fabric of society, and gave concrete expression to the Islamic idea that the
society as a whole must take care of its needy. Vast amounts of money locked into trusts for funding
these activities were seized by the British, and led to a collapse of these social institutions. The resulting
vacuum in provision of social services for the needy has never been filled. As a result, there were over
fifty famines in the British colonial period, and a large number of people died of starvation and disease.
De-Industrialization of India: Many sources including The Rise and Fall of Great Powers provide
evidence for the strong industrial manufacturing sectors of India on the eve of colonization. In textiles,
ship-building and steel industry, glass blowing, among others, India was second to none. Our
manufacturing sector was creative and efficient, and many technologies flowed from our industries
back to England. However, adoption of power looms in India posed a threat to British textiles and was
banned by the Colonial powers. When muslin weavers shifted to hand production, their thumbs were
cut off to prevent production of competitive products. Similarly, many attempts at development of
industry, tanneries, etc. were prevented directly by British intervention, which saw the future of India as
a supplier of raw materials to England, and not as a producer of industrial goods. This transformed India
from an industrial country to an agricultural one, and lead to deaths in large numbers of those who had

49
once earned comfortable livelihoods from industry. One Viceroy stated that “the bones of the cotton
weavers are bleaching the plains of India. The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce."

Causes of British Victory: If India was prosperous and relatively well-governed, why did it succumb so
easily to British invaders? History testifies to the frequency with which barbarian hordes have defeated,
looted and pillaged more advanced civilizations. The Mongol conquest of Baghdad provides an
important example from Islamic history. Conquest proves military superiority, but not philosophical,
cultural or moral superiority. If thieves, pirates and bandits took over and pillaged and looted our
country for over a century, it does not follow that we should seek to emulate them. An important
additional factor is the centuries of constant warfare in Europe, which led to development of military
strategies and tactics. Relative peace prevailed in Islamic lands, so that techniques of warfare did not
develop with equal speed. A thousand years of success led to confidence and pride, and under-
estimation of Europeans, who were deemed to be barbarians and incapable of development by our
early historians like Ibn-e-Khaldun. Thus reports of European developments in warfare reached the
Ottomans but were discounted by Muslims, who later paid a heavy price for this neglect.

Moral Degeneration of the West: This retelling of history is not for the purpose of romantic and
idealistic glorification of our past. It is of vital importance in showing us the way to the future. The
unpleasant and bitter reality of the present is that pirates, robbers, and thieves are firmly in control of
the world, and dominate the stage. Those at the reins of power in the West have such low standards of
morality that they cannot even honor their commitments to be faithful to their wives. They openly state
in international public forums that the killing of half a million Iraqi children is a fair price to pay for
control of oil. Deceit, torture, damage to environment, violation of treaties, use of assassinations and
murder, and all manners of immoral behavior are justified in the name of profits. The law of the jungle
prevails, and any country can be invaded and conquered on the flimsiest of pretexts if it suits the
interests of the West. In this situation, it would be the greatest of folly to think that Western powers
have (as they claim in Iraq) our best interests at heart. Those in power who make such claims to justify
compliance with Western dictates have either been purchased or are being incredibly naïve.

Complicity of Local Elites: To compound the problem, the ruling elites all over the developing world are
in the pockets of the West. Colonial administrative structures designed for efficient extraction of
revenues are now utilized by local political parties for the same purpose. Foreign power and bribes prop
up regimes, which carry out policies favorable to Western interests and harmful to the public.
Oppression and injustice, and extraction of revenues from a colonized public by alien powers, continues
as in the colonial era. Western education systems teach the morality and ethics of pirates and thieves to
our children. There is emphasis on luxurious lifestyles, greed, acquisitiveness, selfish pursuit of career
goals, wealth etc. The concept that we should serve humanity, even if it takes sacrifice of personal
interests, is not taught.

Pathways to Progress: Current society bears a striking resemblance to the Jahiliyya of pre-Islamic
Arabia. Loose morals, drugs, unbridled pursuit of pleasures, callous disregard for those not of your tribe
(nation), and even the murder of babies by their own parents (see Mothers who Kill Their Children) have
become commonplace. The message of Islam transformed this society into one where Muslims became
50
exemplars of human behavior for all times to come. This message carries the same power today, but
unfortunately at the present time we are looking to the West to solve our problems for us. We need to
re-learn our own heritage, which provides solutions not on the menu of choices offered to us by the
West. The Quran tells us that Allah (God) does not change the conditions of a people unless they change
themselves. If we strive for the inner transformation demanded by Islam at the individual level, that of
surrendering our will to the will of Allah, then Allah will change the condition of the Ummah.

51
2. Our Traditional Educational Systems
Published in The News (Pakistan) on Monday, December 1, 2008 and Pakistaniaat: A Journal for
Pakistan Studies Vol 2, No 1. 2010

In Orientalism, one of the most significant and influential books of the twentieth century, Edward Said
describes how the European project of colonizing the rest of the world distorted all academic knowledge
produced about the East (the Orient). The necessity of justifying and providing a moral basis for the loot
and plunder of Asia, Africa and the Americas led to the invention of a large number of Western theories,
which made it impossible to achieve an objective understanding of the East. I mperialism and
exploitation were cloaked under the noble objective of the White Man’s burden to spread the benefits
of his civilization to the rest of the world. The extremely cruel treatment of blacks (leading to an
estimated 10 million slaves taken out and about a 100 million killed in the process, over the period of
European colonization of Africa), was justified by the invention of racism.
The superiority complex of the West described in Orientalism has a natural counterpart in the inferiority
complex in the East. The colonial educational system was designed by Macaulay, who expressed his
extreme contempt for our heritage in his famous Minute on Indian education: “(no one) could deny that
a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
Those who absorb this message embedded in Western education, write fiction and essays demeaning
and insulting to their own families, culture, country and religion. European superiority becomes an
article of faith to those trained to be “Indian in color, but English in taste” and criticisms such as the
present one invoke an irritated defense combined with the platitude that if Europeans are bad, we and
our ancestors are even worse. To overcome this inferiority complex, we need to learn that the common
bonds of humanity that we all share are much stronger than petty differences created by race, nation,
ideology and language.
This essay was motivated by a recent article in a leading newspaper contending that “public education
began in our subcontinent with the advent of British rule. Before that, no such system existed.” This
perpetuates the European myth that we were all ignorant savages and barbarians before the White Man
came to educate and civilize us. The facts are so breathtakingly at variance with this picture that they
will come as a shock to the average reader. The educational system of India was one of the wonders of
the world and people from many lands came to India in search of knowledge and wisdom. A
contemporary account from pre-British India states that while excellent scholars are present
everywhere in India, Delhi can be especially proud of the vast assortment of world class experts in every
field of knowledge as well as trade and craft. Among both Muslims and Hindus, it was a religious duty to
support scholars and to free them from worldly worries so they could concentrate on the acquisition of
knowledge. Scholars could and did travel the country in search of knowledge without financial
constraints, since they could count on hospitality wherever they went. Private and public libraries
galore, books, copyists, authors, public debates, intellectual competitions of many types testify to a
widespread culture of learning, where even courtesans boasted of literary accomplishments.

52
This culture survived into the early periods of colonial rule. Research on madrassas in early colonial
British India shows that: “The syllabus employed at the Nizamia madrassa, which served as a model for
madrassas elsewhere, represented a blend of naqli 'ulum (revealed sciences), including the Quran, the
hadith, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and tafsir (Quranic commentary), and the aqli 'ulum (rational
sciences), including Arabic language, grammar, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, physics
and mathematics.”
Our educational systems were destroyed by deliberate British policy, which seized numerous
endowments (Awqaf) set up for educational purposes, and denied jobs to all but those trained in the
newly setup British educational systems. The destruction was so thorough that not only the educational
institutions but the cultural traditions and even the memory of these institutions were lost:
Lament on the loss of the treasures of the travelers

And even more, the loss of the sense of loss [Iqbal: free translation]

The British educational system was explicitly designed to create intermediaries between the ruling class
and the public; in effect a method of producing bureaucrats and clerks, not scholars. The greatest loss
from the introduction of this system has been the transformation of the concept of education as a
sacred duty, which leads to spiritual transformation and enlightenment, to education as means of
acquiring a job.

This problem can only be fixed by reverting to our traditions. In her book,The Making of the Modern
University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality, Harvard Professor, Julie
Reuben has described how universities in the USA abandoned their mission to build character and
develop morals, opting for a purely technical education. It was not illiterate savages, but graduates of
the finest educational systems of the West who designed the gas chambers used to burn millions of
innocent men, women and children in Germany. David Halberstam in his book, The Brightest and the
Best, has documented how graduates of Yale and Harvard ran the Vietnam War on the pattern of an
efficient business, with callous disregard for human suffering: more than one million civilians died as
"collateral damage" in the mass bombings and napalming, and atrocities and massacres were common.
Ph.D. physicists who developed the Nuclear bomb denied any responsibility for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Leading biologists work for salaries to develop non-fertile varieties of genetically engineered high yield
grains so that multinationals can profit from the hunger of humanity. The value of technical expertise is
lost if the expert will stuff his pockets at the expense of the public at every opportunity. There is
substantial evidence to show that the greed of highly educated financial wizards is responsible for the
current global financial crisis. There is a vital need to re-learn and revive our heritage in education,
which emphasized character, integrity, honesty and morality in addition to the development of
competence in specialized subjects.

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3. Thoughts on Education and Character Building
The idea that the west is the model for us to follow is widespread, and actively advocated by the elite
and the powerful in Islamic societies. Two key social structures required to build character are the family
and the school. Both have broken down almost completely in the west.
Family: The breakdown of this fundamental unit of society has been documented in many places, such
as a recent report on “Fractured Families” put out by the Social Justice Foundation (2006):

This Report paints a worrying picture of family breakdown in the UK.We now have one of the highest
divorce rates in the Western world and the fabric of family life has been stripped away in the past thirty
years. This study also shows more clearly than ever the destructive effects of family breakdown upon
millions of children, as well as the links between family breakdown and addictions, educational failure
and serious personal debt.
Consequences of this breakdown are apparent in the Josephson Institute survey (2008), which shows
that more than 30% of the 30,000 USA high school students admitted to having stolen from a store,
parents or friends. According to the Center for Disease Control, USA also has the highest teen
pregnancy rate in the world. The vast majorities of approximately a million such pregnancies per year
are unintended and have devastating social, economic and health consequences for both the unwed
mothers and the off springs.
Schools and Universities: In “Against School: How public education cripple sour kids, and why?” John
Taylor Gatto, a well-known and experienced teacher in US writes about “an educational system
deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students
appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens.” Lack of character education
in universities is documented by Julie Reuben, discussed below.
The family and the educational institutions are the two places where character is formed. Neither is able
to perform this function in the west. Furthermore, there is no chance of the west finding a path out of
the mess they are in – the resources required to build character are no longer there with them, since
religion is the basis for morality and character.
By and large, Muslims are following in western footsteps, and imitating their ways in culture and
education. We are at risk for the same collapse. However, we do have resources in our Islamic heritage,
which can be used to combat the incoming flood of corruption. Here is an action plan.
1: The first step is to get rid of our inferiority complex. This prevents us from looking beyond Western
models, where there are no solutions to be found. Allah T’aala tells us that He has perfected His gift to
us (Islam), and that we should rejoice in the blessing of the Quran that has been given to us. The
widespread feeling in the Ummah that Western knowledge is superior to ours is a serious spiritual
obstacle to progress.
2: Western wealth is not something to envy or strive for – Qaroon is not a model for us. When Umer r.a.
asked the Prophet s.a.w. to pray for a share of riches of the Persians and the Romans, he was told to be
content because they have been given the treasures of the Akhirah, while Persians and Romans have

54
been given the Dunya. The Quran mentions that but for our weakness, Allah T’aala would turn the
houses of the Kuffar into gold and silver. He says elsewhere that do not let their (luxurious lifestyles)
deceive you [La yaghurranakum taqallabalazeen kafaroo fil bilad]. Unfortunately, our leaders are
focused on increasing GNP per capita as the sole route to progress, and this is not where the problem
lies.

3: The key to progress is to build character on the individual level, and build unity (that is the Ummah as
one body, which feels the pain of all) on the group level.
4A: To build character, we need to strengthen the family, and teach families the Islamic arts of bringing
up children of excellent character. Hajira, the wife of Ibraheem, a.s. provides a model for us: she trained
her child so well that when Ibraheem a.s. said that I saw a dream in which I am sacrificing you, the ten
year old responded by saying that Do as you are commanded, you will find me among the Sabereen
insha-Allah! Amazing training! It is my personal belief that this is why all men and women must imitate
her footsteps in Hajj until the end of time. There is wealth of information available in Islamic sources
about training children, which are gathering dust in remote and neglected libraries in the Islamic world.
Unfortunately, most Muslims believe that learning about chemistry and biology is the route to progress,
without stopping to reflect on how useful the calculus that we learnt has been to us in our own lives,
and how harmful lack of character has been both on a personal level and on a social level.

4B: To build character, we need to thoroughly re-vamp our educational institutions and design them
explicitly for this purpose. Julie Reuben in “The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual
transformation and the marginalization of morality” has described the history of university education
in the USA. She explains that character building was a central goal, but could not be achi eved due to
difference among protestant sects. Numerous alternatives to religion were tried and failed before the
whole mission was abandoned, and the universities restricted themselves to providing technical training
only, without worrying about character development. There are several important lessons for Muslims
in this book (summary attached). The first is that many of the routes that were tried and failed are
currently being advocated by Muslims in Islamic countries – we should learn from the western
experience. The second is that they have given up on the effort to build character, so they do not have
any model for us to follow. Therefore we must look to our own sources.
4C: The problem that arose in the west was that they could not agree on what character means.
Morality is defined by consensus. If we agree that homosexuality is bad, then it is a sin and a crime (up
until the 70’s). If the consensus changes, then it becomes normal behavior, and to speak against it
becomes a crime (currently). Fortunately, Islam provides us with a solid foundation on which to build
here, one which is not available in the west. The basic elements of character are:
 A strong faith in God and consequents.
 Trust in God – Tawakkul.

 Contentment – Ghana.
 Integrity, Honesty, Truthfulness.

55
  Amanah – Trustworthiness.
 Compassion for the weak and the oppressed.

 Generosity
 Courage
 Strong sense of justice and the desire to struggle for it.

There may be additions as well as different ways to categorize items, but with minor variations the
above list would command consensus among Muslims. That we can agree on what character is, is a
tremendous asset for the Ummah, and makes the path to achieving goals in this direction substantially
easier.
5. On the group level, it is essential to build up unity in the Ummah. Allah T’aala has stressed the unity of
the Muslims as a basis for their strength in the Quran. Whereas the Meccan period concentrated on
building of individuals, the Medinan period shows how to build society. The first task of the P rophet
s.a.w. was to establish brotherhood among the Ansar and the Mohajireen, and to eliminate tribal
rivalries. Allah T’aalah says that the love among the Muslims was such that it could not have been
purchased with all the treasures of the world. It is this love that is needed to unite the Muslims. Again
our blind imitation of western models gets in the way of correct understanding and implementation of
Islamic ideals. Western thought assumes a secular society with different individuals having different
religions and goals; thus the only possibility for collective action occurs at the nation-state level. Muslim
leaders have implicitly absorbed this analysis, ignoring the warning of Iqbal:
Among these newly minted Gods, the biggest is the Nation

The dress it wears is the coffin of religion.

Many of the currently existing nations were explicitly designed and created to sow disunity among
Muslims. To accept this as a basic framework, within which we must work, is to abandon the possibility
of genuine Islamic collective efforts. It will require creative and visionary thinking to plan actions at the
level of the Ummah; models for concerted action at this level are neither available from western sources
nor even from our own history. The early Muslims faced many situations, which had never before arisen
in history and solved them creatively with the inspiration of Islam. We also face circumstances, which
are unique in the history of Islam. We need to rise to the challenge.

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4. Confidence building and tax reforms
Published 15-7-2010 (Business Recorder)
Pakistan’s tax potential is estimated at Rs4 trillion, according to Huzaima and Ikram*, when the actual
realization is far less. Pitifully small amounts are spent on social welfare and long run development,
which reflects the country’s miserable performance in poverty alleviation, education, health, and other
vital indices.

Our recent record is especially frustrating when compared with countries like India, China, Bangladesh
and East Asia, which often had far less in the way of natural resources and other advantages.
However, cures are not easy, because the roots of our ailment are deep and complex, and not easily
remedied. In this essay, I will deal with only one of these problems and suggest a possible solution.
The root cause of our problems is the continuation of colonial political, administrative and economic
structures post-independence. These hierarchical structures were single-mindedly designed for efficient
extraction of revenues from the colonies.
Efficient command and control from top down was built into them, but representation and participation
of the public in the government was not (something which was the reason for the revolt of the American
colonies in the 18th century)
It is important to note that these structures were manned by personnel educated to be “Indian in blood
and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” – indeed this was a crucial part of
the governance structure of the colonies.
It would have been impossible for the 1,000 odd Englishmen in the Indian civil service to govern a
country of India’s size without co-opting a sizable number of natives into sharing the burden of ruling
and taxing the populace.
After a brief interlude of sincere leadership, reins of the newly partitioned nation fell into the hands of
political parties who found themselves at the head of a functional and efficient machine for revenue
extraction.
Our education system continues the colonial policies of creating love and affinity for the West , and
contempt for both our heritage and the “Urdu-medium” native populace. Thus, the English educated
elite class in power had no difficulty in continuing the colonial policies, and exploiting fellow countrymen
for self-enrichment.
To this day, politics in Pakistan is more about sharing revenues amongst those who rule Pakistan, than
about providing growth, development and social services to the populace. The idea of a government of
the people, by the people and for the people remains a distant dream.
How can we act to bring this dream closer to realization? Several elements in the changing dynamics
give us room for hope and potential for action.

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As the power base has expanded beyond a narrow and tightly knit elite upper-class, many people with
genuine love for their country and the desire and capability to make sacrifices for the benefit of the
populace have also been inducted into the power structures.
The moral bankruptcy of world leadership, which is spending trillions of dollars on death and destruction
at a time when the bottom billion of the world’s population are in desperate need, has become obvious
for all to see. More and more among those in power are coming to see that their interests are common
with the general public, and not tied to the fortunes of treacherous alien powers.
Foreign experts with no knowledge of local conditions try to distract us by stale and tired mantras of
privatization, liberalization, free market reforms and fiscal austerity, which have been tried and found
wanting all over the globe. If we decide to think for ourselves, we can easily see that the way forward
lies in building coalitions, joining hearts and working together for a common purpose.

In every dimension, there is an urgent need for fresh, out of the box thinking. In the realm of taxation,
good solutions can be found along the lines of ‘local public finance’. The idea is to fund public projects
by raising revenue from those who will benefit from them, directly or indirectly.

With this localization, it may be possible to raise money, when it is seen to be going directly to the
benefit of the public. This will also generate confidence that the government is interested in providing
benefits to the public instead of carrying out foreign agendas to harm the public. I will i llustrate the idea
with one example; parallels can be found in many others.
Consider financing, or supplementing the finances, of a local police station by revenues generated from
local taxes on the neighbourhood covered. At the very first stage, one needs to make a conceptual
change, the equivalent of going from colonization to self-government.
Is the police station an agent of alien powers designed to enforce government authority over reluctant
natives? Or is it a local institution designed to keep the neighbourhood secure, and to help solve local
legal and criminal problems of people?
It is the former concept which is reinforced by the fortifications recently made to police stations. But it is
only in the latter case that the public will be willing, even happy, to contribute to the upkeep of the
station. It is the shift in conceptualization and attitude from the colonial model to the self-government
model, which is crucial to any efforts for change.
Since police stations are central to current power structures, sharing authority with citizens may be too
radical to contemplate at an early stage. Confidence building needs to be done in small and simple
steps, at least in the initial stages. One key is to devolve authority, as much as possible to small
communities.

But devolution has been tried often, and failed just as often. The reason is that the concept of
participatory government, and the accompanying feeling of empowerment, has been forgotten in the
long period of colonial rule.

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Habits of hierarchy, with arrogant and authoritarian leaders and subservient followers have become
deeply ingrained. Channels for creating change by peaceful participatory means don’t exist; the only
ones that remain are demonstrations, protests, strikes and violence.
To change this state of affairs requires work along the lines of the Orangi Pilot Project of Akhtar Hameed
Khan. Build communities, empower them and enable them to take collective action, and facilitate this
via government or non-government means.
The task facing us is difficult. The key to success is to take matters in our own hands. If we do what is
possible for us to do, we can bring about great changes. The biggest obstacle in the way of change is the
‘spectator’ attitude widespread in society, where we watch and wait for good things to happen, without
making any efforts to be part of the process for change.
Instead we must become the agents of change. I am reminded of an Urdu poem we learnt in school,
regarding rain clouds and the dry earth. Each raindrop thought itself insignificant in face of the vast need
and hesitated to sacrifice its all for only a miniscule impact. However, when a few courageous ones took
the lead, the clouds proved adequate to provide amply for all the needs.

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III: Emergence of Market Economies
European societies did in fact change dramatically between the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries. This change has been documented in many places, such as the
Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi. One aspect of this change has been the increasing
importance of the market. There is strong evidence that market societies do produce
more wealth than traditional societies. However, is this good thing? The answer is yes
only if one believes that wealth is always good. Islam teaches us otherwise. Our Prophet
Mohammad S.A.W. rejected the offer of great wealth from Allah, preferring poverty for
himself. In this section of the book, we discuss certain philosophies, which are associated
with market societies and show how harmful they are to the welfare of human beings.
This is opposed to the dominant European views, which consider these philosophies to be
beneficial. Some of the important market philosophies are rebutted in this section:
 Everything is marketable, and has a price.
 Pursuit of wealth is a good thing – the promotion of greed is not bad.
 Materialism: material goods are valuable; intangibles are not.
 Human beings are consumers and/or laborers
 The poor are necessary as inputs to the labor pool.
 The Trickle Down effect means that as society grows rich, poor will benefit also.

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1. The Market Economy and Its Limits
2 May 2009: Entry for “Encyclopedia of Islamic Economics”

By the “Market Economy,” we mean a method of organizing economic affairs within a society so that an
un-regulated market is the means for conducting nearly all material transactions within the economy. In
such economies, decisions about production of goods, valuation, trade, distribution, etc. are all settled
by individuals or small groups acting with maximum possible freedom, and a minimal set of legal or
social constraints. Since this is the dominant mode of organizing economic activity currently, it appears
natural, and alternatives are hard to imagine. In fact, as Polanyi (1946) notes, “Previous to our time, no
society has ever existed that, even in principle, was controlled by markets.” To understand the functions
and effects of the market economy, it is necessary to delve into the history of its emergence and rise to
a global system. This analysis, undertaken below, leads to the following conclusions:

1. A market economy requires supporting institutions, social structures, political structures,

ideologies, and ways of organizing knowledge. Labeling all of these elements combined as a
“market society,” we can say that market economies can only exist within market societies.
2. Social structures required for market economies conflict with traditional social mechanisms.
This implies that transitions to market economies are accompanied by violence and destruction
of traditional social norms. Recent history is a record of resistance and conflict between
traditional society and market society.
3. The global dominance of market economies has led to glorification and praise of their virtues.
The tremendous damage inflicted on the world and society by the emergence of market
economies has been suppressed. A realistic assessment shows that urgent action is needed to
rescue man and society from the brink of disaster to which the market economy has brought all
of us.

Because of the damages caused to society by the market economy, Polanyi (1946) in The Great
Transformation forecast its demise following the largest crisis in his time, namely World War 2. The
unexpected recovery and rise to global dominance of the unregulated market, and its dreadful
consequences have been documented by Klein (2008) in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster
Capitalism. Many of the central elements of the analysis, which follow are borrowed from these two
sources, referred to simply as Polanyi and Klein hereafter.

1. The Emergence of the Market Economy

A confluence of historical forces led to the emergence of a market economy in seventeenth century
England. The most important of these are the weakening of the hold of religion, and also the rise in the
power of the landed aristocracy in England. Both of these forces are conveniently represented in the
brief realm of Oliver Cromwell, who beheaded King Charles I, and also massacred large numbers of Irish
Catholics.

1.1: Rise of Secular Thought: The European experience of massacres, violence, and massive social
disturbance due to religious conflicts led even religious leaders to agree to the use of secular principles
to organize society for the sake of social harmony. Release of the constraints of religion allowed the
introduction of values and principles dramatically opposed to traditional values. The most important of a
large number of such changes was the replacement of the Biblical idea that “The love of money is the
root of all evils” by Bernard Shaw’s sentiment that “The lack of money is the root of all evils.” Traditional

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society honors those who renounce material possessions, value simplicity over luxury, and consider
gluttony, avarice, covetousness, and greed as sinful characteristics. Market societies honor the wealthy,
consider poverty as a vice, promote luxurious lifestyles, and consider greed and selfishness as natural
and socially useful. This transition of thought is in accordance with the Quranic verse (2:257) that those
who deny God will move from the light into darkness.

1.2: Rise of Landed Aristocracy: In the long standing battle between monarchs and aristocrats, kings had
supported commoners against the nobles, to keep a check on their power. Efforts of the aristocracy to
gain complete control over their landholdings (the commons, in particular) had been successfully
resisted for some time, but Cromwell’s victory shifted the balance of power permanently in favor of the
landed aristocracy. They wasted no time in putting up enclosures, which prevented access of large
numbers of the poor to grazing land and other means to eke out a living. The resulting social
catastrophe has been described by Polanyi as follows:

The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient laws and
custom, by violence …. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the
common, tearing down the houses … ( of ) the poor. The fabric of society was being
disrupted; desolate villages and the ruins of human dwelling testified to the fierceness
with which the revolution raged, endangering the defenses of the country, wasting its
towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil into dust, harassing its
people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars and thieves.

2. Consequences of Social Disruption

These events in England had far reaching consequences, both temporally and spatially. We list those
most important to our current theme, the emergence of the market economy.

2.1: Property Rights: Political tussles frequently led to re-allocation of lands in favor of victors. Utilizing
their newly gained power against the monarchs, aristocrats sought to prevent this by developing new
theories of property. Instead of viewing land as a sacred trust, a gift of God to all humans, the idea of
ownership and private property as a natural right was introduced. Philosophers like Locke argued that
the right to own property was prior to the social contract, so that governments could not alienate
property.

The effects of this historical change on modern thought can be seen in the concept of “Pareto
efficiency.” According to this theory, re-allocation of property must command universal support. In a
society where a few have all the resources, and the masses have nothing, modern economic theory
prohibits us from recommending a re-distribution in favor of the poor. Instead of seeing this as an
ethical commitment to property rights over the rights of the poor to a decent living, economists view
Pareto efficiency as an ethically neutral and value free scientific idea.

2.2 Changing Conception of Poverty: Poverty is an honorable condition in traditional societies. Christian
monks take vows of poverty, and the Bible states that it is harder for a rich man to enter paradise, than
for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Our prophet Muhammad s.a.w., refused riches and
wealth, lived with very few possessions, and prayed to Allah to be counted among the poor. Poverty
emerged as a social problem for the first time in England, following the first privatization – that is, the

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enclosures. While the poor have always been with us, traditional societies accept and fulfill collective
responsibility for feeding the poor. An essential element of a market society is the idea of blaming the
poor for their poverty, which was first introduced by Malthus. According to him, it was over-breeding
that led to poverty, while poverty led to vice, misery and squalor. To the natural cures of plague,
pestilence, and wars for the reduction of population, Malthus added birth control as a means of
combating poverty.

For reasons to be discussed, the traditional concept of social responsibility for the poor must be
destroyed to allow unregulated market economies to function. Malthusian ideas created the possibility
not only of blaming the poor for their poverty, but also of arguing that helping the poor would hurt
society in the long run. Feeding the poor would lead only to more over-breeding, which would create
even larger numbers of poor in the long run. This idea, that helping the poor hurts them in the long run,
takes many different shapes in modern economic thought. Reagan and Thatcher reduced taxes on the
rich, arguing that this would increase growth because the rich would invest and increase productivity.
The poor would only consume the tax cuts, reducing savings, investments and growth – this would hurt
the poor in the long run.

3. Essential Requirements of a Market Economy

The many institutions and ideologies required for self-regulating markets to function are listed below.
This section relies fundamentally on the analysis of Polanyi.

3.1 Labor Markets: Production in a market economy depends on the ability to hire labor and a market
for labor. Labor is time or the material from which human lives are constructed. It is not normally for
sale. England got a fifty year head start on the industrial revolution because of the surplus pool of labor
created by the enclosures. It was the desperate condition of the large numbers of people evicted from
their homes and barred from their conventional means of livelihoods that led to the possibility of a labor
market. Under normal social conditions, people would not submit to the indignity of a labor market
requiring them to sell their labor for money. Massive disruption of the social fabric created the
conditions required for large scale production in factories to come into existence. A similar catastrophe
did not take place in Europe, which caused it to lag behind.

3.2 The Market for Land: Traditional societies value a harmonious relationship between man and
nature, treating land and all that lives on it as a sacred trust, a gift of God to humankind. Yet a market
economy must separate the man from the land, and turn both into commodities freely available for sale
and purchase. Strengthening of property rights and large scale enclosures created the possibility of
agricultural capitalism, and the production of large amounts of surplus food as well as industrial raw
materials like cotton. This coincided with the industrial needs for raw materials as well as the need for
food for large numbers of laborers not engaged in agriculture. The remoteness of the owner from the
land allowed him to view it as merely an input to a production process, a means for producing wealth. In
a traditional society, a laborer invests his life energies and efforts, and enjoys the reward of bringing
valuable products out of dead land. In a market society, economic necessity compels the laborer to sell
his time for money. He is alienated from the land and the produce, both of which belong to his
employer. It is the loss of this sense of “mother earth” as an organic entity with an intimate
relationship to man that has led to the global environmental catastrophes, which threaten to destroy all
of us.

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3.3 Money and Financial Markets: The strength of the market economy lies in its ability to produce far
beyond the minimal requirements of society. This surplus production creates its own inexorable
demands on the structure of market societies. Subsistence economies have small self-sufficient
subgroups with minimal trading requirements and hence little use for money. Demand for surplus must
be created by promotion and marketing of luxurious lifestyles. Having large amounts of surplus
necessitates trade and hence also the use of money for trading purposes. Commodity money functions
adequately in non-market societies where trading is marginal and peripheral. Commodity money is not
flexible enough to be adequate for market economies, which engage nearly everyone in monetary
transactions and have large and fluctuating amounts of trade, conducted over long geographical
distances and time, and with unfamiliar trading partners. This accounts for the rapid introduction of
token monies in market economies. Since token money is directly of no use, the best way to understand
it is as a government guaranteed financial instrument – it allows trade based on promises to pay, which
are flexible, backed by the government, and (hence) obligatory on all members of the society.

Fluctuations in the quantities of money as well as the needs of trade can lead to fluctuations in
price levels – these have been the bane of market economies, which require stable prices to function
smoothly. Many mechanisms, including the introduction of central banks and other government policies
have been tried to smooth out the business cycle without success. Problems are substantially
exacerbated by international trade, which cannot be conducted in terms of token money for obvious
reasons. Polanyi (1946) discusses the mechanisms for price stabilizations at the international level, and
how their breakdown led to both world wars. He also suggests that the market economy is inherently
unstable, inflicts tremendous damage on man, society and environment, and must be replaced by
alternative mechanisms for production and distribution of goods.

4. Market Ideologies and Consequences:

The Quran (104:2) condemns those who “gather wealth, and count it,” . Furthermore, wealth in excess
of needs should be spent for Allah – that is, on socially useful projects, and on other needy people. In
direct contrast, market economies encourage the pursuit of wealth “to the point of being absolutely
irrational,” according to Max Weber. Excess wealth is to be spent on personal luxuries, or to be used to
multiply wealth even further, but not on social welfare or on the poor and needy! Spending on the poor
and needy undercuts the labor market, strengthens the laborers against the capitalists, and results in
reduced profits for investment and growth. Classical economist Ricardo wrote that “The principle of
gravitation is not more certain than the tendency (laws providing relief for the poor) to change wealth
and vigor into misery and weakness (and) universal poverty.” Similar sentiments can be found in
contemporary writings of economists. Milton Friedman argued that firms should exclusively pursue
profits and should not engage in socially beneficial activities.

The relentless demand for profits, the production of surplus goods, the legitimization of the pursuit of
wealth, and greed and selfishness, have led to many disasters and crises both local and global . Polanyi
has documented how the demands of the market economy led to world wars 1 and 2. Naomi Klein has
picked up the story of capitalism from the 70’s to the recent times, and documented the sequence of
disasters generated by the market economy. In the three major dimensions (Land, Labor, Money),
replacement of traditional values by market society based values has resulted in catastrophe.

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4.1 The Market for Human Beings: The Collapse of Values

Traditional social transactions are based on a mutuality, and partnership in the service of community
and humanity. The market society replaced these by anonymous arm’s length trades of money for
services. The gradual erosion of the sense of community, which accelerated in the post-world war 2 era,
has resulted in the destruction of family, ethics of cooperation, generosity and trust. The family is the
most fundamental unit of society, where children learn the rules governing social interactions. This
erosion of trust has been documented in many studies. For example, a report on “Fractured Families”
put out by the Social Justice Foundation (2006) in the UK states that “We now have one of the highest
divorce rates in the Western world and the fabric of family life has been stripped away in the past thirty
years.”
Promotion of the “Invisible Hand” idea that individuals pursuing selfish goals will produce socially
beneficial results has led to widespread corruption. Leaders like Mad off pursue Ponzi schemes, and the
greed and dishonesty of followers in the finance industry has led to worldwide financial chaos and
collapse. Many sources document massive corruption in post-Katrina, Iraq war, and recent bailout
payments following financial meltdown. All of these developments can be directly traced to promotion
of the core idea at the heart of market societies: all is fair in the pursuit of wealth.

4.2. The Market for Land: Environmental Disaster

By treating land, its products, and all that lives on it, as merely inputs into the process of the production
of wealth, the market economy has done large scale environmental damage, destruction and depletion
of forests and other natural resources, and created a looming catastrophe due to global warming. The
idea that the market is self-regulating leads to the delusion that we don’t need to worry about these
problems; if they matter, the market will automatically take care of them. The recent financial collapse
should be a warning to those who believe in this core belief of a market society. Barack Obama states
that “All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly
dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running
debate over whether or not climate change is real.”

Environmentalist, Daniel Quinn writes that “Upwards of two hundred species..mostly of the large, slow-
breeding variety.. are becoming extinct here every day …These species are being burnt out, starved out,
and squeezed out of existence. The endless production of radioactive wastes and other poisons are
“hazardous to the future of life on this planet”. For the first time in the history of the world, every
human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception
until death. With great difficulty, consensus has been reached on global warming and how it threatens
human life on the planet. Market societies have prevented a solution, which requires shared sacrifice
and cooperation. Leading capitalist countries put self-interest and profits above cooperation for survival.
Instead of proportionately sharing the burden of environmental cleanup and costs of anti -pollution
measure, they attempt to put all the blame and the cost of adjustments on the poor and powerless
countries.

4.3 The Market for Money: Financial Crisis and Collapse

As discussed earlier, commodity monies impose discipline and constraint, which unregulated market
economies cannot cope with. Token monies are able to adjust to changing market conditions and keep
prices stable. However, use of token monies involves a crucial element of trust. Even when backed by
gold or other commodities, no one is in a position to detect over-issuance of paper. For a large number

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of different reasons, betrayals of this trust are common, and result in financial crises, which have been
extremely common in the twentieth century. Among the big ones, Taleb (2007) in The Black Swan
writes that “In the summer of 1982, large American banks lost close to all their past earnings
(cumulatively), about everything they ever made in the history of American banking—everything.”

Can we trust the invisible hand, which guides selfish profit seekers to produce socially beneficial
outcomes? The deep financial crisis currently enveloping the globe suggests otherwise. Even if the
global economy recovers, which many pundits doubt, should we continue with a system, which delivers
shocks disrupting lives and livelihoods of vast numbers of people on a regular basis? There is ample
evidence to suggest that alternatives, which provide more comfortable lives for all human beings can
readily be devised.

5 Concluding Remarks

The market economy is a European experiment with an alternative method of organizing society.
Instead of intrinsic values of cooperation, trust, generosity, and other social virtues, many of which go
against the natural grain of man, they sought to build a society with maximum freedom. Everyone is
allowed to do whatever he desires, with a minimum of rules and regulations. The outcome of this
experiment has been a complete failure on all fronts. Lane (2005) in The Loss of Happiness in Market
Economies documents the fact that this freedom has not resulted in happiness. Numerous studies in the
emerging field of well-being studies provide evidence for this. At the same time, crucial social structures
like family, communities, as well as social values like cooperation, generosity and trust have been
substantially depleted – more so in the heartland of the market economy, but also, to a lesser extent in
the periphery. In addition to eating up social capital, the natural resources of the planet have also been
depleted at an astonishing rate by the market society. Many have noted that a sure recipe for complete
collapse and disaster is to simply continue in our present ways.

Fundamental and radical change is an imperative at this time. Islamic economics provides a radically
different system, which remedies the fundamental difficulties of market economies. A detailed analysis
of the differences between the two, and how Islamic economics can deal with problems generated by
market economy concepts is provided in Zaman (2008) Islamic Economics: A Survey of the Literature.

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2. Markets Versus Society
Published date: 05-5-2010 (Express Tribune)

Humanity as a whole faces problems on a scale never before seen in history: Environmental
catastrophes (global warming, rapid destruction of species of flora and fauna, pollution of water, sea
and air, depletion of natural resources, etc.), political catastrophes (billions in extreme poverty,
destruction of innocent lives and livelihoods in historically unprecedented numbers, etc.) and social
catastrophes (dysfunctional communities, families, social and financial institutions, due to erosion of
trust). It is a testimony to the genius of Karl Polanyi, that he foresaw these consequences of the triumph
of the market over society, which lies at the root of all of these problems. In this essay, we will discuss
the contrasts between these two ways of understanding the world we live in.
Societies claim that the most precious things are those, which cannot be bought in markets. Love cannot
be purchased. The value of human lives cannot be measured in dollars. Character (displayed by heroism,
sacrifice, fidelity, etc.), spirituality (in the form of devotion, meditation, worship), intellect (in the form
of philosophical, mathematical, and scientific achievement), and human achievements (exemplified by
arts, sports, and literature) are all beyond the reach of the marketplace. Markets vigorously contest this
idea and assert that ‘every person has his price’. The full ramifications of the idea that everything can be
bought and sold on the marketplace can only be understood by unfolding it in a variety of dimensions.
A natural consequence of the idea that everything is for sale is that money becomes all important.
Because it is a tempting illusion, societies everywhere have built barriers against it. The Quran states
(104:2) “*Woe unto him+ who amasses wealth and counts it … The Bible states that the love of money is
the root of all evil. Confucian sage Lao Tzu warned us not to race after riches. Societies everywhere train
children to share, to be generous, and to value social relations over money. Markets reverse these
priorities. Bernard Shaw’s dictum that “Lack of money is the root of all evil,” accurately reflects the
market mentality. This legitimization of greed and the pursuit of wealth is the root cause of the recent
global financial crisis, explored in depth in numerous books with “Wall Street Greed” as their titles.
Though the financial hemorrhage appears to have stopped, the human consequences in terms of the
joblessness, homelessness, and hunger will be with us for a long time. Furthermore, this is only the tip of
the iceberg. A recent IMF publication counts nearly a hundred monetary crises in the twentieth century,
many of which have similar roots.
Traditionally, children are taught to take pleasure in service, and self-sacrifice for higher social causes.
Healers everywhere learn their skills with the motivation to serve the sick, as reflected in the Hippocratic
Oath. The market mentality, which teaches doctors to take pleasure in earning profits from patients, is
considered despicable by societies everywhere. The current rarity of organizations oriented towards
service, like “Doctors without Frontiers,” and the dominance of the profit motive, is testimony to the
triumph of the markets. Schools have replaced the society oriented slogan “Enter to Learn – Leave to
Serve,” by the market oriented “Enter to Learn – Leave to Earn.” Communities dissolve when humans
seek to earn profits from each other, instead of serving each other.

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The conflict between social values and market ideologies is played out across a broad spectrum of
current issues. Rainforests are natural wonders, a subtle and complex ecological balance of flora and
fauna, which provide dazzling displays of natural beauty. The market eye turns these into a source of
wood and other natural resources for the production of wealth. Prescient sociologist, Max Weber
remarked that spirit of capitalism is the pursuit of wealth, to the point of being absolutely irrational. This
irrational pursuit of wealth has led to looming catastrophes on all fronts of human existence. It is time to
pause and reconsider. If the best that life has to offer cannot be purchased, we must re -orient our
priorities, and re-learn the social.

Lessons that have been nearly wiped out by market ideologies. The first among these lessons is to value
human lives as being infinitely precious, beyond the possibility of purchase by money.

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3. The Pursuit of Wealth
Published in The News (Pakistan) on Thursday, February 12, 2009

In nearly all cultures and religions, and for most of history, greed, avarice and pursuit of wealth have
been considered harmful and evil. Taoist philosopher, Chuang Tzu writes: “Do not race after riches, or
you will let slip the Heaven within you,” and similar sentiments can be found in nearly all scriptures.
Children are reprimanded for selfishness, and taught to be generous and kind in ne arly all cultures.
Modern Europe replaced the Biblical sentiment that “Love of money is the root of all evil,” by the
wisdom of Bernard Shaw that “Lack of money is the root of all evil.” Many philosophers (Tawney,
Polanyi) have described the process by which wealth gradually came to be prioritized over other social
considerations. In this essay, we will discuss some aspects of this historical change, and the incalculable
damage it has done. Pursuit of wealth, luxury, and hedonistic lifestyles is being promoted by powerful
Western media and this message is eagerly being absorbed by our youth, which bodes ill for the future.
Creating an awareness of this broad historical perspective provides an essential basis for resistance to
the onslaught of modernity, which threatens many of our precious traditions.
Interminable and bloody religious warfare in Europe led to the emergence of a secular system of
thought, which repudiates religion as a basis for social organization. In a secular society, it is necessary
to find some alternative to religion as a basis for collective action. Starting from the assumption that the
society is composed of individuals with different religions and irreconcilable conflicts, European political
thought emphasized the diversity of human goals and the primacy of freedom to choose. Wealth was
seen as an essential component of freedom, as it allows individuals to do whatever they desire. Thus the
pursuit of wealth became a social goal and a means of obtaining maximum freedom in a secular society.
The attempt to turn a vice into a virtue was initiated by Mandeville, whose famous “Fable of the bees”
described how production stops when bees decide to give up greed and become honest and virtuous.
Adam Smith similarly argued that it was the greed of the baker that delivered bread on the tables.
Arguments that pursuit of wealth was socially acceptable and produced public benefits led to a gradual
but radical alteration in the fabric of European society.
Early thinkers saw clearly that wealth was merely a means to an end, but considered it a necessary
intermediate step to advance towards extremely desirable goals. Sociologist Max Weber writes that the
“spirit of capitalism” is the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself, to the point of being “absolutely
irrational”. Keynes wrote that the “accumulation of wealth” is a distasteful human quality, and even a
disgusting morbidity; nonetheless, we must pretend that “foul is fair” so as to get out of the tunnel of
economic necessity. Leading European thinkers of all political persuasions (Capitalist, Communist and
Socialist) were persuaded that the solution to all problems of mankind lies in the accumulation of
wealth, and sufficient wealth would bring about heaven on earth. Later thinkers lost sight of the l arger
goals, and began to think of pursuit of wealth as a desirable goal in and of itself.
It is impossible in the course of a brief essay to cover all of these, but we will sketch some of the
important ones.

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Recent research on the classical question “Can money buy happiness?” has led to conclusions familiar to
the ancients but startling to the moderns. It has been conclusively established that social relations play a
decisive role in determining happiness. In contrast, after basic needs are provided for, money is of very
little importance in creating a sense of well-being and satisfaction with life. Many books like “Loss of
Happiness in Market Economies” document the fact that tremendous increases in wealth have not led
to corresponding increases in happiness in the West. Studies of terminal patients in hospices show that
nearly all regret paying too much attention to careers and wealth, and wish they had given more time to
family, friends and social relations.

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4. The War against the Poor
Published in The News (Pakistan) on Monday, June 15, 2009 with title: The Cynics and the Deluded

How to get decent, kind and humane people to participate in exploiting the poor? This has always been
the central problem facing those who have waged the war against the poor across the centuries. I will
trace some history, successful strategies and countermoves, as well as the recent tides in fortune in this
war. The current global economic crisis is a replication of an event, which has frequently occurred in the
past: too much exploitation breaks the backs of the poor, on which the whole system rests.
The current global financial crisis bears an eerie resemblance to the Gre at Depression of the early
twentieth century. Then, as now, financial chicanery was used to transfer wealth from the honest
workers and producers to the wealthy parasites via interest, stocks, and other financial gimmicks. The
system collapsed because the producers of wealth worked harder and harder to get less and less, while
the wealthy got richer without doing any productive work. While causing tremendous misery to large
numbers of people, the Great Depression was an ideological triumph for the poor. No one could deny
the clear and incontrovertible failure of free markets and capitalism to provide jobs and foods to all.
Keynesian economics provided a theoretical basis for government interventions to provide employment
and also social welfare programs. Anti-poor strategists could (and did) argue that helping the poor
would only make them worse off, and a large government role in welfare programs would lead to
oppressive dictatorships later on; no one was listening. The stagflation caused by the oil crisis of the
70’s was contrary to Keynesian doctrines and provided the opening for a successful counterattack. The
anti-poor theorists explained that Keynes was wrong, and government interventions to help the poor in
short run always ended up hurting them even more in the long run. Again, without a shred of evidence
for these theories, Reagan and Thatcher rose to power and implemented them in the USA and UK. The
centerpiece of these Chicago School stories presented the idea that giving wealth to the rich would
increase investment and lead to rapid growth. Impoverishing the poor would lead to lower wages and
also increase productivity. Welfare programs were dismantled, and tax cuts and other breaks for the rich
were enacted. These neoclassical ideologists have dominated policy making to this day, leading to
situation reported in the USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004: “38.2 million
Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14
million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999.”
Mao’s revolution, which brought Communism to China proved to be a boon to the rural poor all over the
world. The CIA was called to the carpet for its failure to anticipate and frustrate this anti-capitalist
phenomenon. They explained that this revolution was based in rural areas, while the CIA had presence
only in the urban areas. Some readers will remember the extensive Village Aid program in Pakistan.
Similar programs were launched all over the world to gather information, and generally prevent unrest
and revolutions in rural areas. As a by-product, money was pumped into the really needy rural areas.
These programs were dismantled when it became clear that unlike Russia, China did not plan to export
its revolution.

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The influence of neoclassical ideologists was felt in Pakistan in the 60’s when a group of expert
economists from Harvard designed policies for growth at the Planning Commission. Brainwashed by
training in neoclassical economics, the compassionate Mahbubul-Haq went along with the idea that
exploiting the poor was necessary for rapid growth, in the belief that short term sacrifice was needed for
long term welfare. He wrote: “It is well to recognize that economic growth is a brutal, sordid process.
There are no short cuts to it. The essence of it lies in making the laborer produce more than he is
allowed to consume for his immediate needs, and to reinvest the surplus thus obtained.” Much to his
credit, he renounced his earlier views when he saw the bad effects of these neoclassical policies. Wealth
became concentrated (22 families) and did not “trickle-down.” He wrote that “we were told to take care
of our GNP as that would take care of poverty – let us reverse this and take care of poverty as this will
take care of our GNP.” Unfortunately, this remained a pipe-dream. The anti-poor faction has remained
in power in Pakistan, and persuaded Musharraf to make the same mistake that Mahbubul-Haq had
renounced over forty years earlier. In his biography “In the Line of Fire” Musharraf writes that he faced a
choice between increasing social welfare programs to help the poor, or working on higher GNP growth,
which would alleviate poverty; he chose the second alternative. The current government is preparing to
make the same mistake all over again.
Extensive experience with growth projects all over the world led Mahbubul -Haq to the insight that our
people are our greatest treasure. If we invest in them, and provide them with lives with dignity,
economic security, and justice, they will create progress on all fronts. Our people are our most powerful
agents of change, and strategies based on injustice and exploitation will always fail, as has been
repeatedly experienced. Haq expressed this insight as follows: “…, after many decades of development,
we are rediscovering the obvious—that people are both the means and the end of economic
development.” As the battle against the poor has been waged in the course of the centuries, this
central insight has often been re-discovered, and just as often buried under anti-poor propaganda.
A crucial insight for those who would fight for the poor is the following. The cynics who deliberately
oppress the poor for personal gain are few; much more damage is caused by sincere people deluded by
anti-poor propaganda into believing that it is to the benefit of the poor to exploit them. Helping the
poor raises wages, reduces production, and hurts the poor in the long run. Helping the rich increases
investments, productivity, and is the best way to help the poor in the long run. Sincere and
compassionate people are fooled into believing that balancing the budget, privatization, debt relief or
other agendas take priority over the problems of helping the poor lead better lives. Convincing these
people to learn from historical experience (instead of repeating it) that we must prioritize human beings
over all other things, is a key to achieving success. The current global financial crisis makes it critical not
only to spread the message, but also for everyone to personally participate in trying to help those whom
we can – we cannot afford to wait for the government or foreigners to come to our rescue.

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5. The Value of Human Lives
Published date: 25-1-2011 (The Express Tribune)
Human lives are infinitely precious. We have only a few moments to enjoy the wonders of creation, and
to experience the joys and tragedies of life. English philosopher, David Hume shocked society when he
first presented the idea that a human life could be priced at its economic value. Today, it has become
commonplace, and arguing against it is considered idealistic and romantic. This cheapening of human
lives has resulted in wars, destruction of habitats, flora and fauna, and dissolution of communities, all
for a few dollars. Today we need ideals and romanticism to save the world.
The idea that wealth will solve all human problems has been responsible for an immense amount of
human misery in the twentieth century. The tremendously influential economist Keynes expressed this
idea very clearly. He wrote that we must pretend that “fair is foul and foul is fair” and pursue the (false)
gods of avarice and usury, for at least a hundred years. We will be able to afford to behave morally only
after we have accumulated sufficient wealth. Only then will we be able to give up the distasteful, foul
and disgusting “love of money.” But at the moment we need this very quality in order to achieve
wealth, which is necessary for the prosperity of mankind.

A generation of economists faithfully followed this Keynesian advice. The idea that wealth was meant
for the enjoyment and welfare of human beings was replaced by the idea that human beings were a
means towards the creation of wealth. Economists argued that the poor should be fed because that
would increase their productivity as laborers, instead of arguing on grounds of compassion and
humanity. Human beings became a “resource” to be used as an input to production of wealth.
Education became a means of providing people with skills valued on the job market, instead of the
pursuit of knowledge for spiritual transformation and for understanding and changing the world for the
better. Development was measured in dollars, instead of enhancement of human capacities for wisdom,
love, and respect for each other.

Making human lives a central concern would radically affect development policies. Economists routinely
advise governments to let inefficient sectors collapse – this will lead to greater productivity when
resources are shifted to other, more efficient sectors. The impact on lives of those who become
unemployed in the process does not figure in these calculations. In this and many other cases, the cost
benefit analyses of economists pay no attention to the human factor, but only compute effects on
wealth and productivity.

The economists’ paradigm is that by building industries, institutions, free markets, and encouraging
capital accumulation through FDI and privatization, we will create economic growth. Diametrically
opposite to this idea is to concentrate on providing the people with lives of meaning and dignity,
supporting them on crucial dimensions of health, housing and education. The people will then prove to
be the engines of growth along all dimensions, social, political and economic.

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6. The Power of Ideas
Published date: 20-5-2010 (The Express Tribune)
Materialistic theories of history suggest that geography and material resources determine the destinies
of nations. Karl Marx went further to suggest that even our ideologies are strongly influenced or
determined by changes in economic and other material conditions. A delicious irony of history is that,
entirely contrary to his theories and expectations, the ideas of Marx went on to change the lives of
millions of people in Russia and China for more than half a century. Without any material resources or
compelling historical necessities, the vision of a classless society, which promised to look after every
member “according to his needs,” inspired Russian and Chinese leaders. The reality of communist Russia
was so different from the idealized vision that there is a legitimate dispute as to whether it was a force
for good or evil. However, there can be no dispute that the ideas of Marx, without any material
resources to back them up, changed the course of history.
It is only because materialist views have become widely accepted that something as obvious as the
power of ideas to change the world needs to be stated argued and demonstrated. The terrifying flash of
the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima in which "Practically all living things, human and animal, were
literally sent to death” is highly visible. Even more powerfully destructive than the ideas of mathematics
and physics, which led to the creation of the bomb, are the invisible ideas, which allow us to calculate
the value of human lives in terms of barrels of oil. Far more than an inter play of material resources, this
world is a battleground of ideas, good and bad, which shape our lives and history.

Historians have searched the history of the nomadic Arabs in vain for material causes to explain their
sudden rise to world power after the coming of Islam. The ideas of Islam, explicitly preaching the
equality and brotherhood of all men turned the tides of history. In the words of the brilliant historian
Marshall Hodgson, “Muslims succeeded in building a new form of society, with its own distinctive
institutions, its art and literature, its science and scholarship, its political and social forms, as well as its
cult and creed, all bearing an unmistakable Islamic impress. … (Islamic civilization) came closer than any
had ever come to uniting all mankind under its ideals.”
Today, powerful media are spreading many ideas antithetical to the central Islamic messages. Ads,
movies, magazines and the internet encourage us to enjoy life to the fullest, by adopting a luxurious
lifestyle. Islam encourages us to adopt a simple lifestyle, as modeled by the Prophet (s.a.w.) who ate one
day and went hungry the next. Ads encourage purchase of goods to “be the envy of your neighbors.”
Islam teaches us to bury fruit peels so as to not incite the envy of the neighbor’s children, if we cannot
afford to share fruits with them. The Quran (59:9) praises those who give to others even though they are
themselves needy. This is in stark contrast with promotion of luxury products at a time when millions
are hungry and homeless.

The most important battles of today are for minds and hearts, not the ones for power and oi l. Our
common enemy is the message of supreme self-interest, combined with complete indifference to
others, crystallized in the popular “Gestalt Prayer”: “I do my thing and you do yours … if by chance, we
find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.” Many western analysts have expressed their

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dismay at the dissolution of the social fabric and breakdown of families caused by individuals “doing
their own thing,” without concern for others. The consequences to society in terms of divorce,
depression, suicide, crime, alcohol and drugs, random shootings, and myriad others, have been
documented in many thick research reports.
We must actively engage in the battle against slick ads and Hollywood movies, which make material
goods and pursuit of pleasure, appear far more attractive than they really are. We must teach our youth
the ancient wisdom that feeding the poor brings more memorable and meaningful pleasure than the
finest meal at the most luxurious restaurant. Love, honesty, commitment, trust, sacrifice and service are
needed to build families and communities, which are far superior to lonely lives covered by glamour,
glitter and luxury. Strong forces are pushing materialism, hedonism, and individualism, but we still have
the cultural resources to win the battle if we try.

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IV: Consequences of Free Markets
The emergence of markets as central, and the accompanying market philosophies, has caused massive
damage to humanity on all fronts. Some of these damaging consequences are documented in this
section. The first essay lists some market philosophies and how their application in the real world has
caused increase in economic misery. Subsequent shorter essays deal with the similar theme.

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1. Anti-Poverty Policies and Anti-Poor Philosophies

1. Introduction

In this essay, we will discuss the many policies, philosophies, and theories which, claim to help the poor,
but actually hurt them. The most prominent recent example is that of the SAPs. According to an
independent evaluation by Mr. Fantu Cheru (2001), the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the
IMF and the World Bank designed to generate growth and alleviate poverty have had the opposite
effect:

“Increasing malnutrition, falling school enrolments and rising unemployment have been
attributed to the policies of structural adjustment. Yet these same institutions continue to
prescribe the same medicine as a condition for debt relief, dismissing the overwhelming
evidence that SAPs have increased poverty.”

Many other authors have documented the harmful effects of the SAPs on global poverty and inequality.
Even World Bank experts have admitted that these policies have failed to achieve the desired effects.
Accordingly, the SAPs were replaced by PRSPs – Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. The name strongly
suggests that these papers would be poorer friendly. Closer examination reveals that it is old wine in
new bottles – policies known to worsen poverty continue to be pushed as effective anti-poverty
measures. The reasons why PRSPs will not make any impact on poverty is detailed in the report by Cheru
(2001) cited earlier. This is an often repeated historical pattern, where anti -poor policies have been
deceptively justified on fallacious grounds. For those who are genuinely interested in helping the poor, it
is useful to outline some of the arguments used to justify crushing the poor, and the historical contexts
in which these ideas emerged.

The vast majorities of people are decent, kind, humane and wish to help the poor. In order to win their
support, the small minority who wish to exploit the poor must mislead them. Without such support,
anti-poor policies cannot be implemented in democratic societies. The power, status, and socio-
economic benefits enjoyed by a small but powerful social class are directly tied to the exploitation of the
poor. This class has been ingenious in coming up with a varied set of justifications for this exploitation,
some of which will be discussed in this essay.

2. Locke and the Invention of Private Property

The Commons were lands in England, which provided a living for large numbers of the poor, by hunting,
fishing, eating, and making use of the natural resources of timber, coal, etc. Efforts by the rich to
“enclose” this land for private use had been successfully resisted for a long time. One reason for this was
that the monarchs wished to limit the powers of the nobility and aristocracy, and aided the poor in their
struggles against them. A double set of catastrophic social and political upheavals upset this balance of
power. The Civil War of 1642 was a watershed event in British history. By both launching a successful
rebellion against the monarchy, and later by supporting the restoration of the monarchy, the nobility
and aristocracy established that they had the power to make and break the kings.
During this same period, the latter half of the seventeenth century, the rise of the Protestants and the
suppression of Catholicism in England was another blow against the poor. The Catholic Church was
central among the institutions to support the poor. A huge amount of Church property was seized by
private parties acting on behalf of the king. These social upheavals also led to the rise of a corrupt and

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financially motivated class to power. Tawney (1926, Chapter 3) writes about the emergence of a new
creed of private property (which denies social responsibilities in the utilization of property) as follows
“That creed was that the individual is absolute master of his own, and, within the limits set by positive law, may
exploit it with a single eye to his pecuniary advantage, unrestrained by any obligation to postpone his own profit to
the well-being of his neighbors, or to give account of his actions to a higher authority. I t was, in short, the theory of
property, which was later to be accepted by all civilized communities.”

In this anti-poor atmosphere, a philosophy to justify massive seizures of lands and properties serving the
public was needed. This was duly provided by Locke (1698), who wrote in favor of enclosures as follows:

To which let me add, that he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not
lessen, but increase the common stock of mankind: for the provisions serving to the
support of human life, produced by one acre of enclosed and cultivated land, are (to speak
much within compass) ten times more than those which are yielded by an acre of land of
an equal richness lying waste in common. And therefore he that encloses land, and has a
greater plenty of the conveniences of life from ten acres, than he could have from an
hundred left to nature, may truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind: for his labour now
supplies him with provisions out of ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred
lying in common. I have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but
as ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one: for I ask, whether in the wild
woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage
or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many
conveniences of life, as ten acres of equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are
well cultivated?

Locke has argued that enclosures lead to such improvements that 10 acres in Devonshire provide as
much as 1000 acres of uncultivated land in America to the needy and wretched. “He, who in closes 10
acres, may truly be said to give ninety acres to mankind”! Did the enclosures, which took place, have such an
effect? We have the graphic testimony of brilliant historian Polanyi (1944) to the contrary. In fact, a
social catastrophe resulted:

The lords and nobles were upsetting the social order, breaking down ancient laws and custom,
by violence …. They were literally robbing the poor of their share in the common, tearing down the
houses … (of) the poor. The fabric of society was being disrupted; desolate villages and the ruins
of human dwelling testified to the fierceness with which the revolution raged, endangering the
defenses of the country, wasting its towns, decimating its population, turning its overburdened soil
into dust, harassing its people and turning them from decent husbandmen into a mob of beggars
and thieves.

In discussing the effects of this invention of the idea of private property on the lives of the poor,
Kogl (2005) writes that:

However, in creating the liberal right to private property, Locke argued in effect for the nullification
of a number of other rights and capacities that existed in the commons economy …
Commons rights enabled persons to meet many everyday needs: not only by pasturing livestock
and raising crops in the open fields, but cutting turfs (peat for fuel) and wood (for building and fuel),
hunting game, and foraging for wild foods and building materials as well. All these rights were

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 precisely named (e.g. right of turbary, right of botes) and lands were precisely delineated as
pasture (mead or meadow), agriculture lands (the open fields), or “wastes” and woods.
It may be difficult to imagine the experience of being suddenly cut off from the basic, everyday
items needed to sustain life: water, food, fuel, building materials, and fiber for clothing. Now these
items must be paid for, which previously were free but for the labor required to raise and harvest or
simply collect them. No one had to work for another who did own land in order to pay for these
items.

Thus private property was one of the philosophies which led to the creation of a poor class in England.
Paradoxically, this class actually sparked the Industrial revolution by providing a large mass of laborers
available at cheap wages and willing to work in miserable conditions. Many historians fully aware of the
tremendous human misery, which accompanied the industrial revolution, have downplayed this aspect,
as they believe that it was necessary for progress. However, others have argued that this same progress
could have been achieved in more humane ways.

3. Malthus and the Population Explosion

The French revolution was significant in changing the course of history in Europe. Desperation of the
excessively exploited poor led to the overthrow of the establi shed aristocracy and the formation of
peoples’ government; see Forrest (1981) for details. It became clear to powerful aristocrats and
landowners that more rights for the poor supported the long-term interests of the rich by reducing the
chances of a revolution. In this favorable atmosphere, slogans of “Liberty, Fraternity and Equality,” and
progressive ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like Godwin, Condorcet led to substantial popular support
for social programs to improve the lives of the poor.

Across the channel, these ideas were threats to the power of the English aristocracy. It was necessary to
come up with an alternative stance regarding the poor, in order to protect the interests of the powerful,
and prevent them from having to make too many concessions to the poor. Necessity is the mother of
invention, and Malthus (1798) fabricated the desired theory in his famous “Essay on Population.”
Working entirely from his imagination, without any support from facts or statistics, he argued that the
main reason for poverty, vice, and misery was the high population growth rate of the poor. Schemes to
help the poor would be counterproductive because giving the poor more food would only lead them to
reproduce faster, creating even more poor. By putting the blame for poverty on the poor, he diverted
attention from the responsibility of the rich to provide welfare and social programs to help the poor. In
fact, he argued that the high price of corn stems from the Poor Laws which "increase the parish
allowances in proportion to the price of corn". Thus, the Poor Laws force up the price of daily
necessities, which actually hurts the poor.

All of the quantitative elements of Malthusian arguments have proven to be false. For example, Malthus
argued that the island of Britain could not sustain a population of 20 million, but 150 years later the
population was more than triple Malthus' ceiling. Also, Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen has shown that
supplies of food per capita have been increasing slightly for centuries, and contrary to popular belief,
famines are not caused by food shortages. Nonetheless, in an oft repeated historical pattern, the
governing classes seized upon Malthusian arguments without bothering to verify them, because their
interests were served well by them. Initiatives for social programs to help the poor were curtailed or
dropped. Since better conditions for the poor would only help increase their numbers, repressive
legislation was passed, which worsened the conditions of the poor in England. According to Malthus's
biographer, William Peterson, British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger (in office: 1783–1801 and

79
1804–1806), upon reading the work of Malthus, withdrew a Bill he had introduced that called for the
extension of Poor Relief. New bills were introduced, which curtailed earlier provisions for the relief of
the poor. The blame for poverty was put on the vices of the poor, and Malthusianism led to the
institution of workhouses for the poor, which were meant to be humiliating and degrading, so as to
motivate people not to become poor.The sexes were strictly separated to curb the otherwise inevitable
“over-breeding”; the cause of poverty according to Malthus.

There is no logic to Malthus. Poverty is not caused by excessive breeding of the poor. Research on the
demographic transition suggests that the causation may run in the other direction. The poor have more
children as insurance policies for their old age. When affluence is achieved, they start having fewer
children. Some research by Amartya Sen shows that educating females is a crucial variable, which leads
to lower childbirth rates. Malthusianism became popular, and continues to be invoked, as a convenient
excuse to avoid the responsibility for feeding the poor, which would otherwise trouble our conscience.

4. The Rise and Fall of Keynesian Economics

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Laissez-Faire economics was the dominant school of thought.
This school of thought embodies myriad anti-poor philosophies in its vast bosom. One of them is the
theory of Pareto optimality or efficiency. According to this theory, one cannot say whether or not the
social good is served by taking away land from the rich to give to landless peasants. This is because the
utility loss to the rich landlord with refined tastes who loses an extra cup of wine may be far greater
than the utility gain to the peasant with coarse tastes who is given an additional loaf of bread. It is not
our intention here to examine the value judgment involved. A far more serious problem of Laissez -Faire
economics is the idea that market outcomes are always the best for society. There is no need to
intervene in the workings of the market place. In fact, interventions always create more problems than
they solve.

The folly of this position was made obvious to all by the Great Depression. The workings of the free
market led to massive unemployment. Loss of income of the labor class led to a huge amount of human
misery on an unprecedented scale. The human face of the tragedy has been graphically depicted by
John Steinbeck in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. While causing tremendous misery to large numbers of
people, the Great Depression was an ideological triumph for the poor. No one could deny the clear and
incontrovertible failure of free market capitalism to provide jobs and foods to all. The Keynesian
revolution in economic theory was a result of this obvious failure of Laissez-Faire. The most fundamental
of economic principles, the theory of supply and demand was suspended in the labor market by Keynes.
Classical economic theories held that the market would automatically eliminate unemployment through
the operation of the laws of supply and demand. In terms of policy, this means that the government
need do nothing for the unemployed laborers. Keynes argued that (for reasons which continue to be
obscure) these laws did not operate in the market for labor. It was therefore necessary for the
government to intervene in the labor market to bring about full employment.

Many have argued that Keynes saved capitalism. The collapse of capitalistic economies and the far
better treatment of workers in communist economies had made communism very attractive to the
populace within capitalist countries. Keynes created a theory, which made room for the government to
help laborers within a capitalistic framework, and thereby made it possible for capitalism to survive.

The stagflation caused by the oil crisis of the 70’s was contrary to Keynesian doctrines and provided the
opening for a successful counterattack by the Laissez-Faire economists. The anti-poor theorists

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explained that Keynes was wrong, and government interventions to help the poor in short run always
ended up hurting them even more in the long run. Again, without a shred of evidence for these theories,
Reagan and Thatcher rose to power and implemented them in the USA and UK. The centerpiece of these
Chicago School stories was the idea that giving wealth to the rich would increase investment and lead to
rapid growth. Impoverishing the poor would lead to lower wages and also increase productivity. Welfare
programs were dismantled, and tax cuts and other breaks for the rich were enacted. These neoclassical
ideologists have dominated policy making to this day, leading to massive homelessness and hunger in an
economy, which can afford to spend trillions on warfare and weapons.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that, in 2009, 14.7 per cent of American
households were food insecure, meaning that at some point they lacked sufficient food for an active,
healthy life for all household members. This represents the highest level of food insecurity since the
government began tracking the issue in 1995. In 2009, 50.2 million people lived in food- insecure
households, including 17.2 million children. Within this group were 12.2 million adults and 5.4 million
children who lived in households with very low food security.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Homeless Assessment Report found
that, for the second straight year, the number of sheltered homeless families (a household that includes
an adult 18 years of age or older and at least one child) increased, while the number of sheltered
homeless individuals dropped. In 2009, approximately 1,035,000 individuals used sheltered or
transitional housing at some time during the year, as did 535,000 people who were there as part of a
family. Slightly more than 170,000 families were sheltered homeless in 2009 - about a 30 per cent
increase since 2007.

The homelessness and hunger in the USA is not due to scarcity of resources, but due to flawed
philosophies, which suggest that poverty is necessary for the survival of capitalism.

5. Development Economics and the Pursuit of Capital

By the mid-twentieth century, Russia was the only successful example of a transition from an agrarian
economy to an industrialized economy. All across the globe, developing countries sought to emulate this
experience. The theory of development economics was developed to show how one could achieve this
desired transition within the folds of a capitalist economic system. The basics of the Harrod-Domar
models of economic growth stated that it was all a matter of the accumulation of capital. Growth would
occur if capital could be accumulated at a sufficiently fast rate. It was only after repeated failures in
many countries over several precious decades that it was realized that this was not the magic formula.
There were many other crucial dimensions to growth.

We, in Pakistan were subjected to these theories in the 60’s when a group of expert economists from
Harvard designed policies for growth at the Planning Commission. Trained in neoclassical economics, the
compassionate Mahbubul-Haq went along with the idea that exploiting the poor was necessary for rapid
growth. Where is the capital required for growth by the Harrod-Domar model to come from? From
exploiting the poor, as Mahbubul-Haq clearly saw. The benefits of the growth are eventually supposed
to trickle down to the poor, which is why this exploitation is in their long term interest.

Much to the credit of Mahbubul-Haq, he renounced his earlier views when he saw the bad effects of
these development policies. He noted that wealth became concentrated in the hands of a few families
and did not “trickle-down.” The anti-poor faction has remained in power in Pakistan, and persuaded

81
Musharraf to adopt the same strategy that Mahbubul-Haq had renounced over forty years earlier.
Instead of concentrating on social development, Musharraf put all his investments into growth. The
standard results, that had occurred earlier, happened again. Fairly good growth rates were achieved, but
prosperity did not trickle down. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and social inequalities and
divisions increased.

6. Conclusions: Investing in People

Extensive experience with growth projects all over the world led Mahbubul-Haq to the insight that our
people are our greatest treasure. If we invest in them, and provide them lives with dignity, economic
security, and justice, they will create progress on all fronts. Our people are our most powerful agents of
change, and strategies based on injustice and exploitation will always fail, as has been repeatedly
experienced. Haq expressed this insight as follows: “…, after many decades of development, we are
rediscovering the obvious—that people are both the means and the end of economic development, Bari
(2001).”

A crucial insight for those who would fight for the poor is the following. The misanthropists who
deliberately oppress the poor for personal gain are few; much more damage is caused by sincere people
deluded by anti-poor propaganda into believing that it is to the benefit of the poor to exploit them. This
propaganda has often taken the following lines: Helping the poor raises wages, reduces production, and
hurts the poor in the long run. Helping the rich increases investments, productivity, and is the best way
to help the poor in the long run. Convincing these people to learn from historical experience (instead of
repeating it) that we must prioritize human beings over all other things, is a key to achieving success.
The current global financial crisis makes it critical not only to spread the message, but also for everyone
to personally participate in trying to help those whom we can.

References

Bari, F. (2001) From Economic Growth to Human Development: The Journey with Dr. Mahbubul- Haq.
CMER Working Paper Series, Working Paper No. 01-28

Cheru, F. “The Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative: Human rights
assessment of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP)” The United Nations Economic and Social
Council Commission on Human Rights report number: E/CN.4/2001/56, 18 January 2001.

Forrest, A.The French Revolution and the Poor.Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981.

Kogl, Alexandra (2005) "Enclosure and Exclusion: The Invention of Private Property" Paper presented at
the annual meeting of The Midwest Political Science Association, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, Illinois,
Apr 07, 2005 Online <PDF>. 2010-01-21 <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p85670_index.html>

Locke, John "Second Treatise of Government" 1690.Reprinted as: "John Locke Second Treatise of
Government", Edited, with an Introduction, By C.B. McPherson, Hackett Publishing Company,
Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1980.

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Malthus T. R.An essay on the principle of population vol. (1) and vol. (2).Edited by Patrica James.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (1990, originally published 1798).

Polanyi, Karl (1944) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time.

R. H. Tawney (1926) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc..

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2. Policies for growth
Published date: 24-4-2010 Posted onlineon 28-4-2010(The Express Tribune)

The World Bank data for 2008 shows that incomes in Norway are about 400 times more than those in
Congo. Statistics cannot convey what journalist Kevin Carter showed with a photo of a vulture waiting
for a starving child to die. Haunted by vivid memories of starving children, Kevin committed suicide
three months later.

At the same time, the rich buy crocodile skin briefcases worth $20,000. How did the world come to be
this way? Can we change things for the better? These questions and the urge to ‘do something about it’
arise naturally to sensitive and compassionate people.

Theories of how modernization, industrialization and development could be achieved were created in
the post-colonial era. The dismal record of such theories has been recorded in several books like the
Failure of Economic Development.

In Pakistan, we have firsthand experience of this failure. The first and second Five Year Plans were
drafted by economic experts from Harvard, who also created academic and bureaucratic institutions like
the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, the Planning Commission and the Central Statistical
Organization, among others that were required for this process.
Mahbubul-Haq, one of the chief architects and executors of the Harvard group’s economic policies, was
disillusioned by the outcomes of the much touted “Decade of Development.” In 1968, Dr Haq said that
22 family groups “controlled, about two-thirds of the industrial assets, 80 per cent of banking, and 70
per cent of insurance in Pakistan.”
He expressed his dissatisfaction as follows: “In blunt terms, Pakistan’s capitalistic system is still one of
the most primitive in the world. It is a system in which economic feudalism prevails. Post-World War II,
first generation policies for economic development designed by expert economists led to similar
outcomes throughout the world.

Widespread failures, and changing political climate, led to the development of second generation
development policies, this time based on free markets. The IMF and the World Bank created the
‘Washington Consensus,’ a list of ten universally applicable economic policies for growth. Despite
substantial differences, this ‘new’ approach to development has led to outcomes similar to those
observed in Pakistan: increases in concentration of wealth, income inequalities, poverty and
unemployment.

Social tensions caused by these policies have frequently resulted in political and economic crises. Some
economists have argued that much of the poverty we see around the world is due to the global
imposition of these flawed policies for growth. Many people associated with the Washington Consensus
policies have acknowledged their failure.
Oliver Williamson, who coined the term ‘Washington Consensus,’ has summarized the overall results as
“disappointing, to say the least.” Despite this acknowledged failure, Williamson, and others continue to
tout third generation reforms and sophisticated versions of these policies, as cures for low income.

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They attribute second generation failures to institutional weaknesses, flaws in execution and
sequencing, corruption, and other factors. In fact, these policies and their background theories are
fundamentally flawed.
To prove this, Dani Rodrik of Harvard has pointed out that the general economic policies of China and
India remained the exact opposite to the Washington Consensus’ main recommendations, which were
to “stabilize, liberalize and privatize.”Both had high levels of protectionism, no privatization, extensive
industrial policies planning, and lax fiscal and financial policies through the 1990s. However, they have
been highly successful in achieving income growth and poverty reduction.

3. Economics: The Vacuum Cleaner Effect

Published: May 26, 2011 in The Express-Tribune

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25000 people die of hunger every day. This is not because of a population explosion. The amount of
money required to end hunger is trivial; far less than what is spent on wars, or even on cosmetics. What
is lacking is the political will to end hunger on the planet.
Who benefits from the misery and death of millions? The direct beneficiaries are very few in number.
Publicly available internet information lists Defense Budgets, Weapons Industry, Corporations involved
in reconstruction and other war related products, etc. who make astonishing amounts of profits from
wars and economic crises. They have inflicted huge amounts of damage to civilization, and even to the
concept of civilization. After all, what does civilization mean when the US Government official,
Madeleine Albright, can state on public TV that lives of half a million Iraqi children are a price worth
paying for economic and political goals?
A much larger proportion of the rich and powerful benefits indirectly from wars and crises. Since most
people do have a conscience, theories, which make evil actions appear good are required to enable
them to sleep peacefully. The most blatant of such theories was invented by Milton Friedman, who
argued that the only business of business was to make profits – it was immoral for business to have
social concerns or responsibility. After teaching such theories at the MBA program for decades, Harvard
Professor Zuboff stated that “I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has
caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, and destabilized the world economy …”
In graduate school, we were taught more subtle and sophisticated theories. The U-curve of Kuznets
states that economic growth initially increases income inequalities. Solow growth models reinforce this
message by showing that initial reductions in consumption (by the poor) create greater investment and
rapid growth. In a nutshell, these theories reduce to the infamous “trickle down” effect: Growth
inevitably favors the rich, but their increased wealth will eventually trickle down and eliminate poverty.
In fact, the opposite is true. Free market economic policies create a “Vacuum Cleaner” effect: wealth is
sucked up from the poor and concentrates in the loot bags of the rich.

The theory that scarcity of food leads to famine suggest the solution of increased production. In fact,
increases accumulate in hands of the wealthy, with no benefit to the poor. AmartyaSen won the Nobel
prize for showing that famines were not caused by scarcity of food. At the height of the Bengal famine of
1943, food was being shipped out of Bengal because the starving poor did not have the money to pay
for it. Again the Vacuum Cleaner describes empirical reality better than trickle down.
Since the Reagan era, free market policies have been pursued in the USA. Within the USA, homelessness
and hunger are at record levels, according to recent USDA reports. The Vacuum Cleaner effect is
documented by Joseph Stieglitz, who reports that the top 1% have increased their share of wealth to an
astounding 40%, while the share of the bottom 90% has declined substantially. The Washington
Consensus was used to enforce free market policies all over the globe, with similarly predictable effects.
Income inequalities have increased sharply and concentrations of wealth have increased, both within
countries and across countries.

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The vast majority of people who design and execute policies, which create poverty, do so in the
mistaken belief that this will help the poor in the long run. Facts might help rectify these errors.
MahbubulHaq talks about his “agonizing mistakes,” stating that “the most unforgivable sin of
development planners … was to forget the real objective of development,” which was to improve the
quality of lives of human beings. We hope that those with a conscience in positions of power can be
similarly persuaded.

4. The Current Crisis in Economics

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4.1 Part I: Twentieth Century Economics
Published: April 15th, 2011 in The Express Tribune

The human tragedy of the Great Depression has been graphically depicted by John Steinbeck in his
moving novel, The Grapes of Wrath. The crisis it created for economic theory is not so well known.
Leading economists kept forecasting prosperity and quick recovery, creating embarrassment for the
profession as a whole. In 1927, Keynes had flatly stated that “there will be no more crashes in our time.”
The shock of the Great Depression led him to create an entirely new economics. The Keynesian
revolution created the field of Macroeconomics, which gave a vital role to the government in removing
unemployment.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Laissez-Faire economics was the dominant school of thought.
Laissez-Faire economics says that free markets without government interventions automatically lead to
the best possible economic outcomes. The folly of this position was made obvious to all by the Great
Depression. Samuelson and other disciples of Keynes were the only economists with quantitative and
apparently rigorous answers to questions about the Great Depression. They enjoyed a monopoly in the
field of Macroeconomics until the 1970’s.

The OPEC countries imposed an oil embargo to retaliate against the USA’s support of Israel in the Yom
Kippur War in 1973. The sudden rise in energy prices led to "stagflation" in the US economy --
unemployment and recession occurred simultaneously with inflation. This was contrary to the central
tenets of Keynesian economics, which held that only one or the other (unemployment or inflation) was
possible. The damaged prestige of Keynesian economics allowed a counter-revolution to be launched.
Surprisingly, most of these new macroeconomic theories went back to the laissez faire ideas of pre-
Keynesian economics.

Milton Friedman and followers, labeled Monetarists, lost no time in re-interpreting the Great
Depression along lines which would suit the laissez-faire theories. On this re-interpretation, the Great
Depression was actually caused by inept government policies related to the money sup ply. Many
economists have remarked that theories so violently in conflict with facts became acceptable in the late
70’s only because the generation, which had experienced the Great Depression, had passed away.
Regardless, the old wine of Laissez-Faire was presented in new bottles, and rose to prominence once
again. Reagan in USA and Thatcher in UK implemented these bold ‘new ideas’, by tax cuts and reduced
spending to minimize the role of the government. The failure of Thatcher’s economic policies eventual ly
led to her forced resignation. It is a puzzle that the same policies were apparently quite successful at
reducing unemployment and creating growth in the USA under Reagan.

A deeper look into the difference between what Reagan said and did can resolve this puzzle. Tax cuts for
the rich were balanced by increased taxes on the poor. Large reductions in government expenditure on
social security and welfare were more than made up for by massive increases on defense expenditures.
What was advertised as a reduction in the role of the government led to a quadrupling of the
government budget deficit. Reagan restored the tarnished reputation of Laissez Faire economics by
using traditional Keynesian methods of expansionary fiscal and monetary policy, labeled as free market
economics.

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The collapse of communism further enhanced the prestige of the Laissez Faire economists. The IMF and
the World Bank enforced the Washington Consensus all over the globe. The poor results of these free
market policies disappointed even Williamson, the economist who invented the term. However, instead
of rethinking the underlying paradigm, failures were attributed to the wrong sequencing of the
economic reforms, and the lack of institutional structures necessary to support the free market . Thus
Laissez Faire economics was again the dominant paradigm at the dawn of the Twenty First century.
Economists were just as unprepared for their encounter with reality in the form of the Global Financial
Crisis of 2008, as their predecessors had been for the Great Depression.

4.2 Part II: Historical Roots

Published: April 30th, 2011 in the Express Tribune

The current crisis in economic theory has deep historical roots. To understand it, we must go back to
sixteenth century Europe. Continual warfare and bloodshed among different Christian sects led to the
search for a secular basis for society. How can we achieve cooperation in a society composed of religious
groups with different goals? Secular thinkers promoted freedom and wealth as the core values of a
secular society. One could expect different groups with conflicting goals to agree to these as common
goals for the society. Freedom and wealth would provide each group with the possibility and material
means to pursue whatever goal they desire.

Considerable effort was put into promoting freedom and wealth as desirable collective goals, because
these were in conflict with prevailing and dominant religious conceptions. Duty to society takes
precedence over individual liberty in traditional society. Secular thinkers created a political theory which
puts individual freedom above claims of the social order. These momentous changes were fundamental
in creating the modern world.

Secular thinkers disagreed about effects of allowing individual freedom and pursuit of wealth in a
society. The disagreement was about the nature of human beings. Rousseau felt that human beings
were naturally good, and hence advocated anarchy – no rules or regulations of any kind were required.
On the opposite extreme, Hobbes thought that human beings were naturally evil. Without strong
government enforcement of extensive laws, life would be “nasty, brutish and short,” if people were
allowed complete freedom to act as they desire. Locke took an intermediate position, finding society
and government necessary, but with minimal rules acceptable by all.

The debate between Locke and Hobbes continues to this day in various guises. The Hobbesian view was
that extensive government control and regulation in all spheres of life is required for a s table social
order. Followers of Locke argued that minimal control would suffice. A very important ingredient in the
victory of minimal government views was the “invisible hand” argument of Adam Smith. He argued that
even though people are selfish, society would benefit by allowing them freedom to pursue self-interest.
This provided a counter to the Hobbesian idea that selfish individuals would destroy society unless there
was extensive government control.

Laissez-Faire economics is based on intellectual grounds prepared by Locke and Smith. It argues that one
should allow maximum freedom to individuals in the economic sphere. We are witnessing today the

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outcomes of a social experiment spanning two centuries. Whereas traditional societies warn strongly
against pursuit of pleasure and wealth, secular thinkers thought that these baser tendencies of humans
could be harnessed for the betterment of society. As long as the institutional frameworks of politics,
justice, and society were sound, allowing freedom for pursuit of wealth would enrich society.

All religions and cultural traditions have asked individuals to sacrifice selfish pleasures to fulfill social
obligations, and frowned on pursuit of wealth. The outcomes of this social experiment make clear why
this is so. Contrary to the expectations of secular thinkers, individualistic pursuit of wealth and pleasure
did not remain confined to the narrow domain of economic activities. When profits were permitted to
trump compassion, the odious actions of Shylock the Jew became socially acceptable. Bankers threw
millions out of their homes for nonpayment of interest after the financial crisis of 2008. On the family
front, placing pleasure over duty has led to ever increasing divorces, infidelity, and illegitimate child ren.
One of the economic consequences of promoting selfish pursuit of profits as a virtue has been the global
financial crisis of 2008, as we will show in the next part.

4.3 Part III: The New Millennium

Published: May 23rd, 2011 in the Express Tribune

Karl Marx was deeply moved by the plight of the exploited laborers in industrialized England in late
nineteenth century. He theorized that the dynamics of capitalism would lead to increasing exploitation,
until the laborers revolted against the system. After the revolution, the laborers would create a new
economic and political system, which would be far more equitable than capitalism. This Marxist
prophecy was wrong, but did contain one core truth: increasing exploitation of workers did lead to a
breakdown of capitalism during the Great Depression. The same dynamic has repeated itself in creating
the global financial crisis of 2008. This article explains the parallels.

We can partition the economy into a real sector and a financial sector. The real sector is where the
production takes place; these are the farms, factories, and other industries, which produce real goods
and services directly beneficial to human beings. The financial sector is based on activities, which are not
directly productive, such as lending money for interest, speculating on stocks, foreign exchange, and
using derivatives and insurance contracts to gamble on the outcomes of real activities. In the roaring
20’s, wild appreciation in stock prices led to a situation where it became substantially more profitable to
gamble on stocks than to invest in real productive activities. Increasing shares of wealth in hands of
gamblers and decreasing returns to productive activities cannot be sustained for long, and led to a
collapse of the real sector, which is called the Great Depression.
Collapse of the real sector led to massive unemployment and human misery on a large scale. It is
correctly said that Keynes rescued capitalism from the fate Marx had prophesied. Conventional
economic theory holds that market forces of supply and demand wil l automatically eliminate
unemployment. Keynes revolutionized economics by repealing the law of supply and demand in the
labor market, and urging the government to intervene to help the unemployed laborers.

The Keynesian compromise provided relief against the worst effects of capitalism, and prevented the
more radical changes suggested by Marx. In her brilliant book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein has
provided a detailed picture of how a counter-revolution was planned and executed by a small segment
of society, which was unhappy with the Keynesian compromise. An opening was provided by the 1970’s

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oil crisis, which led to stagflation in the USA, contrary to central premises of Keynesian theories. The
monetarist school of Chicago was quick to stage a comeback. They argued that the Great Depression
was caused by government mismanagement of the money supply, rather than a failure of the free
market. Using strategies described by Klein, these free market theories were applied all over the world.

Reagan and Thatcher implemented these free market policies in the USA and UK with predictable
results. From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America tripled their after-tax percentage of nation’s total
income, while the share of the bottom 90% dropped over 20%. Between 2002 and 2006, it was even
worse: an astounding three-quarter of all the economy's growth was captured by the top 1%. The same
pattern of sharply increasing inequality holds globally; the wealthiest 250 people have more wealth than
the poorest 2.5 billion people on the planet.

Superficially, “Laissez-Faire” or no interference in markets seems like a fair and equitable philosophy –
let everyone do whatever they want. In fact, it is highly inequitable; the poor don’t have choices, while
the rich and powerful take advantage of this liberty to extract money from the less rich. Financial
wheeling and dealing is used to transfer money from the real sector to the financial sector controlled by
the wealthy. A simple method is the leveraged buy-out, which allows the wealthy to purchase a real
productive business for peanuts, and extract all profits for themselves. More complex methods like
CDO’s (collateralized Debt obligations)“… may not be properly understood even by the most
sophisticated investors,” according to financial wizard George Soros. Just before the global financial
crisis, the value of financial derivatives (which represent different types of complex gambles) alone was
10 times the GDP of the planet. The worth of the financial sector was more than 50 times that of the
real sector. This illustrates the increasing inequity that arose between the real productive sector and the
financial sector, which ultimately broke the backs of the working people. Many people ranging from
religious scholars to financial wizards have correctly traced the roots of the global financial crisis to the
limitless greed of capitalists. Removal of traditional restraints to this impulse has led to an extraordinary
concentration of wealth combined with extraordinary exploitation and injustice.

5. Failures of Development Strategies

Published date: 03-11-2010 (The Express Tribune)
History is the conquest song of the victors. Since ancient times, these songs have glorified the victors
and grossly exaggerated their virtues, while denigrating and vilifying the losers. From them, the

91
defeated learn an extremely biased and distorted picture of the world, which prevents access to the
truths necessary for liberation.

In graduate school of economics, we learnt about Rostow’s theory of the stages of economic
development. This theory places all existing non-European civilization at ground zero, and argues that
development will require them to imitate the path taken by England in the eighteenth century, and go
through all the steps that England went through in the course of its rise to global world power. This idea
is patently absurd. Current global conditions bear no resemblance to those faced earlier by European
countries. Contrary to the idea of ground zero, India had advanced shipbuilding, glass, and textiles
industries. De-industrialization took place as many of these industries were deliberately destroyed
during the process of colonization. Economic theory was used as a weapon to argue that India’s
comparative advantage lay in supplying raw materials for British industry.

Another reason the comparison is flawed is the political realities; European countries enjoyed a degree
of sovereignty not available to current developing countries. Weak and corrupt governments, and
massive debt burdens, allow rich countries to dictate terms and set policy. How can one make effective
development policy while paying billions in interest on nonproductive loans? Rostow’s prescriptions for
growth do not take current political circumstances into account, and are not confirmed by history.
Despite numerous flaws, Rostow’s ideas undergird modern economic growth theories. This is a
testimonial to the power of the victors to dominate the discourse. The spectacular accomplishments of
the losers of WW2, Japan and Germany, receive no mention in economics courses. Even though their
economies were wiped out by the war, both went on to become economic superpowers. Similarly, very
little attention has been paid to the experience of the East Asian tiger economies, which accomplished
something unprecedented in history: sustained rates of growth of 7% per annum, The famous industrial
revolution that we struggle to replicate à la Rostow had growth rates of only 1.5%, tripling the previous
historical average of 0.5%. This 7% growth rate is out of the ballpark and has been justly labeled the East
Asian Miracle. Their experience is far more relevant to modern development strategies than the
eighteenth century experiences of England.

Not a single Nobel Prize has been awarded to an East Asian economist. Instead, it is deeply ironic that
Milton Friedman, the prophet of the free market, received the Nobel Prize. Policies designed and
supported by him were implemented to the last detail over a period of twenty years by a group of
economists known as the “Chicago boys” under General Pinochet in Chile. Despite Friedman’s repeated
assurances that these would bring about an economic miracle, Chile experienced high unemployment,
sharp increase in income inequalities and poverty, expansion of multinationals at the expense of
domestic industry, and a highly erratic economic performance. The Economist, a magazine which
ardently supports free market policies, had to confess that the “hair of the Chicago boys has gone grey,
waiting for the free market to give results.” Pinochet eventually fired the Chicago boys.

A similar disaster occurred in Russia, as a result of the implementation of Friedman’s ideas. After the
collapse of communism, there was widespread agreement on the need for a transition to free market
policies. The debate was only between the gradualists and those in favor of a rapid transition. Supported

92
by IMF, the “shock treatment” party won out, and implemented a sudden shift to free market policies.
As a result, production in Russia fell by 50% in one year. In an economy previously able to feed its
population, extreme poverty, hunger and starvation occurred on a large scale, accompanied by the
creation of a new small group of billionaires.
Instead of looking to those responsible for numerous crises big and small, including the recent global
financial crisis, wouldn’t we be better advised to consult those few countries, including China, which
have been success stories of development over the past few decades?

6. Social Revolutions in the West

Published date: 07-7-2010 (The Express Tribune)
As a teenager in the USA in the post-Hippie 70’s, I was unaware of the broad sweep of the social
revolutions taking place around me. These same revolutions, which completely changed the structure of

93
Western societies, are in their initial phases in Pakistan. It is therefore important to look at the
outcomes of these, so as to be able to make informed choices.

In a college class, we read and discussed an essay entitled “The Virtue of Selfishness.” The author, Ayn
Rand, argued that contrary to traditional beliefs, selfishness was a good thing. At that time, the majority
of the students in my class were against this idea, though there was a minority that was boldly and
shockingly in favor.

This same sermon was preached from many pulpits. In our Economics classes, we learnt that man is
basically selfish, and that ruthless competition leads to efficient economic outcomes. In Philosophy, we
learnt that man is free to choose without constraints posed by society, tradition or religion. Those who
are brave and intelligent seize the opportunities offered by life, and are not bound by morals,
conventions and tradition. The message of psychologist Freud was widely understood to mean that
society creates “inhibitions” against certain types of behavior. The path to perfect happiness lies in
removing these inhibitions, and learning to act according to our inner desires, even if society does not
approve. These revolutionary philosophies were translated into popular language by bestsellers like
“Looking out for Number 1,” which argued that it was our prime duty to look after our own selfish
interests. Courses in “assertiveness training” taught people how to go after what they wanted, without
being polite and considerate as society demanded.
In a discussion in today’s classes in the USA, there would be none to argue the case for generosity
against selfishness. Stodgy old-fashioned traditions have been completely routed by the modern ideas
of “hedonism” and “individualism.” Hedonism is the idea that we do not acknowledge any obstacles to
the pursuit of pleasure, power, and profits – aptly summarized as “All is fair in love and war.”
Individualism encourages us to pursue personal goals even when they conflict with community and
social interests.
It is impossible to cover the full effects of these social revolutions, which have impacted all dimensions
of human lives. I will look briefly at just one dimension: the family unit. The nature of society depends
crucially on whether children are taught to be caring, compassionate and social or ruthless individualists.
What is currently being taught is reflected in Josephson Institute survey showing rates well over 30% of
theft, cheating, and lying among high school teenagers in 2008. Similarly, current statistics on alcohol,
drugs and sex among youth in western societies are frightening.
Granted the license by society, while youngsters were busy pursuing pleasure, sober minds were aware
of the tremendous damage being done. There were many efforts to “save the family” by many different
groups using different strategies. However, anti-family forces proved too strong.

There are dire consequences of following lifestyles made to appear so attractive in Hollywood movies.
The acids, which dissolve communities and families, are making progress in Pakistan. It is time to take
notice, and take preventive measures before it is too late.

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V: Pathways to Progress

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Given the diagnosis of the problems we are facing, how can we move to solve them? This section of the
book spells out strategies, which may be useful as we seek to rebuild Islamic Societies on the patterns
shown to us by the Prophet Mohammad S.A.W. Our contention is that the message of Islam is perfect
and complete, and not in need of supplementation for today’s needs.

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1. Re-building an Islamic Society
1. Introduction

Islam came as a stranger, and has again become a stranger.

The society that came into existence following the spread of Islam had no resemblance to the pre-
Islamic Arab society (Jahiliyya), nor any to the Persian and Roman societies, which came under Islamic
rule. During the Jahiliyya, the Arabian people had savage and barbaric customs including burying their
own daughters alive, and killing each other for trivial matters. The most significant event in human
history is the transformation of these people into paradigms of civilized behavior – the Quran praises
them as those who feed others while they themselves are hungry. This miraculous effect of the training
of the Prophet Muhammad *s.a.w.+, the embodiment of God’s mercy to all the worlds, is desperately
needed as the current times bear a close resemblance to the Jahiliyya. Counterparts to all evils of the
Jahilliya, often exceeding the savagery and barbarism of the ancient Arabs, can easily be found in the
modern world1.

Islam has become a stranger in that modern Muslim societies have no similarity to the ideal society
depicted in Islamic teachings and created and demonstrated as a living reality by the Prophet s.a.w. and
his followers. In all domains of life, the dominant models are those derived from the West. All over the
Muslims world, the vast majority of political systems, judicial systems, social welfare systems,
educational systems, and patterns of culture reflect to varying degrees the influence of the colonial era,
during which the West ruled over more than 90% of the Muslims. Even purely Islamic institutions like
the Madrassahs, the Masajid and the Awqaf, which formed the core institutions of Islamic societies, are
but pale shadows of their original Islamic forms.

The first step to a revival and rebuilding of the Islamic forms is to strengthen the faith of the Muslims,
and to create a desire for Islam in the hearts of people. Without this critical step, no effort can succeed.
Syed Ahmad Shaheed was heartbroken when his lieutenants appointed to enforce the Shari’ah in the
Muslim areas under his control were killed by Muslims who were more attached to their local culture
than to Islam. Similar efforts to re-establish Islamic ways all over the Islamic world have floundered
because of the lack of preparation of the ground: Muslims resist these efforts and Allah T’aala
withdraws his help due to the conflict among Muslims. It is the grace and mercy of Allah T’aala that He
has inspired the movement of Tableegh and made it grow to be by far the largest and most universal
movement for the revival of the faith in the Ummah. He has made it the cause of the strengthening of
faith, which has led to widespread awareness that as Muslims we are living in very un-Islamic ways. The
desire to replace the ways of the West with pure Islamic ways has led to many efforts by many people
and groups in many different departments of life. Unfortunately, successful efforts have been few and
limited, while failures have been many. Our goal in this article is to analyze the causes of failure and to
suggest new methods, which may lead to more success in the struggle to re-establish Islamic ways.

2. Evolution Versus Revolution

1
This includes the burying of living children. In context of the confession by Susan Smith that she put her two
children in a car and drowned them in John D Long Lake circa 1996, it was reported that more than a 1000 similar
cases occur every year – see, for examp le, “Mothers who kill their children.”

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There are two main lines of thought among Muslims regarding methods to be used to move from our
current state to the ideal Islamic forms. For convenience, we may label these as the “evolutionary” and
the “revolutionary” approach. We will describe the form of these efforts and explain briefly why we do
not expect that either of the two will succeed. Then we will describe a third way, from which we hope
that the desired outcomes may emerge.

The evolutionary approach is to start with existing social, political and financial structures, and modify
them gradually, in a step-by-step way, to bring them into conformity with Islam. The revolutionaries
propose to tear down the existing structures completely, and build a new Islamic system from the
foundations. Perhaps paradoxically, both groups have sound and strong arguments in their favor and
against the other group. We discuss this in greater detail below.

There are many arguments in favor of the evolutionary approach. It is practical and immediate. We do
not have to wait for, or organize for, the difficult and uncertain struggle required by a revolution. It is
certain that a struggle for power will be opposed, and violence, death, and disruption will result.
Especially within Islamic societies, revolutions will pit Muslims against Muslims, and this is extremely
repugnant to Islamic principles. Many fuqaha have preferred peace under less than ideal circumstances
than putting Muslim lives at risk in an internecine conflict. Instead, we work to transform institutions
gradually and peacefully, through cooperation and mutual understanding and tolerance for dissenting
points of view. This corresponds to the understanding of Islam as a middle way {A itdal, which avoids
extremism), and as a religion of peace.

Despite the strengths of the evolutionary argument, I find the revolutionary counter-arguments to be
persuasive and justified. The existing Western systems are not, despite appearances, ethically neutral. A
common confusion among the proponents of evolutionary approach is to mistake ethically neutral
Western inventions like the car, telephone, computers etc. with Western social institutions like banks,
legal and political systems, insurance, social security etc. They argue that just like Islam does not prevent
us from benefiting from Western technology; it places no obstacles to our adoption of Western
institutions, suitably modified by removing and replacing un-Islamic elements.

To oppose this idea, it is necessary to understand the historical background in which existing Western
institutions evolved. Briefly, as Europeans moved away from the religious values of Christianity, they
attempted to construct a heaven on Earth, to replace the Paradise they had lost. This required many
radical changes in their ways of thinking. Just one illustration is the transition from the Biblical idea that
“the love of money is the root of all evil” to Bernard Shaw who said that “the lack of money is the root
of all evil.” It was only when greed, avarice and the pursuit of wealth went from being evil and socially
disapproved to desirable and virtuous that it became possible for modern financial institutions to come
into existence. Banks promote the pursuit of wealth by the society as a whole, encourage the wealthy
to multiply their wealth instead of spending on socially worthwhile causes, and generally promote the
pursuit of luxury and indifference to the troubles of others. This was recognized and deplored by
Christians (who lost this and many other battles) during the process of the European transition from
their older systems to modern ones. The principles of self-interest and competition that underlie
Western financial systems are inimical to the development of cooperation and community harmony; see
Nelson (1969) The Idea of Usury: From Universal Brotherhood to Universal Other hood for a historical
study of the European experience.All of these ideas which lie at the heart of banking are in opposition to
Islam. While interest is helpful in promoting the prized Western values of competition and greed,
Western financial experts who have examined the issue in detail state correctly that banks can function

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on the basis of Islamic principles of profit sharing without difficulty. That is, just banning interest and
replacing it by Musharka will not change the spirit, nature and functionality of the Western banking.

Sixteenth century European society was based on Christianity and promoted cooperation, sacrifice of
individual pleasure for the social good, and emphasized the afterlife over the pleasures of this world.
The transition to secular thought led to the idea that each individual should be free to pursue his own
heaven on Earth, in whatever manner that suits him best, without regard for others. Social, financial,
political, judicial and educational institutions designed to help people achieve these goals came into
existence. These institutions form an interlinked system, which cooperate and sustain each other to help
a secular society pursue secular goals. This system cannot be modified in a gradual way to make it an
Islamic system. To understand this, consider a simplified example. Suppose we were to say that since
interest is banned, and banks are based on interest, let us just ban banks. Since banks form an integral
part of the Western system, the whole system would collapse upon removal of a key component.
Recognizing this led some Ulema to attempt to create a “substitute”. There is a lot of flexibility in the
Western system. By altering the shape of some of the transactions, the bank can be re -shaped into an
Islamic form, but the spirit of greed, pursuit of wealth, and indifference to others cannot be taken out. If
somehow we were to succeed in changing the spirit of the banking system, this would be equivalent to
actually destroying the utility of the bank to the Western system. A genuinely Islamic bank would not be
able to cooperate with the other elements of the Western systems and the system would collapse
exactly as it would if banking itself were banned.

Banking has been taken just as an illustration; the same difficulty arises in nearly all fields. As a second
example, consider reforming and Islamize political institutions. Western political institutions are all
designed around the fundamental idea of the nation-state. This idea of the nation-state is in direct
conflict with the idea of the Ummah.

When we accept the idea of working within the framework of the nation-state, we abandon the concept
of the Ummah, and no amount of gradual change can fix this problem. It is a Western assertion that
their institutions are ethically neutral and universally beneficial. They believe that they have achieved
the most advanced civilization and that all others must follow them. Muslims who accept this falsehood
see no harm in adopting these institutions, after patching up the un-Islamic elements. In fact, as we
have argued, foundations of these Western institutions are based on secular ideas and in opposition to
Islamic ideas. Furthermore these are mutually supporting, interlinked in complex ways, and designed to
achieve goals, which are in opposition to Islamic values. It appears virtually impossible to modify this
system to achieve goals in direct opposition to those for which institutions have been designed.

On the basis of this argument, it would seem that we have no choice but to implement a
revolutionary approach. We must tear down the entire Western system, and rebuild an Islamic
system from the ground up. Nonetheless, there are serious difficulties with a revolutionary
approach as well. The most important difficulty, which will be discussed in greater detail in the next
section, is that we do not have functional models for a genuine Islamic system. It is not enough to
say that we must implement the Quran and Sunnah – concrete details of how this is to be done
need to be spelled out. For reasons to be clarified, no one has a clear idea of how this can be done.
This can be illustrated by the experience of Afghanistan and Iran, both of whom succeeded in
creating an Islamic revolution. A critic of the Islamic system, Sohrab Behdad (1994) writes about Iran
that
Similar to other utopias, the Islamic ideal world would be a just and humane society, without the exploitation,
domination, alienation, and other social ills that have afflicted the contemporary capitalist and socialist societies.

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[However, in practice, the Iranian revolution did not succeed in creating such a system.] Frustrated by conflicts
between the Parliament and the Ulema, one of the followers of Khomeini said: “Ten Years after the Islamic
Revolution, [we] ask you … to present to the world the unadulterated Muhammadan Islamic view on economics.”
In June 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini died, unable to define his version of Islamic economic order. It has become
apparent that an Islamic economic system is not capable of presenting a viable social alternative.

In a similar way, even though they were free to choose whatever system they wanted, there were no
functional and practical models for an Islamic financial system, which could be implemented by the
Taliban. The Islamic government in Sudan is groping towards Islamic models, but there is no clarity on
the desired outcome. Thus experience demonstrates that even a revolution w ould not succeed in
getting us to an Islamic system. In the next section, we explain the source of this difficulty and suggest a
way around it.

3. The Ideal Islamic System

Because the spirit of the Western institutions is secular, changing their form to achieve conformity with
the Islamic law will not serve our purposes. Even more surprisingly, our own past will not provide us
with adequate guidance for the difficult task which faces us. Even though we can find a complex of
Islamic institutions in our past, which are infused with the Islamic spirit, the modern times are so
different in terms of their needs and requirements that the concrete shape of the required Islamic
institutions will not resemble those which existed in our past. Our problem resembles that which the
Jews faced when they decided to use Hebrew as the national language of Israel. The language existed
only in books and there were no living speakers of the language. No one knew the correct
pronunciations of the words, and there were no words in the ancient language for many of the objects,
which had assumed importance in contemporary life. The Jews invented the words and the
pronunciations and overcame many other problems required to bring a dead language to life. In this
section, we spell out the nature of the task facing us, which is similar but substantially more difficult.

The discovery of the “Genizeh documents,” – which is the same as “Janazah” – in a cemetery in Cairo
has led to very important insights about the history of the period 300-800 Hijri or 950-1350 A.D. All sorts
of papers containing religious terms were buried out of respect for the names of God. These include
documents related to trade and commerce over this time period. These documents show the existence
of an extensive network of trade from Spain to China centred around the Muslim empires. The
framework and basis of this trade was the Hanafi law and involved Islamic methods of risk sharing
finance. Muslim invented methods in conformity with Islamic law, which created the possibility of global
commerce. Historians who have studied the era have called it the “age of the commercial revolution,”
and argued that these Muslim innovations created the basis for the capitalist system, which later
emerged in Europe. These Islamic methods for international commerce were destroyed by a series of
large shocks, which included the crusades, Mongol invasions and destruction of Baghdad, and the
bubonic plague. The international Muslim framework of trade never recovered from these shocks. With
the rise of European power, Islamic methods and institutions for international commerce were replaced
by primitive forms of the current capitalist interest based institutions.

The modern Western institutions for education, trade, politics, commerce, and social interactions
evolved out of roots planted on the basis of a secular framework of thought. These started from
primitive beginnings and gradually became more complex and developed linkages in response to
historical needs. A much more advanced framework of Islamic institutions centered on masajid, awqaf,
judicial and political structures was destroyed by various historical events, and went out of existence in

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the colonial era. Had these institutions remained in existence, they would have evolved to cope with the
complexities of the modern era. In many arenas, the Ummah faces situations, which have no historical
precedent. This is why it would not be sufficient for us to rediscover the Islamic institutions of the past,
although it would be helpful in providing a basis on which to build. Just as a language evolves and
develops new vocabulary and literature, and acquires depth and complexity to cope with new situations,
so our ideal Islamic institutional framework would have developed over the six hundred years that have
passed since the Islamic domination of the globe. To compete effectively with modern Western
institutions, we need to start from Islamic bases and imaginatively provide the depth and complexity
that would have occurred due to developments that would have been required over six hundred years.
This accounts for the difficulty of the task, which we face.

To summarize, the revolutionaries underestimate the difficul ties facing us. The capitalist system as a
whole cannot be affected by making small changes in minor areas to some pieces of the system. The
task requires changing all systems together in a co-ordinate way. Failure to do this is giving a bad name
to the efforts of Islamization. Our elders claimed correctly that an Islamic system would provide justice,
and a cure to the many evils of the dominant capitalist systems. However, the small and piecemeal
changes we are making have no such effect, and critics argue that, despite our claims, we have nothing
to offer. The revolutionaries have the right instinct that we need to build from scratch. However, neither
party has a clear idea of what needs to be done. The revolutionaries fail to realize that Islam builds on a
ground that is currently un-opposed. These are the dimensions on which we need to work not the ones
where we face political resistance from opposing forces. Therefore, there is no need to make a
revolution. We need to prepare the ground by changing ourselves. If we bring about the required
internal changes, then Allah T’aala will change our conditions in accordance with His promise:

13:11 Verily, God does not change men's condition unless they change their inner selves;

3. The Third Way

If Western systems cannot be modified to serve our purpose, and a revolution to put in place ancient
Islamic institutions will not work, what can be done to create an Islamic society? As the ayat 13:11 cited
above says, the first task is to change ourselves by creating the desire to live in a society governed by
Islamic values. We have a long list of failures of efforts to impose Islamic structures by force on an
unwilling people. This essay is addressed only to those who wish to live in a purely Islamic society and
are looking for ways to bring this about. I do not seek to convince those who are doubtful about the
value of such efforts that Islam has a lot to offer. Changing the hearts of doubters must be done in the
traditional pattern, the Sunnah of all the prophets, whi ch is the invitation to the good. This will
eventually lead to creation of a living model of Islam, which will be the most powerful invitation.

In all areas of life, we need to create Islamic alternatives to existing institutions. To begin with, we must
start with small fledglings, seeds of the future system to come. As these newly planted institutions gain
strength and grow, they will begin to support each other. The sequencing of our efforts must be
carefully planned. Some of the institutions are robust and can survive and thrive on their own, while
others will work only when the environment has become sufficiently favorable. Only after a sufficient
amount of growth has occurred will we be able to address the issue of what is to be done with existing
Western systems with which we will not interfere in the initial stages. Below I will describe the various
types of efforts that we need to make along different dimensions. Before doing so, note that because of
the radical novelty of Islamic ideas, we will not be able to offer convincing proof to skeptics that the new

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ideas we are trying to bring into the world will work. We will rely on Allah and have Tawakkul that he
will be sufficient for all our needs. Allah T’aala has promised to show us ways out of difficulties, which
we cannot even conceive of or calculate. That is why we cannot describe precisely what will grow out of
the seeds that we plant today. We cannot make a timetable or a flowchart or provide a precise schedule
of steps. Rather, in the way similar to the deliverance of the Bani Israel by Musa, when the spiritual
preparations have been done than Allah T’aala will part the waters and create a way for us out of
slavery.

This does not mean that we do not engage with the world. In fact we engage with the world in the best
possible way, but this engagement is a means to seeking our path to Allah. In accordance with his
promise that

(29:69) But as for those who strive hard in Our cause -We shall most certainly guide them onto paths that lead
unto Us: for, behold, God is indeed with the doers of good.

Allah T’aala will guide us if we struggle with this world in the right manner. Below we provide a sketch of
some of the important areas of our lives in which we need to struggle to bring about the changes
required to put them into conformity with Islamic ideals. The sketch and the forms are tentative, since
Islam emphasizes the struggle, and the feelings in the heart with which the struggle is carried out:

Q6:162 Say: "Behold, my prayer, and (all] my acts of worship, and my living and my dying are for God [alone],
the Sustainer of all the worlds,

In the process of the struggle, Allah T’aala will guide us to the concrete forms of social structures and
institutions that are needed to express the spirit of Islam in the modern world. In this section we discuss
four fundamental principles, which should guide our efforts to change to Islamic ways. The principles are
distilled from the teachings of Islam and also from the ways in which the existing institutions di ffer most
from the Islamic teachings.

Equality: All are equal in the sight of Allah, except by the virtue of Taqwa. This radical message needs to
be implemented in all dimensions of our lives. It is a teaching of Islam that slaves are to be housed,
clothed and fed on equal terms with the owner of the slaves. This means that servants, employees and
subordinates must be treated with utmost respect as equals. Implementation of this message requires
restructuring ways of working together for common goals. The standard command and control
structures of un-Islamic firms and institutions cannot be used within an institution based on equality. A
living example of the type we are seeking occurs within Tableegh, where thousands of people work
together to run what is perhaps the biggest organization in the world, serving millions of Muslims
worldwide. No one receives a salary, but all work together in a hierarchical structure. It is sometimes
argued that this type of structure can only work within purely religious organizations. In fact, it is a duty
for Muslims to ensure that all our activities are purely religious; once we learn how to convert our
organizations and institutions from profit seeking activities to God seeking activities, we will also learn
about the structures suitable to such activities.

Cooperation: The Western paradigms are based on the idea that there are no common goals in a secular
society. Therefore cooperation is to be purchased. The servant, employee or subordinate sells his labor
for money and does not share in the output. In Islamic paradigm, we will only engage in work, which is
socially beneficial – trade in goods or services, which are harmful to society is Haraam. For socially
beneficial products, all employees will participate in the reward from the benefits of the work. Thus the

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sweeper of the masjid or madrassa makes the intention of earning the reward for the activities of the
enterprise. The idea of cooperative effort for a joint enterprise to serve society as a means to earn the
pleasure of Allah leads to radically different structures for all social institutions. The idea that the “King”
is actually a servant of the people [which is even now at least verbally acknowledged in the title
“Khadim-ul-Harmain” in Arabia+, the ‘boss’ is responsible for the welfare of all the employees, and that
the entrepreneur, laborer and provider of funds are all equal partners in a joint enterprise to serve the
Ummah and conform to the nature of the Islamic institutions.

Social Responsibility: As a society, we are collectively responsible for the needs of all those who cannot
provide for themselves. It was in recognition of this responsibility that the first hospitals, orphanages,
and facilities for travelers came into existence in the Islamic world. Umar r.a. said that if necessary, he
would pool the resources of all to ensure that basic needs were met. Western societies put no limits on
Israf and Tabzeer, even in presence of unmet basic needs. As a result, 28 million households were
reported to have faced hunger and food insecurity in 2006 in the USA. While the principle of
responsibility is widely acknowledged, the practice is very deficient within the Islamic world. We have all
been influenced by western teachings, which encourage us to spend excess on luxuries, rather than
social welfare as recommended by the Quran:

And they will ask thee as to what they should spend [in God's cause]. Say: "Whatever you can spare." In this
way God makes clear unto you His messages, so that you might reflect

The understanding that money in excess of one’s needs should be spent on the hungry and the
uneducated, and that this is Farz-e-kifayah, would transform Islamic societies.

Local Action: A major obstacle to change has been implicit acceptance of a western idea regarding
collective action. In a secular society, different people are assumed to have different religions and
conflicting goals, so all collective action is left up to the government. Many Islamic thinkers have
followed suit, and suggest that social change can only come after we capture the government.
Historically, in Islamic societies, individuals and small groups have been the agents of change. A vast
network of social welfare institutions was organized on a purely voluntary basis by individuals. Islam
requires every individual to take care of his neighbors, and the worship of a rich man is not acceptable if
his neighbor is hungry. Similarly, the educated and pious are responsible to spread what has been given
to them by Allah to their neighbors. For example, the prophet s.a.w. upbraided the Ash’ari tribe for not
educating and training neighboring tribes with less knowledge. If every educated man considers it his
responsibility to spread his knowledge, and every rich man considers it his responsibility to share his
wealth with the needy, local actions by them will cause global change in Islamic society.

Islam is very strongly process-oriented rather than outcome oriented. Misunderstandings regarding this
issue have led to many wrongly directed efforts by Muslim groups. The Quran encourages the rich to
spend on the poor and to encourage others to spend on the poor – this will develop compassion and
generosity, and create an ethos of giving and community feeling within the society. If one mistakes the
intention of the command to be ‘helping the poor,’ one might advocate forcibly taking from the rich and
giving to the poor if the rich do not give voluntarily – several Muslim authors have fallen into this trap.
However, forcible policies will not achieve the desired ends of harmony, mutuality and community
feeling between the rich and the poor. In general, the poor will not have the power to enforce such
redistribution. In cases that they do (like the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution) class
conflict, hatred, and injustice will result.

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The basic idea that Islam is concerned with is what is going in inside the hearts of people, rather than
the gross physical outcomes, is expressed clearly in the following Ayah:

(Q22:37) It is neither their meat nor their blood that reaches Allah. it is your piety that reaches Him

Because the goal is to change the hearts of the people, the struggle has to be carried out by individuals
locally. Islamic history bears witness to the effectiveness of this strategy for social transformation on
many occasions.

4. Need for Fresh Thinking in Secular Domains

At the time of Greek invasion of Turkey, a Turkish soldier went to the grave of a famous Sufi saint who was also
known for his skills on the battlefield. He addressed him as follows: “O Shaikh, the Kuffar are invading our lands.
Please rise up and help us!” The spirit of the Shaikh rose from the grave and slapped the soldier hard in the face.
“You ask for help from the dead to fight the living? You must fight your own battles, as we did ours!”
On many occasions in history, Muslims have faced unique situations, which had never arisen before.
They rose to the challenges and devised solutions in conformity with the spirit of Islam and adapted to
the circumstances. The political, economic and social structures, which came into existence with the rise
of Islam, had no parallels in the Jahiliyya, or in the un-Islamic societies of the past. Today we face
situations, which are unique, and have never before been faced by the Ummah. One group wishes to
modify Western solutions and make them Islamic. Because the spirit of Kufr is deeply embedded in the
western solutions to modern problems, this type of solution cannot work. Another group wishes to
destroy western institutions and replace them with Islamic ones by making a revolution. The problem
here is that the Islamic solutions that we need to devise require deep analysis and creative efforts at
Ijtihad; these solutions cannot be found by turning back the clock. Preliminary analysis shows that the
solutions lie in areas, which are not contested, so that there is no need to destroy institutions or to seize
power in order to implement these solutions. It is obvious to all that there is conflict between Islamic
ideals and current western institutions, which represent their solutions to modern political, economic
and social problems. A lot of Ijtihad is being undertaken to modify and bend the Shari’ah so as to
legitimize existing Western structures, or suitable modifications of these structures. There is no need to
modify the Shari’ah; rather, Ijtihad is needed in developing radical alternatives to current Western
institutions, which will embody the spirit of the Shari’ah. As an illustration, we present some ideas about
areas in which creative and out of the box thinking is required to find genuine Islamic solution to
problems being faced by Muslims today. Note that the forms to be presented are speculative; the actual
forms, which emerge may differ drastically from the ones sketched below. If recommended Islamic
processes for bringing about change in the hearts, and producing Taqwa are followed, then Allah T’aala
has promised to give us solutions from place we cannot foresee, and in ways we cannot calculate.
As a first example, consider the issue of suitable governance structures for Muslims. A lot of Muslim
political thinking takes for granted existing Western institutions of the nation-state, parliamentary
democracy, etc. etc. In fact, western political institutions and arrangements for governance are built on
secular premises, and are in direct conflict with Islamic arrangements.

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As Iqbal recognized:
In taza khudaon main bara sab say Vatan hay,
Jo pairahan iska hay who mazhab ka kafan hay
Having abandoned religion, Europeans were forced to seek some alternative basis for collective action.
They created a basis in the form of a nation. The process by which this idea of an “imagined community”
was created, and people were made to believe in it, has been studied by historians. In Islam, the basis
for unity is the Ummah, and local allegiances to tribes, languages, geographical entities are strongly
discouraged. Those Muslims who take existing nation states and western political structures such as the
multi-party systems, democracy, voting, parliaments, etc. as given, and seek to build Islamic governance
on top of these structures are doomed to disappointment. These western institutions cannot be
modified to become Islamic. On the opposite extreme, some Muslims seek to destroy existing political
structures, and replace them with Islamic institutions, principally Islamic Law and the Khilafah. While
these are laudable goals, these groups have not given enough attention to devising effective strategies
appropriate for current conditions. They seek to blindly imitate the past, arguing that these were the
structures used by the Khulfae Rashideen, without recognizing the need for changes required for
adaptations to current conditions. Many such groups have tried very hard and sacrificed many Muslim
lives without achieving the desired results. This is because our ancient political structures were ideally
suited to their own circumstances but modern societies differ substantially from earlier ones.

The key to progress is to realize that the solutions we seek do not exist in any of the western paradigms,
which are built on the denial of religion, and elevation of “science and reason” to a sacred status on the
pattern of the Mu’tazila. An even bigger difficulty is that these solutions cannot be found in our past; our
ancestors did a tremendous job of struggling with their own problems and finding their own solutions –
they will get the reward for their efforts and we will not be asked about what they used to do. We must
solve our own problems in our own ways. The spirit of Islam will guide us, and if we follow the Islamic
processes for change, then appropriate forms will emerge, which will not resemble anything in the
West, nor will they resemble institutions from our own history. This is exactly what the early Musl ims
did; they translated the spirit of Islam into concrete forms by creating orphanages, hospitals, postal
services, and many other institutions to provide governance and social services, which had no parallels
in the Arab past, nor in the institutions of Roman and Persian civilizations at the time. We must replicate
their achievements: we will struggle to change the world as a means to achieving inner spiritual
transformation and closeness to God in the spirit of the Ayah 26:69 cited earlier. If instead, we simply try
to imitate without thinking, we will be deserving of the reproach of Iqbal that:
Thay to aba wo tumhare hi mugar tum kya ho –
hath pur hath dharay muntazir farda ho.

6. Recreating the Ummah

How can we structure political institutions in a way that is pleasing to Allah? To think about this question
is worship, and to struggle to bring about such structures is to be among the “wallazeena jahadoo
feena” for whom Allah has promised guidance to his paths. This view permits reconciliation of the “Top
Down” and “Bottom Up” approaches to rebuild Islamic society, which have divided Muslims. We engage
in the (top down style) struggle to transform all dimensions of our lives (political, economic, and social)
as a means to the inner spiritual transformation required by the bottom up approach.

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Thus there is no conflict between the two approaches. Before thinking about strategies, it is essential to
have clarity about Islamic goals for political struggles. The desired outcome is the creation of solidarity
within the Ummah as a whole. Our traditions state that the Ummah is like one body, so that hurt to any
part is felt by the whole. Many verses of the Quran testify to the importance of solidarity among the
Muslims:

(Q3:103) And hold fast, all together, by the rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among
yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah's favor on you; for ye were enemies and He joined your hearts in
love, so that by His Grace, ye became brethren;
Failure to create this solidarity, and fighting among ourselves, will lead to weaknesses and allow our
enemies to triumph over us.

(Q8:46) And obey Allah and His messenger, and dispute not one with another lest ye falter and your strength
depart from you; but be steadfast! Lo! Allah is with the steadfast

It is in the light of these commands that we must devise methods to rebuild the Ummah. It is a grievous
error to take the existing western structures of nation-states as given and start from this as a basis for
Muslim political action. By creating artificial divisions among men, and creating an ideology, which
makes it desirable to die for ones nation, this idea has been responsible for a tremendous amount for
strife, violence and bloodshed in the world. In addition, Muslims have been specifically and deliberately
been divided into nations by enemies, as a part of the strategy to divide and conquer, and to foster
conflicts among Muslims. For example, after the Russian conquest of portions of the Usmani Khilafat,
the Muslims were divided into many different nations like Circassians, Georgians, Uzbeks, etc. Histories
were written and traditions invented to create a feeling of allegiance to ones geographical region and
language, to fight against the Muslim concept of Ummah, which unites all Muslims. Similar efforts were
made to promote nationalism within Islamic countries. The word “Turk” meant villager, and carried the
connotation of ignorant, coarse, etc. The Turkish people identified themselves as Muslims and felt
themselves to be part of the Ummah. An effective campaign was carried out to popularize the word
“Turk” *ne mutlu Turkum diyene+ and to replace the pan-Islamic feelings of the people by nationalistic
sentiments. European sentiments of nationalism based on racism, language, geography were absorbed
by the Turks and eventually resulted in bad blood between Turks and Kurds who had lived in peace and
harmony as Islamic brothers for centuries. Nationalistic feelings and racist or li nguistic allegiances
(which were non-existent among Muslims) have been created and have led to a substantial number of
conflicts among fellow Muslims in the twentieth century.

Islam teaches us to value the bond of religion over that of blood, geography and language.

Q11:46 He said: O Noah! Lo! he is not of thy household; lo! he is of evil conduct, so ask not of Me that
whereof thou hast no knowledge. I admonish thee lest thou be among the ignorant

On many occasions in Islamic history, Muslims have shown that they have valued religious bonds over
blood, geography and language. Today our failure to do so is causing tremendous damage to the
Ummah. When we start political action at the level of the nation, we have already lost the battle for
building genuinely Islamic institutions.

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Islam provides us not only with the vision, but with methods and institutions designed to facilitate
achieving this vision. How can we work to create the solidarity within the Ummah, and the possibility for
collective action by the Ummah, which is the goal of our political struggles? The methodology for
collective decision making is “shoora” and the institutions for creating community are the Masajid, the
Jum’a namaz, and the Hajj. How we can use these to achieve Islamic political forms is described in
greater detail below.

6.1 Distinctive Islamic Methodology for Decision Making

The fundamental political problem is group decision-making in the absence of consensus and in the
presence of conflicting interests. The main process of decision- making in an Islamic society is shoora or
consultation. This was the practice of the Prophet Mohammad (s.a.w.) and is explicitly mandated in the
Quran, which describes believers as being

(Q42:38) Those who hearken to their Lord, and establish regular Prayer; who (conduct) their affairs by mutual
Consultation; who spend out of what We bestow on them for Sustenance;

Despite explicit injunctions that Muslims decide their affairs by Shoora, this has been largely forgotten
by the Ummah. So much dust has gathered on the books describing the methodology for shoora that
some Muslim political thinkers confuse it with democracy. Because it has fallen out of practice, many
controversies over how it should be done have arisen. It is a great favour of Allah to have revived the
practice of Shoora in the context of the worldwide movement of Tableegh. A detailed understanding of
the mechanism can only be understood by experiencing it in action; theoretical discussions are not
adequate. The main thing to understand is that the mechanism is designed to create consensus and
unity in the hearts of the Muslims. There are many different principles for shoora, which help in arriving
at this outcome. While dissent, free discussion, and debate on merits of alternative views are
encouraged during the process of shoora, the community is urged to unite on the final decision taken:

Q3:159) It is part of the Mercy of Allah that thou dost deal gently with them Wert thou severe or harsh-
hearted, they would have broken away from about thee: so pass over (their faults), and ask for (Allah's)
forgiveness for them; and consult them in affairs (of moment). Then, when thou hast taken a decision put thy
trust in Allah. For Allah loves those who put their trust (in Him)

These methods for decision making contrast with European political mechanisms, which assume the
existence of irreconcilable conflicts in a secular society. Manicas (1989) writes in this context that “the
only thing, which people have in common is 'the government' and, paradoxically, their private
interests!” and describes the history of the transition from the traditional polis to the modern societal
form of political organization in Europe.Since consensus cannot be hoped for, struggles and conflicts of
interest are to be resolved in favour of the majority. The European political system is a model of a
perpetual battle between different subgroups, where the emphasis is on providing means for resolving
these battles within the framework of a legal system perceived to be fair. These models are based on
the historical experience of Europe, with perpetual warfare among differing Christian sects. Islam aims
much higher than European models can conceive. Unity among Muslims is prized above all the treasures
of the world:

(Q8:63) And (moreover) He hath put affection between their hearts: not if thou hadst spent all that is in the
earth, couldst thou have produced that affection, but Allah hath done it: for He is Exalted in might, Wise.

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Furthermore, the previous verse suggests that this unity will also protect us from the treachery and
deception of the enemies. In shoora, all members are encouraged to think about what is best for the
group as a whole, in preference to the interests of individuals or subgroups. Implementing shoora on a
large scale in Islamic societies requires training individuals to put group interests above personal
interests. This is what was achieved by the training of the Prophet s.a.w. in the Islamic community, and
this was a key to their success. Islam has many mechanisms for achieving this goal, which the Quran
exhorts:

(Q49:10) The Believers are but a single Brotherhood: So make peace and reconciliation between your two
(contending) brothers; and fear Allah, that ye may receive Mercy.

(Q59:9) But those who before them, had homes (in Medina) and had adopted the Faith,- show their affection
to such as came to them for refuge, and entertain no desire in their hearts for things given to the (latter), but
give them preference over themselves, even though poverty was their (own lot). And those saved from the
covetousness of their own souls,- they are the ones that achieve prosperity.

This shows how Muslims are urged to resolve disputes and to give preference to others over
themselves. When consultation is done with these sentiments, it creates unity and community feelings,
which is a priceless treasure, and brings the help of Allah. Existing political institutions, which we have
copied from the west create divisions among Muslims, encourage struggles and vilification of others,
create bad feelings between the victors and vanquished in political struggles. These western methods
cannot be adapted for use in Muslim societies. Trying to modify them or adopt them, or working within
their frameworks, is harmful to the efforts to bring genuinely Islamic methods of governance into
existence.

6.3 The Institutional Structure

Islam has not only provided us with mechanisms to achieve unity, it has also provided a fully functional
institutional structure to enable us to realize this in a concrete fashion. At the heart of this structure is
the five times daily prayer of the Muslims. Many Ahadeeth show that men must make these prayers in
the Masjid. The masjid functions as a community center, where all local problems are resolved by
consultation among neighbors. Many traditions testify to this character of the masajid, as the cente r of
Muslim social activity at the local level. Hazrat Ayesha narrates that she saw soldiers from Abyssinia put
on a show of acrobatic skill, and martial arts, at the Medina Masjid. When the Prophet s.a.w. walked
into the masjid on one occasion, he saw two Halqa’s, one engaged in Zikr and another engaged in
Ta’leem. One of the bitter enemies of Muslims, who had done a lot of damage, was captured and
chained to one of the pillars in Medina Masjid. After observing the activities in the Masjid for three days,
he converted to Islam. Commentators write that this event is reported because three days was an
unusually long time. The atmosphere of the masjid was such that most visitors would convert to Islam in
a much shorter period.

It was prophesied that “Only the name of Islam and only the script of the Quran” will remain to the
Muslims. Just like our daily prayers have become rituals, instead of the intense engagement with Allah
that they are meant to be, so our masajid have become merely buildings of bricks and stones, and not
the center of local Muslim action. The potential power of this institution is shown by the Iranian
revolution, where the sermons delivered at the masajid mobilized and united the whole nation, and was
central to bringing it about. Today, by the grace of Allah, the effort is being made to revive this
institution and to turn masjid into living centers of activity for the Deen on a 24 hour basis. In many

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masajid all over the world, daily mashwera, and activity to motivate the neighbors to spend more time
on the Deen is taking place on a regular basis. This is the seed from which an Islamic structure can
emerge at the local level, which will be basis of global activity. Binding the hearts of the people together
at the local level requires getting neighbors to know each other, to learn to cooperate, and to act
collectively in the common interest of Islam, sacrificing personal concerns when needed for the sake of
the group. Current conditions are such that the majority of those who pray together regularly for years
in the same masjid recognize the faces but do not know the names of their fellow worshippers. This
must be changed to re-vitalize the Ummah.

The second level of integration is provided by the Jum’a namaz, which is meant to bring together the
whole city. Current practice is such that virtually all the masajid are also used for Jum’a, contrary to the
original intent. Since very large populations and difficulties in travel make it impossible for there to be
one Jum’a for a city, we must modify the form of the institution to achieve the spirit. For example, we
could gather 5 to 10 or more masajid from a suitable locality at a single Jum’a. If even this seems
difficult, we could at least ask key representatives from each masjid to gather at a central location and
hold mashwera regarding the locality every Juma’a. Perhaps a monthly meeting could be arranged for
representatives from the entire city. This would provide us with the seeds of a distinctly Islamic
structure of governance, not to be found in the west. This type of structure is also not easily seen in
Islamic history, since the structures, which emerged were always a mix of ideal Islamic institutions with
practical compromises to historical situations. The Islamic methodology is to keep the ideal vision in
mind and work to bring it about. The actual forms, which will result cannot be predicted, but will emerge
as a result of the level of Ikhlas in our efforts and the decisions of Allah. On the night of the Mairaj, the
Prophet s.a.w. saw some threads going up to the Heavens and others coming down. On inquiry, Jibraeel
a.s. reported that it was the deeds of the Ummah, which were going up and the decisions of Allah, which
were coming down.

The third level of integration is provided by the Hajj, which brings representatives of the entire Ummah
together on an annual basis. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that when the Ummah was a living
entity, there was a lively trade of information and remedies for problems being faced by one segment of
the Ummah and solved via united efforts. This aspect of the Hajj has been forgotten. When
representatives of the entire Ummah meet, they should get together and discuss how to create better
ties, to promote understanding, cooperation, and take united action at the level of Ummah. Once there
is an annual meeting of representatives from all segments of the Ummah for the explicit purpose of
reviving the concept of the Ummah as a collective body with common interests and needs, Allah T’aala
will guide us to the ways of creating cooperative action in ways which we cannot calculate or imagine at
this time. In consultation, creative methods for promoting integration like migration, skills and student
exchanges, inter-marriages, open borders for Muslims, trade promotion, and many other issues would
come under discussion.

Today our thinking is constrained by Western frameworks for this type of activity, and we take action
using western style institutions and organizations, following western methodology. This is despite the
fact that Islam has furnished us with deeper insights on how to bring about social change, and given us
methods and institutions for this purpose, which we are currently ignoring. For those who have been
blessed with the knowledge of the Quran to look elsewhere for guidance is an extreme injustice, and is
the source of failure for many types of efforts to bring about change.

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7. Institutions for Justice

As discussed in the introduction, Islamic societies are far from Islamic ideals in nearly all dimensions of
our lives. Coordinated changes on all fronts are needed to bring about the transformation that Islam
calls for. It is impossible to discuss all of the work that is needed in the span of a brief article like the
present one. Our goal is to provide some illustrations of the style and methodology for a new way to
approach the problem of change. A key to the approach is the understanding that we struggle to change
the world in accordance with the orders of Allah in order to bring about an inner spiritual
transformation. Therefore, we measure the outcomes in terms of our own progress towards Allah, and
not in terms of visible impact on the world. We make the choice to travel the path to the Lord, and
struggle in Him so that He may guide us to his ways. A second crucial ingredient is to start with work on
areas where change is feasible, and possible for us to do as individuals, and then in small groups. We
move on to larger changes only after the ground is prepared. When there are large areas of ou r lives
where Muslims voluntarily choose the ways of the Kuffar in preference to the ways of the Prophet s.a.w.
then this must be the first target of reform. These general principles may be illustrated by methods to
bring Islamic Justice or the law of the Shari’ah into the lives of the Muslims, the topic of this section.

There are aspects of Islamic law for the enforcement of which we need control of the state apparatus.
However, there are also aspects for which all that is needed is people who desire to live by Islamic law.
Historical examples show numerous failures of attempts to force people to live by Islamic law, when this
desire is not present. Instead of following western methods of gathering votes to change the
constitution, we could work on implementing the Shari’ah in areas where there is no opposition or
restriction by the government. For example, we could try to ask all Muslims who enter into legal
contracts with each other to include a clause, which states that all disputes will be settled by binding
arbitration according to Islamic Law by suitably, trained Ulema.

To implement this vision, we will need to work simultaneously on two fronts. There is clear recognition
of the need to update the curriculum of the Madrassahs – the subject matter being taught fails to
address current social concerns of crucial importance in shaping Islamic societies.However, the
suggestions for reform, involving teaching sciences and computer skills, are based on western priorities
regarding knowledge. If we start courses developing the skills of applying the laws of shari’ah to current
trading transactions, and develop the personnel and institutions required to arrive at decisions of Islamic
law for settling trade disputes, this will develop the educational curricula of the madrassa in directions
which build on our strengths and are in conformity with our heritage. Similarly, the madrassahs would
be well placed to provide the basis for personnel and institutions, which would give Islamic quality
certifications, guarantee certain types of transactions and products, and provide similar Islamic services.

Cooperative insurance and Islamic methods for investment require a mindset, which is the opposite of
that developed in modern business schools, which makes it difficult to convert existing western
institutions to Islamic models. Providing madrassa students with sufficient training in modern
transactions will be necessary to enable them to adjudicate trade disputes, and may also provide the
seeds for launch of Islamic style trading institutions, which differ radically from western counterparts.
This type of preliminary work will develop the capacity to provide for an application of Islamic law on a
larger scale. Currently, we simply do not have the capacity to provide this service. If it was announced
that from tomorrow, all the laws of the land will be in conformity with the Shari’ah, we would not have
the personnel with the skills required to provide judicial decisions in the volume required.

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At the same time, we need to persuade people to resort to these newly created institutions for Islamic
Justice within the umbrella of the madrassa. Initially, our target audience will be very small. A small
number of committed Muslims trading with each other will agree to participate in this experiment. We
will use Quranic exhortations for Muslims to settle their affairs by referring them to the Prophet and
Allah. We will impress on the people that it is very reprehensible for Muslims to resort to courts based
on Christian or Secular law. Since our initial capacity to handle trade disputes will be small, the fact that
only a few will utilize this method will actually be to our benefit.

Once an Islamic model for settling trade disputes comes into existence, people will be attracted to t his
model because they will see the advantages over conventional courts. Islam emphasizes speedy
settlements, and also fairness and justice. Western systems of justice are adversarial in nature, with a
winner and loser. Islam seeks to find solutions acceptable to all, or at least those considered fair by all
parties. The difference between these two approaches can easily be illustrated by actual practice in
conventional western courts and by cases from our history.

In the US legal system, justice is an incidental by-product of a mediated struggle between opposing
interests. The American criminal defence system is an adversarial process with artificial boundaries,
rather than a pure search for truth.

The siege of Edirne illustrates the extremely high standards of Islamic justice. When supplies ran out, the
army proceeded to requisition the necessities from the entire population. However, the Qazi ruled that
the Kuffar who had paid Jizya had already paid for their defence and Muslims had no further claim on
their properties. Despite life and death consequences, the seized properties were returned to the non-
Muslims.

If we can achieve these standards of excellence, then people will flock to the newly found Islamic courts
for settling trade disputes initially, and other disputes at a later stage. Once the taste for Shari’ah
develops in the people, then a popular move to bring in the Shari’ah at a larger level will attract the
popular support necessary for its implementation.

8. Concluding Remarks

There are many signs that an Islamic revival is underway. Many Muslims are working on many different
fronts to bring about the changes, which are needed to transform our current societies to genuinely
Islamic ones. It would be our good fortune if Allah T’aala includes us among those who worked to bring
this about, and makes us among those who are the apparent causes of this change.

Inspired by the powerful vision of Islam, the early Muslims changed the course of history. They derailed
two powerful and ancient civilizations, and created a uniquely Islamic civilization the likes of which had
never been seen before. This endured for a thousand years, much longer than any other enterprise of its
kind. Among the many unique features of this civilization, one was that the conquests and empire were
motivated by the command of God to go and spread the good to the whole world (“Amr bil Maaroof.”)

Thi na kuch taigh zani apni hukumut kay liay

Sar bakaf phirte they kya dahr main daulat kay liay?

This stands in contrast to other empires built for exploitation of foreigners and the search for glory and
power. The many contributions that Islam has made to shaping human consciousness and all the world

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civilizations have been documented in many places; see for example Syed Abul Hassan Ali Nadwi’s book
The Gifts of Islam to World Civilizations. In the period of dominance of the West, these contributions
have been suppressed, but many recent books such as “The Theft of History” are now bringing them out
in the open.

All signs point to the impending decline of the West. The most fundamental institution, which shapes
society, is the family, where children receive instruction on what it means to be a human being and their
responsibilities towards society. Western worship of wealth, careers, luxury, and greed have destroyed
this institution so that large numbers of children growing up in the West are from broken families.
Infidelity has become so commonplace that the leaders admit to having affairs and illegitimate children
without provoking any serious censure. Children from broken homes do not experience the love of their
mothers or the protective environment necessary for the development of basic social skills and sense of
moral responsibility. The results are manifested in a recent large scale survey of high school children in
the USA in which 30% admitted to stealing from stores.

The decline and fall of the West will not be of help to us. The rise of Islam can only be accomplished by
our efforts to change ourselves and the help of Allah, which will accompany such efforts. We must rise
to challenge of finding bold and imaginative solutions to the multitude of problems currently facing all of
humanity. We must realize that our traditions and Quran offer us wisdom and guidance, which is
outside the repertoire of the West. As single example, the framers of the constitution of the USA
thought that it was too much to ask from a man to testify against himself, and protected him from this
possibility via the 5th Amendment. However Allah T’aala expects us to be just even to our enemies and
to provide testimony even if it goes against our personal interests and those of our kinfolk and friends.

4:135 O YOU who have attained to faith! Be ever steadfast in upholding equity, bearing witness to the truth
for the sake of God, even though it be against your own selves or your parents and kinsfolk. Whether the
person concerned be rich or poor, God's claim takes precedence over [the claims of] either of them. Do not, then,
follow your own desires, lest you swerve from justice: for if you distort [the truth], behold, God is indeed aware
of all that you do!

This standard of excellence is not conceived of in the Western canons. It was the job of the Prophet
s.a.w. to demonstrate standards of behavior, which exceeded the imagination of men, and this
demonstration made it possible for other to follow in his way. For example, the way that the Prophet
forgave sworn enemies who had done so much harm and personal torture of Muslims at the conquest
of Mecca has been an inspiration and model for Muslim armies through history. No other people can
offer similar examples. This time the same demand is being made of the Ummah as a whole. We must
rise to present standards of behavior, which are a model of excellence for all of humanity to follow. In
the past, our forefathers rose to this challenge and created a civilization and culture, which according to
Gibb “possesses a magnificent tradition of inter-racial understanding and cooperation. No other society
has such a record of success uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavors so many
and so various races of mankind.” The same opportunity awaits us:

Sabaq phir parh Sadaqat ka, Adalat ka , shujat ka

liya jaye ga tuj se kaam Duniya ke Amaamat ka"

May Allah give us the taufeeq to grasp this opportunity, to live and die for His sake, and to utilize this
short life to fulfill purpose for which He created us.

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2. On Islamic Economics
Published date: 10-06-2010 (The Express Tribune)

Modern financial institutions, instruments and their underlying philosophies clash with Islamic law in
many areas. For some time, both critics and supporters have thought that these Islamic laws were in
need of revision to bring them into conformity with the complexities of modern requirements of trade
and industry. Critics have been content with ridiculing the “archaic” law. Supporters have made
substantial efforts to provide “Islamic” equivalents of modern western financial institutions and
instruments. Many have been uneasy with these efforts, which often seem pointlessly convoluted ways
of imitating western ideas about finance. There is also the concern that Islamic laws are being stretched
beyond the breaking point to accommodate western forms.
The global financial crisis of 2008 has led to the radical realization that instead of being obstacles to
progress, the Islamic laws provide barriers against financial disaster. Many western commentators have
remarked that adherence to Islamic economic principles would have prevented this crisis. Challenges, a
French magazine, went so far as to say that the 7th century text of the Quran offered better guidance
than the Pope on financial matters.
It is amazing that our sacred texts, from the days when even the simple financial innovation of p aper
currency did not exist, offer guidance on how to prevent the more than hundred big and small financial
crises that occurred in the past century. Furthermore, they offer guidance on the architecture of a
system that would both be proof against such crises and provide a more fair and equitable income
distribution. The innovations, which are needed, are not in adapting Islamic law to modern institutions,
but in changing these modern institutions to bring them into conformity with the Islamic laws.
Islamic law prohibits the trading of debt. It was the trading of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)
which triggered the global financial crisis of 2008. Islamic law insists on clarity regarding the product and
the price as a condition for a valid sale. According to the famous financial wizard George Soros, complex
instruments like CDOs are “so esoteric that the risk involved may not be properly understood even by
the most sophisticated investors.”

Islamic law prohibits interest. There is obvious injustice in a system, which requires interest payments of
billions of dollars annually to wealthy countries from the heavily indebted poor countries, which cannot
afford to feed their own malnourished. The economic consequences of this injustice are apparent in the
numerous financial crises resulting from debt defaults in both rich and poor countries.
Islamic law prohibits gambling. An incredibly large proportion of financial transactions are pure gambles.
For example, while real international trade is only about $100 billion daily, foreign exchange
transactions amount to $ 4 trillion. Thus the vast majority of such transactions are purely speculative
gambles about the freely floating exchange rates.
The global value of financial derivatives was more than ten times the total GDP of the entire world in
2008, when the crisis occurred. On a micro level, the stock value of firms can be more than twenty times
the real on-the-ground value of the assets and revenues generated. The financial system creates an

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illusion of riches, which often collapses, causing distress and misery to millions. In contrast, Islam
requires every financial asset to be backed by a real asset. Western financial methods have created a
topsy-turvy world where financiers through juggling papers make tremendously more than the honest
laborers who work hard to produce industrial or agricultural products.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, many remarked on the need for radical reforms to solve
deepening global economic problems. Currently, producers of goods and services get only about 10% of
the total output while 90% goes to bankers and financiers. Applying Islamic laws would channel a far
bigger share in the output to the producers and laborers. It should be obvious that more incentives for
producers would lead both to greater production and greater wealth for those most in need as well as
most deserving of it. Islamic laws in the economic realm are explicitly designed to produce circulation of
wealth, alleviation of poverty, and equitable income distributi on. These Islamic laws require radical
reforms needed to remove the massive injustices created by the current economic system designed to
transfer wealth from the poor to the rich, both on an individual as well as the national level.

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3. Changing the World
Published date: 28-9-2010 (The Express Tribune)
For too long, we have been content to accept foreign analyses of our problems, instead of doing our
own thinking. The Eurocentric worldview defines deviation from European norms as a problem, and
advances towards European ideals as progress. According to this view, we must liberalize, modernize,
industrialize, and acquire good governance and democracy. To accomplish this, we need to promote the
English language as a medium of instruction in Science and Technology, as well as modern culture. We
need to educate our superstitious, ignorant and backward people, make Pakistan safe, attractive and
profitable for Western investors, etc. In short, we must do everything that competent administrators
working on behalf of the British Raj would do.

Thinking of problems of Pakistan in our own terms, instead of thinking about how to get Pakistan to
resemble England or USA, leads to dramatically different views about development. How can we
improve the quality of lives of the people of Pakistan, the majority of whom are poor, illiterate, and live
in rural areas or urban slums? This question is not even on the agenda of planners. Widespread globally
observed failures of World Bank and IMF prescribed Structural Adjustment Programs have led to
popular protests as well as changes in theorizing by professional economists. However, close analysis of
newly developed and recommended policies reveals that the mention of poverty, jobs, environment etc.
only provides a cover for public consumption. Like old wine in new bottles, strategies to be used for
these noble goals continue to focus on enabling multinationals to be able to operate securely, enforce
contracts, and repatriate profits.
Solutions to our problems lie in re-acquiring self-esteem and dignity shattered by colonization. The vast
majority of Pakistanis are warm, hospitable, generous and charitable people of integrity and honor,
trusting and trustworthy. This is a treasure beyond price in today’s world. Our natural resources lie not
in the coal mines of Thar, but in our Pakistani youth, which is capable of doing whatever we ask them to
do. The challenge facing us as a society is to inspire them with worthwhile and ambitious goals and
provide them with the means to facilitate the achievement of these goals.
In meeting this challenge, a formidable enemy is the dominant message being spread by Hollywood,
internet and other popular media. This glamorizes individualistic lifestyles, pursuit of pleasure, and
teaches contempt for traditions and community. This is extremely attractive to our young, who are
initially exhilarated at being freed from the stifling bonds of commitments and obligations to the entire
community. It is only in the long run that they come to realize the treasures that they have thrown away
for this short run freedom. Instead of life-time commitments of marriage and family, one has
relationships of uncertain duration and reliability even with the nearest and dearest. By the time we
realize the value of permanent lifetime commitments, which day-to-day events cannot shake, it is often
too late to rebuild social relations. Islam places a tremendous emphasis on “Sila-Rahmi,” which is to do
good to your relatives, even if they behave badly towards you.

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A lasting change requires building communities, which work together for change. Building communities
requires concern, compassion, cooperation, caring for others, self-sacrifice and service. While not
highlighted by popular media, these ideals are very much part of our traditions. The inspirational poetry
of Iqbal, Rumi, Saadi and others provide effective tools to combat the pursuit of individual pleasure.
Revolution begins at home. The key is to act as a model for others, and to become agents of change.
Instead of waiting for the world to become a better place, act to bring this about. Instead of talking
about how bad things are, talk about how you and I can change things for the better. Instead of being
spectators, become participants in the process of change. Given the abject poverty that exists in
Pakistan, every reader of this column can easily change ten lives dramatically. Do it.

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4. The Path to the Future
Published date: 17-10-2010 (The Express Tribune)
A recent LEAPS survey of education in rural Punjab finds that about 50% of the children drop out by the
end of class 3. Furthermore, the quality of education is so deficient that most third graders cannot read
a sentence in Urdu, recognize simple words in English or perform standard arithmetic operations of 3-
digit addition and subtraction. Since our children are our future, failure to invest in them is extremely
short sighted. Nonetheless, among the many problems discussed by planners, investment in primary
education has always been of low priority, despite massive and increasing illiteracy. The main reason
Pakistan has fallen far behind countries with far less in natural resources is that our policies have always
favored a small elite at the expense of the masses.

The root cause of this extreme bias in our development policies is the continuation of colonial political,
administrative and economic structures post-independence. These hierarchical structures were single
mindedly designed for efficient extraction of revenues from the colonies. Efficient command and control
from top down was built into them, but representation and participation of the public in the
government was not (which was the reason for the revolt of the American colonies). It is important to
note that these structures were manned by personnel educated to be “Indian in blood and color, but
English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” – indeed this was a crucial part of the
governance structure of the colonies.
After a brief interlude of sincere leadership, reins of the nation fell into hands of political parties who
found themselves at the head of a functional and efficient machine for extraction of revenues. Our
educational system continues the colonial policies of creating love and affinity for the West, and
contempt for both our heritage and the “Urdu-medium” native populace. Thus the English educated
elite class in power had no difficulty in continuing the colonial policies, and exploiting fellow countrymen
for self-enrichment. To this day, politics in Pakistan is largely about sharing revenues generated by ruling
Pakistan, rather than about providing growth, development, and services to the populace. The idea of a
government of the people, by the people and for the people remains a distant dream.
How can we act to bring this dream closer to realization? Unfortunately, both domestic and foreign
experts in economic development continue to repeat the same tired old mantras for salvation, which
have been tried and found wanting for over fifty years. The time is more than ripe for fresh, out-of-the
box thinking.
Investing in our large population, empowering and enabling them to participate in the process of growth
is far more effective than policies related to trade, taxes, privatization, liberalization, and the whole
economic toolkit of IMF and the World Bank. The most serious obstacle to this is that it would
substantially disturb existing power structures. Mahathir Mohammad overcame the class conflicts in
Malaysia by convincing the conflicting interest groups that all stood to gain substantially by pulling
together. They agreed to a smaller share of the pie, because they saw that the pie itself would grow

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much larger. A similar social compact is needed in Pakistan. If instead of fighting each other for a bigger
share of the dwindling pie, we cooperate, Pakistan has natural resources far beyond those available to
other countries with similar developmental status. The path forward lies in educating the people and
providing them with necessary resources. This involves a reversal of current priorities: instead of
achieving growth to feed the poor, we need to feed the poor to achieve growth.

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5. Building Character to Build Nations
Published in The Express Tribune on 23rd June 2011.

The torture and burning of Bruno, and other scientists, and the forced recantation of Galileo’s
heliocentric theory, created a conflict between the Church and Science in Europe. This resulted in
bitterness, which persists to this day. Some years ago a petition by a Jesuit college for affiliation was
rejected by California Institute of Technology because a faculty member proclaimed “remember
Galileo!”. Some scientists go out of their way to discredit religion. For instance, they argue that religion
was invented to explain natural phenomenon like rain, lightning, etc. Now that science provides better
explanations, religion is no longer needed.

Religion was not defeated by science in Europe because it could not compete in explaining natural
phenomenon. Rather, it was a consequence of the moral bankruptcy of the upper echelon of the
Catholic Church.

Religion was relegated to a peripheral status in Europe because it manifestly failed its primary mission of
spiritual, social, and moral development of human beings. Harvard professor, Julie Reuben in her book
“The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality”
has recorded the efforts by Universities in the USA to put character development on a scientific basis in
the early part of the twentieth century. For a variety of reasons detailed in the book, these efforts did
not succeed, and were ultimately abandoned. The rise of individualism has weakened families so much
that more than a third of all the children in the UK and USA are born out of wedlock and raised in broken
homes. The powerful media – fiction, movies, internet, etc. – has also abandoned morality. In an earlier
generation, villains would always come to a bad end. Today, morally reprehensible characters like paid
assassins, prostitutes, thieves and con-men etc. are portrayed as heroes. Lack of moral guidance from
families, teachers, and media has led to frightening situation. Children brought up in single mother
homes are: 5 times more likely to commit suicide, 9 times more likely to drop out of high school, 10
times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape, 20 times more
likely to end up in prison, 32 times more likely to run away from home.

All over the world, the character of the leading personalities in politics and elsewhere is often such that
even their wives cannot trust them. This is a sad reflection of the vacuum in moral excellence created by
breakdown of the main institutions, family, school and the social milieu, meant to develop character.
The spectacular rise of Islam fourteen centuries ago can be directly attributed to the excellence in
character developed by teachings of our prophet Mohammad s.a.w. These teachings led a group of
uneducated and uncivilized nomads to the reins of world leadership, and global dominance for a
thousand years. It is the loss of character among Muslims today, which is responsible for our current
pathetic plight. The ancient formulae for development of character appear to have been lost. The world
awaits those who rediscover them; as Iqbal has said:
Learn once again the lessons of truth, justice and courage
You will be granted the leadership of the world.

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6. Little Miracles
Published date: 24-6-2010 (The Express Tribune)

One man felt deeply for children he saw begging and rummaging through the garbage in his
neighborhood. He recruited a teacher, who was persuaded to go part time at her professional job, to
volunteer time for these underprivileged children. Initially, parents did not appear particularly grateful,
and complained about loss of income. When a quake destroyed the rundown building they were using,
she quit in frustration. Parents, children and the community united to pool their meager resources to
rebuild the school and call her back. The bonds built by her devotion and sacrifice were stronger than
the building. There is now a functional school providing quality education to about 200 children from the
lowest ranks of society, in an impoverished neighborhood of Rawalpindi.
A well off doctor decided that she should give thanks for all the comforts and luxury she has enjoyed.
She took an early retirement and set up a free clinic in a nearby slum (Katchi Abadi). Eventually she
gained the trust of the community, who asked her to expand her services to schooling. Though without
experience in the area, she recruited volunteers from within and without the community to help her set
one up. She recounts as one of her most satisfying experiences a meeting at which people were
discussing a difficult financial obstacle facing their plans. An initial attitude of helplessness generated by
poverty had been replaced by the lesson that dignity and worth derive from character and good
conduct, real wealth is the contentment of the hearts, and strength derives from community.
Cancer is justly a dreaded disease. Treatment is expensive, painful and uncertain. Liquidating family
assets or allowing loved ones to die for lack of money are common stories. A doctor offering the best
available treatment at no cost appears as an angel of mercy. With highest qualifications in his field , he
leads a simple lifestyle while raising millions for his needy patients. Instead of money and luxury, he is
motivated by the desire to serve humanity: “… if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved
the lives of all mankind. (Quran 5:32)”
Imagine trying to sleep outdoors on a cold Islamabad winter night. A warm hearted individual loads his
pickup with blankets, and places them on all the homeless people sleeping outdoors that he can find.
Another person provides meals to day laborers, where they gather and wait patiently, for possible
work. A third man purchased a building within a slum to set up a community civic center. This has
gradually expanded to provide essential food grains at subsidized prices, occupational training to men
and women, a medical clinic, and certain other social services. Recent research by the Pakistan Center
for Philanthropy reveals the paradox that Pakistanis are very generous and charitable, while not
regarding themselves as being such.
I am grateful to God for allowing me to witness hundreds of such small miracles happening all around
me. I pray that I may also become part of this process by which God heals the Earth. It is hard to imagine
the spring when looking at dead and barren landscape after winter. Sharp eyes can still make out
scattered buds, and flashes of colors in the distance, which herald the hope of the coming of the spring.

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