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| April 5, 2002 | atimes.com | ||
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REFLECTIONS ON ISLAM Lessons to be learned from the Muslim world By Sultan Shahin
LONDON - Adequate fulfillment of basic material needs is, in the Islamic frame of reference, as necessary for human welfare as spiritual uplift. Therefore, while arranging for the spiritual guidance of men by a chain of prophets to all people through space and time, God has also provided all necessary resources for his material well-being. Says the Koran, "He it is Who has created for you everything on earth" (2:29) and "has made subservient to you whatever is in the heavens and the earth and granted you His bounties, manifest and hidden" (31:20, see also 4:32-3, 16:12-14, 22:65 and 45:12). Two fundamental principles maybe derived from these verses. One, that God-given resources are for "you", which is addressed to all people and not to any privileged group or class; and two, that they are meant for general human welfare, and at least, for eradicating poverty and fulfilling the basic material needs of all people. There can be little dispute, says Saudi scholar Umar Chapra, that some of the basic material needs of individuals that must be satisfied in the Islamic scheme of things are: 1. Training and education to develop the innate abilities of the individual and to enable him to cater for his well-being independently without becoming a burden on others; 2. A suitable job, profession or trade in keeping with his aptitude, ability, ambition and needs of society so that he and society both benefit from his ability and training; 3. Adequate food and clothing; 4. Comfortable housing; 5. A generally healthy environment combined with appropriate medical facilities, and; 6. Adequate transport facilities to enable a worker to commute to his place of work without unreasonable discomfort and to convey his product to appropriate markets at reasonable cost. These material needs of the individual and their fulfillment have been so explicitly and repeatedly recognized by the Shariah that quotations from the Koran and the Sunnah and Islamic writings would amount to elaborating the obvious. The fulfillment of these spiritual and material needs of individuals and society would naturally necessitate the playing of a vital role by the state in the economic system of Islam. Nevertheless, it may be stressed here for the sake of clarity that it is basically the moral responsibility of the individual to cater for his own needs through his own volition and effort. Islam categorically condemns begging and sloth and places great stress on hard work. The Prophet enjoined, "Beg not anything from people" and that "A man has not earned better income than that which is from his own labor." Chapra writes, "Umar, the second Caliph, symbolized this Islamic teaching for earning one's own livelihood through hard work by saying, 'No one of you should stay away from seeking livelihood and say O God! Give me sustenance, for the sky will not rain gold and silver'; and that 'Seek of the bounty of God and be not a burden on others.'" Chapra continues, "The individual is not only expected to do work for his own livelihood and welfare but is also expected to do his best on every job or mission he undertakes. God desires that whenever anyone of you performs a job he does it perfectly." In fact, the spiritual and material goals of the Islamic society cannot be fully realized until all Muslims, men or women, put forth their best in keeping with the optimum potential of their God-given talents. "Although it is essentially the responsibility of the individual to depend on himself and to try to do his best, the market forces need not always automatically be conducive to this. And even if the individual does his best it is a well-recognized fact that the blind operation of market forces may not always reward him optimally for his socially productive effort. It would hence be the responsibility of the state to play a positive role in guiding and regulating the economy to ensure that the objectives of the Shariah are fulfilled. "Some of the essential functions of the Islamic welfare state with respect to the economy may be stated to be: "1) To eradicate poverty and create conditions for full employment and a high rate of growth; 2) To promote stability in the real value of money; 3) To maintain law and order; 4) To ensure social and economic justice; 5) To arrange social security and foster equitable distribution of income and wealth; 6) To harmonize international relations and ensure national defense." It should not be difficult to us to see in the light of these Islamic guidelines as to where we stand vis-a-vis the Islamic concept of an individual Muslim's conduct as well as the way most of our societies are organized. Obviously, we have gone far away from Islamic ideals. It also opens other areas of thought. Could the West, introduced to Islamic ideals by us, have adopted these same ideals and implemented them while we were busy fighting over the variety of sectarian interpretations of Islam that we developed over the centuries of stagnation? In any case, a close examination of Islam and the West clearly reveals that in comparison with Muslim society or a Muslim individual, both the society and the individual in the West appear to be a closer approximation to the Islamic vision of what a Muslim society and a Muslim individual should be. If this observation is correct, then it is natural for us to wonder if Allah has already decided to pass on the baton from Muslims to the West. Have we Muslims already been thrown to the dustbin of history? Communities that are thrown to the dustbin of history seldom rise again. If there is any possibility at all that Allah is not totally disappointed with us and we can recoup our strength, what are the ways open to us? To some, the way out is the one shown by Osama bin Laden. Whether or not he is alive, his creed is there and it still has some followers in some parts of the world. For those who do not agree with him, the way out is the one suggested by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf in his historic January 12 speech. The only sensible alternative, indeed, is the way of tadabbur (reflection) and hikmat (wisdom) shown to us by Allah in the Holy Koran and the Ahadees and the Seerat (sayings) of Prophet Mohammad (sallallahu-alaih-e-wasallam). Let us recall the distinguishing features of Islam and the reasons why it spread like wildfire, stunning the world with the speed of its spread, a spectacle never seen before or since. Let us judge ourselves against these paradigms and try to improve in accordance with the criteria provided by the Holy Koran and the Ahadees and Seerat of the Prophet. The US and the West, too, would do well to avoid what Jane's Defense Weekly said recently would amount to playing into al-Qaeda's hands. One of the key questions since September 11 concerns the actual objectives of al-Qaeda in launching its deadly attack against the US. Some intelligence analysts fear, reported the authoritative weekly, that widening the US-led campaign to include Iraq and other Muslim states may in fact be in line with bin Laden's ultimate strategy. The UK Oxford Research Group claimed recently that expanding the conflict to include a military campaign against Iraq is likely to "lead to the use of any weapons of mass destruction that the regime might be expected to muster" - with Israel and coalition forces in the region being the prime targets. Does America want to judge the veracity of the claim? Can the world afford that? While the West mulls over these questions, we should make our own efforts to avoid a scenario of confrontation. The best way to do that would be to stress the unifying role of Islam. Allah has created us in different colors and complexions, castes and creeds, given us different languages and so on, so that we can divine the One from the Many. Mankind has been divided into myriad communities with different races, cultures, habits and faiths, so that in spite of these barriers, we can ourselves reach the following conclusion, "Mankind is but one single community." (The Holy Koran, 2:213 and 10:19). The one reform that we just cannot avoid if we want to survive as a progressive community well adjusted to the needs of time is educational reform. "When Islam was at its zenith," said Musharraf in his famous speech, "every discipline of learning, such as mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy and jurisprudence, was taught at these institutions. Great Muslim luminaries such as Al-Beruni, Ibn-e-Sina [Avesina] and Ibn Khuldoon, were the products of these same madaris [religious seminaries]. "And if we study history, we see that from the 7th to 15th century AD, transfer of technology took place from the Muslims to the rest of the world. Look at Muslims' condition today. Islam teaches us to seek knowledge, even if it involved travel to China. I am sure you are aware that the Prophet had told prisoners of war in the Battle of Badar that they would be set free if each of them imparted education to 10 Muslims. "Quite obviously, this education could not have been religious education as the prisoners were non-Muslims. So the Prophet was actually referring to worldly education. If we do not believe in education, are we following the teachings of Islam or violating them? We must ask what direction we are being led into by these extremists." Fortunately, Muslims around the world are thinking along these lines. In an article in the New York Times titled "Islam's generation next", Tunisian scholar Mohamed Charfi, for instance, says, "Muslim countries entered into their rebirth and modernization in the 19th century. The prosecution of apostasy and the use of corporal punishment fell away; power passed, in general, from religious councils and tribunals to parliaments and secular courts. These changes were everywhere incomplete, hesitant, fragile - notably because their doctrinal foundation was accepted only grudgingly by the state and the elite, and still less by the general public. "This was clear in the common approach to education. A great effort was made to teach foreign languages and scientific subjects. But in teaching religion, history, philosophy and civics, traditional approaches prevailed. Schools taught Muslim law, the Shariah, with its classic content; they presented Muslim history in a theological fashion as though we were still living under the Umayyads or the Abbasids. Muslim law was taught as sacred and the idealized caliphate, the first centuries of Islam's expansion after Muhammad's death, was offered as a kind of heaven on earth. "The consequences of such teachings on the minds of young people in most Muslim-majority countries have been disastrous. They learn that, in order to be good believers, they should be living under a caliph, that divine law makes it necessary to stone the adulterer and forbid lending at interest ... only to discover, out in the street, a society directed by a civil government with a modern penal code and an economy founded on a banking system. "Many Muslim children still learn at school the ancient ideology of a triumphant Muslim empire, an ideology that held all non-Muslims to be in error and saw its mission as bringing Islam's light to the world. And yet they see their governments working to live in peace with non-Muslim powers. Such discordant teachings do not prepare children to live in a changing world." Another factor that we must emphasize and reiterate whenever an opportunity presents itself is the peaceful nature of our religion. There is great misunderstanding, largely due to anti-Islamic propaganda throughout history for a variety of reasons, that Islam is a religion of violence. Nothing could be farther from truth. Then some specific Muslim ethnicities like the Pashtuns from among whom came the Taliban, for instance, are portrayed as inherently violent. This again is not true. If only the world knew more about the life and times of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, for instance, who spent 15 years in British and another 15 years in Pakistani prisons in the pursuit of peace and truth. He had created an army of non-violent Khudai Khidmatgars, in the face of the most brutal British colonial oppression, from among the same Muslim Pashtuns that are today reviled as violent on account of being both Muslim and Pashtun. It would go a long way in defusing tensions between Islam and the West if the latter were to accept its responsibility in turning these peaceful people into first the mujahideen and then the Taliban to serve its own political and economic interests. It would also help avoid the looming civilizational clash if the West, and the US in particular, were to concede that if the Muslim world is today mired in ignorance and backwardness, lack of democratic freedom and economic prosperity, their policies, too, are at least partly responsible. Let us hope H A R Gibb (Whither Islam) was right in saying, "Islam has yet a further service to render to the cause of humanity ... No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity, and of endeavor, so many and so various races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small Muslim communities in China and the still smaller community in Japan, how that Islam still has the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and West is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition." ((c)2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.) |
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