Quranic Foundations And Structure Of Muslim Society
Chapter 9
THE
INTEGRALISTIC WELFARE SOCIETY
CONT....
The above twenty one basic dimensions emerge in respect of the society
which it is the mission of the Qur’an to establish,—a mission that was not only
preached but realised unambiguously and concretely by the Holy Prophet Muhammad
(in whom God’s choicest Blessings abide!) in the Islamic society founded by
him.
When this society assumes the form of the state, as it did in the state
of Madina, a theo-centric, democratic, welfare state, or, a theo-democratic
welfare state, comes into being. Defining it a little more elaborately, it is
the ‘Government of God, through the Rule of Divine Law, by the Trustees of the
Mission of Islam, who function on the basis of their election by persons of
character and wisdom among Muslims and administer the state, within the limits
prescribed by God, as Servants of the People, for the attainment by the People
of their Comprehensive Welfare.’
We might briefly clarify certain basic concepts
involved here.[15]
‘Government of God’ implies that sovereignty in the Islamic state belongs
to God and not to the people. The concept of the ‘Sovereignty of God’, in its
turn, ensures political equality for all—the rulers and the ruled, and provides
the basis for immunising the society from political tyranny. The sovereignty of
God can be challenged and denied only by the atheists. But even in secular
political philosophy, which projects the concept of the ‘sovereignty of the
people’, the term ‘people’ stands for a Corporation and a conceptual entity as
it embraces the past, the present and the future generations of the people of a
nation-state, bound all the time by the fundamental principles of Constitution
established by the ‘founding fathers’.[16]
Thus, there too, it is a ‘transcendental’ entity in which sovereignty is
affirmed. However, the antinomy that emerges in affirming that the people are
‘sovereign’ and ‘subject’ at the same time creates difficulties, which are
avoided most rationally in affirming God as sovereign and the people as
subjects.
‘Rule by Divine Law’ implies that the fundamental structure of political
norms, principles and laws has been given by God, and is therefore eternal and
unchangeable. This characteristic of the law governing the Islamic state
ensures stability in political life and the consequent stability in the total
life of the community, and establishes the principle of ‘supremacy of law’[17]
on firm grounds wherein no body, not even the head of the state, stands above
the law.
‘Government by the Trustees of the Mission of Islam’ implies that because
the entire Islamic millat is under obligation to promote that mission, which
consists in the effort directed to the establishment of all that is good and
the eradication of all that is evil,—and all that keeping the ideal of service
to entire humanity in view (4:110), those who administer the Islamic state
have, in the very nature of the case, to function primarily and positively as
the ‘trustees of the mission of Islam’, and not merely as good administrators
of a political machinery.
The condition that the
administrative hierarchy shall come into power through the ‘will of the people’
and not through hereditary monarchy is clearly laid down by the Qur’an,—as, for
instance, when it asks the Faithful to delegate the trust of administration to
those worthy of it (4:58), or when it makes mutual consultation the basic
principle in respect of the administration of their affairs (42:38)—and in the
Holy Prophet’s Sunnah, wherein we find that, with all his absolute authority
and wisdom, he did not nominate anyone from among his descendents [18]
to be his successor in office as head of the Islamic state but left that office
open, as a consequence of which Abu Bakr was subsequently elected.
The condition that the electors should be ‘persons of character and
wisdom’ is the most rational condition in respect of an ideological state. If
the persons who are to wield authority in an Islamic state are necessarily to
be those who are the best available embodiments of Islamic character and
wisdom, very naturally they should be elected by those who are themselves
practically dedicated to Islam and can understand properly the comparative
merits of the different persons for whom they have to cast their votes.
Otherwise, democracy is likely to degenerate into mobocracy, as it is
progressively becoming nowadays under the spell of adult franchise, and to end
in disaster. As Walter Lippmann remarks in The Public Philosophy (p. 21) “Where
mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the
true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging
on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. The breakdown in the constitutional
order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western
society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of
the West."
It is this realistic approach in Islam that accounts for the fact
that, in the election of Abu Bakr, it was only the Muslims of Madina, and not
the Muslims of the outlying areas, that participated. It is well-known that the
former were the people who had assimilated and imbibed Islamic character and
wisdom, because of the blessing of long and continuous contact with and
training under, the Holy Prophet (Peace be on him!), much more than the latter.
Not withstanding that, however, it is desirable, and even necessary, in an
Islamic state to evolve a system whereby the entire population becomes finally
the participant in the elective machinery, —the only condition for the adoption
of universal adult franchise being the universal basic education of the people
and their training in Islamic living: both of which have been enjoined by
Islam. What is of importance in this connection, however, is the acquisition of
the real benefits of democracy, and not the technique of democracy. And for
obtaining of the benefits of democracy, importance lies, in the final analysis,
in the spiritual character, moral integrity and statesmanly wisdom of those who
are elected to govern.
In respect of collective welfare, Islam lays emphasis, as we have already
noted, on comprehensive approach,—that being the demand of its philosophy of
Unity. It means that, side by side with spiritual and moral welfare, the
Islamic state is under obligation to give to the economic welfare of the people
its due; and in that respect the teachings of the Qur’an are directed through
all the channels of economic activity to one goal, namely: the achievement of
not only economic justice but of positive economic welfare for every member of
the society, so that everyone is enabled to live with honour and dignity. Such a goal is actually very difficult to achieve, until and unless all
the dimensions of human activity are trimmed and fashioned to assist in that
achievement. And this is what Islam has done.
In the first instance, it goes to the root of the problem of human
suffering when it lays stress on the spiritual and moral reform of the people
side by side with the establishment of a healthy economic order. It is
self-evident that the dependents of a wage-earner are bound to starve, however
much the level of his income is raised within rational limits, if he is
addicted to harmful pleasures or wasteful pursuits. Indeed, his own health will
starve and he will be crippled. And not only an ordinary wage earner. Even a
wealthy man is bound to suffer through spiritual and moral evils, and so too
his family. Hence, Islam has positively commanded that the life of a Muslim
should be a life of spiritual grace, moral earnestness and material simplicity.
It means that in the godly, austere and industrious society which Islam
creates, all types of luxuries are totally banned,—as historically exemplified
in the society established by the Holy Prophet (Peace be on him!). Indeed,
‘simple and industrious living and high thinking’ is incontrovertibly the only
Way of life found in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, while luxurious living and
wasteful pursuits are the dopes needed in the pagan way of life because of its
spiritual bankruptcy and materialistic sensuous demands,—and by no stretch of
imagination can they be traced in the Qur’an and the Sunnah, and by no amount
of sophistry can they be combined rationally with the lives of the worshippers
of Allaah.
The prime motive in the production of commodities may
either be mounting monetary profit for the producer with
selfish disregard for the interests of fellow beings, which is the very soul of
industrial capitalism; or, it may be the service of fellow beings through the
supply of their basic needs. The former is anti-God and anti-human, and
therefore completely ruled out in Islam. The latter is godly and humanitarian,
and therefore becomes an obligation in the Islamic ethico-religious economic
philosophy.
Indeed, the Islamic state is under obligation, in respect of its
ethico-religious philosophy, to ordain regimentation of production and
consumption both, so that, with the establishment of maximum beneficial
production relating to the necessities of human life and a rational austerity
in consumption—as distinct from ascetic austerity, the material resources of
the community are deployed and employed for the widest and unhampered flow of
economic blessings, and the possibilities of the emergence of moral corruption
and economic exploitation are eliminated.
Secondly, in the Qur’anic principles of widest possible distribution of
wealth and of reward on the basis of labour and achievement, on the one hand,
and of cooperation, on the other, the principle of peasant-proprietorship
emerges in the domain of agriculture—as opposed to the institutions of
feudalism and absentee land lordship—with the creation of co-operatives in
farming.
Thirdly, the Holy Qur’an blocks the roads to monopoly capitalism through
its anti-monopolistic laws in general and the abolition of all form and all
rates of interest in particular.
However, neither private enterprise nor private ownership of property has
been banned. Rather, the latter is protected under the Qur’anic law. Indeed,
the Qur’anic economic philosophy stands in definite opposition to the Marxist
Scientific Socialism which establishes ‘state capitalism’, as much as it is
opposed to individualistic monopoly capitalism. But the fundamental Qur’anic
ideals relating to the maintenance of Islamic society as spiritually illumined,
morally healthy and economically dedicated to the welfare of all members, make
it imperative for the Islamic state to establish a form of economy wherein
private sector does not give birth to business magnates and industrial lords,
and the state remains in a position to ensure the provision of basic needs to
all.
The provision of basic needs to all has to be in the Islamic state
fundamentally on the basis of full employment. However, Islam has provided a
social welfare tax through Zakat for ensuring basic needs to the disabled and
the unemployed. Then, because all that belongs to a Muslim is held by him as
‘trust’ from God (9:111), Islam has also commended generosity in terms of
voluntary economic well-doing to those in need, to the utmost of one’s capacity
and considering one’s action as a fulfilment of the right of the other
person—and not merely as ritualistic religious ‘charity to a beggar’.
This last fact deserves repeated and vehement emphasis in view of the
colossal ignorance concerning Islam’s economic philosophy. For the achievement
of its goal of ensuring economic welfare for all, the Holy Qur’an does not
confine itself to emphasis merely on voluntary charity,[19] as
other religions do, but adopts a methodical approach to the problem of the
economic sufferings of humanity and its solution. These sufferings emerge, in
its view, when wealth becomes concentrated in a few hands, bringing in its wake
insatiable lust for luxuries, creating the cult of ‘wealth, wine and woman’,
and giving rise to the need of greater and greater exploitation of the weaker
members of society. The lust for exploitation, grounded as it always is in a
spiritually-hardened heart, is directed to the enjoyment of vulgar pleasures
and to exercise in megalomania. When it continues unchecked in a society,
moral, economic and political corruption attains progressively such virulence
as to act as a dynamite for blowing up the entire spiritual and moral fabric of
the community, finally bringing about its destruction. The pithy warning has
gone forth in the Qur’an: “And how many a community have We (God) destroyed
that became reckless in respect of (its structure of) livelihood! …”
(28:58).
Source
to be continued . . . . .
