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).
[15] A separate treatise is intended to be presented by the author on the Islamic state, wherein elaboration and comparative evaluation of Islam’s political and economic philosophies shall be undertaken.
[16] Refer, among other books on political philosophy, to Walter Lippmann’s ‘The Public Philosophy’, London 1955.
[17] Islam establishes ‘supremacy of law’ through the separation of the executive and the judiciary also.
[18] In fact, he did not nominate anyone at all. As regards nomination from among his descendents, had he established the institution of hereditary rule in Islam, he would have nominated his elder grandson, the illustrious Imam Hasan, who was the son of his daughter, Lady Fatimah (Allah be pleased with her!)
[19] It should be clearly noted that un-organised voluntary religious charity does not achieve much; and its adverse effect is the creation of the institution of beggary, which is highly degrading and which Islam has vehemently condemned. The fact is that greed for possession of wealth is rooted in the animal self of the human beings, and not many people are capable of helping their fellow beings with any amount of grace and large-heartedness.
to be continued . . . . .
Quranic Foundation & Structure Of Muslim Society In The End Times
