Contemporary Islamic Resurgence: The Politico Economic Dimension
Khurshid Ahmed
Whatever be the ultimate impact of the contemporary movement of Islamic resurgence and whatever be the principal or peripheral irritants at home or abroad, it is difficult to ignore a development that is influencing the very language of cultural dialogue in our times. An old and neglected theme has moved to the centre of the debate: the relevance of god and His guidance to the politico-economic situation of mankind.
Western civilization is based on the principle of separation of religion and state. Man is assumed to be self-sufficient, God does not matter, as far as the social, political, economic, and technological aspects of human civilization are concerned. At best he can be worshipped in one’s personal life. The affairs of the society and state are to be conducted according to man’s discretion. The conquest of nature has become the chief target for human effort. The stream of civilization runs without reference to the values and principles communicated to mankind by god through His prophets.
The muslim world is no exception to this state of affairs, the mechanics of government and society developed during the colonial period were steeped in secularism. The last three decades have witnessed the emergence of over forty-five independent muslim states but the politico-economic systems obtained in these countries are based on western models. This is the contradiction which the resurgent Islam has tried to challenge.
Contemporary Islamic resurgence is neither a transient political articulation of militant Islam nor simply an angry outburst against western nations. On the contrary, it heralds the Muslims’ positive and creative response to the ideological challenge of Western civilization. For the Muslim world it is a duty to try to reconstruct its society by drawing upon its own rich but neglected religio-cultural sources. The ultimate objective of this exercise is to establish a new and just social order in which the material and the spiritual aspects are welded together and in which progress and prayer do not represent two compartments but prayer acts as a stepping stone too.
Islam is not a religion in the limited sense of the world, it is a complete way of life, the divergence between this belif and the social reality lies at the root of the tension that permeates the Muslim world today.
And state in accordance with the Islamic ideals and values and the needs of contemporary life.
What type of polity does Islam want to establish? The idealized Islamic state neither conforms to the western standards of liberalism where there is no place for a set of absolute values to constitute the framework for the operation of popular will nor to western or eastern totalitarianism, where the integrity of the individual is compromised at the altar of collective authority.
The philosophic foundations of the Islamic state are god’s sovereignty, man’s popular viceregency, individuals’ responsibility, and the oneness of the ummah (the muslim community). God’s sovereignty not only means acknowledgement of his authority but also lays down the principle that divine law is supreme and that the values, principles, and priorities are to be based on divine revelation.
Man is god’s deputy on the earth. His status is that of the vice-governor. The universe and everything it contains has been harnessed in his service not to establish his own lordship but to reconstruct human society on the values of truth, piety, brotherhood and justice, within the value framework provided by the divine law.
Man is free to experiment and innovate, to articulate his creative genius and to make optimal use of all that has been provided in the universe.
It is the individual who constitutes the fundamental unit of society and his freedom, education, and development in this world and his salvation in the hereafter are the main concerns of Islamic polity. In the final analysis, the success of the system depends on the faith and commitment of the individual and his sense of moral and social accountability.
The Islamic state operates on the principle of shura (mutual consultation). The Prophet of Islam established a political order in which hereditary monarchy and despotism had no place. Kingship was an aberration. It was tolerated but subjected to a number of significant modifications most important of which was denying the monarch the right to legislate and impose his will as law
The Muslim community is one international brotherhood. The ideal political and spiritual arrangement is one where the community operates under one leadership but even when that is not possible, close cooperation between all muslim countries is an essential principle of Islamic life.
The Islamic state is an ideological state. Participation of the people in the political process is its lifeblood, and mutual consultation is its operational mechanism.
A variety of structures can be built to translate these values and principles into practice in the modern age. Islam does not force its followers to a particular historical-political structure in it’s entirety. There is a built-in flexibility in the system. This enables the modern muslim to make experiments and evolve new arrangements to achieve these socio-political ideals.
His main problem is to transform the social system he has inherited from the colonial period and to give it an Islamic character. The revolutionary tension in certain parts of the muslim world is indicative of the re-ordering that is in the offing and the pangs that go with a new birth.
Western democracy has succeeded in giving the individual a positive role in the system: it has yet to actualize his real participation in the processes of decision-making at different levels of the polity and economy.
Resurgent Islam wants to not only weld together the religious and secular approaches so as to temper political power with moral integrity and social justice but also to see that the involvement of the individual is not confined to the casting of a faceless vote but he actually participates in the process of power. The Islamic Revolutionary Committees in present-day Iran may still seem to be in early phases of evolution but they do represent an effort to develop a new institutional base for participatory democracy.
The economic programme of the Islamic movement is also unique. Capitalistic and socialistic models, as experimented in different muslim countries, have failed to meet the economic challenge. The problems of poverty, waste, underdevelopment, unemployment, exploitation, maldistribution and dependence on the industrialized world have not been met in any significant way. Resurgent Islam wants to face the economic problem from a different perspective.
It claims to abandon the pseudo value neutrality of the Western economic approach and asserts that by spelling out its value-commitments, it is trying to adopt a more honest approach. It is drawing upon its own spiritual resources to involve people in the economic endeavour. It shows readiness to settle with a slower rate of growth which is commensurate with social justice, and more equitable distribution in society. It wants to introduce zakat (a welfare tax) as the basis of its system of social security and to ensure that efforts are made at the grassroots level to attain economic self-sufficiency.
Islam is disenchanted with a welfare state wherein increasing numbers of people live on doles. Instead, it wants to achieve people’s well-being through enabling them to participate in the production process. It wants to reorganize the banking system on the basis of equity-sharing and to so re-arrange the flow of resources that the less well-off may get from the system, something which is not possible under modern banking.
Two major interest-free banking institutions have already started operation. A network of interest-free banks has emerged in the UAE, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. All these may look like tiny ripples in an ocean, but they do release waves of change. And the most distinctive feature of resurgent Islam is that it represents a departure from the status quo, a disapproval of the dominant secular and sensate culture of the West, and a search for a new order. This search is not confined to the people who live in areas where Muslims hold political power. In the context of the cultural crises of our age, this represents man’s quest for a new order—an order which brings to the spiritually starved men and women of the twentieth century, whether in the east or the west, the hope for a life which is morally rich and socially just.
