Fall Of Capitalism and Rise of Islam by Mohammad Malkawi

The collapse of the Wall Street’s giant world trade center and the collapse of Wall Street’s giant financial institutions spectacularly raise two images of Islam: An image that spreads fear and carries threat; and an image that shines with life and prosperity. The terrorist attacks which demolished the world trade center on 9/11/2001 have made it very difficult to portray the true Islamic view of the world. Despite the repeated calls by politicians, philosophers, and thinkers to distinguish between Islam as a religion and those who carry the attacks, the distortion of the image of Islam was quite significant. Seven years after heightening the war on terrorism, wall street financial market collapsed, but this time the terrorists were economists and were from within the system, and were not Muslims. As a result, the public is stuck with two views and two images; one portrays Islam as a threat and the other one as a benefit. This part of the book addresses this dilemma. It is not the intention of this part to discuss the issue of terrorism at length; this will be dealt with in another publication. It will only be discussed within the limits and the scope of this book.

When the issue of terrorism is widely debated, many people continue to draw a hard line between Islam as a global religion and the acts of terrorism. With this type of distinction and clarity, there should not be a serious fear from the rising trend of Islam. This view, however, was not the case with the former Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In one of his comments, he portrayed the rise of the Islamic political system as a threat to the west in general, as reported in an article published by The New York Times on December 12, 2005, under the title “21st-century Warnings of a Threat Rooted in 7th Century.”158 In this article, Bumiller shows how score of high level politicians view Islam as a threat to western civilization and democracy. Capitalizing on the issue of radicalism, fundamentalism, and terrorism, Wayne Kopping produced in 2006 the film “Obsession—The Threat of Radical Islam.”159 The purpose of the movie was to warn against the threats presumably posed by radical Islam.

The war against terrorism and the myriad of media outlets, blogs, web pages, radio talk shows, and publication have helped create what amounts to an “Islamophobia” at the public as well as the official levels in Europe and the USA. In France, a resolution was passed against wearing Islamic head dress by Muslim women in public schools. Several European countries contemplated a law against Muslim women wearing the veil. The United States adopted several security related laws including profiling, spying, wire tapping, patriot law, and other laws, all of which have been indirectly related to Muslims.

The point here is that a significant element of fear has clouded the atmosphere of Islam and its potential rise. Dealing with this phenomenon is not a simple task, especially when the identities of people who carry some of the worst attacks are revealed and found to be Muslims. Terrorism as such is a horrible crime; it cannot be condoned or accepted or justified in any way. This is said; it must also be clear that Islam as a religion and a comprehensive ideology is not the cause or reason behind terrorism. On the contrary, Islam, in its capacity as a comprehensive system, can play a decisive role in eliminating terrorism and the environment which breeds terrorism.

The argument throughout this book has been that Islam as an ideology functions as a whole system. For Islam to produce the expected outcome, it needs to be implemented at more than one level. Even the economic and financial systems, which have received a great approval from several parties around the world, are not expected to provide the stability and prosperity unless coupled with the social, political, and ethical components of the ideology. The fact that Islam as a comprehensive system is not practiced or implemented in the Islamic world, makes it difficult to attach global societal behavior to Islam, whether in the fields of war or peace. It is not a coincident that Islam for the first thirteen years of its initial rise left out a great part of its legislation, rules, and regulations. In fact, all of the rules which are directly related to the organization of society and societal behavior were revealed during the last ten years of the life of the Prophet when a state for Islam was created.

Except for the rituals and personal aspects of Islam, the practical aspects of the Islamic state were superseded throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century. As a result, the civilization of Islam, which flourished for the previous thirteen hundreds years, was replaced by a mixture of civilizations. Since the caliphate was abolished in 1924 in Istanbul, various types of nationalism coupled with variations of capitalism and socialism dominated the world of Islam. The dominance of these civilizations was reflected in many aspects of life including the government structure, the economic system, the educational institutions, the lifestyle, and international relations. It was also remarkably visible during the era of anticolonial national liberation movements, which swept the majority of third world countries. For the majority of the twentieth century, the dominant ideologies and civilizations were stamped by national socialist movements, which characterized Egypt Nasirism, Palestinian national movements, Indo-Pakistani movements, Indonesian movements, Turkish nationalist movements, and the like.

Traits of Islam began to appear in the national movements towards the end of the twentieth century when the shah of Iran was toppled by a revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. During the same period, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan prompted a counterrevolution characterized by Afghan nationalism, local Islam, and Western liberal idealism. Later in the century, the collapse of socialism and the Soviet Union shifted the national socialist movements in the Muslim world to national democratic movements.

The point here is that the Islamic civilization was not the main driver of events and societal behavior in the Muslim world for the past one hundred years. The main events were driven by nationalism, socialism, and later in the century by democracy and liberalism. A mixture of these civilizations created almost every environment in the entire Muslim world. This includes the environment of poverty in countries like Egypt and Indonesia or prosperity in countries like Qatar and Bahrain. It also includes lack of economic developments in many parts and political instability and oppression in other parts. The responsibility of Islam for the conditions which prevailed throughout this period of time is almost null and negligible. In fact, part of the conditions which persisted in many places in the Muslim world included the persecution of Islamic activists and forced ejection of Islam from the practical life of people. Turkey, for example, continues to ban some Islamic public practices like the Muslim women dress code.

During this period, which is characterized by an exclusion of Islam as a civilization and ideology, an environment of militancy and violence was created in some parts of the Muslim world. Part of this militancy was an outgrowth and continuation of previously created liberation movements under conditions of occupation, colonialism, or social repression. Al-Qaeda, for example, grew out of the womb of the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad movement, which was in part supported and funded by US covert operations. Hamas, in Palestine, was born in the midst of uprising against Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, which had instigated the creation of several brands of Palestinian national liberation movements. Despite the apparent Islamic character of these militant movements, Islam did not contribute to the environment in which any of these movements was created. Islam was used in the majority of these movements as a recruiting vehicle and a source of inspiration for the members.

Before Islam was drawn into the front, nationalism and sense of patriotism inspired the same crowd which supplied the fighters of the earlier periods. In other words, the environments of violence, war, repression, terrorism, occupation, poverty, economic deprivation, and political instability were predominant throughout the majority of the third world including the Muslim world, without Islam being part of the mosaic of the land. In response to these conditions and environments, the nations of these lands used many ideologies and political agendas; when an ideology fails or runs out of energy, another one comes into play. The Palestinian movements provide the best example of this phenomenon, where the nationalistic and patriotic drivers were slowly replaced by Islamic ones. In Afghanistan, Islam helped fuel the tribal motives of the Afghan people. The point here is that Islam as an ideology is not the one to blame or praise, to commend or to condemn for whatever activities and movements which culminated in the last one hundred years.

When Islam ruled and the Islamic civilization was the main and dominant one in the lands of Islam, historians could easily attribute many events, conditions, and environments to Islam. This was true even when the Islamic state was at its weakest point during the crusade wars, because Islam continued to provide the law of the land. There is no dispute that during the period of Islamic dominance and until its decline at the end of the nineteenth century, Islam was responsible for the ups and downs, the despair or hope, the stability or chaos, the economic progress or downturn, the violence or peace, the scientific advancement or the lack of it. The inventions made in Baghdad or Samarqand, the architecture in Andalusia or Istanbul, the libraries in Alexandria or Baghdad are undoubtedly the results of Islamic civilization. Today, there are thousands of Muslim innovators, scientists, writers, and scholars. But the truth of the matter, which is recognized by any observer in the field, is that these brilliant people are not the product of the Islamic civilization, despite the fact that many of them are devout Muslims. There is no question that Islam helps molding the personality of scientists and innovators and contributes to their productivity; but the environment, which created their ability to invent and excel, is a product of the contemporary civilizations, which in turn are mix of nationalism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, and democracy.

In essence, a Muslim who wins a Noble Prize in literature or science achieves this performance under the conditions and systems created by ideologies other than Islam. And it is not fair to attribute such achievements to Islam when Islam is not the driver of the laws of land or the maker of the civilization of the land. In societies ruled by non-Islamic laws, Muslim achievers are simply not the product of Islam. By the same token, a Muslim who blows up a market full of people or carries a bomb on an airplane is not a product of Islam either. Both are the products of the laws, regulations, systems, and civilizations which dominate the societies in which both brands—scientists or terrorists—grow.

Until and unless Islam becomes the source of laws and systems in the land, and becomes the main guide for the civilization and the societal behavior, it will be ideologically incorrect to attribute any of the contemporary events to Islam. As any ideology, the theoretical foundation of Islam alone cannot produce its expected outcome unless it begins the practical period by implementing the systems that emanate from this foundation. This principle applies to the economics of Islam as well as to its politics. During the first thirteen years of the first rise of Islam, there was an extensive discussion on many aspects of the societal behavior and issues such as poverty, justice, morals, wealth distribution, war, peace, family ties, and much more. And Islam did not take the responsibility over the actions of people living and practicing any of these issues, although some of the Muslims were part of these actions. For example, some Muslims living in Mecca during that era continued to be part of the usury practices, which were condemned by Islam.

Even after the creation of the Islamic state in Medina, the Islamic society and state did not assume responsibility for Muslims who continued to live outside the scope of the Islamic society and the state. This is important to know, because Islam, when it assumes the responsibility over an issue, it must have the complete authority to impact the outcome of that issue as well as all the parameters that contribute to it. When Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) conducted a peace treaty with the Quraish tribe of Mecca, he agreed to expel any Muslim who migrates to the Islamic state against the will of Quraish. It is narrated in the biography of Mohammad, as compiled by Ibn Hisham,160 that a Muslim fled Mecca and ran into Medina seeking the protection of the Islamic state; but the Prophet forced that man to return to Mecca based on the request of Quraish. When that man fled again and began to carry militant assaults against Quraish, the Prophet (PBUH) distanced himself from his actions and refused to provide him with any type of support.

In the meantime, the Prophet as a leader of a state conducted the relations between his state and other states with complete responsibility. The rules of engagement between his state and the rest of the world were well defined, whether in peace or war. Islam provided a full and complete script for the rules of engagement. But these rules are carried out at a state level, and not at the levels of individuals or groups. The responsibility for the acts are centralized and well defined. The Islamic state or system does not assume the responsibility or bear the consequences over the acts of individuals or groups outside the scope of the state. The point I want to make here is that for Islam to be fully responsible for Islamic acts or events, it must be in control of the society and the rules of the lands. Once Islam is in control, and the laws of the land are driven and controlled by Islam, and a central leadership in the form of a caliph is in charge, then and only then we can attribute general behavior and actions to Islam. While Islam is not in power, and a central leadership is absent, the sporadic, fitful, and spasmodic acts of many Muslims in the world will continue to be outside the scope of the Islamic system and ideology; each individual will be responsible for his own acts.

Aside from the first thirteen years of the life of Mohammad (PBUH), this is the first time, throughout the history of Islam, where Muslims find themselves living in societies and states which are not governed by Islam and its systems. The difference, though, is that during the first thirteen years’ period, the systems of Islam were not completely revealed and the Islamic state was never created before. This time around, the systems of Islam have already been compiled and can be found in original texts of the Quran, the Sunnah, and many books of jurisprudence; moreover, a history of more than thirteen centuries of real practice is readily available for all. Fundamentally, though, the two eras are similar, because the existence of the Islamic state and central leadership is essential for the implementation of Islam. The fact that the rules and laws of Islam are compiled and can be found in many sources does not mean that these laws perform on their own or by the power of conviction in the hearts of those who believe in these laws. Laws and rules need a central state and governance to activate them. By the same token, the systems of economy, governance, social life, and jurisprudence do not run on their own in a society; in order for these systems to be active and produce their results, they require a political system to install these systems, monitor their performance, and protect them from corruption.

The point here is that the fear that some people may have regarding the implementation of Islam is not realistic. This fear is created out of the false perception that Islam stands behind the actions that people have been accustomed to attribute to Islam. This fear is real, but it is not founded on real grounds. It is based on the premise that the Islamic ideology is an active participant in the affairs prevailing in the world including those of extreme nature. The truth of the matter is that Islam has not been part of the mix of ideologies, which have shaped the world affairs and politics for the last one hundred years. On the contrary, Islam has been rising, and in many cases with great difficulty, to challenge the current ideological mix. Consequently, Islam should be viewed and scrutinized from the perspective of an ideology seeking a foothold in the world affairs. The basis of this scrutiny should be the theoretical foundation of Islam and the history of Islam in action.

The validity of any ideology should be first tested at the level of its theory. If the ideology had been practiced for a sufficient period of time, then it should also be tested at the implementation level. The theory of Islam is complete and had been compiled and can be found in numerous sources; therefore, it can be verified and tested. Islam also had been implemented and has a history of implementation over thirteen hundred years (more than any other single ideology). Therefore, the practical implementation of Islam can also be tested and verified.