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There is another source of difficulty
which has so far frustrated all efforts at building a good society.
The experience of the West shows that historically two systems of
society, viz., the political and the economic, have become so
influential and powerful that they have dominated all the rest of
the society. Without a doubt power has corrupted its possessor
without fail. What is more, absolute power has corrupted absolutely.
Men and women in possession of political power have tyrannized,
victimized, and corrupted humankind in all societies—no matter what
cultural values the people professed to believe in or under what
economic system they carried on the task of production of the
material means of life. Most often the producers of wealth have been
robbed of their produced wealth by those in the positions of power.
We know that even in Muslim history the “power-state” quite
powerfully supplanted the Islamic state. The first schism in Islamic
history arose after the death of the Prophet (P.B.U.H.) over who
would possess power in the Madinah state. Never again did secular
power holders in Islam allow Islamic state to be re-born. Today
Muslim countries are ruled by all sorts of political powers
including hereditary monarchy, which can only be considered
repugnant to the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah. The point here,
for social theory, is that, if one of the sub-systems becomes so
overwhelmingly powerful that other sub-systems cannot exist and
function as its co-equals, it spells trouble for the social system
as a whole. Not only everyone is too afraid to get on the wrong side
of those who hold power, but also one can get ahead in life
socially, political, and, most importantly, economically, by
pleasing and playing up to those in power. Power thus becomes the
transcendental factor in the scheme of life and the conduct of
society. Even in religion, the absolute and sovereign Power of God
is the first and the foremost attribute of God. All His other
ninety-eight attributes are nothing as compared to the theological
centrality of Power.
But even the
injustice, exploitation, and corruption wrought by the political
system by virtue of its holding the monopoly of power has been
insignificant compared to the injustice, exploitation, and
corruption wrought by the economic system, especially under
capitalism, by virtue of the ownership of the means of production
monopolized by the capitalist class. The logic of money means, in
theory as well as practice, that accumulation systematically,
rationally, and calculatedly—and to the exclusion of all other
(cultural, social, political, religious, moral, and ethical)
considerations—be maximized. Marx was right when he stated the
summum bonum of capitalism: “Accumulate. That is Moses and the
prophets.” The purchasing power of the Western economic system has
been so great that it has truly succeeded in purchasing whomever or
whatever it cared to purchase. Who can deny that Western capitalism
has reduced all culture, religion, science, education, laws, mores,
customs, ideals, family relations, kinship relations, human
relations, moral values, ethical values, art forms, and, not to
forget, social sciences to mere superstructure of the Western
economic system to modify, to mould, and overhaul as it suited the
interests of the capitalist mode of production, distribution,
exchange, and consumption.
From “Modern
Muslim Though” by Ausaf Ali, pp. 145-46 |
