Saturday, January 3, 2009

Reporting the Reviving the Islamic Spirit Conference 2008 - attempts at redemption . PART 2

Excerpts from addresses by Imam Zaid Shakir and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

These eminent and well beloved speakers spoke more than once during the conference. Key foci of their talks were the economy, and law and order in a just society. Often enwrapped in the force of their arguments I would forget to take notes. Here is an amalgamation from what I do have MashaAllah.


Imam Zaid Shakir
Positive Law and the Quest for a Just Society (title from my interpretation)

In a critique of the debate of positive law versus natural law the Imam called upon the Muslim community to participate in the judicial and societal codification processes of the western societies they live in.


For those of us not so familiar with the terms, positive law is a term used generally to define laws enacted/codified by use of logic and reason (e.g. some parts of the constitution of the USA) and natural law is a term used to mean the inherent sense of justice and injustice we possess. Proponents of both camps have debated to a great extent the positive and negative of both views. Aristotle has been supposed the father of natural law, while Socrates and Plato are also considered strong proponents of it.
In Islamic law, the concept of ‘Istislah’ bears some similarity to the concept of natural law as understood in the west. Al-Ghazali tied the definition of what is ‘naturally good’ to legal precepts in the Qur’an and Sunnah. Ibn Rushd (better known as Averroes) on a commentary on Plato’s Republic also tied natural law to tenets in the Islamic sharia, and his writings later influenced Thomas Aquinas who is considered to have brought natural law to the modern (i.e. post medieval) fold.


He began highlighting the example of the current economic crisis brought about by the western economic principle of building on credit. Saying that if you think about it, western economies are really all a pyramid scheme the Imam asked that we revisit our scholars and find solutions based on morality and ethics for the current problems we face. He quoted the famous words of Edmund Burke who said;
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing”


It is not without reason, the Imam stated, that Allah subahan wa ta’ala is bringing Muslims in multitudes to the west at this critical juncture of world social history. He reiterated that we as a community have a rich history of academia, intellectualism, and the ability to provide sophisticated answers to deep social problems, and that we must stop doing nothing, and begin to contribute to solving problems plaguing western economies and social justice systems.


He expounded on the existing critique of positive law as being divorced from morality. And he made the strong statement that ‘as Muslims, we have the authority to say that positive law can be wedded to a higher morality’. This is the unique gift Islam has to give to social systems, the ability to integrate profound spiritual truths with day-to-day social laws necessary to maintain a just moral society.


He gave two examples.

One the Quranic ayah known to many of us, but mostly in a simple way;
“Men are the protectors and maintainers of women…” [Sûrah al-Nisâ’: 34].
The statement that men are to protect and maintain women also encompasses the meanings that men must act to protect women’s rights in society as a whole. Pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking are massive industries in the modern world that directly or indirectly denigrate the status of thousands of women and girls. Ponder deeply in to the Quranic call for men to protect women and understand that this entails a larger social responsibility and moral context than we often think.


The other example he gave is of the Muslim gold standard in economic dealings. Both in the Quran and in the Sunnah the explicit call to use a gold standard is made. I will elaborate on this aspect later on under the report on Shaykh Hamza’s talk as he spoke at length on this topic.


Imam Zaid Shakir inspired hope by reminding us of that noted chapter in world history where the Mongols ravaged and brought to its knees the Muslim empire in the 13th Century AD. We all know, that within about 200 years of the Mongol victories, those very marauding forces who had desecrated Muslim monuments and massacred the Muslim people almost all became Muslim themselves. Alhamdulillah this is the strength of Islam and of those who practise Islam.

“Our strength is knowledge and moral strength”
“No society can endure if it’s morally and intellectually bankrupt”


Islam will endure. These words bring to mind another great talk by Dr. Tariq Suwaidan, the published professor of management and leadership, who gave three excellent lectures on how to be a good leader. In one of those lectures, he thundered ‘Do you doubt, O Muslims?.. Islam will prevail. Do you doubt?!”


Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
Sunnah or Mammon – Prosperity or Bankruptcy?

The published abstract; ‘Mammon? In New Testament terms it represents the false god of riches and avarice. It represents the accumulation of wealth as an object of worship and of its greedy pursuit. When wealth becomes an evil tat is Mammon. Who worships Mammon? The greedy who make their wealth a deity. Regarding those who persist in accumulating wealth by engaging in a system of Riba, Allah says their gain will be blithed, destroyed, obliterated. In other words, whatever they earn will vanish. If you are concerned, as you should be, about the current global financial crisis, this talk will shine the tremendous light of Prophetic wisdom on Mammon’

This talk definitely did shine the tremendous light of Prophetic wisdom on the machinations of modern economics and the economics of justice. I was enthralled through most of it and regret that my notes are few. However, the gist of this talk was expounding the necessity for economic justice in a society.

Economic justice is a God given right, that no government should deviate from when setting and implementing fiscal policy. The Qur’an is very clear in it’s principle of the forbiddance to create something out of nothing. Therefore modern complicated monetary instruments such as hedge funds etc are not allowable in an Islamic system. The gold standard, which is based on real assets, is the only standard acceptable as a just economic system. Shaykh Hamza quoted from the noted economist Alan Greenspan who in the 1960s said that the ‘gold standard is incompatible with chronic deficit spending’. Therefore the current credit crisis propagated and grown by the economics of a system based on the buying and selling of credit is would not have occurred if modern economic super powers had stuck to the gold standard.

Shaykh Hamza asked us all to read Naomi Klein’s book, ‘The shock doctrine’, in which this highly respected journalist outlines the creation of modern economic imperialism through the establishment of global commercial behemoths.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no protection for the common man. People are not able to protect their savings from inflation and therefore are almost forced in to capitulation in to the credit system. This is economic injustice which is impermissible in an Islamic social system.

The economics practised by the Prophet sallaalu alaihi wa sallam, who was head of state to a very large empire at one time, and the Quran injunctions on economic practise are there for us to take as guidance. It is imperative we study these diligently. At one time our scholars had delved in to this subject deeply, it is time we revisited lost knowledge and shared our treasure with the world.
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