Islam and the Modern Age

In view of the present state of marvellous rate of progress, can one really believe that Islam can cater to the needs of the modern world? Today, when man, by the means of his power of reason, is conquering the planets and is able to journey far out into the depths of space, is it not time for us to discard such ancient dogmas and concentrate our vision and will on the pursuit of our magnificent victories, pursuing the modern sophisticated way of life?

- By Allamah Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i [QS]

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Tags: absoc, age, imperial, islam, modern, tabatabai

Hajj – Rejecting an Empty Philosophy

Life today (not life as it should be carried on) is an idle cyclical action a movement with no goal! A meaningless pendular action starts with the day only to end at night and night starts only to disappear at dawn. In the mean time, man is busy watching the play of these black and white “rats” who chew the strings of our life until we die.Life (as we live it) is like a theater. Man watches these aimless nights and days. Indeed, what foolish play is conducted! When you are in need, you hope and struggle to overcome your needs. Yet once you achieve this, you view your past efforts humorously. What a senseless philosophy to live by!

Living on a day to day basis, the person lacks direction. His aim is only to live. What exists is a dead spirit in a living body. However, the Hajj experience alters this unhealthy condition!

Once you decide to perform Hajj and take the necessary steps, you are on the road to the actualization of Hajj. Before going to Hajj you reside in your home calm and reposed. Upon entering the state of mind for Hajj, you arise and move away from your routine environment.

Hajj is the antithesis of aimlessness. It is the rebellion against a damned fate guided by evil forces. The fulfillment of Hajj will enable you to escape from the complex network of puzzles. This revolutionary act will reveal to you the clear horizon and free way to migration to eternity toward the Almighty Allah.

Depart from your home. and visit “Allah’s house”, or the “house of the people”! You, whoever you are,you are a man, Adam’s son, and a representative of Allah on earth!You are a relative of Allah, Allah’s trustee, His master of nature and a student of God. Allah taught you the names. He made you from His spirit and endowed you with special qualities. You were praised by Him; His angels even prostrated to you. This earth and everything in it was made available to man. God became your “homemate”, with you at all times and watching all of your actions. Are you living up to His expectation?

Prophet (PBUH):

Allah is in the hearts of the believers

Quran XXIX:3

Thus Allah knoweth those who are sincere, and knoweth those who feign.

Quran LVII: 25

And that Allah may know him who helpeth Him and His messenger, though unseen.

Quran XVII: 7

Lo! We have placed all that is in the earth as an ornament thereof that we may try them: which of them is best in conduct.

Quran LXVII: 2

Who hath created life and death that He may try you, which of you is best in conduct; and he is the Mighty, the Forgiving,

With the passage of time and the influence of various forces of the social system which disregard human rights and duties, your character has been changed. The vicissitudes of life have affected you to the degree that you became alienated and neglectful. Originally, with Allah’s spirit in your heart, you were supposed to shoulder the responsibility of being Allah’s trustee on earth. You were granted time as a means for fulfilling this task but you failed because the gift was used carelessly!

Quran CIII: 2-3

By the declining day, Lo! man is in a state of loss,

This is what is called life! But realistically speaking what has been accomplished? What constructive contributions have you made? What have you gained? So many precious years have been lost, yet who are you?

Oh trustee and vicegerent of Allah on earth, you have turned to money, sex, greed, aggression, and dishonesty. You have regressed to the inferior status that you occupied before almighty Allah blew His spirit into you. Where is the spirit of Allah now? Oh man, rise out of this decadent situation! Divorce yourself from this gradual death.

Leave your surroundings and go to the pure land. There you may face Almighty Allah under the inspiring sky of Mashar. The estrangement which you have experienced will be overcome. At last, you will find yourself!

Source: The Pilgrimage by Dr Ali Shariati

Food Crisis and Peak Oil – Feedback

Do you get your 2000 kilo-calories a day? This is the minimum energy intake of an adult from food according to the UN body the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since you’re in Britain, you probably do, but the answer to that question is no for 1 billion of the 6 billion people who inhabit this Earth.

As part of the Ahlulbayt Islamic Society’s campaign about the current Economic Crisis, Mr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (IPRD) gave a talk regarding the current crisis in food supplies. Mr Ahmed began by making the point that increases in food prices are actually causing riots around the world. Although not reported widely in the news, 37 countries have seen food riots, including Indonesia, Morocco and Mexico. Here in Britain the consequences have been less severe with households seeing their weekly grocery bills increase food prices due to fluctuating prices over the past few weeks, which have hit low-income families the hardest.

Since most Imperial students are not farmers, it’s difficult for us to remember that the food we eat – that Ploughman’s Cheese sandwich sitting in its plastic container or the mandatory cup of coffee between lectures – actually grew out of the ground at some point. Agriculture is that age-old human activity, but according to Mr Ahmed, it is the unsustainable industrial agriculture practiced across the world that is creating a food crisis. Some of the mechanisms for this, such as soil erosion, were explained. The intensive growing of crops today isn’t compatible with the fact that it takes 500 years to replenish 1 inch of top soil, the result is lower productivity year on year. Water scarcity is an under-acknowledged issue, the NewScientist magazine reported that an average hamburger takes 11,000 litres of water to produce, and like top soil, fresh water is currently being used faster than water tables are replenished. Pesticide Pollution and the effects of Global Warming were also discussed.

Lastly Mr Ahmed argued that monoculture – the growing of only one crop over a large area – is completely unsustainable. Third world farmers face pressure to grow only one “cash” crop to sell to huge corporate agricultural companies like Dupont and Cargill, who in turn sell it to supermarket chains in developed countries. Instead of rotating crops or growing a variety of them which would supply local markets, huge fields of cocoa or cotton are sown and their produce exported. Colombia is not short of arable land and its biggest agricultural exports are coffee, tobacco and cut flowers, but the Latin American country must import other food to feed its population, of which 13% are undernourished according to the FAO. India is another paradoxical case where, despite earning $1.2bn from exporting milled rice in 2004, a fifth of India’s population is undernourished.

Overall Mr Ahmed made a compelling argument, but he failed to address several common criticisms. For example many advantages have been gained from the industrialisation of agriculture, like economies of scale and improved yields, and what role would Genetically Modified food would play in a more sustainable agricultural system. Additionally the Peak Oil half of his talk was not as well developed, with a plethora of technical terms clouding his argument. Terms like a Hubbert curve, Olduvai theory and the opinions of petroleum geologist Colin Campbell, are ones best left for the hours spent browsing Wikipedia.

Worrying about feeding ourselves is something we don’t do anymore in a developed country like Britain. Our supermarkets are open 24/7 with a huge choice of food, and the law requires motorway service stations to be open 24/7 to let us refill our fuel tanks and stomachs. And if you’re annoyed that the JCR closes at 6pm when you still want a bite to eat, the Imperial College Library Café is open throughout the night! We live our lives assuming food will always be available for us to eat, but for masses of people in the world most of their time is spent ensuring they get their 2000 kilo-calories a day just to survive.

Hassan Joudi

Islamic Economics: the solution? – Feedback

Being faced with the worst global economic crisis in the last century, religion is the last thing on the mind of some individuals. However, on a cold gusty night in central London, dozens of students, professors and businessmen warmed the ambience with a glimmer of hope, asking the single question: Can Islamic Economics be the solution?

The heart of academic excellence in London was united with that of economics, as experts on the field graced Imperial College with their presence. The main speaker was Professor Rodney Shakespeare, a Cambridge graduate, barrister and economist. He was joined in the audience by Canon Peter Challen, the Chairman of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice and co-author of the widely read book “Seven Steps to Justice” with Shakespeare. Renowned economist Tarek el-Diwany, who Shakespeare described as the “number one Islamic author on interest”, was also present to contribute his expertise on the matter.

The main speaker’s high profile brought with it an aura of expectation, and he didn’t fail to impress. Shakespeare is a teacher of Binary Economics in Triskati University, Jakarta, the largest private higher education institution in Indonesia, and it showed. His arguments for an Islamic system based on binary economics were well structured and his radiant and jovial approach defied the bitterly cold night in a country on the verge of recession.

The Imperial AhlulBayt Islamic Society organised this event as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the “credit crunch”. Shakespeare called not just for the spreading of awareness, but the spreading of ownership. This is the pillar on which the notion of binary economics rests, and the reason why an Islamic system without interest can hoist us from the current financial pitfall. It may seem idyllic, but as Shakespeare said, the current system is on the precipice of collapse with interest continuing to shift wealth from the poor to the rich. A new arrangement is needed quickly; ironically, perhaps this “new” system was proposed some 1400 years ago in the deserts of Arabia.

Mohsin Asharia

Economic Genocide: A debtly deception – Feedback

Credit crunch. Global Financial Crisis. Britain on the brink of recession. We are told we are simply facing the consequences of over-borrowing. But is there a much deeper flaw? Is the monetary system inherently causing an Economic Genocide?

As part of the AhlulBayt Islamic Society’s current campaign to raise awareness about the Economic Crisis, students of all faiths and backgrounds convened in the Clore Lecture Theatre last Thursday to discuss the topic in more depth. We were extremely privileged with the presence of Toufik Machnouk, Executive Director of the Insitute for Policy Research and Development, to clarify the nature of the crisis we are currently in. However, this was not simply a chiding to consumers about overspending, or a scolding of banks for overlending, rather a structured analysis of three important factors often misunderstood by average Joe: the ownership of wealth, the monetary structure, and the Islamic perspective on these two systems.

The talk sent a chilling message, implying that the problem is in the “credit” rather than the “crunch”. Whilst some governments seem to think we can fight fire with fire and “borrow our way out of this”, Mr Machnouk suggested otherwise. The problem, he explained, lies in the ownership of wealth. You know something is wrong when the lower half of the world’s population own just 1% of the world’s wealth, and that the richest three men on the planet are worth the equivalent of the total GDP of the 48 poorest nations.

Combining the wealth ownership inequalities with a flawed monetary structure creates a lethal concoction. So lethal, in fact, that it has led to the deaths of more children than the number of deaths caused by World War I. Interestingly, 97% of “money” is today created by private banks in interest. However, when one pauses to ask where all this money came from, there is an eery silence. In fact, the majority of this money is not in circulation but in the form of digits in computers. No wonder we can’t pay it back. So why has this never been a problem up till now. Economists liken it to a game of musical chairs: so long as the music is playing, everyone is fine. When it stops, somebody has to lose.

The problem is overshadowed globally, with poor countries strangled by unpaid debts in a system set up post-WWII by the States. Unfortunately this perpetual debt can only be sustained by perpetual growth. As the speaker put it, it is like charging you for the air you breathe, whilst simultaneously asking you for a part of your lung for each breath you take. The poor countries are forced into IMF loans, which seem like an idyllic escape at the time. However, the structural adjustment programmes attached to the loans ensure the loan money disappears to private and foreign investors, leaving the impoverished nations to clear up the mess. And pay back the loans, of course. It comes as no surprise that all nations given IMF loans showed a decline in 17 key indicators in the years after they received the loans. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that half of the world’s population now lives in absolute poverty, earning under $2 a day.

Mr Machnouk concluded with the Islamic perspective on the issue. The Arabic word for “Economics” stems from the word “Equality”. In Islam, wealth is nothing but a trust from God, and policies in place attempt to ensure fairness and justice in transactions and the financial system. Be it through the prohibition of hoarding wealth to the public ownership of community resources, the right of financial assistance to the elimination of interest, Islam aims to reach a state where wealth is not the goal, rather a means to satisfaction.

In conclusion, the talk was a huge success in fulfilling the AhlulBayt Society’s aim to raise awareness about the crisis, and its more general aims to encourage dialogue and free thought. The looming discussion on Islamic Finance by guest speaker Prof Rodney Shakespeare looks to be the icing on the cake for the Economic Crisis campaign.

Mohsin Asharia