Summary: Capitalist Individuality

• Is capitalism / democracy universal and necessary?

• This claim founded on the Enlightenment’s conception of rationality – ontological truth can be discovered through deductive / inductive logical processes.

• This reason is universal – common to all human beings as is the pursuit of this worldly happiness. Reason is therefore a slave of this passion for pleasure.

• Reason identifies the universal moral norms and social practises, which can maximize human happiness.

• Since every one is rational every one must rationally choose (a) maximization of happiness as the purpose of life (b) the norms and practises which makes this possible autonomously – no domination.

• In Romanticism intuitions / passion are seen as the source of ontological truths.

• The self – the source of intuitions – is necessarily good (for it can discover truth). It is good even when it wills evil (for this is just a means for achieving good). That is why the Roussiuan General Will is always good – willing the welfare of all. This is the basis of the faith in democracy and (autonomous) capitalist contracts.

• According to Kant the self “does not derive its laws from but prescribes them to nature”. It possesses an order which determines the structure of our experiences. The self gives the world its form and meaning. The self is transcendental in the sense that it is the necessary universal basis of all experiencing and conceptualizing. It has prior knowledge of the concept of an object and of the process of causation.

• As the self is the source of experiencing and knowledge it cannot be known. We have faith in it – in a self which is free to know and to will the world autonomously. This freedom is the presupposition of democratic / capitalist immorality.

• It is reason which tells us what our duty is. Reason produces universalizable moral principles. The practice of these universalizable principles produces a harmonious community (“a kingdom of ends”) in which everyone is treated as an end in himself.

• Reason permits a detachment of the noumenal self from the phenomenal self and the phenomenal world. The self is essentially good because it can autonomously discover the good. Faith in freedom is required for this discovery. Faith in freedom is intuitive.

• The self is the source of all feeling, knowledge and action and it is responsible for the world. In the German Romanticist tradition the self is seen as creating the world – willing truth not just knowing it.

• Hegel expands the self from the individual to a language community. Hegel also denies the existence of self validating universal truth. Every language community creates its own universal truth which is a shared interpretation of the collective experiences of a language community. The self realization of a language community takes place in history. The self realization of the West is the end of history.

• It is not the individual but the language community which is autonomous. Morality is the conventions / way of life of a community – it is not universal laws created / discovered by autonomous individuals – at the end of history the West’s conventions / constitutions are indispensable for freedom.

•Schaupenhauer showed that the world that the West has created is dominated by its Will not by its Reason. The Will is free – and reason is its slave. From the 19th Century the West insists upon the possibility of choice – but choice only among valueless ends. Keirkegard argues it is not important what you choose but how you chose it. Choices cannot be defended rationally. All choices are ultimately absurd and passionate commitment does not lead to moral progress. Life is full of crises of choosing between equally absurd commitments.

• Marx saw this as alienation and believed that it could be avoided by situating the whole harmonious person in a whole harmonious society. Class struggle was the means for creating a harmonious society and would lead to Communist Society where choice would be unlimited. Absurdity returns.

• Since the late 19th century the West asks, is Freedom possible. The positivits – Comte, Wittgenstein, Frege – reject the possibility of answering the main ontological questions rationally – necessary and universalizable propositions are only logical / mathematical other investigations of ontological questions were mere “psychologism”.

• Emotions and judgements are correct if they reflect the individual’s true “value feelings”. Thus Dilthey argued that these may reflect historical experience but hermeneutics – the systematic interpretation of human experience – may allow us to understand the meaning of every human experience. Nevertheless relativism could not be ruled out.

• Neitzsche – and Bergson – react to relativism by seeing the individual as the bearer of a vital force – the will to survive. Truth is an instrument for survival, not a source of knowledge. The morality of ubermansch is spending life as a work of art – a rejection of slave morality and an acceptance of fate.

• Phenomenology sought to return to universals by asserting that truth could be found in consciousness. Examining the structure of consciousness could reveal the universal / necessary truths of experience. The transcendental self “I” must find the truth in itself. Turing inwards leads the individual to objective truth (Husserl).

• Freud argued that objective truth is to be discovered essentially in the sub conscious. The urges of the unconscious (‘the libido’) dominate the individual’s life. But these urges are evil and civilization is possible only through their repression, this repression, “self denial”, leads to the “death wish”.

• Wittgenstein asserts the impossibility of discovering the ethical life through reason. Metaphysics is unsayable. There was therefore a need to transcend rational discourse. There is no necessity or value in the world. Knowledge is not to be found even in language – there are only “language games” which cannot represent universal truth. Wittgenstein gives us self doubt.

• Self doubt is re-enforced by Heidegger. The individual is merely Dasein – “being in the world” enquiring about Being. Asking the unanswerable question “who am I”. The boundaries of the self are unclear. The individual is concerned primarily with being not knowing. The self is partly constructed by “the they”. The self must choose his Existenz and avoid Falleness. Choosing Existenz seriously is coming to terms with death. Facing death is the hallmark of authenticity. But how this is to be done and what meaning is revealed by being remains unclear in Heidegger.

• Gadamer and Habermas argue that meaning is to be found in life not in death – the self knows itself as part of a humanity that shares the problem of life on earth. Intersubjective communication – if not distorted politically – can lead to a harmonious consensual universal fusion of interpretations that asserts Enlightenment values. Since the mid 1990s Habermas has significantly qualified these claims about the universality of human rights.

• Sartre endorses the absolute freedom of the individual – there are no necessary choices. The self is to be created. It is itself nothing. Consciousness can make the world what it is not. It can put whatever meaning it likes into the world attempting to do this is wanting to be God. Abandoning this wish is bad faith but in Camus’ view death frustrates this wish and shows the ultimate meaninglessness of life.

• Structuralism argues that objective laws of human behavior – though not meaning – can be discovered in the structure of culture and language. Foucault seeks to study the structure of Western civilization and identifies the historical sources (the genealogy) of these structures. He denies the possibility of deriving universal laws of human behavior from this examination. He speaks of the death of man in the precise sense that universal meanings cannot be derived. Knowledge is socially manufactured and discursive practices reveal power relations in a specific social setting. In Foucault meaning is not truth. Progress is impossible. The individual is filled with revulsion of post-modern society but continues the meaningless struggle for freedom despite recognizing the inevitability of capitalist subjectivity.

• Deridda ridicules these struggles. There is no meaning, no subject, no reality. All practical consensus is historically constructed. We can merely deconstruct.

Transcending Social Science

•General loss of faith in Western ideals, freedom, rights, progress, reason. Foucault etc. have shown that it is impossible to justify the universalist claims of capitalist norms and practices. Post modernists justify these claims on esthetic grounds.

•Islamizing social sciences makes no sense in these circumstances. It only produces apologies for capitalist practices and liberal policies. This subjects Islamic thought and practise to human rights imperialism at a time when it is collapsing.

•Legitimating capitalist/liberal practices makes the construction of Islamic individuality, society, state more difficult. Such legitimation by Christianity has led to avarice dominated individuality, sexually and economically corrupt society and human rights imperialism. Rejecting social science is necessary for avoiding moral decadence and imperialist domination.

•Capitalist individuality and rationality is not natural but contingent. The dedication of thought and policy to the maximization of freedom/pleasure is not natural.

•Imam Ghazali provides the framework for deconstructing unIsalmic metaphysics and epistemology. He neither subordinates Islam to alien systems of knowledge nor does he incorporate them in Islamic epistemology. He seeks their total destruction.

•The Ghazalian approach refutes the claim of the West to be universal or a civilization. It rejects dialogue. It seeks the deconstruction of modernity and Western hegemony.

•The internalist Ghazalian critique of the social sciences demonstrates the incoherence of their presumptions and methodologies, identifies their hidden meanings and their lack of correspondence to their claims and to reality. The externalist Ghazalian critique involves critiquing social sciences presumption, methodologies, practises on the basis of Islamic epistemology and morality. Only the orthodox ulema and soofia can undertake this externalist critique.

•The development of a comprehensive internalist and externalist critique of Enlightenment epistemology is required for the overthrow of Western savagery and the demonstration of Islam’s claims as the only universal civilization.

•Islamic epistemology cannot accommodate social science presumptions and methodologies Islamic social enquiry presumes the ultimacy of God and rejects human autonomy and self determination. The moral oughts are established by the will of the Creator as interpereted in Shariah and the Tariqas by ijmah. Human practices are evaluated in terms of their submission to Allah’s will. In this perception knowledge is essentially awareness of Allah’s will with regard to human being and human conduct.

•Enlightenment epistemology is an outright rejection of these truths. Similarly there is no room for freedom, equality, progress, human rights, tolerance in classical Islamic learning. Imperialism seeks to incorporate these concepts into Islamic discourse in order to subordinate Islam to Enlightenment epistemology.

•We reject social science because its methodologies are not value neutral but provide justification and technologies for capitalist governance. Capitalism sees man as master of his body and of the world. Man imposes order on the world through self reflection which makes experimentation possible in order to subject it to his will. The commands of the human will cannot be evaluated (except thru universalisability, i.e. formally). Reason is a means for obeying the arbitrary commands of the will. The social sciences provide tools for the practise of mechanism and utilitarianism. They promote passion specially avarice and covetousness.

•The purpose of social enquiry in Islam is to create an individuality and society which voluntarily submits to God’s will. We recognize freedom as an evil because freedom is al bagh – the choice to choose any thing. This is to desire to subject the world to man’s arbitrary preferences. In practise this is the preference for capital for capital is universalisable and limitless. That is why social science legitimates and provides governmental technology for capitalist order.

•Islamic economics and Islamic constitutional theory legitimate capitalist rationality within the constraints of the Shariah. They are attempts at incorporating Islam within capitalist order. Fundamentalism – Christian and Islamic – may be seen as attempts at re-enchanting capitalism in this sense. They do not reject the goals of progress and freedom within Shariah constraints.

•The practise of shariah constrained capitalist rationalization and technologies in Iran and Saudi Arabia subjugates these societies to global capital and human rights imperialism. The authority of the ulema is delegitimised and Islamic individuality and social organization is weakened.

•Islam is committed to the overthrow of capitalism as a way of life. Islamic social enquiry is concerned with creating rationalities for the flourishing of Islamic individualities, social organization and virtues for effectively dealing with the contemporary challenges that Islamic revolutionary movements are facing.

•Islamic revolutionaries need to create space for anti capitalist economic and political practise. One way is the organization of non capitalist production and exchange structures. These structures should be instruments for the flourishing of Zuhd and infaq and for augmenting the material power of the Islamic revolutionaries. Islamic social enquiry should develop appropriate theoretical constructs for the mobilization of community based political struggle against the administrative and legislative authority of the constitutional state.

•Classical Islamic branches of learning have been concerned with developing mechanisms for the flourishing of Islamic virtues and Islamic social organization. They therefore provide an appropriate paradigm for addressing these issues in the contemporary context. Our social theorizing must be within the classical Islamic episteme.

•Such social analysis must not be concerned with legitimating isolated capitalist practices – stock trading and elections for example. It must develop the capacity to see capitalism as a complete system. It must ask: how can society as a whole be organized for the promotion of the Islamic virtues and the transcendence of capitalism (takkathur).

•Classical Islamic methodologies and rationalities have been preserved by the Ulema of Deoband and Barrailly in a pure and uncontaminated form. A basis exists for continuing Hazrat Qutb-ul-Alam Mohajir Makki’s project of integrating the movements of spiritual uplift, revival of Islamic leanring and jihad.

•The deconstruction of Enlightenment epistemology and addressing contemporary issues related to the overthrow of capitalism requires an expansion of the scope of ilm-I-Kalm, Fiqh and usul-al-deen. This broadening of scope must entail a construction on the basis of our inherited wisdom and an elaboration of the teachings on which there is ijma. Our social theories must conform to the maqasid-i-sharia and be sanctioned by the principles enunciated by usul-i-fiqh for the formulation of ahkam.

•This is taqleedi ijtihad – an ijtihad which confirms, elaborates and vindicantes ijma and preserves grounds for establishing Islam’s claims as the only universal civilization. Such ijtihad provides an indispensable basis for transcending social science and for waging permanent jihad against Western savagery.

•The West has adopted capitalism as a way of life and re-articulated the claim ana rabba kum al ala. The rule of capital leads to a total rejection of Allah’s authority and universalization of the vices of avarice and jealousy. It fills the world with sexual vice and mass slaughter. Economic life is thoroughly corrupted by riba and gharrar. All this represents a never to be satisfied lust for freedom and plentitude.

•Social science justifies man’s rebellion against God (freedom) sexual vice, economic exploitation and human rights imperialism. Transcending social science is necessary. It can be achieved by the ulema who must revive classical Islamic learning to reassert the universalist claims of Islamic civilization.

Islamic Banks as the West's natural Allies: Review of The politics of Islamic finance

The September 11 counter attacks on America have created something of a crisis for Islamic finance. The Bush administration had expressed misgivings about the involvement of Islamic banks in financing resistance operations in America and several unsuccessful lawsuits have been brought against leading Islamic financiers. Islamic banks have been insisting that they have played no part in financing the Islamic resistance to American dominance of the Muslim world. Islamic banks seek to present themselves as institutions, which can facilitate the subordinate integration of Muslim economies to American capitalism.

The principle aim of Henry and Wilson’s book (Henry C.M and Wilson R (ed) The Politics of Islamic Finances, Karachi, Oxford University Press 2005) is to justify this claim of the Islamic banks. It seeks to show that the growth of “a new type of Islamic capitalism” has largely been a response to liberalization by governments in Muslim majority countries. These initiatives were usually articulated --through the Structural Adjustment Programs (redesigned as Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility Programs) of the IMF and the Sectoral Programs of the World Bank. The growth of the Islamic banks can legitimately be seen as a (perhaps unintentional) consequence of these programs. It is therefore not surprising that leading IMF and World Bank officials Sami’ al-Darvsih, Abbas Mirakhor and Mohsin Khan have played pioneering roles in the Islamic finance movement.

The book under review recognizes the superficial nature of the Islamic banks rejection of interest “they appear to share a financial world view in which riba is abolished while the time value of money as understood in contemporary financial theory is respected” (p. 2). Rodinson made much the same point about the legitimating of interest by the client Ulema of the Abbasi and Saljuk courts in medieval Iraq (Rodinson 1969 Chap 7).

Islamic banks exist in Muslim countries whose governments support them as “a part of a strategy to legitimate themselves” (p.2). At the beginning of 2002 Islamic banks esisted in 18 Muslim and six non Muslim countries (Switzerland, France, Netherlands, India, UK and the USA). Their share of commercial banks deposits in the Muslim countries averaged about 5 percent ranging from over 10 percent in the UAE to less than 0.1 percent in Tunisia. These figures exclude Iran where unislamic financial practices are forbidden. These figures also do not include deposits in the Islamic branches of non-Islamic banks. These are quite substantial in Egypt, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. The share of Islamic financial institutions in bank deposits in non-Muslim countries was usually less than 0.001 percent in 2002.

On average about 60 percent of Islamic bank financing is on mark up basis Islamic banks have rechristened markup as “ murabaha”. Above 90 percent of credit extended by Islamic banks requires borrowers to pay fixed periodic charges. This is implied interest by whatever Arabic, Turkish, Swahili or Urdu name you call it (Warde 2000 p. 6)

But apparently changing names is sufficient for satisfying members of the Religious Advisory Boards who guarantee the Islamicity of the products of Citibank, Abn Amro, HBSC and the 200 odd other members of the Geneva based International Association of Islamic Banks. Henry and Wilson are confident that “the (Islamic) financeries and their religious boards will (continue) to make compromises with the financial markets” (p.5) and the range of interest duplicate financial contracts offered by Islamic banks had been increasing rapidly over the last decade. Moreover “the most significant guarantee of Islamic banks’ future (is) the large Western multinational (banking sector which) has opened Islamic windows” (p.5).

Henry and Wilson describe in detail the patronage networks sustaining the Islamic bank. Monzer Kahf a senior executive of the Jeddah based Islamic Development Bank attributes the rise of the Islamic banks to “an alliance between private financiers and religious scholars” (P. 17). This “alliance between the rich and the wealthy and the shari’a scholars…served to de-politicize the Islamic movement and opened up new avenues of co-operation between the government and (the) Islamic opposition” (p.17).

The founder of the Islamic banking movement in Egypt Dr. Ahmed al Najjar was a German educationist and financial economist “at considerable distance from the Muslim Brotherhood” (p.19). The first Islamic bank of Egypt was known as the Nasser Social Bank. It was owned by the government and a major purpose of its establishment was to delegitimise the social efforts of the Ikhwan.

Prince Muhammad al Faisal played a pioneering role in the development of Islamic banks in the Gulf and North Africa. The Saudi sponsored international religious network recruited many ulama to the Islamic banking movements, all of them dissidents of the Ikhwan (such as Yusuf al Qardavi, Abd as Sattar Abu Ghaddah, and Hussain Ahmed Hassan). A leading Deobandi critic of the Jama’at’i’Islami, Taqi Usmani was recruited some years later.

According to Kahf “(t) his alliance between the ulama and the Muslim bourgeoisie creates a new power structure” (P 25). The ulama “created a buffer that can be used in support of the main shareholders and professional managers of Islamic banks who are usually drawn from commercial banks” (p.25).

The shari'a scholars need the support of the banks and the government “for the rising Islamic movement sidelined most of them” (p. 25). There are innumerable material benefits the ulama enjoy because of the support of the bankers. One only has to visit Dar ul Ulum Korangi to ascertain this. As Monzer Kahf notes, “The alliance gives the ulama a new source of income that by far exceeds what they were used to earning. It gives them opening to a new life-style that includes air travel, some times in private jets and stay in five star hotel suits. In addition they are frequently commissioned to undertake paid research.” (p.26).

“Bestowing a new income and new associations it opens the ulama and exposes them to experiences that were even hard to imagine in the past. The ulama that in the 1950s, and 1960s had weather beaten dead skin hands, humble clothing, sitting in the cold teaching on the ground of mosques are now replaced with soft living ulama who are used to luxurious garments, services of five star hotels and expensive restaurants, (this) has resulted in changes in (their) viewpoints”(p.27)

Kahf further notes, “The bankers have always been very sensitive in selecting the type of ulama who are acceptable to both the government and the general public. The ulama allied with the Islamic movements are avoid(ed)” (p.28) The Islamic banks seek to promote “reconciliatory reformers who abandoned the banner of Syed Qutb, “Take Islam all together or leave it” (p. 29).

The pro imperialist stance of the Islamic banks is emphasized by Ibrahim Warde (chp2).

Warde notes that with the exception of the Sudan “Islamic finance (is) firmly embedded in the US centered political and economic order oriented towards preserving the status quo. In every new market they penetrate Islamic banks establish links with the local legal power structure and work within established oligopolies. (They) are keen on working with the major international financial institutions. The capitals of Islamic finance are London, Geneva and the Bahamas not Jeddah, Cairo or Karachi. (They) have a stake in the stability of international markets where they are heavily invested. They hold a large percentage of their deposits abroad. The large international banks were instruments in the very creation of the Islamic banks” (p. 41).

In countries such as Bahrain, Qatar and Malaysia governments have used Islamic banks as a tool for policy liberalization and deregulation (p.47). The Islamic finance movement has during the 1990s moved further and further away from traditional Islamic practices and in the name of urf and masliha sanctioned virtually all interest replicating contracts (pp. 47-49).

As Warde stresses “Islamic bank(ing) has become more pragmatic and is increasingly converging with conventional banks” (p.49). It is laughable that much of the “ijtihad” justifying Islamic bank practices now takes place at the Harvard Islamic Finance Information Forum (HIFIP).

For these reasons the Islamic banks were deeply shocked by the post 9/11 suspicions against them voiced by America. Prince Muhammad al Faisal was the first and most vocal denouncer of the counter attack on America. He wrote “We all condemn in the strongest possible terms the terrorist September 11 attacks as a serious crime (Gulf News 12th September 2001). Saleh Kamal boss of Al Barakah was equally distressed. The West has recognized the genuineness of the Islamic finance movements’ commitment to American hegemony and no case brought against the Islamic banks in the wake of the September 11 counter attack has succeeded.

The similarity between Islamic and mainstream banking practices is illustrated by Tarik Yousef’s paper (chap 3). The domination of murabaha in the Islamic banks’ financing packages shows that they are not an alternative but rather a compliment to the standard products of commercial banks. Yusufi shows (pp. 65-66) that murabaha contracts are “virtual replicas” of interest based debt contracts.

He shows that the same systemic factors account for the dominance of interest replica and straightforward interest financing and that there is convergence between them. There is nothing peculiarly Islamic about Islamic finance or about the behavior of Islamic capitalists.

Empirical studies have shown that the financial performance of Islamic banks has generally been inferior to conventional banks and Islamic banks have over the years became particularly dependent on state subsidies and a host of other forms of government support and patronage (chap 5).

In chapter 6 Rodney Wilson documents

the role Islamic mutual funds have played in accelerating capital flight from the Muslim world to the West. Far from contributing to national development Islamic banks and financial institutions are facilitating the rich and wealthy to transfer their funds to safe havens in Europe and America.

Foreign direct investment from one Muslim country to another is miniscule in relative terms in Islamic mutual funds invest almost exclusively in America and Europe. As Wilson notes “Islamic capital flourish (es) in the liberalized environment of the West” (p. 130). He sees contemporary Islamic capitalists as

“cultural brokers acting as institutions facilitating the westernization of the Muslim countries Islamic funds and banks serve as conduits for money that was previously held outside the banking system and the Muslim world to be transferred to Western financial markets. Shari'ah advisors of Islamic banks are legitimating this transfer of funds.

Wilson estimates that Gulf “filthy rich” nationals totaling about 200,000 held over $ 2 trillion in Europe and America in 2002 ( p.135). The predominant proportion of this investment is in America

The total number of Islamic funds had increased from 9 in 1993 to 105 in 2002. Most of these are owned and managed by American and European financial institutions, such as Permal Asset Management, Keppel Insurance, Pictet & Cie, UBS, CITI, First Investment Company etc (p. 141). The four largest Islamic funds management companies are from America, Britain, Germany and Switzerland.

Henry and Wilson conclude, “(P)olitical Islam should not be conflated with Islam’s other economic and social dimensions. Even governments in the Muslim world that wage war against political Islam recognize the difference between Islam’s political and economic practitioners” (p. 287).

Islamic finance is an imperialist initiative and as Henry and Wilson note

“Islamic banks remain highly vulnerable to external forces emanating from New York and Washington DC. Political Islam in the modern world is suspended between radical and moderate poles and the emergence of a distinctly Islamic form of capitalism (an) alliance between the Ulema, bankers and entrepreneurs could tip the balance and effect a deep structural transformation in the Muslim world. United States policy makers might well ponder over the implications of Kahf’s arguments, instead of supporting a bunch of middle class NGOs they might assist Islamic institutions that promote the spirit of capitalism and free enterprise” (pp. 296-297)

The natural affinity between the imperialists and the Islamic finance agenda is illustrated by the organic link between Islamic and mainstream financial institutions. Islamic banks can either be instruments for financial policy liberalization within the Muslim world or else a conduit for transferring money from Muslim countries to capitalist metropolises specially London, New York and Geneva. The Jordan case study (Chap 9) shows that Islamic banks make extensive use of trade financing and commodity speculation to transfer funds abroad.

The Kuwait study shows that policy liberalization has contributed to a softening up of the Islamic movement through the work of Kuwait Finance House. This has not been the case however in Egypt (Chap 12) or in Turkey (chap 10) where there is widespread criticism of the Islamic banks by the Islamic parties and the Islamic banks are now seen to be the pawns of the secular governments. Sadat’s and Mubarak’s attempt to transform the Ikhwan into an Islamic equivalent of the Christian Democratic Party has manifestly failed.

Typically “Islamic banks offer cover to the governments for the further engagement with international financial institutions and the Washington consensus” (p. 261) As Samir Soliman observes “Islamic financial banners wave freely in the air unfolding a harmless variety of meanings” (p. 264).This is especially true in the Gulf which is the only region in the world where Islamic banks have a significant share of bank deposits and which are for all intents and purposes American colonies.

The Kuwait case study shows how Islamic banking is being used to tip the scales in favor of American reformers within the government. There is widespread recognition that “it is in the Western world’s interest to encourage the integra (tion) of Islamic financial instruments into international finance.

Islamic capitalism is not a threat to Western capitalism. The IMF and the World Bank encouraged the establishment of the Islamic Financial Service Board that advises the central banks on the regulation of Islamic banks and facilitates standardization” (p.293). Integration between Islamic and western capitalism is being promoted by Islamic bonds “which have exactly the same features as their conventional equivalents and yield fixed rate of return comparable to market rates of interest” (p.294). Today Islamic capitalism is being sponsored by “ a much better qualified and financially aware generation of Sharia scholars in the Gulf approving radically innovative Islamic financial products” (p. 295).

This is a well-researched anthology written by insiders. It illustrates the imperialist sponsorship of the Islamic finance movement and the dangers it poses to the Islamic movements in the Muslim world. Separate chapters on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are badly missed and one hopes that OUP will add these to a future edition of this book.

Toward religious reorganization of civilizations: an Islamic perspective

Professor Samuel P Huntington’s widely noticed contribution to US journal Foreign Affairs presents an essentially Jewish vision of world history and of the nature of global conflict in the immediate future.* The main features of this ‘vision’ are:

•“Culture” or “Civilization” are seen as identical terms. Both are loosely defined and both are seen as being ultimately reflective of the racial characteristic of a particular group. Huntington writes “Arab, Chinese and Westerners are not part of any broader cultural entity. They constitute civilisations (which are the highest cultural grouping people).

•People belonging to different races and civilisations are seen as having “different views on the relation between God and man, the individual and the group, the citizen and the state, parents and children, husband and wife as well as differing views of the relative importance of rights and responsibilities, liberty and authority, equality and hierarchy”. These different views cannot be assessed on the basis of some objective criteria – one holds them because one belongs to a particular race or civilization. Huntington presents no basis for evaluating the value claims of different civilizations and races.

•Religions are means for the assertion of racial identities: “In much of the world religion has moved in to fulfil the gap (created) by the weakening of the nation state.” Religious fundamentalism is thus merely an extreme form of nationalism a revived fascism which seeds the assertion of a particular racial superiority.

•Racial and civilisational groups cannot change their identities. The question is no longer “which side are you on” but “what are you”? “Russians cannot become Estonians,” writes Huntington. “Even more than ethnicity religion discriminates sharply and exclusively among people.”

•Economic success “reinforces civilisational and racial consciousness.” “Economic regionalism can only succeed when it is rooted in a common civilisation.”

•Since “people define their identity in ethnic and religious terms they are likely to see us versus them distinction between themselves and people of different ethnicity and religion.” It is no longer a question of which values are superior, whose views are right. Civilisaitonal conflict is not about the ordering of values. It is merely a naked struggle for power between different racial groups.

•The analysis presented by Huntington is anti-Islamic. “Islamic terrorists” and Islam are described as a threat not just to the West but also to “Russia, the bulk of Africa, Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in Philippines.” “Islam has bloody borders.” The suppression of Islam and the victimisation of the Muslim people is therefore justified. It is justified to apply double standards – condemn human rights violations in Iran but condone mass genocide in occupied Kashmir and Bosnia – for according to Huntington “ a world of clashing civilisations is inevitably a world of double standards: people apply one standard to (themselves) and a different standard to others.”

•Despite an acknowledgment of the supposedly over-whelming military, political and economic power of the West there is a warning that “Western ideas of individualism, liberalism, human rights, equality, liberty, the rule of law, democracy, the free market (and) the separation of church and state have little resonance in other cultures.” There can be no “universal civilisation.” Only a very few “torn countries” – notably Turkey, Russia and Mexico – can “redefine their civilisation identities” (as in some exceptional circumstances Judaism accepts converts). But such conversion will necessarily be very limited and the main option before the West is to subvert and fight the “Islamic and Confucian states” which constitute “a renegade mutual support pact run by the nuclear proliferators and their backers.”

•Huntington recommends that the West “must limit the expansion of the military strength of Confucian and Islamic states, moderate the reduction of Western military capabilities and maintain military superiority in East and Southwest Asia, exploit differences and conflict among Confucian and Islamic states (and) support groups (in these states) sympathetic to Western values and interests”.

In sum the West is advised to become a greater Israel – it must abandon all claim about the universality of its values and content itself with ruling the world through force and fraud. This is the strategy the Jews have been pursuing in Europe and America for over a thousand years. They have made no attempts to universalise Jewish values but by force and fraud they have carved out for themselves a dominant position in the West; its finance, its science, its culture. Why not a Jewish future for Western civilisation? Has not Iqbal said:

Ha naza kay alam may ye tehzib jawa’n marg
Sha’id hoh kalisa kay Yahudi mutawali
(The existing Western civilisation is in the throes of death
In all probability Jews are going to be its custodians)

The future of the West

The Judaisation of the West has been an uneven process. The reformation provided an opening for the Judaisation of Christianity leading to the birth of an exclusivist national state and an exclusivist national church. Christianity, both Orthodox and Catholic, compromised with this Judaisation, but it never abandoned its universalist claims – liberalism in both its political and economic manifestations is a grotesque and monstrous mutilation of Christianity, reflecting above all the latter’s anthropomorphism. That is why the soldiers of Christ followed in the footsteps of the imperialist regimes throughout Africa and Asia and the conversion of the natives to liberalism and Christianity were hand in hand.

The modern dilemma of the West is that its people are losing faith in liberalism and the certainties of the Enlightenment. This loss of faith is reflected at many levels. Most fundamentally liberalism has failed to provide any workable alternative for Christian morality – the inner life of the individual has become impoverished for as even the pagan Greeks knew aesthetics can never take the place of morality. Spirituality can not be a consequence of beautifying the external world. Spiritual impoverishment has made love impossible, family life has collapsed and the West is in the grip of the worst sexual anarchy ever experienced by mankind.

Democratic structures too are disintegrating as people realise that freedom is nothing but an empty void – pure form. Participation in democratic processes is declining, political choice is narrowing as differences in the agenda of mainstream parties disappear. The universalisation of bureaucratic procedures make participatory and representative decision making a farcical charade. The traditional issues of high politics have become meaningless for the common people.
Freedom remains meaningless when it takes the form of capital – pure quantity, an infinite abstraction. The revolution in information technology is merely making the money (the symbol of freedom) go round faster and faster. On the other hand the rate of growth of physical production has been halved in the past decade, compared to the Bretton Woods era. The circuits of finance and physical capital are further apart than ever. Accumulation for its own sake focuses on the creation of unreal need. Men live to want and the purpose of life is merely to want more.

The West cannot survive if it closes its eyes to the tragedy of its own existence – to the failure of liberalism, capitalism and democracy. The people of Europe and America are among the bravest, most perceptive and resourceful people on earth. Abandoning universal principles and retreating into a nationalist cocoon is contrary to their nature. From the days of the ancient Greeks, it is this perpetual quest for universal truth which is the main current in Western history. The Judaisation of the West would among to an abandonment of this quest for truth. The successes of the Western states in extending the spheres of Western power would be phantom victories for the people are fast losing faith in the purposes for which this power is being amassed. Western states would become instruments of oppression for their own people in order to keep up the pretence that the international struggle for Western dominance reflects the needs and wishes of the Western peoples. The World Jewish community has since 1948 been Israel’s most pathetic victim.

The decay of liberalism, capitalism and democracy must not lead to an abandonment of the search for truth. In this quest Islam and Christianity are natural partners; for they, unlike Judaism, Confucianism, Hinduism (and all other civilisations enumerated by Huntington) are by their very nature non-exclusivist, anti-particularistic, anti-nationalist. They belong to no race, no nation. They are the common heritage of all mankind. Indeed it is by partially abandoning its universalist claims (St. Augustine’s sanctioning of the inevitable coexistence of the city of Man and the city of God) and by legitimating secularism in the form of empire and feudal order that Christianity lost the soul of the West.

The West must return to a non-secular, non Roman Christianity; the Christianity of the holy father of the church of Jerusalem of the first century, the Christianity of Peter and John and Baranabas. This Christianity is nothing but Islam. The rapid growth of so many sufi orders throughout Europe and America testify to the continuing strength and vigour of this pure Christianity. Those of us who have had the privilege of sitting at the feet of the European saints like Sheikh Abdul Qadir al Dargavi in Britain, Sheikh Abu Bakr Garudy in France, Sheikh Fadl Allah in Germany – know that they are the true inheritors of the now almost extinct monkish traditions, specially of those of holy saint Francis of Assisi.

They are the new opening (Fatiha) by which Islam is flowing into the heart of Europe and America and re-awakening the followers of the true Christianity. This re-awakening in the beginning must necessarily be spiritual miracle but if the spiritual miracle in the lives of the followers of the pious saints is to be universalised – if a new civilisation is to take place – political and economic reorganisation must inevitably follow. Religious political economy consolidated so that liberalism in the form of both capitalism and democracy may be superseded. Without this spiritual impoverishment, sexual anarchy, political disintegration and economic exploitation nurtured by liberalism cannot be overcome and religious society and a religious state cannot be created.

The British saint Hasan Abdul Hakim (Charles Gai Eaton) teaches “for those who are sickened by the errors of modernism, of rationalism, of nationalism and who wish to break from these illusions there is a home, a shelter always available, Islam.” Despite Jewish hopes, we are entering and ear when civilisations are coming together. The possibility of a religious alternative to liberal universalism is becoming manifest and a retreat into nationalist and racialist exclusiveness is by no means inevitable. There is every hope that a true religious consciousness spreads throughout the West the oppressive acts (both domestic and foreign) of predatory democratic and capitalist states will lead to the organisation of popular resistance to nationalism, secularism and democracy.

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* Huntington's article can be read here

Overthrowing Capitalism: A Ghazalian Perspective

The foundations for the rejection of the Western way of life was laid by Hazrat Shaikh al Mashaikh Imdadullah Muhajir Makki(may Allah bless him) the Amir of the 1857 jihad. Hazrat Qutub-ul Alam (may Allah bless him) insisted that the project for constructing an Islamic state was inextricably interlinked with the project of totally rejecting the Western way of life.

There are two essential elements in the Islamic revolutionary response to the West: First we must articulate a principled and practical rejection of capitalism as a way of life – its norms, regulation procedures and transaction forms. This involves the construction and consolidation of a religious society encompassing the cultural, economic and political life of the Muslims. Authority at all levels must be concentrated in the hands of the Ulema and the mosque and the madrassah must be developed as central institutional modes for organizing the Islamic systemic resistance to capitalism.

In a country such as Pakistan there are ample opportunities for doing this. A very large proportion of businesses are outside the capitalist order – they do not transact with financial markets and their owners do not seek profit maximization. It is entirely possible to develop a mosque / madrassah based system of tamweel for establishing a counter capitalist economy and for mobilizing the power of the bazzar for the over throw of capitalist order. This has been done in Iran and the Islamic movements of Indonesia and Malaysia have developed several institutional initiatives to achieve this end.

Similarly Islamic movements can utilize the power of the trade unions for delegitimating capitalist property. Unions under the leadership of the ulema should abandon the struggle for workers rights and higher wages within the capitalist system. They must seek the transcendence of capitalist order through an abolition of capitalist money and finance and the utilization of state resources for deconstructing capitalist property and delinking from globalized capitalist markets.

The Islamic movements aim at creating a universal state. We explicitly reject the possibility of carving and a niche for a Muslim state within capitalist order through struggles for national liberalization. We seek not liberation but humanity’s total submission to the will of God. An Islamic state is necessarily a Jihadi state. The democratic process may be a mean for the construction of such a state. But the Islamic state is committed to the total destruction of democracy and republicanism in all forms. This is because we reject the possibility of validating norms and practices with reference to ‘general will’ or ‘the will of all’. We regard the quest for autonomy as a quest for evil. Islam is the submission of the will of man to the will of God – all truth claims are validated with reference to God’s will, and to it alone. Islam is a reassertion of the pre Augustinian commitment.

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Such a comprehensive social and political struggle against capitalist order has to be firmly rooted in Islamic epistemology.

The fifteenth century of the Islamic era is one of accelerated disintegration of the capitalist way of life throughout the world. Western savagery can no longer sustain the pretense that it is a civilization. Today the Enlightenment project has all but collapsed. As Wendy Brown argues “the West is still grieving the loss of belief in progress, rights, freedom, reason. Yet it still holds these ideals to be irreplaceable” (p. 103). Foucault and Gadamar and Gray and Rorty and Taylor have shown that it is quite impossible to theoretically justify capitalist norms and practices. The Islamic assault on capitalism and on Western savagery is gaining momentum because of the inherent incoherences of modernist and post modernist discourses.

Reinterpreting Enlightenment epistemology and the projects built upon this epistemology makes no sense in these circumstances. Islamising social sciences produces only apologies for capitalist practices and liberal policies. This subordinates Islamic scholarship and the political strategy of Islamic movements to human rights imperialism at a time when the imperialist system is beginning to implode.

Moreover legitimating capitalist norms and institutions makes the construction and sustenance of Islamic individuality, society and state more and more difficult. Legitimation of capitalist norms and practices by Christianity led to the development of an individuality incapable of surrender to God’s will and dominated by the passions of avarice and jealousy. Marketisation of society has led to a shocking decline of sexual morality and a disintegration of family and community. Finally the liberal state has imposed capitalist oppression throughout the world slaughtering hundreds of millions of people in America, Australia, sub Saharan Africa, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Latin America for the subordination of these countries to global capital. Rejecting Enlightenment epistemology is necessary to avoid and to overcome moral decadence and physical destruction throughout the world.

Rejecting social sciences in particular must involve a recognition of the contingent character of capitalist individuality and rationality. It is not necessary that avarice and covetousness dominate human consciousness. Similarly the dedication of thought and practice to the pursuit of freedom and the maximization of power/pleasure is neither inevitable nor desirable.

Imam Ghazali (may Allah shower His choicest blessings on our master) provides a framework for demonstrating the incoherence of all unIslamic metaphysical and epistemological discourses. Unlike the Mutazila our Imam did not try to incorporate alien discourses into the Islamic system of knowledge. He developed a critique of Greek thought on the basis of Islamic principles – and demonstrated its incoherence in order to refute it and overcome and destroy it. This ensured that Islam was not submerged within an alien system of thought and practices but sought and achieved its total destruction in the Muslim world. The Ghazalian approach explicitly refutes the claim that the West is a superior or universal epistemological and moral civilization. It rejects the possibility of a dialogue with the West [1] . The Ghazalian approach does not see any of the streams of Western thought and practice as a continuation of Islam. The Ghazalian approach seeks the destruction of modernity and post modernity and of Western hegemony. It tries to pave the way for the deconstruction of all Western knowledge and practise by highlighting its incoherences. This can be done both by developing an internalist and an externalist critique of Western knowledge and practice.

The internalist critique of Western philosophy and of the social sciences is an attempt at demonstrating the incoherences of the presumptions underlying this analysis, their methodological incoherences their concealed meanings and implications and their lack of correspondence to reality. Such an internal critique can be developed by Islamic revolutionary workers familiar with Western thought.

Such internalist critique must be accompanied by the development of an externalist Ghazalian critique of Western philosophy and the social sciences. Presumptions, methodologies and practices and policies produced by social sciences must be critiqued from an Islamic epistemological perspective. This externalist Ghazalian critique can be developed only by the orthodox (i.e. rasikh-ul-aqeeda) Ulema and Soofia. It cannot be undertaken by Muslims who have not been methodically educated in the classical Islamic branches of knowledge.

Following in the footsteps of our master Imam Ghazali we will insha Allah develop this internalist and externalist critique to show the inherent incoherence of Western thought and practise and to destroy the intellectual and political hegemony of the West. This is essential for the triumph of Islam as the only universal civilization through transcending capitalism.

The incorporation of social sciences methodologies and associated rationalities and practices within the classical Islamic branches of learning is impossible because of a fundamental dichotomy in the presumptions underlying Islamic and Enlightenment epistemologies[2]. Islamic learning is grounded in belief in tauheed manifested in a recognition of the metaphysical and axiological ultimacy of Allah (subhanahu wa ta’ala).

This is the perception and assertion of the following truths:

•There exists a transcendent Creator and historical creatures separated by an unbridgeable ontological gap.

•The Creator’s will constitutes the creatures’ “ought to be” expressed in terms of both Shariati and Tariqa (s) as articulated in the continuing history of the ummah authenticated by silsilah and ijma.

•Human beings are necessarily required to submit to the will of the Creator. Human beings are capable of moral actions but actions are moral only to the extent to which they articulate man’s surrender to God’s will.

•The ‘normativeness of the oughts’ and the moral capability of human beings entail the necessity of judgment of intentions and action in the hereafter. Attainment of God’s pleasure and of rewards in the hereafter are the objectives of all human thought and action.

•Knowledge is essentially awareness of God’s will with respect to human being and human conduct.

Enlightenment epistemology is an outright rejection of these primary truths [3]. Similarly thee is no room for freedom, equality, self determination, human rights, tolerance, welfare and progress in Islamic epistemology and our classical branches of learning. Apologetic attempts at providing space for these concepts within Islamic epistemology are elements of the imperialist strategy to subordinate Islam to Western savagery. We reject Western philosophy and the social sciences because;

•methodologies underlying them are not value neutral. Their purpose is to justify and provide technologies of governance for capitalist order

•their conception of being and of the world sees man as creator, sustainer and sovereign

•Enlightenment philosophy and social science holds that man imposes order upon on the natural world through a process of self reflection. This makes empirical enquiry possible and the purpose of both self reflection and experimental enquiry is the actualization of human freedom and autonomy. The commands of the self cannot be evaluated except formally (on the basis of universalisability). Reason here is a means for obeying the universalisable commands of the un-knowable self

•The self judges and cannot itself be the subject of judgment. There is no room in Western philosophy and the social sciences for the recognition of God as sovereign law giver

•the social sciences are the practical methodologies articulating the philosophy of mechanism and utilitarianism

•the social sciences are committed to the flourishing and the satisfaction of the passions and not to the elimination of vice

•the social sciences legitimate and facilitate the functioning of capitalist order which seeks the universalisation of the passion to make money.

The purpose of social enquiry in Islam is the formation and sustenance of an individuality and of a society which voluntarily submits to God’s will. Such an individuality and society recognizes freedom as evil. Freedom is essentially al Bagh, (rebellion). Freedom is the choice of choice itself – the assertion of man’s (fictitious) authority and capability to subject the world to his arbitrarily willed (universalisable) preferences. The theoretical preference for preference is in practise the preference for capital – for in secular orders capital alone is universalisable and in principle limitless. That is why the social sciences legitimate and provide technologies for the creation and sustenance of capitalist individuality civil, society and capitalist states.

Attempts at practicing social science methodology within the constraints of the Shariah – as reflected in the writings of Maulana Maududi on Islamic government – legitimate capitalist practices at both the individual and the institutional level . They do not contest capitalist rationality but instead accommodate. Islam within capitalist order. Nineteenth century clergymen and modern Christian apologists within the Christian Democratic parties of Europe have presented similar arguments for reconciling capitalist practices with the ‘spirit of Christianity.’

Euben argues that modern Christian and Islamic fundamentalism may be seen as attempts at “re-enchanting” the Enlightenment rather than as anti Enlightenment movements because they limit and do not in principle reject Enlightenment rationality and the associated goals of freedom and progress [4]. The practise of Shariah constrained ideologies and technologies in Iran and Saudi Arabia illustrates how this opens up these societies to capitalist penetration. Religious individualities and Shariah constraints on market and state institutions become delegitimised and political authority is transferred from the ulema to the agents and representatives of national and global capital.

Social science is a product of Enlightenment philosophy and a technology for the legitimation and practise of capitalist governmentality. Islam is committed to the overthrow of capitalism as a way of life and rejecting social science rationalities is therefore necessary. Islamic social enquiry must focus attention on creating rationalities and methodologies which can foster the growth of Islamic individuality and the flourishing of the Islamic virtues within the context of the contemporary challenge with which the Islamic revolutionary movements [5] are confronted.

Islamic social enquiry seeks the transcendence of capitalist order through the universalisation of the practise of Islamic virtues in the life of the individual, the society and the state. The flourishing of these virtues and the contractual and institutional structures which sustain them has been the concern of the classical Islamic branches of learning. These branches of learning provide an appropriate paradigm for addressing contemporary issues with reference to the sustenance of Islamic individuality and society. Our social theorizing must be contextualized by and located within the traditional Islamic episteme. The ulema and soofia have zealously preserved the epistemological heritage of Islam. In the subcontinent the ulema of Barailly and Deoband have in extremely difficult circumstances comprehensively defeated the modernists and revisionists who sought to corrupt traditional Islamic learning by its incorporation within Western epistemes [6].

This magnificent achievement of the ulema and soofia makes it possible to continue Hazrat Qutab-al-Alam Imadullah Muhajir Makki’s project of integrating the quest for spiritual revival and the revitalization of Islamic learning with the organization of a movement of jihad against the West [7].

The development of an Islamic critique of the presuppositions and methodologies of the social sciences (the development that is of an externalist Ghazalian critique of Western philosophy and the social sciences) is an indispensable step in the deconstruction of Enlightenment and post Enlightenment epistemes and in conceptualizing contemporary issues on the basis of the assumptions and methodologies rooted in Islamic epistemology and in our classical branches of learning.

The development of an externalist Ghazalian critique of Enlightenment philosophy of the social sciences provides a basis for the expansion of the scope of the classical Islamic branches of learning. In particular the scope of Fiqh, Ilm-i-Kalam and Usul-u-deen need to be broadened to enable us to analyze contemporary problems and issues on the basis of Islamic ontological assumptions and within the context of Islamic epistemological methodologies. This broadening of scope must entail a construction on the basis of our inherited wisdom and an elaboration of the teachings on which there is general consensus. Theories articulated within this context must confirm to the maqasid-e-Sharia and be derived on the basis of methods and mechanisms sanctioned by the usul-I-fiqh for theorizing and for articulation of policy based on legitimately constructed theories. The ijtihad this entails is taqleedi-ijtihad – an ijtihad which confirms, elaborates and vindicates the ijmah of the Ummah [8] . Such ijtihad provides grounds for asserting Islam’s claims as universal history and as the world’s only civilization (Qutb 1974 p51-60). It provides an indispensable epistemological basis for transcending Western philosophy and social sciences and waging permanent jihad against Western savagery [9].

Our commitment to undertake permanent jihad against Western savagery reflects our principled rejection of the rule of capital. The West has rejected Christianity and embraced capitalism as a deen. It has rearticulated. Pharaoh’s age old claim – ana rub kum al ala. (I am your great Lord). The rule of capital rejects the sovereignty of God and proclaims the false doctrine of freedom (human autonomy and self determination). The theoretical preference for preference is in practise the universal dominance of the vices of avarice and covetousness. Western man is possessed by the devils of covetousness and lust. He has filled the world with sexual vice – pornography, nudity, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, AIDS. He has corrupted economic life by infusing riba and gharrar in all production and exchange transactions. He continues to slaughter hundreds of million of innocent victims – Red Indian, Vietnameses, Cambodians, Palestinian, Kashmiri, Iraqis and Afghans – in a never to be satisfied blood lust for freedom and plentitude. Western philosophy and social science justifies man’s rebellion against God, the explosion of sexual vice, institutionalized economic exploitation and human rights imperialism.

A carefully crafted revolutionary strategy to build an anti-imperialist, anti capitalist universal state in the Muslim world has reasonable chances of success in these circumstances. Our chances of achieving the overthrow of capitalist order are improved in countries such as Pakistan due to the incoherence of modernist discourse as articulated by the local supporters of American imperialism. Perhaps we are in the Narodnik stage of our revolution or in its 1883 (when Plekhanov set up the party) or in its 1902 (when ‘What Is To Be Done” appeared) or in its 1905. But its 1917 seems a distinct possibility because of liberalism’s inherent incoherences and vulnerability, its inability to justify the rule of capital, the moral degeneration that is its inevitable consequence and the continuing weakening of the client states.

The socialist revolution was defeated because socialism did not reject enlightenment ontology – the worship of man remained as central to socialism as to liberalism and capital cannot be transcended without rejecting man worship. The Islamic revolution is essentially a revival of the pre Augustinian commitment. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. Islam represents an internal – not an external – threat to capitalism. It is capitalism’s definitive critique and not simply another attempt to re-enchant the capitalist world as the Jewish political theorist Roxana Euben fantasizes. Today Islam threatens. Washington as Christianity threatened Rome in the 4th century.

The priority concern at present must be to mobilize the masses to resist American hegemony and to raise the costs of American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and American support of the Zionist enemy. This must be accompanied by the struggle to de-legitimate capitalist and liberal norms and institutions and to struggle for the establishment of a non-national Khalifat. The coming together of all Islamic forces on the basis of Islam’s orthodox doctrines and practices with the mosque as the organizational focus and in resolute opposition to the rule of law of capital is possible and should be our goal.

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Notes:

1. This is not a rejection of the possibility of Islamic dawah to individual Europeans or Americans. As Islamic da’ee we invite them to reject the ontological and epistimological presumptions and participate in the task of destroying Western savagery. We reject the possibility of dialogue in the sense that we do not recognize the West as a civilization and reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with it.

2. The incorporation of Islamic themes within the social science paradigm is also impossible for the same reason.

3. The ‘Islamisation of social sciences’ project glosses over this basic dichotomy.

4. See specially the last chapter of her book where this argument is fully developed

5. both movements of jihad and movements of khurooj: These movements and not the ummah, or Muslim states or other formations are the agents of change in the struggle against capitalist order.

6. On the other hand Hindu intellectual and spiritual leadership failed to preserve such incorporation. Modern Hindu fundamentalism thus poses no challenge to capitalism and Western savagery and the Hindu religion has been overwhelmed by nationalism in the same way that classical Judaism has been destroyed by Zionism.

7. Hazrat Muhajir Makki was not only a scholar and a renowned sufi saint he was also the Amir of the 1857 jihad.

8. The ijtihad undertaken by Barelvi and Dewbandi ulema in the 19th and 20th century is taqleedi ijtihad.

9. It is to be stressed that the tasks of developing an externalist Ghazalian critique and of expanding the scope of the classical Islamic branches of learning to address contemporary issues can only be undertaken by the ulema and soofia. I have not attempted this since it cannot be undertaken by Western educated Muslims.

Islamic Constitutionalism and Maulana Maududi

The greatest impact of modern political science on Islamic scholarship has been in the area of constitution making. I shall in this section briefly outline Maulana Maududi’s legitimization of liberal theories and practices on Islamic grounds.

Maulana Maududi is a seminal figure in contemporary Islamic thought. His critically important contributions are:

 His development of Shah Waliullah’s conception of Islam as a complete, closed system and as the only universal civilization. It is on this basis that Maulana Maududi makes a distinction between Islam and Jahiliya [1].

 His conceptualization of Jihad as a permanent revolutionary strategy and rejection of the view that Jihad is a defensive war for national liberation.

 His total rejection of Western epistemology and insistence on the position that no new interpretation of Islam is needed to deal with contemporary problems and challenges.

Despite this insistence on Islam’s completion and uniqueness Maulana Maududi endorses the use of liberal discourses and institutions as a political technology. His conception of “Islamic democracy” is of a political order in which “every individual is an equal participant in Khilafat and (in which) all individuals enjoy equal status as citizens” (Maududi 1990 p14)[2] . In Islamic order “every individual is Khalifa. All (individual) Khilafa delegate their powers of Khilafat to the formal ruler for administrative purposes” (1990 p140).

Maulana Maududi also finds room for personal autonomy within Islamic political order “within legal constraints every individual has full freedom to choose his way of life” (1990 p141). Endorsement of liberal values – autonomy and equality – leads to an endorsement of liberal institutions. “The President of the state must be elected by the Muslims… the election must reflect the free uncoerced will of the Muslims” (1990 p337,340). Maulana Maududi argues that a well defined and permanent shoora representative of the Muhajareen, the Ansar and allied tribes existed in the time of the Prophet (Salal Allah –o-Alehe-wa salam) “(Members of the Shura of the Prophet, sallah Allah-o-alahe wa salam) were choosen by a natural electoral process. They were true representatives of the Muslim tribes. Had elections of the modern type based on universal franchise been held the same people would have been elected….Had voting taken place there was no one else in the society who would have enjoyed the confidence of the Muslims. They thus joined the majlis-e-Shura through a process of natural elections. Thus in the era of the Prophet (Salla Allah-o-alahe-wa salam) the institution of the majlis-I-Shura had been established and the constitutional provisions for its continuous existence had also been formulated” (Maududi 1990 p346).

Maulana Maududi stresses the importance of representational democracy in the Islamic state. “The President must not consult any one be likes but only those who are the representatives of and enjoying the confidence of the ordinary citizens…. It is evident that the method for determining the representativeness of the members of the Shura that was applied in the time of the Prophet Salal Allah o alahe wa salam is no longer practical…. In the modern age (adult franchise based) electrons are a permissible way for determining the representative character (of the members of the Majli-I-Shura)” (1990 p344).

According to Maulana Maududi ordinary citizens of the Islamic state “have the right to elect the President and to be members of its parliament” (1990 p352). He endorses the whole array of liberal and social democratic rights – life, property, consciousness, association, welfare (1990 p355-358)[3] . Maulana Maududi does not recognize human rights as a negation of huquq-ul-ibad – i.e. as duties of a capitalist state to foster capitalist individuality and civil society and universalize avarice and covetousness.

In Maulana Maududi’s view Islamic democracy is based upon “popular viceregency” (1990 p371) and “this necessarily implies that government be established by the will of the people and remains in power only while it enjoys popular support” (1990 p371). Thus kingship (mulukyat) cannot be legitimate in any circumstances (1990 p374) and a constitution sanctioning human rights provides the legal framework for the practice of ‘popular vicereging (190 p375). Popular viceregents’ – i.e. the elected representatives of the citizens have the right “to legislate within the constraints of the Shariah” (1990 p441). “The legislator should have specific characteristics [4] but “he does not need to prove that he possesses them” (1990 p445). Such legislation and the existence of a legislature (Parliament) is seen as necessary for establishing the Islamic legitimacy of the state (Maududi 1990 p346).

The Islamic state is thus not a rejection of modern liberal democracy “but an intermediate stage and system of law and culture between theocracy and Western secular democracy” (Maududi 1990 p479). Like liberal democracy Islam accepts the principle that “establishment and change of government should be based on the will of the citizens… the state belongs to the ordinary citizen. It is run by a legislature elected on the basis of popular representation and enjoying the right to enact laws through consensus or majority decisions” (1990 p481). The Islamic revolution culminates in the establishment of the authority of such a legislature governing the state.

In sum Maulana Maududi provides legitimation for the establishment of a constitutional democracy in which Khilafat resides in a citizenry of individuals enjoying equal human and representational rights and governed by a parliament which legislates through consensual and majority decisions. This is certainly a new interpretation of Islamic political thought and it is not legitimated by references to the work of classical Islamic political thinkers such as Imam Mawardi, Imam Muhammad, Imam Ibne Khuldun, Imam Ghazali and Shah Waliullah (may Allah reward them and exalt their heavenly status). Quite the contrary Maulana Maududi’s political thought seems to draw upon the work of al Farabi a neo Aristotelian who saw democracy as providing opportunities for the development of the sciences and arts necessary for the establishment of the ‘virtuous regime’ (Mahdi 2001 p144-146). A more direct inspiration of course is the work of Locke and Rousseau.

It is Locke who provides the key statement justifying representational liberal governance in opposition to the religious state established by the saintly Lord Oliver Cromwell. Rousseau’s” conception of the general will is strongly influenced by Locke’s treatise on representative government. Rousseau’s conception of the general will as necessarily good in that it can not will evil draws upon Locke’s view that divine law sanctions representational governance [5]. In the Lockean conception there can be no contradiction in the articulation of the commands of God and the directives of the will of the citizens. This is based on Locke’s assertion that God does not mandate a particular political order and divine will in this respect had no particular content. The general will can be seen as an instrument for articulating divine will in a particular context [6] . Divine will can thus be interpreted as sanctioning the practical sovereignty of the citizen [7] - though as Locke recognizes this cannot be proved by direct reference to the Bible.

In Maulana Maududi’s view the general will of the people of Pakistan sanctions the supremacy of the divine will in the country’s political order. In the Pakistani state divine will legitimately circumscribes the general will and makes it subservient to and constrained by the Shariah. In this conception divine will is not empty (as it is in Locke’s thought). It legitimates the structuring of legitimate obediences and defines moral and social values. This concurrence between the dictates of divine will and those of the general will of the people of Pakistan is not theorized by Maulana Maududi in the sense that he does not show its necessity but takes it as an empirically observable fact. It is this fortuitous coincidence between the general will of the people of Pakistan and divine will which makes democracy an appropriate instrument for the Islamisation of Pakistan’s political system.

Sustaining concurrence between the general will of the people of Pakistan and divine will is a crucial problem for Maulana Maududi, for divine will as articulated in Shariah has a specific content[8] . Maulana Maududi does not justify his own scheme for the particular articulation of the general will within Pakistan in the form of a political system with reference to the historical experiences of the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. Instead Maulana Maududi presents an abstract model based on his interpretation of some sources of the Shariah – he does not even justify his abstract model with reference to classical Islamic political thought.

The institutions Maulana Maududi sanctions – citizenship, human rights, the constitution, parliament – are not rooted in Islamic or Indian Muslim history. This implies that the political paractice of the Muslims of India has failed to articulate authentic Islamic norms and institutions and we are now able to do so only because of Maulana Maududi’s theorizing [9].

Electoral defeats since the Punjab elections of 1951 have shown that the people of Pakistan do not endorse the conceptualization of Islamic order as conceived by Maulana Maududi. The victory of the Awami League nationalists and the PPP secularists in 1970 showed clearly that there was no coincidence between the general will of the people of Pakistan and the divine will (at least as articulated in Maulana Maududi’s thought) hence democracy could not be conceived as an instrument for the articulation of the pre existing concurrence between the two. Therefore the democratic process has since 1971 been seen as the process by which people can be convinced of the need to formulate a general will which is in concurrence with (Maulana Maududi’s interpretation of) the divine will. To achieve this reformulation of the general will the Jama’at has sanctioned the politics of rights – the implementation of Islamic political order would lead to the provision of human and welfare rights and increased prosperity and progress. Islamic political struggle was thus reconceptualized as a quest for this worldly progress and welfare (not a quest for sacrifise and shahdat). In pre imperialist India struggling for rights was entirely alien to Muslim political culture. The Pakistan movement and the post 1970 political practise of the Jama’at-I-Islami has provided legitimation for the politics of rights and effectively closed the gap between politics of Muslim nationalism and the politics of Islamic revival.

Legitimation of the politics of rights has meant an endorsement of the values of competition (covetousness) and accumulation (avarice) and a downgrading of the need to foster the religious virtues through political struggle. The movement for establishing an Islamic state has effectively become a movement for reforming the liberal capitalist state. This illustrates that the strategy for using the democratic process as a means for creating a concurrence between the general will and divine will is practically a strategy for redefining the substantive content of the divine will in a manner which is acceptable to the people. The emphasis on human and welfare rights necessitates that the commands of the Shariah be implemented in a manner and to the extent acceptable to the people and an endorsement of capitalist values – competition (covetousness) and accumulation (avarice) – makes a reorientation of the general will impossible. The practise of democratic politics thus does not lead to a transformation of the general will but to a reinterpretation of the divine will for legitimating the politics of rights. Capitalist development inexorably secularizes society and fundamentalist movements (Hindu, Christian, Islamic) can provide legitimation for this secularization as both Binder (1983) and Euben (1999) have argued. Fundamentalist movements sanctioning the politics of rights are self destructive for they accept autonomous (i.e. capitalist) individuality as natural and not a product of the triumph of Enlightenment philosophy. Such religious movements thus do not seek a transcendence of capitalist individuality, civil society or of the capitalist state. They seek instead a reconciliation between the substantive content of religious teachings on the one hand and the arbitrarily willed preferences of the capitalist individual and the norms and structures of the capitalist system on the other.

Such religious movements reinterpret capitalism and seek to show that religious practices are effective means for the realization of capitalist norms and for the redressing of capitalist structural imbalances [10] . While Maulana Maududi seeks to constrain capitalist and democratic practices by Shariah injunctions the political discourse of the Jama’at presents Shariah injunctions as effective means for the achievement of progress and the flourishing of human rights [11] .

The essential significance of Maulana Maududi’s work in contemporary Muslim thought emerges from his insistence on Islam as a complete system, his recognition of the West as jahiliya and his rejection of the need for a new interpretation of Islam to deal with contemporary issues and challenges. Maulana Maududi’s, political writings however provide grounds for legitimating capitalist and liberal political values and structures and this frustrates the quest for systemic transformation and the transcendence of capitalist order. Thus Maulana Maududi’s reinterpretation of capitalist political order must be rejected and the analyses of classical Muslim political thinkers – Imam Mawardi, Iman Ibn-e-Khuldun and Shah Waliullah in particular – must be revived for achieving Islamic political hegemony and the comprehensive and final annihilation of capitalist order.


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Notes:

1. Syed Qutb uses these concepts in Ma’alin fit Tariq and both Maulana Maududi and Syed Qutb described Western civilization as Jahiliyat-I-Khalisa Syed Qutb develops the argument that civilization is necessarily Islamic and Islamic civilization confronts not other civilizations but savagery (1973 p. 78-81). Maulana Muhammad Marmadukh Pickthall makes a similar point (1960 p. 184).

2. This separates Maulana Maududi’s thought not only from jadidis and innovators such as Amir Ali, Khalifa Abdul Hakim and Ghulam Ahmad Pervaiz but also from that of Islamic modernists such as Allama Iqbal, who argue that some Enlightenment schools of thought – in Iqbal’s case, empiricism – are inspired by Islam and therefore provide a basis for inter-civilization dialogue (It should be noted that Iqbal the poet is different from Iqbal the prose writer and thinker. As a poet most of his poetry is inspirational and contains revolutionary Islamic perspective of eternal value).

3. Universal franchise is unreservedly endorsed by Maulana Maududi. He writes “the electoral system must be so devised that the whole nation and every individual can participate in it” (1990 p. 370).

4. Maulana Maududi recognizes that “legislation within the constraints of the Shariah” requires legislatures” who have the following characteristics.
a) Belief in the Shariah, sincere wish to obey the commands of Allah and reject all other sources of legislation.
b) Knowledge of Arabic grammar and literature.
c) Comprehensive knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah and of Islam as a complete, closed system of beliefs and practices.
Knowledge of the work of the established fuqaha and schools of fiqh and intention to “legislate” in a manner which ensures continuity of the legal tradition of Islam (1990 p445).

5. As we have argued elsewhere Locke could not substantiate this view by reference to the Bible.

6. This view also required the assumption that there was no authentic interpretation of the divine will. The Protestant revolt against Catholicism was premised on the argument that the Church had no right to insist on the authenticity of its interpretation of the Bible and every Christian had the right to independently interpret scripture. As a devout Protestant Locke was thus on sound grounds when he rejected the traditional interpretation of Biblical teachings.

7. Divine will can also be interpreted as having no content whatsoever.

8. This is not a problem for Locke for in his conception divine will is empty and its substantive content is necessarily provided by the general will.

9. It also implies that classical Muslim political philosophy misconceived political order.

10. Rawls (1985) recognizes this and believes that such movements can be part of his overlapping consensus.

11. Thus Euben (1999) argues that Isalmic fundamentalist movements seek a ‘re-enchantment’ of liberal order and therefore the work of Syed Qutb and Maulana Maududi should be viewed in the same perspective as the works of mainstream communitarians (MacIntyre, Taylor, Rorty etc.)



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References:

Binder L. (1983) Islamic Liberalism New York, Cambridge University Press

Euben R. (1999) The Enemy in the Mirror New York Oxford University Press.

Locke J. (1967) Second Treatise of Government London Cambridge University Press.

Mahdi M. S. (2001) Al Farabi and the Foundations of Islamic Political Philosophy New York Oxford University Press

Maududi A. A. (1999) Islami Riyasat Lahore Islamic Publication

Maududi A.A. (1961) Insan ka Maashi Masala Aur Uska Islami Hal Lahore Islamic Publication

Maududi A.A. (1963) Sood Lahore Islamic Publications

Qutb S. (1973) Jada-oManzil (Urdu translation of Ma’alim fit Tariq) Lahore, Islamic Publications

Corporate crime and accountancy fraud

Corporate crime is booming once again in America. America has always been the natural home and global capital for corporate crime. In 2005 a long line of American ‘whiz kid’ CEOs have gone to jail with life or near life sentences. Examples include Dennis Kowzloski and Mark Swartz of Tyco, John and Timothy Ragas of Adelphia, Andrew Festow of Enron, Martin Glass of Rite Aid, Jamie Olis of Dynergy Sam Wicksal of I m Clone and of course Bernie Ebbers of World Com. By persecuting individuals and sparing companies - Enron, World Com, Arthur Anderson, Tyco and Rice Aid continue to survive and often, thrive - American judges have shown their awareness of the link between burgeoning corporate crime and impending capitalist crises.

The American justice system’s commitment to capitalism has been graphically demonstrated by its treatment of Arthur Anderson and KPMG - two of the global accounting industry’s ‘final four’. Both Andersen and KPMG have admitted to serious fraud and both have been spared by the American Supreme Court and the American Justice Department. Arthur Andersen settled out of court with World Com investors in April this year, and in May the American Supreme Court overturned its 2002 conviction. The judgement amounted to exonerating Arthur Andersen.

The American Department of Justice has been extremely reluctant to bring legal action against KPMG European Union regulators have warned it that bringing KPMG to the courts would destabilise the global accountancy industry. KPMG’s corruption is well known.

An American Senate committee report issued in May this year exposed the fraudulent and highly lucrative tax avoidance business run by KPMG for years, and in July KPMG admitted "full responsibility for unlawful conduct" with respect to what the Senate described as "abusive tax practices". Abusive tax practices are of course not confined to KPMG. Deloitle Touche has moved swiftly to avoid action with regard to misconduct of its associated firms in a case filed by investors. The Senate Report hinted at similar business deals involving Price Waterhouse Coopers and Ernst and Young. The American Justice Department, however, is bending all the rules unscrupulously to avoid the collapse of another ‘final four’ accountancy firm and to prevent it from following in Arthur Andersen’s footsteps. A decision not to punish KPMG severely will be interpreted as a license for continuing frauds. Other accountancy firms through out the world will feel that it is lucrative and beneficial to take the sort of risks that KPMG took when it advised clients on how to undertake tax frauds.

The ‘easy’ alternative of punishing CEOs while exonerating corporations is also becoming unpalatable. CEOs have expressed reservations about the ‘chilling effects’ of enhanced conceptions of individual legal responsibility for corporate transactions. As long as corporate America’s godfather Dick Cheney continues to call the shots at the White House, it will be impossible to dismantle the protective barriers, which shield most American corrupt CEOs. Accounting fraud will continue to flourish in America.

Accounting fraud is increasingly common throughout America. Major accounting frauds have been discovered at General Electric and the AIG in 2005. The Standard and Poor downgrade of GM and Ford shares was also partly fuelled by accounts related suspicions: with the explosive growth of ‘fair value’ accounting - and its official endorsement by American regulators in 2005, the scope for accounting fraud has expanded enormously. A 2005 study by Glass Lewis found that investors lost almost $1 trillion during 1999-2004 due to accountancy related frauds.

Fair Value accounting allows firms, in connivance with their auditors, to declare what profits suit them - fair value is thus unfair value in this precise sense. Fair Value accounting allows accountants to assign imagined estimated value to items such as bank loans and buildings. A 2004 study by Bergstesser and Rauh has shown that such estimates are usually widely off the mark and very easy to manipulate. They found robust evidence of deliberate tampering of statistics to influence M and A, new issue and stock option deals. Further evidence of fraud is presented by Lev, Li and Sougiamis’ 2005 study which shows that fair value accounts estimates are worthless as indicators of a company’s future performance, because they are in the main fraudulently estimated. Federal Reserve based records show that bond and loan fair value estimates are so volatile that they are practically worthless.

Mathematical model based calculations of ‘fair values’ of financial assets are nothing but fraud. This is because market values of all assets are speculatively determined in capitalist order, without reference to any objectively determined foundation, and as chaos theory shows there are no rational grounds underlying speculation. ‘Rational’ expectations are a myth. A 2005 much awaited Ernst and Young report admits this when it recognises that" estimated ‘fair value’ for intangible assets, unquoted securities, derivatives, pension costs and share based payments appear in company accounts at a hypothetical market price based on management’s assumption about the future and using a valuation model. We consider that it is inappropriate to refer to such estimated value as fair value. Fair Value accounting has deliberately been made increasingly incomprehensible to conceal fraud.

What are American regulators doing to deal with all this? Paradoxically, they are watering down the implementation of the Sarberne-Oxley Act (SOX) to facilitate accountancy fraud. SOX was a panic reaction to the enormous accountancy frauds of 2002. Today the imperialist press - the Financial Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal - is full of demands to roll back SOX. It requires management boards to waste a "huge proportion of time on reporting procedures". SOX is accused of "addressing symptoms not causes" and "costs significantly exceed benefits". In May 2005, the American Public Company Accounting Board (PCAOB) -a body established under SOX- chided management for being "overly cautious and mechanical" in interpreting SOX. The American Securities and Exchange Commission has also called for greater management discretion. Section 204 of SOX, requiring management to maintain "an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting", has come in for heavy criticism. This is said to cost America about $1.4 trillion and according to Deloitle, 700,000 additional man-hours. It is also said to be leading to a further concentration of the accountancy industry. The ‘final four’ - Deloitle, Ernst and Young, KPMG and PWC-are said to hog 98 per cent of the SOX related business. SOX, it is said, discourages risk taking. There is little evidence to show that SOX has reduced fraud..

It is predicted that William Donaldson’s replacement by Christopher Cox as American Security and Exchange Commission Chairman in June 2005 will lead to a "lighter application of SOX", according to the Financial Times.

The American business press is urging on Mr. Cox "to screw SOX" and scrap Article 204. No doubt he will do so, but you eat an apple bite by bite, not all in one go.

That accountancy fraud thrives in America is hardly surprising. Corruption is the American way of life. A 2001 Dept of Justice study found that 43 per cent of all income in America is in some form connected to the booming national crimes industry. Moreover, corruption has deep historical and cultural roots. Fifteen million Red Indians were methodically slaughtered and an entire continent looted and plundered over two and a half centuries through political and financial fraud and corruption. Today, the American government is inextricably involved in similar action in Iraq, Afghanistan and much of Latin America. America is the natural home of fraud and its global capital.

But America is also the sole surviving capitalist hegemony and capitalism is a system, not a Habermasian life world. Objectively (from an Islamic perspective) finance is fraud, capitalist property is theft, but a capitalist order structures finance and capitalist property so that they flourish as normal social practices. Historically, this has required a reconciliation of the practices legitimised by welfare (consumption) maximisation with those required by the need for profit (surplus) maximisation. Capitalist fraud is action, which (a) either prevents a corporation from maximising profit or (b) enables it to maximise profit in a manner considered illegal because it inhibits welfare (consumption) maximisation by the political representatives of free citizens. Neo-liberal capitalism shies away from recognising that the capitalist state must be empowered to prevent both types of capitalist fraud. It subscribes to the mistaken (but time-honoured) belief that markets can be self regulating - i.e. that shareholders can discipline (in a Foucaultian sense) managers and that profit maximising behaviour of individuated (corporate) persons will automatically unintentionally lead to the maximisation of social consumption (welfare).

Global capitalism has shown both assumptions to be untenable. Managers cannot be disciplined by shareholders in ways that do not inhibit accumulation. Efficient markets do not maximise social consumption. Moreover, dominant political forces, especially in America, are systematically obstructing the search for viable institutional restructuring to address the agency problem and the growing problem of governing the market. Social democracy is dead in America and America is killing it in Europe, Japan, China and India. Those working for the overthrow of capitalist order may therefore live in hope.

from here