Perspectives on Morality and Human Well-Being. Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi

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СКАЧАТЬ in the wealth of the rich; the individual’s right of ownership is only relative to Allah’s ownership, which is to emphasise that he is only a trustee of his wealth and can spend of it only in prescribed ways.³ A linkage between religious callings and mundane matters achieve two objectives simultaneously: it strengthens altruism significantly in running efficiently and equitably an essentially individualistic economy, and it minimises the free-riding and assurance problems. To some extent the internalisation of moral values which flows from regarding religion as a ‘living reality’ can be observed in Muslim societies, which are admittedly no more than mere pale shadows of the Islamic ideals. Thus, for instance, Muslims normally give away large amounts of money as zakāt, khums, ṣadaqāt, and a lot more to help the poor and the needy, even when they may evade ‘secular’ taxes. As a result, the differential between the rich and poor is less in Muslim countries than in non-Muslim countries (see Chapter 6). But Islam’s contribution to the debate about the role of religion goes well beyond its potential to increase material well-being. The emphasis here is that religion is an internally consistent and a complete way of life that provides guidance about “individual and social, material and moral, economic and political, legal and cultural, national and international challenges that human societies must respond to” [Ahmad (1976); p. 37]. Islam considers religion as constitutive of individual well-being and happiness, an end to be desired for its own sake. It should strengthen individual’s economic and social roles when moral values become deeply internalised in man’s consciousness so that both the mind and the soul take on a quiet but magical luminosity. In Islam’s unified world-view, religion defines man/woman’s entire personality as geared to achieving a higher social purpose, of which economic pursuits are only one, though a significant, element. Thus, he/she is given the exalted status of Allah’s vicegerent on earth, endowed with a free will (that guarantees human freedom as part of a Divine design) which is informed by a sense of social responsibility that links the individual to the collectivity and encourages him/her to do good to fellow human beings. It may be noted that, in the unified Islamic perspective, social responsibility is not allowed to degenerate into human bondage. Rather it goes with substantive human freedoms, which increase by a heightened sense of individual and social commitment, and decrease by cupidity and greed. This has a far-reaching policy implication: for Islamic moral values to become a source of social binding, Muslim societies must be reorganised on the basis of human freedom, social justice, and a commitment to help the poor and the needy by restoring to them from the wealth of the rich what is morally and legally theirs as a matter of right. Thus, in a society where wide inequalities of income and wealth prevail, and in which hunger, starvation and human deprivation is rife, individual freedom and social responsibility lose meaning – all of which is ẓulm and a direct defiance of the Divine principles of al-‘adl wa al-iḥsān. Even more important, such a defiance is not taken lightly in Islam; instead it is roundly condemned as a denial of faith itself!

The cumulative effect of Islam’s ‘integrationist’ economic-ethical vision is that moral powers – i.e., an overarching sense of justice, freedom and responsibility – come to be shared widely and reinforce each other in a virtuous circle. In it, ‘rationality’ includes a consideration of our obligations and ideals as well as our interests and advantages so that the demand on scarce altruistic resources does not become unrealistically excessive. The individuals’ urge to act out of altruism is extolled, but Islam does not envisage a society of only altruistically motivated individuals, in which there are no trade-offs between the conflicting demands on interests, obligations, and passions. At any rate, such would be a morally irrelevant concept because a society in which all, or even most, of its people act only out of altruism is beyond justice, i.e., one in which, in the absence of injustice, there is no demand for justice!⁴ But Islam does recognise human greed and love for wealth even though these traits of human nature do not serve as an oriflamme of social and economic forces. In other words, Islam’s recognition of self-interest objectives does not imply a claim about the morality of self-interest behaviour. Moral values that entail adverse consequences – inequality, poverty, and social deprivation – cannot form a part of any valid moral philosophy.

      ii) The Principles of Islamic Reform

      There are, at least, four guiding principles of Islamic reform. Firstly, without a proactive public policy, free-riding and assurance problems will choke off the supply of beneficence even in societies of morally upright and altruistic people. But, Islam does not envisage that such rightly guided people will be in an overwhelming majority in real-world societies. In other words, voluntary economic behaviour in a morally reformed Muslim society will not be radically very different from the very imperfect ones now in existence. Secondly, Islam’s comprehensive vision of religion encompasses both its instrumental and constitutive roles: its contribution to human happiness is to restore the balance between the call of the flesh and the beckoning of the soul. That being the case, public policy had better look at these aspects of religion as connected with one another and mutually reinforcing. Thus, for instance, greater political, social and economic individual freedoms enrich human lives and make them aware of their social responsibilities. However, the balancing of human freedom and responsibility implies that: a centrally controlled economy, in which individual freedoms are denied, is contrary to Islamic vision. And so is laissez faire capitalism in which economic injustice and poverty are widespread and where the resulting economic unfreedoms greatly compromise the effective use of political and social freedoms by men and women.

      Thirdly, the Divine nature of the broad Islamic message does not provide any Divine guarantee of the success of the specific implementational strategies designed to address the problems of real-life Muslim societies, but the former does increase the probability of the latter if the nature of Islamic reform is correctly understood and efficiently implemented. While it is left to humankind to follow it or not, general Islamic ethical principles provide guidance to the Right Way. Hence the need for an egalitarian public policy which aims to redress the inequities of the system of rewards and incentives found in many (unjust) aristocratic, or feudal Muslim societies.

      Fourthly, while Islamic ethical principles are universal, the traditional (Islamic) implementational strategies are not universal for the simple reason that the latter are limited by the constraints of time, space, the state of development and knowledge. By the same token, such strategies are no less prone to failure than those taken to implement a secular agenda. The general point is that any Islamic economic system, and the reforms undertaken within its parameters, are going to be as man/woman-made as any other existing economic system (i.e., capitalism, socialism) and as liable to failure. Its success will not be determined on a priori basis by its Divine origin, but will rather be evaluated empirically by its success in achieving the Divine purpose – which is to encourage economic and human development by raising the growth rate of per capita income on a sustained basis, universalising literacy and access to health care, minimising poverty, reducing inequalities of income and wealth, and rolling back the tide of human deprivation [Ahmad (1994); Naqvi (1994)]. However, success on this score will require, not a repetitive application of the remedies prescribed by Muslim sages in the distant past, but taking innovative initiatives informed by new knowledge. This is a road that Muslim societies have so far not taken, but it is only if they do so that the Islamic economic system will be voluntarily demanded by the Muslims themselves.

Bearing in mind these general principles, the following basic questions must be answered: how to translate Islam’s soaring idealism into a set of operational rules for application at theoretical and practical levels. At the theoretical level, it can be demonstrated that an Islamic economy (a theoretical construct) can be at least as efficient and equitable as any other economy; and that it can stand its ground as it “opens up, interacts, and competes with other economic systems” [Sirageldin (1995)]. This is the easier part of the problem which has been addressed elsewhere [Naqvi (1997)]. A more difficult task is to find a set of values СКАЧАТЬ