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

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СКАЧАТЬ nuggets of antediluvian wisdom. Consequently, such exercises, notwithstanding the scientific pretence, do not create new knowledge, any more than hanging autumnal leaves back on top of the trees may herald a new spring. What is urgently needed in the Muslim world are bold ventures in the realm of knowledge, beyond empty rhetoric and sterile formalisms.

      All this must change to make our discipline relevant to reality. In particular, the deeply ingrained habits of enunciating infallible verities that defy obsolescence must be given up by the students of this difficult but rewarding discipline. The hard fact is that what is intellectually obsolete must be quietly discarded. Rather than staking out a claim about the self-sufficiency of traditional wisdom, the proper attitude should be one of humility – because here, as elsewhere, what we already know is only a small proportion of what we do not know yet. In a milieu of incessant change, a deterministic mindset extinguishes optimism about humankind’s capacity to change its condition for the better. The all-enveloping revolution in the realm of ethics and economics must, therefore, be reflected in Islamic economics as well. Its continued vitality and fertility demands a flow of new ideas. For want of them, Islamic economics may soon come to resemble “truths”, in Aldous Huxley’s words which “begin as heresies and end as superstitions”.

      Fortunately, all is not yet lost. The present work foresees a flourishing future for Islamic economics, if it is delivered from the deadweight of conservatism and if it is allowed to flower in an environment where intellectual freedom is not considered as criminal abuse of the God-given gift of human reason. The key to success lies in the ability to see, in different times and places, the contrast between the extant economic reality and the prevailing religious ethical mores of society, and to design a flexible economic and ethical response to this contrast. This is hard work, but nothing solid can be achieved without it. To this end, I have sought to give a vivid sense of the Islamic moral vision in a logically rigorous manner, and I compare it with self-contained analyses of the secular, Christian, and Jewish moral visions. The aim is to determine the influence of morality in general, and of Islamic morality in particular, on the principal determinants of human well-being, especially those which relate to economic growth, distributive justice, and poverty alleviation; and to recognise that the constraints set by free-riding and assurance problems severely limit what (private) morality alone can do to enhance human happiness. However, recognising the latter possibility is not a recommendation for launching a vain search for nature-defeating moral perfectibility. It rather opens up a vast fertile territory that an egalitarian public policy can productively furrow – to correct the inequities of the existing system of rewards and incentives, and to provide redress to those adversely affected by it. In this context, the need for explicit moral guidance is highlighted in cases (e.g., economic growth) where Islamic ethical values are implicit or vague, or where these have fallen prey to gross misinterpretation (e.g., population dynamics, equality between sexes). It is emphasised that what is done in the name of Islamic morality should be seen by the people as fair and just – i.e., the procedures used to arrive at the principles of justice must be fair and the principles of justice themselves should be just.

      To give it an easily recognisable face, and to highlight its originality, the Islamic moral vision is translated into an ethical system, which is then factored into four irreducible elements – namely, unity (tawḥīd), equilibrium (al-‘adl wa al-iḥsān), free will (ikhtiyār) and responsibility (farḍ). These elements (or axioms), in effect, state that all human activities are vertically integrated and horizontally equilibrated to produce moral, social, political and economic harmony and justice; and that these activities are carried out by a free human agency endowed with the powers to make a choice between alternatives as well as being saddled with the responsibility for the consequences of its actions. In this broader informational context, bringing ethical values, based on religion, into economic analysis in no way fetters the spirit of scientific inquiry. Instead, doing the former enhances the salience and reach of the latter. It becomes transparent that, as opposed to the limited reach of self-interestedness, a morally charged economic system can accomplish many an objective in one go: promote a high rate of economic development to ensure the equality of social and economic conditions (not just the equality of opportunity) for all in terms of their capability to translate material plenitude into the metric of individual happiness; safeguard the freedom to achieve social cohesion and political and social stability; and guarantee effective protection to the poor and the weak against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful.

      The aim of this book is not to prove the absolute superiority of one ethical system over competing systems; nor is it to show that one or the other system enjoys some kind of an uncontested monopoly over knowledge and wisdom. It is rather to demonstrate that, within the parameters of their inner logic and societal compulsions, all ethical systems stand to gain from what others recommend to maximize human well-being. In other words, the universal messages of apparently self-sufficient ethical systems can be enriched by building bridges of understanding between them and learning from each other. With this overarching theme, it is intended to comment on the ‘secular’ advances in ethical philosophy and delve deep into the diverse historical experiences of Islamic, Christian, and Judaic religions to come up with the many ways in which moral ideals have been (and can be) reconciled with the ‘hard’ social and economic reality. It this context, worthy of note by Muslim thinkers (and, in particular, the ‘ulamā’) are the intellectual efforts made by the Calvinists and Levellers in Europe, and the Social Gospellers in the United States, to strengthen the processes of industrialisation and economic growth. Their success in abandoning the morally enervating doctrines of predestination, innate human depravity, original sin, and in freeing the mind and the soul from the weight of excessive dogmatism, greatly helped scientific and technological fluorescence in Western societies. The reasons why this has not happened in the Muslim world are many, and some beyond its control; but what has contributed most to perpetuate discontent in these societies is that, long ago, they gave up rational thought, ignominiously surrendered before the un-Islamic principle of predestination, and forsook the revolutionary concepts of human freedom and individual responsibility. Worse still, with sullen obstinacy, they have clung to statis and inaction when circumstances demand standing up to the difficult social, economic, political, and moral challenges of a fast-changing world. The net result has been to imprison human reason, underrate the power of scientific advance, and undermine economic progress and human development. The tragic reality is that the fabric of Muslim societies is falling apart around a conservative centre that can no longer hold the forces of change.

In a rather optimistic vein, it is argued that, for all their social and economic infirmities, Muslim societies still have it in them to do it better if they mobilise the full force of their moral ideals and translate them into a just and dynamic public policy. This is especially true of the luminous Islamic teachings on distributive justice and poverty reduction. Islam has stated these moral values much more explicitly and emphatically than has been done by Western secular and religious thought. The equality of mankind before Allah and towards each other and the poor having a prior right in the wealth of the rich are the two regnant Islamic moral principles which have survived the vicissitudes of Muslim history and wilful misinterpretations to tame the awesome waves of Islamic egalitarianism. By contrast, the tendency in the West to overemphasise unbridled individualism and to substitute public responsibility for individual responsibility has prevented it from satisfactorily resolving the fundamental conflict between the pursuit of self-interest and the commitment to work for collective good, notwithstanding its splendid success in vastly increasing the national wealth. Their dilemma is that collective goals, even when universally accepted, cannot be achieved through purely individualistic behaviour, which has a tendency to drift into an incapacitating isolation. In particular, the dominant libertarian secular philosophy – that insensitively denies the poor man’s right to aid, accepts the rich man’s (unlimited) claim to private property, and condescendingly advises the poor to help themselves – is deeply rooted in Western religious ethics. Thus, for instance, Christian thinkers (including religious scholars) have tended to “reverence the attainment of riches as the supreme facility” and “regard the poor as damned in the next world” [Tawney (1937); p. СКАЧАТЬ