We are living in the era of
industrial feudalism. Large capitalist corporations own and control almost
everything on which the society depends. Building blocks of economy like oil,
gas, electricity, sources of industrial raw materials and metal ores as well as
human intellect are privately owned by large capitalist corporations.
What good can we expect when such basic things are monopolized in a few hands?
This freedom of the capitalist to own whatever suits his profiteering transforms
bulk of the society into a peasant worker class.
Islam does not allow this freedom to enslave the whole society. The Messenger of
Allah (S.A.W) provided comprehensive guidance about who can own what. Sharia
rules of ownership protected Islamic society against feudalism for more than ten
centuries, until European powers colonized and enslaved Muslim ummah into the
clutches of both agrarian and industrial feudalism.
Allah (S.W.T.) is the Creator and therefore He is the true owner of everything.
He is the king of all what He created. Allah (S.W.T.) says:
“And to Allah belong the east and the west.” (Al-Baqarah:115)
“To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and the earth.” (Al-Baqarah:116)
“To Allah belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth.”
(Al-Baqarah:284)
Only Allah (S.W.T.), the Kindest and the most Merciful, knows the purpose of
each of His creations. Only He can guide which of His gifts for the mankind are
meant to be possessed and owned by individuals. Similarly only He knows which of
the resources belong to the society and are to be kept in collective ownership,
free from anyone’s monopoly. Humans can have ownership only according to His
guidance.
This article reminds that Islam is not limited to a set of rituals or ways of
praying, Islam provides solutions to all problems that mankind shall ever have
to face. Ownership is among the most fundamental concepts on which human society
is built and I intend to fully expose how capitalism distorts and misuses the
notion of freedom to trap humanity into its hegemony and how Islam frees mankind
towards the way of prosperity. Islam is the only solution for correct social,
economic and political interactions to satisfy human instincts in this world and
the way of success in the hereafter.
Slaves are made in the name of freedom
Freedom of ownership is like a pillar of today's capitalist economic system.
Europe celebrates its freedom of ownership due to the historic political and
ideological struggle European public went through in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries against feudalism. Monarchs in Europe had monopolistic
control over land, which was the means of production in the agrarian societies
of that time. Monarchy in Europe worked through dictatorial man-made laws that
enabled lords and feuds to control large pieces of land in order to serve their
monarch. This created a wealthy and rich upper class, which dominated almost all
economic activity through their feudal land-holdings, while commoners served
them mostly as peasants.
Since land was the main resource of production, control over land was all that
monarchs needed to run their dictatorship and keep the society pinned under
their thumb.
Private ownership of one’s means of living is exactly fitting to human instinct.
European common man was deprived of this basic right for centuries. While most
Europeans will never even imagine going back to the dark ages when they were not
allowed to freely utilize their means of production, most Muslims will not
understand why this right is such a blessing. That's because the right of an
individual to own his land, his business, his house and his common belongings
was granted by the Messenger of Allah, Muhammad (S.A.W) and Caliphs of Islam
protected the right of private ownership of both Muslim and non-Muslim citizens
of the Islamic state according to the Islamic Sharia obligations imposed on
Caliphs.
Moreover, according to the guidance of Islam, uncultivated and undeveloped land
was free for people to cultivate, develop and use for agriculture. Therefore
means of production and economic activity were spread all across the society.
Islamic society never faced domination of an upper class over means of
production.
No Caliph of Islam ever resembled anything similar to the European monarchs or
emperors. That's why the Islamic state was always referred to as the Caliphate,
while European monarchies are referred to as Empires. Muslim ummah never faced
the European style of persecution before getting colonized by the West.
That's the reason most Muslims don't fully comprehend the love of freedom by the
Westerners.
However this romance with freedom comes with a cost for all freedom-lovers. The
cost of freedom is the freedom itself, resulting in total slavery and
persecution of the society at the hands of the Capitalist.
Freedom of ownership allows an individual to purchase, own and trade anything.
The only limit on freedom is the freedom of other individuals. As long as an
individual does not violate the freedom of other individuals (e.g. by illegally
taking over someone’s property), everything is considered fine. How about
enslaving the entire society as a WHOLE in one go without touching an
individual's freedom? That's exactly what capitalist policy makers are so good
in doing. They achieve this by monopolizing the means of production and
controlling the entire economic activity as a whole.
Means of production in industrialized societies of today are factories and
machines. Natural cost of industrial production is the cost of processing
naturally occurring raw materials (like metal ores from mines or wood from
forests) to make finished products. The journey from raw metal ores to useful
end-user products will include a diverse range of industrial and engineering
activities like discovering and developing ore extraction sites, metallurgical
processes to produce useful materials (such as metals and alloys) out of ores,
and the steps to manufacture, assemble and build machines, gadgets and consumer
items (ranging from ordinary kitchen and household products to automobiles and
airplanes) out of metals and alloys.
Similarly, wood from forests is processed in at least a couple of steps to form
paper. First pulp is extracted from wood, which is in turn converted into paper.
Paper produced from pulp is then converted into a variety of writing, printing,
publishing and packaging products for end use.
This journey from raw natural resources (whether metal ores or forests or other
forms) to finished end-user products is commonly referred to as a supply chain,
in which industrial activities always start with raw natural resources, join in
a chain one step after the other, each step adding a small value and the entire
supply chain ending at useful end-user products.
A healthy industrialized economy will have industrial and business activities
spread all across the society. The most important feature of healthy industrial
activity is that the cost of production is the cost of human effort to perform
each industrial step (e.g. from discovering a metal ore to making the finished
end product). Spreading economic and business activity across the society will
create a healthy and competitive economic atmosphere for a rich and diverse
exchange of products and services. The benefit of rise and fall of prices will
be shared across the society.
In fact, cost of human effort in every step of the supply chain is the only
natural component of production cost.
The processing of natural resources is carried out by industrial workhorses
(like engines, turbines and motors) that need to be fuelled by an energy
resource like petroleum. And the industrial process itself is a manifestation of
human intellect. Therefore almost entire industrial activity is driven by
naturally occurring resources like minerals, forests, petroleum, etc. and human
intellect.
However, if natural resources and human intellect are monopolized in a few hands
or the entire business activity is controlled by a rich class, then an
artificial cost component will be added to the natural cost of production.
The artificial cost is the cost of natural resources in their raw form.
Similarly if human intellect is at the mercy of large corporations, they can
artificially add to the cost of an industrial process by charging for the use of
intellect.
This way the Capitalist can control cost of production of all necessities of
life and profiteer from the efforts of all individuals to meet even the most
basic needs. Look at the top among Fortune 500 companies, Exxon Mobil and
Chevron for instance, to see how large corporations own and control energy
resources across the globe and therefore have the capability to play with
prices.
Control over energy and mineral resources and human intellect results in
monopolization over means of production. In order to ensure a free, open and
competitive economic atmosphere, it is important to keep mineral and energy
resources free from profiteering or monopoly by any individual, group or class.
These resources are meant for the benefit of the people and should remain
available for everyone. Any price tag, profit or monopoly imposed on the raw
form of natural resources results in the persecution of the whole society
(interestingly, without touching the freedom of any particular individual, thus
ensuring the so-called human rights and democratic values in an enslaved
society!).
Since freedom of ownership allows to buy, sell and privately own anything
including human intellect, there is nothing in a Capitalist society that can
stop the capitalist from owning and monopolizing all modern means of production.
With control over means of production, capitalist has the power to keep the
society under the oppressor’s thumb.
Control over means of production is exactly the way of feudalism. That's what
the West was running away from in their quest for freedom and they have ended up
in the same trap. Capitalism is nothing but industrialized feudalism, and even
one step worse: the peasant commoners of this industrialized version of
feudalism are being persecuted, every aspect of their lifestyle is being
controlled and manipulated by the Capitalist and they still live in the
misconception that they are free!
Communism: another ditch of slavery
Communists strongly reacted against monopoly over means of production, opposing
both agrarian and industrial forms of feudalism. Communist reaction to the
capitalist hegemony resulted in intense ideological debate and fierce political
struggle against capitalism.
While capitalists monopolized over means of production and established their
domination by using the notion of freedom of ownership, the extreme communist
over-reaction was to deny private ownership altogether.
Communist ideology only allows common (or public) ownership. Nothing can be
privately owned by an individual in Communism, not even the common belongings of
a person like his house, his means of transport, and his means of earning, his
small business or his own factory. All men and women are treated as part of a
society just like the mechanical component of a machine, which has no purpose
but to fulfill his role as a component of the machine. Simply another form of
slavery!
Although world has seen several flavors of both capitalism and communism (like
the strong socialist version of capitalism in Scandinavia and Canada and more
right-wing oriented capitalism in the USA), but the basic capitalism-communism
debate is always about freedom of private ownership of an individual vs.
collective ownership by the commune.
The capitalist-communist debate is now more than century and a half old. All
along this debate and conflict between capitalist and communist thinkers, both
sides always showed narrow and one-track minded extremism. Capitalist thinkers
focused on the freedom of an individual and never discussed the freedom of the
society as a whole. Communists, on the other hand, cared about the society and
debated as if the individual was totally banished from life. None among the
genius philosophers from both sides was ever able to decipher the actual reality
of an individual human being living in a society.
Divine solution to the question of ownership
Islam does not get stuck with narrow, single track questions such as whether
individuals need freedom or the commune should own everything. Islam guides
while treating humans as humans.
Allah (S.W.T) is the Creator of the universe and everything therein. Therefore
He provides guidance to humans according to the purpose of each of His
creations.
Islamic solution caters for all aspects of life, whether individual or
collective, for this generation or the next or coming generations, whether
economic issues or spiritual requirements of human personality and so on. The
comprehensive guidance provides simple answers to solve the problem at its core,
once and for all, without hurting the society for the sake of the individual or
vice versa.
Absolute ownership of everything, according to Islam, belongs to Allah (S.W.T).
Only Allah is the owner of everything and no one else, individual or society,
owns anything. Allah then allows the use of resources to humans according to
Sharia rules revealed by Allah (S.W.T) to His Messenger Muhammad (S.A.W).
Therefore, the question of ownership in Islam will not be resolved by discussing
freedom of an individual. It will be resolved by discussing the Sharia rules
that define ownership of different types of resources.
Islam on one hand provides liberty to the individual to privately own, sell and
purchase his personal belongings like his house, his business, land or factory,
his means of transport as well as other essentials of everyday life of an
individual. Islam also allows individuals to start, promote, expand and enhance
their own privately owned businesses, be it related to trading, industry or
agriculture. Moreover, it is a Sharia obligation on the Islamic state to protect
the private property of individuals.
On the other hand, Islam forbids private (individual) ownership of resources on
which the society or community depends as a whole e.g. mines, petroleum and
mineral reserves, all forms of energy resources, rivers and other natural
sources of water, roads and highways etc. These resources are considered public
property and are to be kept available for all Muslim and non-Muslim citizens of
the Islamic state, free from profiteering by any individual, group, or class of
the society.
Caliph is the custodian of these public resources and it is a Sharia obligation
on the Caliph to ensure that public property is neither privatized nor
monopolized. Being a custodian of public property, the Caliph has to make
policies to spread economic activity across the Islamic society so that people
can participate in industrial and business activity to create a competitive,
diverse and rich exchange of products and services and not just act as
industrial peasants serving the rich class.
This way Islam keeps the whole society free from monopolization (unlike the
Capitalist system, which monopolizes means of production) and also provides a
competitive economic environment for capable, creative and hard-working
entrepreneurs to grow and excel ahead of the others (unlike Communism, which
does not allow liberty for individuals to grow and excel).
Islamic thinking, from its very basics, is totally different from any man-made
ideology like capitalism or communism. This is depicted in the way the Messenger
of Allah (S.A.W.) guided about private and public property: Abu Dawud narrated
from Ibn ‘Abbas (ra) that the Messenger of Allah (S.A.W.) said: “Muslims are
partners (associates) in three things: in water, pastures and fire,” and Anas
narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas adding, “and its price is Haram (forbidden)”.
Similarly, Ibn Majah narrated from Abu Hurairah (ra) that the Prophet (S.A.W)
said: “Three things are not prevented from (the people); the water, the pastures
and the fire.” These Ahadith explain that the three things i.e. water, pastures
and fire are in the ownership of the community and therefore individuals cannot
privately own any of these. The additional comment from Ibn ‘Abbas “and its
price is Haram (forbidden)” further explains that putting a price tag on these
collectively owned commodities in their natural, raw form is forbidden.
However, the Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) did allow private possession of water in
At-Taif and Khaybar by individuals, in cases where the water resource was only
for the irrigation of a farm owned by an individual while the community did not
depend on the particular resource of water. This permission of private ownership
of water by the Messenger of Allah (S.A.W.) establishes that an individual can
own water (or other resources) as long as public or community does not depend on
the resource.
The combined meaning of the Hadith “Muslims are partners (associates) in three
things: in water, pastures and fire” and the permission for an individual to own
water for private use establishes the rule that communal utilities are to be
kept in public ownership and cannot be privately owned or privatized. However if
something is not of communal utility, it can be privately owned.
Another Hadith narrated by Tirmidhi from Abyadh ibn Hammal adds further clarity
to the Islamic understanding of private and public ownership. Abyadh ibn Hammal
states that upon his request, the Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) gave him a piece of
salt-laden land. It was later pointed out that the land holds uncountable amount
of salt, which means it was a salt mine. Upon hearing this, the Prophet (S.A.W)
took the mine back. Then ibn Hammal requested to grant him another piece of
land. The Prophet (S.A.W) granted him the ownership of that other land by
putting a limit to the privately held property so that it did not include any
part of the pastures used for camel grazing.
This explains it is all right for an individual to own a piece of land, however
if it is a mine (uncountable mineral), individuals cannot privately own it.
Moreover, the Messenger of Allah (S.A.W) was supportive of ibn Hammal’s wish to
own a piece of land, but did not grant anything that is of communal utility
(like pastures used for camel grazing in the time of the Prophet (S.A.W) or
energy resources in today’s age).
If someone has read and knows about the infinitely endless narrow-minded
capitalist-communist debate over the issue of ownership, he would be amazed at
the simplicity of Prophet’s ahadith, how effortlessly and flawlessly Allah’s
apostle guided about most complex of human issues.
Public utility structures: another victim of Capitalist hegemony
Capitalist approach to monopolize all resources does not stop at naturally
occurring resources like minerals, oil and gas. They also extend their monopoly
to man-made public utility structures like electricity or water supply systems,
without which communities cannot survive.
Capitalist thinkers provide a very naive rationale to make monopolistic business
out of public utilities. Since it is impractical to have multiple water pipes or
electricity supply lines going through streets, they just allow one company to
bring in investment and monopolize the business of public utility services under
disgraceful arrangements such as publicly guaranteed rate of return for
investors.
Once monopoly has been created and capitalist’s greed and profiteering starts
hitting the public, they bring in the so-called “regulations” to add legitimacy
to their monopoly. However regulations do nothing except fooling the public,
since once monopoly has been established over necessities of public life, there
is no way to save the society from persecution by the monopolist. The correct
and sustainable solution is to nip the evil in the bud by stopping monopolies
from creation in the first stance. This correct solution only comes from Islam,
which makes it forbidden for individuals to own or monopolize any public
utility.
It is worth pointing out here that Islam allows the government to give out
service contracts to individuals or teams of professionals to provide specific
services to the public such as building, installing, maintaining or operating
utility services. Such a hire-for-service contract is allowed, although public
infrastructure has to remain in public ownership. This solves both ends of the
problem i.e. on one hand public is saved from monopolistic profiteering and on
the other hand service providers will need to provide reliable and competitive
services in order to keep serving, otherwise the government can always bring in
new service providers.
These are examples of how the most genius of human minds completely fail to
decipher different dimensions of human issues, remain stuck in single-track,
narrow-minded, extremist debates, and always lead mankind right into traps of
disaster like feudalism, capitalism and communism. Only Allah (S.W.T), the
Creator and the true Owner, can provide correct guidance, which is His most
precious gift to the mankind.
Capitalist’s profiteering with human intellect
Capitalist debate over Intellectual Property (or IP, as it is commonly called)
is yet another example of how immaturely they argue to privately own everything
of communal utility. Objective of capitalist thinkers is always to
ruthless oppression. Human intellect, in this era of scientific discoveries, is
an important ingredient of almost everything that human society needs, be it
healthcare, industry, alternative energy, public utilities, telecommunication,
or simple household.
Hegemony over human intellect is indispensable among Capitalist’s tools to keep
the society pinned under its thumb.
Therefore intellect is also among top victims of capitalist’s tyranny, for which
they have come up with patent laws to provide legal framework for private
ownership of ideas like cure of a disease or an industrial process. Patents are
the laws that establish private ownership of thoughts and ideas.
Imagine large corporations holding patents over information related to human
genome. Any drug or cure based on genetic information will carry profit for the
patent holder corporation. What amount of profit? This is not the profit that
comes from competitive business activity. This is monopolistic profiteering as
patents only establish monopolies over human intellect. Patent holder
pharmaceutical companies can make whatever amounts they can squeeze from public.
It does not make much difference whether pharmaceutical companies squeeze their
profit through taxpayer-funded public healthcare programs like the Canadian
Medicare or through private healthcare insurance plans.
Use of monopoly over intellect for profiteering is not limited to healthcare.
There are many other examples spanning all across different forms of industry,
consider solar power generation for instance. Solar cells are made of sand!
Apply intellect on sand and generate power. But there are a couple of dozen
processing steps to make solar generation facility out of sand and each step
carries the burden of IP. Corporations holding patent rights over solar cell
technology do nothing except adding to the cost of every processing step. IP is
what is responsible to make the technology barely affordable. If there were no
IP laws, the processing steps would have freely spread all across the society
creating lots of small private production facilities and competitive end-user
prices.
It is estimated that amount of solar energy that hits the surface of earth in an
hour is enough for a year’s needs of entire human population. There is no
scarcity of energy resource as far as human needs are concerned. Just eliminate
IP and the world energy crisis is solved. This points to the fact that Allah
(S.W.T) has created enough resources to fulfill all needs of mankind. Then He
also revealed the Sharia laws that are necessary if mankind is to enjoy
resources created by Allah (S.W.T), for example the Sharia law to abolish all
monopolies over things of communal utility. But freedom of ownership frees
mankind from correct guidance and traps it into one form of slavery or another.
Not only this much, patent holders also have the legal right to deny a
particular piece of technology to the public. They can purchase patents and keep
them buried in patent files without using. If a company has already invested in
a particular technology, they have the tendency to stop or delay the use of
competing technologies. Large corporations commonly do this to maximize their
profits.
And although the technology will exist and known to technical professionals, but
the patent law does not allow the use of technology if patent holder (private
owner of the patent) does not want to issue licenses for the use of patent.
Another common misuse of patents is to protect the market. Technologies that
produce longer life products are in customer’s benefit, but will result in
lowering the size of yearly market. Patents, being bought and sold like
commodities, provide the opportunity to large capitalist companies to purchase
and bury those patents that have the potential to lower the market size by
providing longer life products.
How do capitalist thinkers this monopoly over human intellect? Freedom
of ownership simply allows everything to be bought, sold and privately owned and
therefore supports private ownership of everything including intellect, thus
making it a tradable commodity. And since trading is always done at a price
according to the benefit or value of the commodity, so a mechanism is required
to determine the ownership of a particular piece of intellect, organize its
exchange or trading from one hand to the other and its use. Patent laws provide
the mechanism of doing this by granting ownership of an idea to the one who came
up with the idea.
Once patent is granted, the idea becomes private property of the patent holder,
ready to be bought and sold, thus allowing large corporations to purchase
patents of their interest.
However this whole debate of freedom to buy and sell human intellect does not
address the question under consideration. The question to be answered is: Do
ideas, thoughts or human intellect belong to an individual? Does a new idea
belong to the person who comes up with the idea? When someone comes up with a
new idea, does it mean the idea becomes private property of the thinker?
In order to understand whether intellect or ideas can be owned by an individual
or not, we have to understand the reality of an idea or a thought. Although
thoughts and ideas are not limited to science and technology, but since my
discussion is all about economics in an industrial society, so let me take the
idea of an industrial machine as an example. Consider the design of a steam
turbine, for instance. Steam goes into a turbine and its shaft starts rotating
like a wheel. This rotating motion is of great value in many industrial
applications.
Working of a steam turbine involves so many ideas. The foremost idea that comes
to mind is that of a wheel. Man discovered usefulness of wheel’s rotating motion
thousands of years ago and has been putting rotary motion into use for ages upon
ages.
What about mathematical ideas used in the design of steam turbines. If there was
no geometry, trigonometry and algebra, there would have been no steam turbines.
Thanks to the work of great Greek and Muslim mathematicians like Pythagoras and
Al-Khwarizmi who established the principles of basic mathematics on which modern
engineering strongly stands today.
The third most important scientific concept used in the working of steam
turbines are the laws of thermodynamics developed by brilliant European
scientists and engineers like Sadi Carnot in the nineteenth century. There
cannot be any steam turbines without the understanding of thermodynamics.
In addition, scientific understanding and laws related to the behavior of gases
at different temperatures and pressures are also applied in the design and
working of steam turbines.
Furthermore, metallurgical know-how is also required to select proper materials
to manufacture a turbine.
These are just few examples of how many different mathematical, scientific,
engineering and industrial concepts are used in a steam turbine. In fact when
Charles Parsons made the first steam turbine in 1880s, he did not invent
anything from scratch, he just did the last step of thousands of years long
scientific journey.
All ideas and thoughts are based on previous human experience and that
experience is integral part of every thought.
If Parsons was born in ninth century instead of nineteenth century it was
impossible for him to build a turbine, simply because the required human
experience did not exist at that time.
No scientific discovery or idea can be attributed to a single individual.
Scientific development is a pure human thing and can only be attributed to the
human mind in general which is capable of thinking based on previous experience.
Ideas already known to mankind serve as previous experience for new thoughts,
thus making it capable for scientific advancement and progress.
Scientific development is a human phenomenon and should be attributed to
mankind, not to any individual.
This is why capitalist arguments to privately own ideas and intellect are all
wrong and do not match the reality of actual thinking process. The idea of
attributing a scientific idea to a single individual is so amateur and childish
that only someone who is totally unaware of how science works and how scientific
development occurs over time can claim that a scientific idea can belong to an
individual.
Allah (S.W.T) the Creator has created the mankind capable of scientific
development and He has sent correct guidance about keeping the scientific
development (an important item of communal utility) free from monopolies, thus
allowing everyone the access, use and further development of technology.
On the other hand, rubbish man-made laws hegemony of the oppressors.
Capitalist ideology is Jahiliyyah (ignorance), which provides the freedom to
deviate from the right path! Capitalism is oppression in this world and a curse
in the hereafter.
Any judgment or law that is not according to what Allah (S.W.T) has revealed is
a source of injustice and persecution. Allah (S.W.T) says in Quran:
“Those who do not judge according to what Allah has revealed are the unjust”.
(Al-Ma’idah: 45).
Allah (S.W.T.) is the Kindest and He is the only source of true guidance. Islam,
the greatest blessing and favor from Allah (S.W.T.), provides freedom from all
forms of oppression in this world and success on the Day of Judgment. Quran
says:
“Do they then seek the judgment of Jahiliyyah (Ignorance)? And who is better in
judgment than Allah for a people who have firm Faith. ”. (Al-Ma’idah: 50).