Another argument. The Syrian president Assad
and the Yemen president Saleh
began advocating the return of regulation.
Limiting the price of food and so on ...
All that is happening in the Middle East
is not a coincidence.
If we ask the question, what does
neoliberalism mean to the Muslim world,
and to Islam as a social-economic system,
we get the answer: a foreign body.
Tariq Ramadan says that the neoliberal
economic policy is Alam al Harb.
A world of war, against which
every Muslim must fight.
Often we forget the main reason why
in 2003 George Bush invaded Iraq.
Everybody thinks the reason was oil,
Israel and so on.
Naomi Klein rightly points out
that the most important reason was
to impose, with military aid, neoliberal reforms
on the whole of the Middle East through Iraq.
As the Middle East was the hardest nut to crack
for the prevalence of neoliberal paradigm.
Francis Fukuyama, you all know his work,
The End of History and the Last Man.
It is not a coincidence that he wrote
in his book that
outside of the Muslim world there is
a general consensus that
liberal democracy is the most
rational form of government.
I stress, outside the Muslim world.
In other words,
everywhere our paradigm of liberal
democracy and free market capitalism is accepted,
except in the Muslim world.
It's no coincidence that almost all
eminent Muslim intellectuals
attacked Fukuyama.
Abdullahi An-Na'im, Turkish foreign
minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Akbar Ahmed etc.
All saying that it is unacceptable
to propose the idea
that what the West has
is the best possible form of human society.
Timur Kuran, who is in the USA used
like Fouad Ajami and (undistinguishable)
for legitimizing official politics,
has recently written a book,
The Long Divergence, in which he
points out that all traditional societies
are resisting corporations,
particularly strongly in the Middle East, he added.
So you see why this is happening.
Let me remind you of Muslim economists
who claim there exists a distinctive
Muslim economic science
which distinguishes itself from
neoclassical economics-
- an economics that has again embraced,
after the Kensyan paradigm, the free market.
And these Muslim economists
emphasize ethics.
Ethics is supposed to be important in economy, too.
They insist that the Islamic approach must
explicitly incorporate ethics, based on
Muslim values, into the economic equation.
In this context they point out
four economic axioms.
These are: unity, balance ...
Balance, I think, is important.
Balance is in essence (incomprehensible)
equity and doing good.
In the Islamic cultural paradigm
balance - equity and doing good-
is the opposite of non-balance.
Where non-balance is characterized
with the word "zulm".
Zulm means tyranny, exploitation, evil.
What zulm represents,
is described in Quran 59:7.
It says, wealth should not be
accumulated in the hands of the rich.
I think that today we all live
in one big zulm.
How else can we explain ...
When the British government
gave one thousand billion pounds
to the banks,
and tried to agree upon giving one quarter of it
to small businesses for employing workers,
the banks said no.
This is in complete contradiction with the Muslim
paradigm, which is significant for Western thought too.
Let me also say that for Muslims
equity goes hand in hand with ethics.
Sura 16, ayah 90 says, God advocates justice
and doing good deeds.
This ayah repeats itself at the end of
every khutbah.
Khutbah is a sermon,
given at Friday prayers.
In this sense the rise of
anti-neoliberalism is not a coincidence.
Allow me to draw three distinctions
between the Muslim economic approach
and the Anglo-Saxon approach
from which neoliberalism originates.
First is the question of individualism
and the community.
The Anglo-Saxon liberal approach is
markedly individualistic.
Partly based upon John Locke's
Two Treatises of Government.
Some say that Locke was a radical
individualist,
i.e. an individual should only take care of himself.
According to the Muslim paradigm,
an individual may use his talents,
however there is such a thing as an ideal
of a righteous community. In other words,
the standard of preserving it's social cohesion.
Second thing is property.
Under the Anglo-Saxon liberal paradigm
private property is inviolable.
Even if a hundred lives depended on it,
a rich man may use his money to buy a jet plane.
In Islam this is not allowed.
Property must be used socially,
for the benefit of the community.
According to the Islamic doctrine,
the final owner of property
is God.
Man is only it's caretaker and
must therefore use it morally, ethically.
Thirdly, greed. Taking from
Adams Smith's The Wealth of Nations or
The Theory of Moral Sentiments,
greed in the Anglo-Saxon paradigm is
appreciated, glorified as a driving force
of economy and welfare.
Adam Smith says,
do not attempt to do good,
for good shall be a side product
of selfishness.
The idea, upon which the modern
western economic science is based,
is that every individual should only work
for the benefit of himself and follow his greed,
and then the market will magically
produce benefits for the whole community.
The Islamic paradigm
warns against greed.
Sura 59, ayat 9, those who overcome
their greed are the successful ones.
Islam admits that man is prone to greed.
Sura 100, ayat 8, he loves wealth excessively,
but wealth and children are ornaments
of the world, the lord prefers good deeds.
And lastly, the market.
Islamic social and economic paradigm
is sceptical towards the market.
Because it doesn't give the right results.
Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkish foreign minister
and a brilliant intellectual,
says it is totally unacceptable that
some artificial economic and market mechanisms
create the system of values.
Competitiveness, efficiency etc.
He says that a system of values can only
be based upon absolute values from Quran.
These are goodness, equity,
truth, and so on.
It is, therefore, not a coincidence that
Muslim economists stress the following.
State regulation of economy,
which should lean towards
maximum possible employment
and a strong social network.
And this should make
a just distribution of wealth.
