 any
of the arguments heard since September 11 have invoked the economic
underdevelopment of the Islamic world to explain why so many Muslims
appear angry at the West and particularly at the United States. Economic
globalization has benefited the West and harmed vast segments of the
Islamic world, it is said. Some add that Islam has exacerbated the
conflict by transforming economic grievances into mistrust of Westernization,
even into antagonism to modernity. This hostility is consistent, we
are told, with the emergence of an Islamic banking system and with
al Qaeda's use of hawala, an old Middle Eastern credit delegation
instrument, to finance its deadly operations.
Other observers,
trying to counter the perception that such acts of economic separatism
represent broad trends, note that mainstream Islam has been, and
remains, supportive of markets, technological creativity, and material
prosperity. Nothing in Islam conflicts with economic development
or global economic integration, says the latter group of commentators.
The nineteen Arab hijackers of September 11 hardly spoke for the
millions of Muslims who yearn to participate in the global economy
as equals.
Whatever their
inconsistencies, none of these interpretations can be dismissed
out of hand. Each captures important truths that we ignore at our
peril.
Widespread
Muslim misgivings about globalization are not a figment of anyone's
imagination; just as there are anti-globalists all across America
and Europe, so there are many in Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
But for the most part the observed Muslim resentment is less an
expression of opposition to modern capitalism than it is a cry of
desperation. Middle Easterners who have acquired skills to compete
in the global economy, when given opportunities to participate in
it, usually prefer peaceful production to hateful destruction. The
Hebron crowd that danced in the streets on September 11 consisted
overwhelmingly of people pushed by modern technologies to the fringes
of the global economy.
Does it follow
that poverty is responsible for whatever clash we observe between
Islam and the West? Will the current tensions subside if measures
are taken to uplift the Islamic world's desperately poor sectors?
While it would
be comforting to believe that a quick fix exists, it is doubtful
that the problems will respond to economic incentives alone. After
all, the hijackers of September 11 were not unemployable souls living
at the margins of subsistence. Holding university degrees, some
of them were perfectly capable of achieving prosperity through legitimate
means. What motivated them was not material deprivation but an all-consuming
ideology. They were not just Muslims but Islamists pursuing goals
they considered higher than life itself. The difference is critical.
Just as Timothy McVeigh belonged to a small minority of Americans
consumed by hatred against their government, so Islamists, whether
or not they are prone to violence, differ from most Muslims by a
commitment to radical global transformation.
Islamists believe
that to be a good Muslim is to lead an "Islamic way of life."
In principle, every facet of one's existence must be governed by
Islamic rules and regulations — marriage, family, dress, politics,
economics, and much more. In every domain of life, they believe,
a clear demarcation exists between "Islamic" and un-Islamic
behaviors. Never mind that in all but a few ritualistic matters
the Islamists themselves disagree on what Islam prescribes. They
have been educated to dismiss their disagreements as minor and to
expect a bit more study of God's commandments to produce a consensus
about the properly Islamic way to live.
The march of
history, Islamists are also trained to believe, is going their way.
Earlier generations of Islamists had predicted that the two major
economic systems of the modern era, capitalism and Communism, were
doomed to fail, because in their own ways they both bred injustice,
inequity, and inefficiency. One part of this prediction was borne
out by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Now it is the turn
of capitalism, which is far less stable than the pace of its "arrogant"
global spread might suggest. Just as Communism collapsed like a
house of cards as soon as communist societies discovered it was
safe to revolt, so capitalism will self-destruct when someone manages
to expose its vulnerability. Or so the thinking goes. Capitalism,
Islamists believe, has failed humanity because it breeds emptiness,
dissatisfaction, and despair — even among the materially successful.
What Islamists
offer as an improvement is an Islamic economic system. The key components
of the envisioned Islamic economy are an Islamic banking system
that avoids interest, an Islamic redistribution system based on
Koranic principles of sharing and equity, and a set of norms to
ensure fairness and honesty in the marketplace. To anyone familiar
with the complexities of modern economic relations, this list will
seem hopelessly truncated. In fact, the "Islamic" elements
of the planned economic transformation do not go much beyond these
three elements.
Consequently,
there exists no workable Islamic economic system. Government-championed
"economic Islamization" efforts in Sudan, Pakistan, and
Iran have all ended in failure. Leading Islamist writers rationalize
these disappointments by arguing that no properly Islamic economy
can exist so long as the world is rife with corruption. Some add
that none has existed in history, except during the initial few
decades of the first Islamic state founded fourteen centuries ago
in Western Arabia. After that "Golden Age," corruption
took over, breeding unfairness, injustice, and inefficiency.
There is, of
course, a massive contradiction here. How can the march of history
be favoring the Islamist agenda if that agenda has repeatedly been
frustrated for the last fourteen centuries, since shortly after
the birth of Islam? And why should anyone believe in the viability
of Islam's economic agenda if its proponents cannot cite a single
contemporary example of successful implementation?
Yet, within
the Islamist mindset, observed failures establish merely the need
to redouble efforts to defeat the offending sources of corruption.
Today, goes the argument, the principal source of corruption is
Westernization, which masquerades as globalization and whose chief
instruments are the military, cultural, and economic powers of the
United States. Americans have been corrupting people everywhere,
including Muslims, through seductive advertising and the dominance
of their godless media. They have also been propping up client regimes
that are committed, despite appearances to the contrary, to frustrating
Islamist goals.
Not that this
tendency to blame outside forces for various sorts of failures is
limited to terrorists. Islamists with no affinity for violence attribute
sundry domestic problems, including failures of their own movements
and initiatives, to the prevailing moral standards. Articulated
incessantly in diverse contexts, such excuses foster an intellectual
climate that enables violent groups to justify their destructiveness
as essential to ridding the world of evil and building an Islamic
utopia. It also aids these groups in finding recruits.
Contrary to
common understandings, the notion that Islam offers the world a
workable economic system destined to outperform its alternatives
is a recent creation. It emerged in late-colonial India, in the
1930s, a time when leading Muslim Indians were intensely debating
whether the dominant element of their communal identity was their
Muslim faith or their Indian nationality.
Some Muslim
leaders proposed that to be a Muslim was to live differently from
Hindus and Westerners, and that their Westernized co-religionists
were Muslims only in name. To substantiate these views, they undertook
to show that Islam offers distinct prescriptions in all domains
of life — marriage, friendship, dress, government, economics,
and much more. Concepts such as Islamic economics and Islamic banking
emerged in the course of a sustained campaign they launched to differentiate
what they considered the properly Muslim lifestyle from other lifestyles.
Many clerics
in South Asia and elsewhere endorsed this campaign, partly because
the elevation of religious values would enhance their own authority.
Weak governments, including ones run by essentially secular Muslims,
have had their own reasons to support Islamist efforts to define,
articulate, and, where necessary, invent an Islamic way of life.
To stay in power, they have found it convenient to trumpet their
Islamic virtues by supporting Islamist pet projects. The Saudi regime
has bankrolled Islamic universities in numerous countries, sponsored
conferences on the Islamization of knowledge, and built institutes
to train Islamic bankers. Pakistani leaders known to have a low
opinion of Islamic economics have paid lip service to the ideal
of economic Islamization, supported a ban on non-Islamic forms of
banking, and founded an Islamic redistribution system.
Neither individually
nor collectively have the economic measures taken in the name of
Islam revolutionized the economies they were supposed to cleanse
and perfect. This is hardly surprising when one considers that they
were inspired by cultural goals rather than efforts to stimulate
economic development.
In any case,
whatever the economic successes of Islamic history, it is patently
unrealistic to expect the Koran or early Islamic precedents to yield
the blueprint for contemporary economic life. A modern economy is
far more complex than the seventh-century Arabian desert economy
that contemporary Islamists treat as their model. The inspiration
for economic development must come primarily from outside Islam
and Islamic precedents.
Forced to confront
this plain fact, even some Islamists grant the necessity of basing
the design of modern economic institutions at least partly on non-religious
experiences and human judgment. Yet, such recognition does not amount
to a discarding of their Islamist beliefs. Their capacity for mental
compartmentalization (a capacity we all share) allows them to revert
to Islamist thought patterns in contexts where it is convenient
to have clear and simple answers to complex problems. Their mental
compartmentalization is facilitated by the prevalence of Islamist
discourse and by the paucity of challenges to its premises, assertions,
and arguments.
The economic
grievances that contribute to Muslim resentment of the global economic
order have, then, an unmistakable cultural, and specifically religious
dimension. Muslims who are angry at the United States are propelled
by more than their own poverty or that of their societies. They
are driven also by a vision that treats Islam as the answer to every
conceivable problem and attributes all failures to non-Islamic influences.
If I am right,
there can be no immediate solution to the current world crisis.
Catching Osama bin Laden and destroying the Taliban will do nothing
to alleviate nightmarish conditions in the Afghan countryside or
the slums of Cairo. Nor will it keep Pakistani and Saudi youths
from being taught that capitalism is evil and that an oversimplified
form of Islam is a source of unrivaled economic wisdom.
A lasting solution
to our crisis requires an arduous two-pronged strategy of economic
development and cultural repair. Out of both compassion and self-interest,
the developed countries must take steps to assist the Islamic world
in ways that go beyond window dressing.
For starters,
the United States and the European Community should lift barriers
to the industrial and agricultural exports of the Islamic countries,
especially the poorest. Equally important, the developed world must
lend a helping hand to the secular education systems of the Middle
East and South Asia. Within the Islamic world itself, governments
and civil organizations can join the struggle through a dual program
of their own. Making a renewed and credible commitment to poverty
reduction, they must also be willing to counter the nonsensical
and destructive elements of Islamist discourse.
Regardless
of their faith or creed, the world's intellectuals can also help
out by abandoning the relativist strains of modern multiculturalism.
Although all major cultures, including those associated with Islam,
offer much that is valuable and instructive, they are not equally
successful at producing viable economic solutions. In particular,
whatever other comforts Islamism gives its adherents, it is clearly
an inferior instrument of economic development.
In fact, some
of its variants, including that of the Taliban, have proven to be
positively harmful, even hostile, to material prosperity. The laudable
goal of cherishing the achievements of diverse cultures and respecting
cultural differences does not absolve us of the responsibility to
acknowledge failures, dead-ends, and dangers where they are noticed.
— Kuran is a professor of economics and
law, and King Faisal
Professor of Islamic Thought and Culture, at the University of
Southern California in Los Angeles.
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