With the revolutions in the Muslim world in full swing and now spreading from North Africa to the Middle East Western nations are attempting to hijack the Ummah’s demand for change and labelling the protests as demands for democracy, freedom and Western values. It should be remembered that those informing us of what the ummah demand are the very same countries that constructed the architecture the ummah is working to remove.
David Fromkin, Professor and expert on Economic History at the University of Chicago explained in his 2009 book ‘A peace to end of peace: the fall of the Ottoman empire and the creation of the modern middle east,’ how the West constructed the Middle East: “Massive amounts of the wealth of the old Ottoman Empire were now claimed by the victors. But one must remember that the Islamic empire had tried for centuries to conquer Christian Europe and the power brokers deciding the fate of those defeated people were naturally determined that these countries should never be able to organize and threaten Western interests again. With centuries of mercantilist experience, Britain and France created small, unstable states whose rulers needed their support to stay in power. The development and trade of these states were controlled and they were meant never again to be a threat to the West. These external powers then made contracts with their puppets to buy Arab resources cheaply, making the feudal elite enormously wealthy while leaving most citizens in poverty.”
Whilst we are all familiar with problems across the Muslim world, be they economic, social or legal, the Muslim world does not lack the building blocks for economic development and prosperity. British Prime Minister Henry Bannerman in 1906 confirmed that “There are people (the Muslims) who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources. They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language, one history and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate these people from one another … if, per chance, this nation were to be unified into one state; it would then take the fate of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world.
Many from the Ummah have braved the brutal crackdown by their rulers and came onto the streets in the hope of a new dawn. The removal of the rulers is the first aspect of this struggle, the second aspect would be the construction of a new order that placed the ummah at the centre rather then a ruling family or foreign power. Central to this is establishing an economic system that changes the current status quo where the majority languish in poverty and the minority treat the regions wealth as their personal wealth. In order to achieve this we would need to ascertain our strengths and advantages, whilst those elements considered necessary but absent would need the development of policies so they can be overcome.
An example of this is China, after a number of failures to develop the nation, beginning in 1979 Chinese technocrats led by reformers created various economic zones to attract foreign technology to deal with the lack of advanced industry. The use of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), although greatly aided economic activity and job creation, it also allowed for foreign technical and managerial knowledge into China. This is why to this day all foreign companies in China are forced to transfer technical knowledge to China for access to the Chinese domestic market. In this way China has been able to achieve phenomenal economic growth, develop its military and created jobs for millions of its citizens.
Similarly Japan by the turn of the 20th century had managed to develop its industries, however the rapid growth of the economy had made Japan painfully aware of its limited natural resources. Japan overcome such disadvantages through a programme of aggressive territorial expansion through conquering the Korean peninsula and surging deep into China in order to exploit labour and resources. In a similar manner the British Empire conquered foreign territories for export markets and utilised slave labour to overcome small workforce.
These examples show that all nations need some very basic ingredients to emerge as powerful nations and ones that can very quickly establish prosperous standards of living for its people with secure borders. When we look at the Muslim world we find whilst it is blessed with the worlds energy sources – oil and natural gas, this has not been used to develop industry, which would allow it to create millions of jobs and secure its borders. The development of infrastructure, defence industries and energy are fundamental for any nation, the possession of mineral resources would place any nation in a strategic position to develop. The examples of Japan and Britain are examples of societies – rightly or wrongly, who overcame the absence of energy sources in order to develop.
When one looks at the potential of the Muslim world, the Muslim lands do not just posses the key building blocks for a new nation, but over and beyond this reality the Khilafah would emerge a very powerful state due to the many strengths it will inherit that are present in the Muslim lands.
The Muslim Ummah collectively possesses over 700 billion barrels of oil and half of the world’s gas. Both the worlds key energy sources. The Ummah globally number 1.6 billion, more importantly over 60% of the Ummah is below the age of 28. The importance of a large population is critical for domestic economic development. The absence of a large pool of labour means a nation cannot be constructed or in many cases would take decades before it was able to become self sufficient. On the emergence of the Khilafah for the defence of its borders the Khaleef will have the capability to deploy armed forces of over 4 million personnel.
The Khilafah would use its immense energy as a tool to bring technology and expertise to the Muslim lands. Rather than making the priority to provide to the international markets as the current rulers do, the Khilafah would make bilateral treaties with energy consumers around the world based on the benefit they can provide to the Muslim lands. Countries such as Japan and Germany could be provided with oil in return for technology.
A cursory glance across the Muslim world shows that the current Muslim nations fall into two camps regarding manufacturing, there are those nations which already have the characteristics of an industrial base, which are the minority of nations and then there is the majority of the Muslim world that lack heavy industry. This can be overcome through expanding manufacturing with the nations that have some industrial base and then linking the nations that do not have much industry with specific types of industry to the nations which have an industrial advantage.
The creation of heavy industry and its supportive industries will bring with it a massive injection of investment from the state and from industrialists. The State will oversee the creation and conversion of many factories which will brings opportunities not heralded before. This will be coupled with private investment from entrepreneurs keen to capitalize on the returns that will be generated. This policy will create jobs for those previously unemployed. The creation of jobs will naturally increase consumption as people will possess greater amounts of income. This in turn will increase demand for goods from the general masses. Such an increase in aggregate demand will push the development of other sectors of the economy such as the consumer goods sector. This demand will push people to supply these goods further creating more jobs and more wealth in the economy
The Islamic economic system when implemented focuses on wealth distribution, Islam views wealth creation as a technical matter, hence where an oil refinery should be constructed, whether manual labour or an automated process using robots should be used to make automobiles are seen as technical issues which can be concluded by understanding their reality. How such cars or a nations wealth should be distributed, should it go to the orphans or aristocracy is something that the reality cannot explain, hence for this area Islam has laid down a system.
Through the application of Islam’s economic rules sustainable economic growth can be achieved that all can share in. Islam’s taxation policy which focuses on wealth rather than income will leave citizens with much more disposable income. Islam does not have complex rules for taxation and has only seven revenue sources for the state, in this way the rules for taxation are much simpler, cheaper to administer and all citizens know where they stand.
This is just an insight on what Islam offers the Muslim world. There is only reason for why the Ummah remains in its current state and this is due to the rulers over the Muslim lands, who have never had any intention of making the right use of the huge wealth in the Muslim lands. The West have attempted to integrate the Muslim lands into their own domestic markets though policies such as the free market and globalisation and whilst they receive cheap oil and cheap labour the Muslim lands have gained nothing in terms of economic development. Countries such as Egypt went from being self sufficient in agriculture to today being a net importer. The Muslim lands posses all the necessary ingredients to take its own destiny into its own hands, it also possesses a way of life that will guide it in using such resources, it now just needs to fulfil its destiny and throw its rulers into the dustbin of history.