Of economic justice

By: Asghar Ali Engineer

JUSTICE is one of the central values in Islam, and any economic system not based on justice is unacceptable. The Quran emphasises distributive justice and lends unqualified support to weaker sections of society, whom it calls mustadifun; it condemns the arrogant ruling classes (mustakbirun) that suppress the weaker sections.

I was inspired to write this piece by the recent Occupy Wall Street protests in America for economic justice, which also spread to Europe. They have raised the slogan, ‘We are 99 per cent’, and leaders of the movement say that just one per cent of Americans have concentrated all the wealth in their own hands, depriving 99 per cent of their rights. People wearing badges with the slogan gather at Wall Street in New York and financial hubs in Europe.

In America, a fortress of capitalism, profit is the only sacred word and distributive justice a dirty one. Freedom there is
considered a fundamental value but it is hardly inclusive of freedom to be a socialist, much less communist. It is from this milieu that this movement has started demanding distributive justice and opposing the concentration of wealth in a few hands.

It is interesting to compare the present-day economic situation with what was happening in Makkah before Islam. As a centre of international trade and finance, Makkah was where tribal chiefs had formed a monopoly over trade to accumulate wealth, neglecting all morality and the weaker sections of society. Much like in our own times, when globalisation and economic liberalisation have allowed a few people to accumulate wealth, in pre-Islamic Makkah polarisation between the rich and the poor had increased, leading to social tensions. These were explosive, as very vividly described in the Quran.

Surah 104 points to ‘one who accumulates wealth and counts it again and again and thinks that this wealth will make him eternal. But surely he will be thrown into hutumah.’ What is hutumah? ‘It is burning fire which will engulf the heart…’ In another Makkan surah, the Quran says, ‘Don’t you see the man who belies Deen? It is this man who pushes away the orphans and does not induce people to feed the poor, and deprives people of their small needs’ (107).

Pre-Islamic Makkah was a centre of world trade as most international caravans laden with luxury goods passed through that city. The tribal chiefs, who first acted as guides for crossing the vast desert between Makkah and the Roman Empire, became expert traders. They were greedy for more and more wealth and sought more and more profit.This obsession with profit-making kept them so engaged that in Surah 102 the Quran says, ‘Your riches have made you quite negligent of your studies till you visit your graves’. While this dominant section of Makkan tribal chiefs was becoming super rich, the poor, the
orphans, the widows and the slaves were totally neglected and exploited to accumulate more riches. The victims of the traders’ greed were leading lives of abject poverty and deprivation. Nothing moved the rich whereas there was earlier no concept of the poor in a more equitable tribal society.

It was against this background that such verses were revealed in the Quran. Justice, moreover, is so central in Quranic ethics that Allah’s name is Adil and the Quran says, ‘Do Justice, it is closest to piety’ (5:8). The complete absence of distributive justice and concentration of wealth in pre-Islamic Makkah can be compared with what is happening in America. Wealth has become so concentrated in the hands of one per cent that 99 per cent are feeling the heat, losing jobs and fearing starvation — in America, where people had forgotten what a life of poverty was.

It is under these circumstances that this movement has started and people are protesting on Wall Street and at other such financial hubs. Of course the western media is not too interested in such movements, which expose the weakness of capitalism. Only occasionally are a few compelled to write about it, without making it too visible in the print or electronic media.

Compared to this state of affairs, pre-Islamic Makkah had no democracy nor awareness about one’s rights; neither did it have a democratic system in place, and so the only way to make people aware of their rights was through divine revelation. Hence the Quran, an instrument of divine revelation through Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), was revealed. It condemned the concentration of wealth in a few hands and large-scale deprivation of people. The cited Quranic verses created awareness among the faithful about distributive justice.

The Quran is in favour of leading a need-based life and opposes all greed or a luxurious lifestyle. It clearly enjoins to give away what is left with one after fulfilling one’s needs (the Quran calls it afw). However, Muslims, except the followers of the Prophet (PBUH) during his lifetime and a few thereafter, never practised it. Many companions of the Prophet (PBUH) considered it sinful to drink water in a gold or silver vessel. But such scruples were short-lived in Muslim history.

If Muslims had taken the Quranic verses seriously and put them into practice they would have been the role model for the world for introducing a distributive justice system and a conflict-free world; a world without wars and bloodshed, a peaceful world where everyone would have felt secure, a living paradise on earth. But capitalism, in order to make the lives of a few plentiful and wasteful, has made it a living hell for many today.

The writer is an Islamic scholar who also heads The Centre for Study of Society & Secularism, Mumbai

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/06/of-economic-justice.html

Dawn: Lying liars and the lies they tell By Cyril Almeida

By: Cyril Almeida

If the US is the 800-pound gorilla that stamps on itself, Pakistan is like a python which thinks it’s crushing its prey but is really asphyxiating itself.

For a couple of days after Mullen’s Haqqanis-are-a-veritable-arm-of-the-ISI allegation last week, it looked like the Americans had finally achieved the improbable: synchronising their tough talk against Pakistan.

In the wake of the Kabul embassy attack, it even made sense why the improbable had materialised: a psychological red line had been crossed by the Afghan militants and the US needed to snarl and snap until the war settled back into a low-level attritional framework.

But the improbable — getting a diverse American foreign and military policy cohort to speak as one, especially when it comes to Pakistan — is actually more like the impossible. Within days, the ‘full-court press’ has started to look like the bench press of a 99-pound weakling.

Mullen didn’t really mean what he said, the Americans began to suggest, the evidence is more like intelligence, it doesn’t really go that far. Yes, the mood is very emotional in DC and in Pakistan, but there’s still work to be done so let’s focus on that, they’ve been saying.

It’s not quite kiss-and-make-up, more an awkward one-armed hug.

The relationship will continue, intelligence cooperation over the capture of yet another Al Qaeda No 3 will be interspersed with spasmodic events like WikiLeaks, Raymond Davis, the OBL raid and the Mullen allegations.

Pressure will mount, pressure will subside, there’ll be paroxysms at times of unhappiness, circumspection at times of measured success and the ungainly and clumsy contraption that is the American policymaking apparatus will continue to make life for itself even more difficult when it comes to Pakistan.

As for the Pakistani side, expect more of the same, i.e. the same

One Province Leads To Many

By Asha'ar Rehman: Dawn Op-ed August 9, 2011

THE wish has been expressed, the slogans raised. The people have set off on the road to a new province, which will take some travelling and entail quite a lot of discomfort, not to speak of the pain of those who must view this as a parting.

All historical tours of Pakistan must begin in India. Indian examples abound in all our discussions. It is no surprise then that the new province debate is in part sustained by how the Indians divided their provinces. They divided them in the wake of Partition, chastened by Partition. It was in a way logical for the people of India to demarcate the boundaries when a partition had just happened.

The movements for division — or as it were, a coming together of small British-period states — on a linguistic basis was strong even in the early 1950s, and following the creation of a Telugu-speaking Andhra Pradesh just six years after Partition, a number of new states emerged on the Indian map in 1956. The principles set and constitutional cover given, it later led to the creation of more states. Pakistan, meanwhile, decided to go its own way in nation-building.

Religion was a given, and it used Urdu, in the name of unity of the people who lived in its five provinces. East Pakistan was told by none other than the Quaid himself that Urdu

The edge of reason: HM

By Hajra Mumtaz

THE way the Pakistani hive mind works can often leave you with the feeling that either you yourself are mad, or everybody else is.

Consider the word that has recently been doing the rounds: that the army must somehow, constitutionally and without initiating a coup, save the country. Are we crazy? True, there are a formidable number of challenges facing us — not that that is anything new.

From an unwieldy and seemingly escalating war with the obscurantists variously labelled as ‘terrorists’, ‘militants’ and ‘insurgents’ to a tanking economy, power shortages and the crisis of the flood-affected and the internally displaced, Pakistan is facing a host of issues of the sort that would deflate the optimist wearing even the rosiest of rose-tinted spectacles.

But what is the army, with its boots and guns and with its hands full, meant to do about this? Ask someone making this suggestion and they tend to do the metaphorical equivalent of shuffling their feet in embarrassment, grumbling about extraordinary times dictating extraordinary measures and how “somebody has to do something”. Such murmurings recently came to a head in certain sections of the media but they’re nothing new, really.

Since this phase of Pakistan’s flirtation with democracy began, sections of a shadowy ‘civil society’ have been mumbling about Pakistan being unfit for civilian rule — i.e. this country’s people need the stick, not the carrot — and about the ruling parties being unfit to rule. This is the same ‘civil society’, incidentally, that historically has refused to vote or participate much in politics and, most ironically, heaved itself out of its armchair only to boo the most recent of Pakistan’s civic-minded military rulers.

The basic trouble with a number of Pakistanis is that their memories are too

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short. Disconnected from the past, having learnt few lessons and even fewer truths, we float in an endless present, severed from history or context and therefore living in a present shorn of meaning.

We treat every crisis as a stand-alone affront, refusing to look at its roots and flailing ineffectively instead at its fruit, and then being flummoxed by the fact that a new shoot has sprung up elsewhere. As a society, generally, we try to understand the present through lots of single-frame ‘nows’, and become frustrated when the meaning that looking at the whole reel would produce is not forthcoming.

It seems that four crippling bouts of military takeovers have not been enough to make it clear to us, once and for all, that the tin hats’ exit leaves us worse off, and with even more systemic issues than we had before. Forget history, even the memory of events in our own lifetimes, just a few years ago, tends to evaporate from our minds.

Take the power crisis that is the first thing on everybody’s minds these days. If I had a rupee for each time I’ve heard someone, from drawing-room activists to people in shops and on the streets or being interviewed on television, say that we had electricity during the Musharraf years — well, I’d be quite rich by now, even while factoring in inflation. The implication is that Musharraf gave us electricity, the present government took it away.

Yes, there was far less loadshedding then. But did the present government start its time in office by shutting down power plants and thereby creating the crisis?

Rationally, we have no electricity now because for nearly a decade, nobody did much to cater to the future needs of a growing population, expanding industry and increasing urbanisation. There was little investment in the power-generation infrastructure and next to no planning. The result, which anybody could have guessed, is that now there is simply not enough to go around.

While bemoaning their fate today, how many people bother to remember that back in the 1990s, Pakistan had a surfeit of electricity and there was talk of selling it to India?

Pakistan’s tragedy is, and always has been, the tendency to reset to a baseline mode of existence which involves perpetually taking two steps back for each one forward, and that too with a unique variety of muddled thinking in which anything that is not a quick-fix solution is not worth considering.

That explains why there is such a widespread tendency to view democracy as some sort of magic wand which, if waved even once, will without further ado solve all our problems. And that, in turn, is the reason that a lot of people are especially critical of this government and the mess that it is overseeing.

Democracy has failed us, goes the line of thinking, because, see, we have it and yet our problems are only multiplying.

Obviously, democracy doesn’t work. Bring on the tin hats.

But democracy is not a goal in and of itself, obviously, and neither is it the sacred cow that many people view it as. It is incredible that one has to explain the fact that it is a process, but one does. Democracy allows you to vote in the people of your choice, and if the choice is only between the devil and the deep blue sea, then so be it.

They can carry on doing the damage that they do and in five years’ time, we’ll be wiser and can refuse to vote for them.

Dictatorships, on the other hand, you’re stuck with. Demand of any general in the presidency, ‘You and whose army?’, and all

he has to do is point out of the window.

Many of us Pakistanis, with our short memories and desire for instant solutions, do not see this. And because we fail to learn from history, we live in an endless cycle of making the same mistakes over and over again.

Source: Dawn Aug 1, 2011 http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/01/the-edge-of-reason.html

What — if anything? By Ardeshir Cowasjee

WITH increasing frequency, there fall into my email inbox messages from young people, students, some studying abroad, others not so lucky back home — but none as unfortunate as the doomed eight youths of Sialkot, desperate to get out and away, who were found dead in the latter half of July in a container bound for Greece.

So desperate were those young Pakistanis for half a chance to live a better life than can be lived here that they scraped together their meagre savings and were willing to take any route as long as it took them elsewhere. Such is the state of mind prevailing in this republic.

The young e-mailers have generally been schooled in Pakistan at our better private schools, but all they appear to have assimilated is disillusion with their homeland and a wish to leave it. They ask what they can do for their country — if anything.

The same question is asked by those studying abroad whose parents urge them to stay where they are when qualified, find a job and make a life for themselves. Their quandary is that they are unable to decide whether to follow that advice or return to the homeland and try to make a difference.

They are all, whether here or there, deeply distressed by what they see as Pakistan today, a country that has evolved into an ungoverned morass. All are aware of what ails the country.

They point out that there is no governance because those who have been put where they are with an aim to govern have neither the will nor the intent, that their prime motivation is the lining of their pockets and the fleeting joys that accompany power. They have read and

Semantics of Terrorism : By Khalid Aziz

WHEN we discuss issues that have to do with terrorism we often tend to avoid using the correct word or description. Therefore, the first casualty is the truth.

In order to remain in the safe world of non-controversial matters, we avoid discussing the real drivers of terrorism. Instead, we identify hunger, poverty and unemployment as the causes of terrorism. An analysis under this framework does not pay dividends; one must identify the real motivating force that drives terrorism if we are to create the right policies.

We fall into this trap because our minds are hardwired by culture, religion, history and our specific national narrative that forces us to view objects from a preconceived angle. For example, as soon as the recent tragic killings began in Norway, yellow journalism ran amok initially. The western media as well as Al Jazeera called it a jihadist attack; some even accused the
Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami organisation as the instigator.

Police finally charged Breivik, an ‘ethnic Norwegian’, with a history of far-right and anti-Islamic views as the accused. This underscores the point that the media is not neutral. All the current self-praise about being rational and enlightened is imaginary. The East and West have both created the ‘other’ as our Neanderthal forefathers did before us. Similarly, we write evasively when we discuss the causes of terrorism.

The war on terrorism is a phenomenon that prevents clear thinking. The Norwegian tragedy showed that when a society is threatened by any danger the impulsive reaction is to accuse the cultural ‘enemy’. In Western Europe, until the Second World War, the Jew was the accepted scapegoat. The new ‘enemy’ is now the Muslim in

A Second Chance by Cyril Almeida: Very sharp and important op

A Second Chance

SOMETIMES big decisions turn on simple questions. In the aftermath of 9/11, the question was a simple one: did we get it? Did our generals get that 9/11 was an epochal, seismic shift, that the old way of doing business had to be chucked out, replaced by a new pragmatism to fit new realities?
The generals didn’t get it. They thought 9/11 was a blip, one that required temporary adjustments and deflections, for which they would be rewarded handsomely, before eventually going back to business as usual.
No thought was given to long-term changes or course corrections, which made sense for a state which rarely has anything by way of strategy, statecraft here being limited to haphazardly responding to crises.
Ten years on, Pakistan is struggling mightily with the consequences of misreading 9/11 and what it meant for this country and the security choices before it.
Which is why debating the minutiae of the present round of accusations and recriminations between Pakistan and the US matters little. Has the CIA been handed a bunch of Pakistani visas as a result of an explicit understanding that no unilateral American operations will take place on Pakistani soil or was it more of a mumbled half-promise accompanied by severe arm-twisting?
Has Ghulam Nabi Fai been outed as a warning that if Pakistan continues to hamper American efforts to get what it wants most — eliminating terrorists who may threaten the US homeland

Dawn: Darkness engulfs the City of Lights: By Cyril Almeida

July 15th, 2011 by Cyril Almeida

THE politicians can’t figure out Karachi, the generals can’t figure out relations with the US — sometimes it really does feel like if this place is ever to be saved, it will be despite us, not because of us.

The City of Lights by the sea has gone dark but for the flames of violence dancing across the city. Zulfiqar Mirza’s astonishing, ugly outburst has been denounced as madness. But was it?

Some think it was more diabolical than mad. Here’s why.

The election cycle is about to kick off soon and for months now the various parties have been jockeying for position, preparing for an uncertain electoral contest.

Karachi is a prize, of course, and the MQM, ANP and PPP have been tussling over it ever since the 2008 elections. But lucrative as Karachi may be, it isn’t the main goal of the PPP, interior Sindh is. By throwing down the gauntlet to the MQM in Karachi, Zulfi Mirza was hoping to pick up the Sindh card with voters in interior Sindh.

Confused? Mirza isn’t; he thinks he has a plan.

Going into the next election the PPP will have to work with two handicaps. One, its record in office hasn’t exactly been stellar, to put it mildly, and historically the jiyala has stayed at home when he’s been disgruntled and unhappy.

Two, to gain power in Islamabad, the PPP cut a deal with the MQM, a betrayal in the minds of the Sindhi voter who is a nationalist and views the MQM with acute suspicion.

How do you overcome those two handicaps?

Zulfi Mirza wouldn’t know about governance if it came and smacked him in

Sindh’s depleting fish resource: Dawn Econ & Busn Review

By: Ghulam Nabi Mughul

Production of most species of sweet water and marine fish including Palla and prawn has drastically declined in Sindh over the past quarter century.
According to a rough estimate, production of Palla, during this period, the delicious fish of Sindh, has gone down at least by 80 per cent, while the output of various other fish species and prawns has also dropped by 50 per cent. But, the most alarming is the fall in Palla yield. According to a source, this year the output of Palla in the Indus was almost nil.

Fish experts also complain that rapidly declining mangroves in the coastal areas is another cause of fall in fish production. – AP Photo--------

The reason behind this sharp drop is the nominal flow of fresh water into the Indus downstream Kotri in the last 10 to 15 years. According to experts, in the past fresh water used to flow in the Indus downstream Kotri by May and continued till August. During this period, Palla used to lay eggs in seawater and then reaching the river’s sweet water, it used to start swimming against the current towards upcountry via the Indus. Its size and weight increased during this period. But for the last over 25 years water was virtually not allowed to flow downstream Kotri, which led to gradual extinction of this species.
A number of causes are being attributed to the fall in the output. These include reduced fresh water flow into the Indus River; toxic effluent from sugar mills falling into the river; LBOD’s saline water; Karachi’s’ industrial toxics drained into the sea; flow of effluent of Karachi city and animal blood from slaughter houses into the sea. As a result, not only fish species in river, canals and other water bodies have been affected but also those in the coastal areas of Karachi, Thatta and Badin.
In the past, Sindh used to be called the land of lakes and small and big water bodies. The number of small and big water bodies
has now come down from 1200 to 700-800 due to the following factors: urbanisation and construction of roads on these waters, flow of saline water and other toxic materials into these waters. Some waters have either evaporated or their quality has deteriorated turning them into brackish – unfit for survival of fish.
The quality of even a big lake of Asia, the Manchar Lake, has deteriorated partly due to flow of saline water from MNV Drain and Balochistan and partly to local fishermen’s pouring cement in the lake to facilitate fishing. The fisheries department officials, say a study was being made to ascertain the actual number of waters in Sindh which still exist despite all these hazards.
According to experts, a havoc has been caused by sugar mills, mostly those located in the coastal belt of Thatta and Badin districts. Toxic effluent coming out from these mills is drained into the sea. These toxics also affect different waters on its way to the sea.
As for sugar mills located in areas away from sea coast, experts complained that their toxic materials fall into river, canals or go directly to crop fields which is also harmful for human health. An official of the fisheries department said that though there were laws to punish such sugar mills, the owners of these millers are too powerful to be made accountable.
Fish experts also complain that rapidly declining mangroves in the coastal areas is another cause of fall in fish production.
They pointed out that some sea fish eat their own eggs. But, in case where these mangroves exist, these eggs get shelter in them and develop into fish.
The fisheries department official said that the department, in coordination with the Sindh University, plans to establish a freshwater prawn hatchery in Jamshoro. They said, a MoU has been signed with the Sindh University, which will provide land for this hatchery. Here, they said, students of the Sindh University would also carry out research work on various aspects of freshwater prawns.
Besides, the department has set up a shrimp farm in Gharo, Thatta district, and now two private firms are also establishing such farms in the coastal area, sources said. In addition, a shrimp hatchery had been installed near Hawkesbay, Karachi, where 2,000 kg shrimp seed has been produced, they added.