We HAVE To Change Out Outlook

The national leaders, administrative and political decision makers in
Muslim countries should do the following to serve Islam effectively:

ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE

1. Devise economically independent nationalism. Stop imitating other nations or other ideologies no matterhow attractive they are. Neither capitalism nor communism has served humanity adequately.

IMPORTANCE TO EDUCATION

2. Give utmost importance to education and research and at every level of education, right from Kindergarten to Ph.D level, blend Islamic education with secular education. Do not compartmentalize education into Islamic and secular. The problem with us is that we are producing academic scholars who later on in life throw Islamic values to the winds. Let us produce Hafizes who are at the same time engineers or architects or other specialists.

INDEPENDENT MONETARY SYSTEM

3. We have to do deep research on banking and investment and international monetary system. We can not rely on non-Muslim banking and monetary systems to do foreign trade, investments and foreign exchange savings. We got to train Muslims to be extraordinary specialists in monetary economics and devise an Islam based international monetary system which can help us reduce the sort of recession under which the present world goes through due to our reliance of West based monetary system.

ECONOMIC AID TO THE POOR NATIONS

4. Muslim countries that are rich due to their oil reserves must find ways and means to invest their extraordinary foreign reserves, in other poorer Mulsim countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Egypt and very many African and Central Asian countries. We can help these poorer countries to develop their potential and soon fully alleviate their poverty. This is the spirit of Zakah.

ESTABLISHING UNIVERSITIES.

5. Muslim countries that are rich must invest billions of dollars in poorer countries as given in 4 above, in building huge universities, higher institutes of learning and research institutes and large well equipped hospitals. This can be done partly on charity and partly on commercial basis.

DEVELOPING MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES

6. Many Muslim countries depend on foreign trade even for simple consumer goods that they are capable of learning to make, simply because they are lazy and lack motivation. They import pens, pencils, paper, sweets, foot-wear, cooking utensils, powdered spices, dressing materials, bicycles, toys, furniture etc etc. They got to set up industries where these things can be locally made using either the local raw materials or imported ones, to start with at higher costs than the imported ones.

But these import substitute industries are important in order, first to learn to manufacture and eventually become skillful. A strong manufacturing base is important in order to slowly develop heavy industries and arms and weapons manufacturing. We can never meet the expectations of the protagonists of the so called clash of civilizations unless we change our business attitudes.

BALANCING INCOMES AND SAVINGS

7. In many Muslim countries people’s propensity to consume is much greater than their propensity to save. Salaried employees earning as much as US$3000- 10,000 a month, spend a lot on luxury items, owning several cars, exorbitant life style and building palatial houses. They seem to give greater priority to showing off their wealth rather than giving priority to their children’s education. Moreover, they lack
corporate thinking or savings in order in order to invest in capital appreciating assets or forming large public companies.

IMPORTANCE TO AKHLAK

8. Rukun Islam is vital but at the same time we have to understand the spirit behind the rituals. Discipline during the time of fasting alone is not important. We got to maintain that discipline and implement Islam based Akhlak and if necessary borrow other good behaviour patterns from other cultures, such as honesty, keeping up promises, paying the wages of workers adequately and on time, punctuality, dignity of labour, the organizational and administrative systems and capabilities of the West, their enquiring spirit, their attitude towards research, their adventurism and above all Islam based mercy and social justice.

STOP THE IMPORT OF WESTERN CULTURE IN TOTO

9. We got to stop copying all aspects of western culture, their dress, their music, their cinemas and movies, their interpretation of history and politics, their architecture, their methods of matrimonial relations, their family, civil and criminal laws in Toto, their philosophy and their freedom of expression. But absolutely nothing wrong in borrowing some of their good characteristics as I have
mentioned in 8 above if they can sharpen our intelligence and improve our efficiency, productivity and honesty in our dealings. We are fast in copying all the bad aspects of western culture but very slow in copying the good aspects.

pam.ameen