Webster's Dictionary defines a system as:
"A regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole."
or "A form of social, economic, or political organization or practice."
or as an "organized set of doctrines, ideas, or principles, usually intended to explain the arrangement or working of a systematic whole."
Based upon this definition, each system is unique and distinct from other systems. Otherwise it would not be characterized as a system. This is because each system is based upon a fundamental doctrine from which political, economic, and other orders emanate to organize the affairs of life.
Therefore, if we study Islam it provides a social, economic, or political structure based upon a Doctrine explaining issues of life at large. This integrated set of solution is not hypothetical or a utopian concept, rather it was put into application and has to be practiced by the people who believe in it. So, Islam is not just a system rather a distinct and unique system not similar to other systems.
We would like to address examples covering the various aspects of life to illustrate the uniqueness of Islam as a system.
Regarding man-woman relationship
Islam viewed Man and Woman as human beings living with each other and forming a particular relationship required to maintain humanity. Therefore, the sexual drive, family life, and its affairs are defined and organized within this particular relationship.
In contrast, the Western culture viewed the man-woman relationship upon purely a sexual orientation. Therefore, it is common to see each individual seeking to satisfy their sexual drive in any fashion. Thus the definition of family is under revision from husband/wife to man/woman to two individuals. And, even the claim that infidelity can be traced to gene.
Political System
Islam is established upon the idea that the Creator, Allah is the sovereign. The sovereignty is manifested through many ways one of which is that legislation for life comes from Allah. Through this Islam freed Man from the influence of the lobbyist, interest groups, and other influences which clearly affects the legislation process in Western democracies.
Democracy gave people a false feeling of sovereignty. In reality the sovereignty is given to the parliament or congress. The legislators in the congress and the parliament are under the influence of campaign contributors which are mainly large corporations. In the end, the sovereignty really belongs to the possessors of the wealth. Through such a setup two classes can be found: The ruling class which has the natural right to rule and legislate and the masses who carry the natural obligation to submit. Such an orientation has made freedom an empty slogan and has established a new form of slavery. Such a form of slavery is worst than what was practiced in the plantations.
Social Order
Racism, equality, and discrimination have been the subjects of great importance in any social order. Islam viewed all humans as equal and negated the superiority of any race. The Islamic State viewed its citizens Muslims and non-Muslims as human beings. The legislation is not drafted by the majority or minority, since such terms do not exists. This is because the needs of each individual have to meet regardless of the race or color. This need is met through a system which is from Allah therefore there is no need for civil rights, affirmative action, or Proposition 209. All such solutions are a natural outcome of the man made system which granted sovereignty to the majority. Even this sovereignty is manipulated by the wealthy. Thus, one can find such statements as a colored man equaling 3/5th of a white man.
Economy
Islam in all of its aspect is in harmony with man's nature. It is part of mans nature to own, interact with each other since Man is a social being, and to live under one political authority. Thus, Islam recognized the three kinds of ownership which is: public, private, and state ownership. Within this frame, the basic need of each individual has to be satisfied. It is the responsibility of the state to ensure that it happens through mechanisms which are defined in Islam. The current man made system denied the private property or emphasized private ownership at the expense of other types of ownership. Muslim proceeds in his life keeping in mind the humanitarian, spiritual, moral, and material value. On the contrary, the capitalistic economic system emphasized upon the material value to such an extent that one can killing of an individual for just a quarter.
In conclusion, when Islam was put in practice both Muslims and non-Muslims enjoyed prosperity and security. Graham Fuller said in his book A Sense of Siege,
"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."
On the other hand we can read in London's Sunday Times,
"The liberal West is constructed on a spiritual vacuum and this may well turn out to be the real political failing. The lesson of Islam on the long run proves to be that a society must believe in something if it is to be a society at all."
Nixon said in his book Beyond Peace,
"Our crisis of values at home coupled with our lack of coherent mission aboard has created an even more deadly spiritual deficit. We seem to be experiencing what Arnold Tongby 60 years ago called the dark knight of soul".
[Taken from Student Association of NIU Islamic Society]
About this blog
In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.
This blog is dedicated:-
1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.
This blog is dedicated:-
1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.
2 Aug 2008
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What they said...
“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”
[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]
"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"
[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]
"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."
[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]
"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."
[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]
"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."
[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]
“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”
[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]
"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."
[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]
"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."
[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]
“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”
[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]
"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"
[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]
"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."
[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]
"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."
[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']
"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"
[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']
"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.
[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]
"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"
[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]
"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"
[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]
“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”
[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]
[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]
"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"
[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]
"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."
[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]
"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."
[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]
"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."
[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]
“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”
[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]
"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."
[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]
"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."
[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]
“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”
[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]
"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"
[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]
"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."
[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]
"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."
[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']
"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"
[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']
"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.
[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]
"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"
[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]
"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"
[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]
“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”
[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]
“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”
[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]
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