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.

28 Jun 2009

Dealing with currupt Politicians

The old saying “power tends to corrupt” has certainly proved true for British MP’s in recent weeks. Whilst thousands of people lose their homes during the recession, MP’s are claiming second-home allowances for multiple properties all charged to the public purse. In addition to this they have claimed thousands of pounds in expenses for services such as moat cleaning, duck houses and even church donations! Understandably confidence in the British government is at an all time low.

The attitude of British politicians towards their abuse of public funds was summed up by MP Harry Cohen, who topped the expenses chart by claiming a massive £310,000, on a second-home allowance. He said, “When MPs were given this allowance they were told "Go and spend it, boys" and that is what I have done. It is my right.”

This ‘right’ to abuse taxpayers’ money is not confined to simply one or two MP’s. An investigation by the Sunday Telegraph found that 65 MP’s are claiming expenses for a second home while earning rental income from letting out a third. These politicians – one in ten of all MPs –claimed between them almost £6 million since records on expenses began in 2001, an average of £85,000 each.

The Mail on Sunday summed up nicely the actual problem with British politicians. “The next most startling aspect of the problem is how few MPs – supposed to be beyond reproach – seem to have any strong sense of right and wrong, or any ability to resist temptation. People whose job it is to make the law are plundering the public purse because there is nothing in the rules to say they should not do so...Men and women who went into politics with honest intentions see all this going on around them and, unless they are exceptionally strong-willed, are swiftly drawn into the swamp of tax-funded greed.”

It’s the core western values of freedom and benefit which give rise to no “strong sense of right and wrong, or ability to resist temptation” that is at the root of government corruption not just in Britain but the entire world today including the Muslim world.

In Pakistan the current President Asif Zardari was previously imprisoned for corruption and siphoning off public funds, so much so that he was given the title “Mr 10%”. Now he is President of the country Allah only knows what his current percentage is.

So how does Islam deal with corrupt politicians?

The most important guard against corruption is the politician’s Islamic ‘aqeedah. Even if they manage to keep their corruption secret and avoid prosecution in this life, Allah sees everything and knows what is hidden. Allah will bring everyone to account on the Day of Judgement and people will see every atoms weight of good and bad they have done.

“Whoever has done an atom’s-weight of good will see it, but whoever has done an atom’s-weight of evil will see that.” [Surah Al-Zalzala (99): Ayat 7-8]

Politicians in Islam, whether they hold government posts or not, have a completely different viewpoint towards politics and their role within the state. Politics in Islam concerns looking after the affairs of people. The politician is the one who is a servant of the ummah. They do not take any government post with the aim of achieving personal benefit. Rather they see their position as a responsibility that they will be questioned about on the Day of Judgement.

It is narrated that Abu Hurayrah said: “A man gave as a gift to the Messenger of Allah (saws) a slave who was called Mid’am. Whilst Mid’am was bringing down a saddle for the Messenger of Allah (saws), an arrow came out of nowhere and killed him. The people said, “How fortunate he is! Paradise is his,” but the Messenger of Allah (saws) said, “No, by the One in Whose hand is my soul, the cloak which he took from the war-booty on the day of Khaybar before the booty had been shared out will burn him with fire.” When the people heard that, a man came and brought one or two shoelaces to the Prophet (saws) and said, “A shoelace of fire” or “Two shoelaces of fire.” [Bukhari & Muslim]

The war-booty (ghaneema) is one of the revenues of the Islamic State and part of the public funds. If someone was punished simply for stealing a piece of cloth from the public funds, what about the rulers in the Muslim world who have stolen $billions of oil and natural resources from the ummah?

Islam recognises that human beings are not angels and will commit sins. If a politician becomes overwhelmed by shaytan and abuses his position or commits oppression against the people then the Caliphate has mechanisms in place to address this.

Building on al-Mawardi’s classical work Al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s book Nidham ul-Hukm fil-Islam describes in great detail two institutions that are tasked with addressing government corruption. The first institution is an independent, powerful, judicial court called the Mahkamat al-Mazaalim (Court of Unjust Acts). The second is an elected house of peoples’ representatives called the Majlis ul-Ummah (Council of the Ummah), whose decisions on certain affairs of state (not legislation) the Caliph is constitutionally obliged to accept.

The Mahkamat al-Mazaalim contains judges whose sole responsibility and expertise is government oppression (Mazlema), constitutional law and legislation. Unlike a standard court the judge (Qadi al-Mazaalim) has investigatory powers and can initiate a court case without a plaintiff. This court has the power to oblige government officials including the Caliph to pay back any money they took from public funds. Mismanagement of the public properties such as oil wealth or the imposition of unjust taxation on the people can all be investigated by this court and practically resolved through issuing a judgement that the officials must abide by.

Ibn ‘Umar said that when ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab was in need, he used to go to the man in charge of the Bait ul-Mal and seek a loan from him. Often he might be in difficulty and the man in charge of the public treasury would come to him, seeking repayment of the debt and would oblige him to pay it, and ‘Umar would be evasive to him. Then often ‘Umar would receive his stipend and so pay his debt. [Suyuti, Tarikh al-Khulafa]

The Majlis ul-Ummah is comprised of elected representatives of the people who are voted in every five years. These representatives can be men, women, Muslim or non-Muslim. Accountability of government officials is one of the Majlis’s central tasks. It has the power to hold any government official accountable on all matters related to the state, and some of the Majlis’s decisions will be binding on the Caliph to enact.

Government corruption in Britain or the Muslim world can never be resolved whilst the politicians hold on to the Capitalist values of freedom and benefit. No matter how many anti-corruption mechanisms they put in place, politicians will always find clever ways to hide their abuses.

Only when sincere Islamic politicians take the reins of power in the Muslim world, and establish a righteous Caliphate will we again see rulers like Umar bin Abdul-Aziz who was so careful not to abuse the public funds that he wouldn’t use a candle paid for from the Bait ul-Mal for his own personal use.

For further reading please see the book Accountability in the Khilafah.

[Article taken from http://www.caliphate.eu/]
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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]







“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]