To Spend A Dirham Daily At Open Market: Zuigan Task

Cape Town, 07 April 2011
An Economic Man:  Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi -

This is very important! You must not think that the scientific world is a world of facts. You must understand that behind technology is a thinking, is a philosophy.


This philosophy was not established, nor was it verified in this last century. The philosophers of scientific method had a crisis. The foundations of scientific thinking collapsed. These things they do not tell you in the universities.

They have taken these people who know this and put them in a special place. They are like a khass [a distinguished group], and they have been given a language that the practising scientists do not understand. All the people studying the sciences are like people fixing a motorcar. These specialists of philosophy are in the corner saying, "There is no petrol. The car will not go." This world of learning, which is now the same in Morocco, Algeria, South Africa, and Australia - everywhere - has divided the sciences into several parts.

The economist understands economy. The physicist understands physics. The psychologist understands psychology. But they cannot talk to each other and they do not understand the world. What the biologist says the language philosopher denies. What the language philosopher says the psychologist denies. What the psychologist says the economist denies. They live in the world that makes no sense. Today we have reached a point where this social world, this political world, by its own logic has had to make a one-world system. All the aeroplanes have the same system; the electrical plants have the same system. If you have a mental breakdown, if you become mad, we use the same system, like a machine to treat you. Everything works the same everywhere.
Kufr; is a system that weakens people. The economical system is a disaster for the people, internally and externally. Our job is not to fight the economical system but to get out of it before its disaster falls on top of us. By getting out of it you are also actively helping in its collapse.

In order to do this we have to look at things in a different way: think differently and behave differently. In this, the Muslim is the opposite of the economic man. The economic man - the man who lives within the patterns given by the economical system - is trained to think as the absolute observer (subject) who looks out at the world (object). This is the foundation of traditional western philosophy in which modern sciences and economics are based. Within this basis, the economical man thinks that usury is an economical problem with some economical answers. He may question, how can I fight the problem of usury? In this way of questioning it is assumed that usury is something over there, while the person questioning is in plastic bubble isolated from it, but this is not how things are. The questioner is actively participating in usury, what he may consider a problem, and yet, he is part of the problem. He is the problem. Without this recognition you will be fighting your own illusion.

This recognition has an explanation in the knowledge of Ihsan by which we can understand that we are not the observers of the world, we are not the measurers of the world but we are being observed. Allah is observing us. He is the Measurer, not us. Only on this basis can we understand our responsibility, rather than escape from it. Only thus we can become masters of our condition, rather than slaves of our condition.

We understand that nothing stops us from getting rid of usurious practice except ourselves. Then the question "How to fight usury?" should be replaced by "How should we change our behaviour so that we do not need usury anymore?" If we think in this way we are in a better position to suggest proper answers. Nowadays our own behaviour demands the existence of the banks and their monetary system. Therefore if we get rid of the usurious banks but continue to behave in the same way, we will end up again creating a bank. Nothing will change if we call it an "islamic bank". We have to change our behaviour. To do that we have to think differently. And to think differently we have to deny that the main characteristic of man is an economic characteristic. We are not economic units.

We deny what Islam denies. We deny the usurious practices of the modern economy and we deny the way of thinking they call Economics. We deny the banking system and its system of paper money. We deny the administrative nature of the state.

We declare the end of economics based on two affirmations: commerce without usury, and government without state.

We are calling for a free man who is free to behave within our Law. We will create a differently shaped society. The society where the qirad was normal was a different society without banks or necessity of banks. It was a society with agents, not banks but agents. The agents brought the people together, without themselves forming an institution. They brought this man with this other man to make business. The agent is like the old woman in the village who says this young man can marry this young woman and so arranges marriages. Without her some marriages would never have happened. The agents are there in the middle of the society, forming an organic part of it, bringing people they know together and not necessarily for money. The wealth of the agent is his honesty and good reputation. He competes in honesty with the others. The best of them is the one who is more honest; therefore more people will trust him with their wealth. Then he does not need to go to the people but people come to him.

Knowledge of Allah is what prevents the agent from being a robot like the 'economic man'. This is a time where there are people, some of them Muslims, who regard themselves as being unemployed. 'Unemployment or employment' is economic conditioning. The Muslim does not regard himself within these categories. We are above that because we have knowledge.

The Muslims use this metaphor to explain knowledge; "Man is like an ant who is so close to the carpet that he cannot see the design." Knowledge is elevation from the carpet, and the carpet is dunya.

The person who is 'unemployed or employed' is spiritually so close tot he carpet that either he finds himself totally useless or in need of the salary in some business of the usurious system. All business today are usurious on their bases because they all are forced to dealwith usurious paper money, which is banking-money. He knows that the bank for instance is no good, but he thinks he has no better choice. He works for the state, although he knows the state is criminal. Even the businessman profiting within the usurious frame is a slave. All these people have failed to understand the nature of dunya and they are slaves of it.

The way out lies in Islam. We need the most pure Islam.
It is, by Allah, in the hands of the Muslims. The Jihad of our time is to abolish usury.
This is the easy way and the path of success. Success belongs to Allah.