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My regular copy of Harakah arrived today: the 1-15 June 07 edition.

Very happy to see two articles Malaysia Think Tank London had released to the Malaysian audience are printed this time.

Zain al-Habshi’s “A New Malaccan economic Agenda” filled up half of page 15.

And Mustafa Akyol’s “The Secularist Hype in Turkey is Pure Paranoia” covered the whole of page 17.

There were two paragraphs in Keadilan President’s policy speech that attracted my attention. Under the section “Anak Muda dan Kebangkitan Bangsa”, she said:

Saya mahu menegaskan di dalam ucapan kali ini bahawa kepentingan menggunakan akal fikiran begitu ditegaskan di dalam al-Quran kerana akal-budilah yang memisahkan antara hak dan kepalsuan, antara kebenaran dan kebatilan, antara keadilan dan kezaliman. Malah, sepertimana yang selalu diingatkan, akallah yang memisahkan antara mahkluk manusia dengan haiwan.

Rahsia kebangkitan dan kekuatan banyak bangsa di dunia adalah apabila mereka dapat membebaskan diri daripada ketidakmatangan yang ditanggungnya sendiri, sepertimana yang ditemukan oleh pemikir agung Eropah, Immanuel Kant dalam esei penting bertajuk “Apa itu Pencerahan.” Teras kekuatan hujah tersebut tentunya tidak terpisah dengan pandangan Ibnu-Qutaibah, pemikir di Zaman Empayar Othmaniah yang menjelaskan mengenai harga diri manusia bukan sahaja perlu dijamin oleh pemerintah tetapi ia telah mendapat jaminan Tuhan.

I can see Khalid Jaafar’s hand in the speech and I must say: “Well done!”

Let us see if PAS leaders this weekend would echo this, or if they would demand even more unquestioning obedience and a big state that has the power to dictate and legislate on almost every aspect of life. As always, I am ever hopeful and remain optimistic.

Sapere Aude!

I am reading about PTPTN - the Malaysian loan system to fund university studies. Earlier today I was browing through the PTPTN’s website and found the formula theyuse to calculate repayment.

Check it out here: http://www.ptptn.gov.my/c/portal/layout?p_l_id=PUB.1.150

What the……

Ibn Khaldun discussed how continous oppression can eventually lead to submission. On pages 95- 96 of The Muqaddimah, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005), he said:

Not everyone is master of his own affairs … As a rule, man must by necessity be dominated by someone else. If the domination is kind and just and the people under it are not oppressed by its law and restrictions, they are guided by the courage or cowardice that they possess in themselves … Self-reliance eventually becomes a quality natural to them … If, however, the domination with its laws is one of brute force and intimidation, it breaks their fortitude and deprives them of their power of resistance as a result of the inertness that develops in the souls of the oppressed.

Indeed man is “by necessity … dominated by someone else”. There is always someone who lead and others who follow. Ideally, leaders are democratically elected, although this is not always the case. But, whether democratically elected or not, there are always people who lead, and, therefore “dominate”.

If the “domination” is through “brute force and intimidation”, meaning that draconian or restrictive laws / rules are put in place to control people, the people will eventually obey and submit. The rules may be enforced by means of force, or through psychological pressure. At the early stages the people may question the laws or resist but eventually they realise how difficult it is for them to go against the authorities / the system. Eventually it becomes a norm for them to not resist or question.

(NB: ever heard about ‘kita perlu ada ISA untuk memastikan keharmonian negara’ or ‘kritik mesti dengan cara yang betul demi rahsia jamaah’? And what do you do? You obey…because you are intimidated by a bigger problem if you do not obey - negara kucar kacir or jamaah tidak selamat. Who intimidates you? The people with vested interest.)

If, however, the “domination” is “kind and just”, meaning that the rules do not prevent the people from being themselves, then the people will become self-reliant and able to think and act for themselves. This is the quality of a society that will progress.

But, if the rules do not stop people from doing certain things, how do we ensure society behaves morally? Do we not need restrictions so that the people only do the right things and avoid wrong things? To this, Ibn Khaldun tells the story of the Prophet’s companions. He argued that the companions did not face restrictive rules, but they still acted morally. They were guided by their own personal self-control and they make up their own mind based on their own thinking. The Prophet showed them the values they should live their lives by. He did not forcibly impose restrictions. Ibn Khaldun said thus:

It is no argument that the men around Muhammad observed the religious laws, and did not experience any diminution of their fortitude, but possessed the greatest possible fortitude. When the Muslims got their religion from Muhammad, the restraining influence came from themselves, as a result of encouragement and discouragement he gave them in the Quran … Their fortitude remained unabated, and it was not corroded by education or authority … Umar’s desire was that everyone should have his restraining influence in himself. (p. 96)

But why is it that we now have become dependant on laws? Such that an ‘Islamic’ state is defined almost totally by its legal system, and not so much by its value system? Ibn Khaldun provided an answer:

(The influence of) religion, then, decreased among men, and they came to use restrictive laws. The religious law became a branch of learning and a craft … People … assumed the character trait of submissiveness to law. This led to a decrease in their fortitude … Clearly, then, governmental and educational laws destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something that comes from outside. The religious laws, on the other hand, do not destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something inherent. (p. 96-97)

People become reliant on the text of the law when they start to forget the values brought by religion (or the purposes of the law - maqasid syari’ah). Rather than aiming for the values meant by the laws, they made the laws itself as the aim. This not only destroys the value of the laws, it also destroys the people’s ability to rely on themselves to make decisions.

Note that Ibn Khaldun said “(The influence of) religion, then, decreased among men, and they came to use restrictive laws”. By implication, this quote shows that the more we become reliant on laws, the further we are from religion.

The last quote also points to why a small government is better than a big one. A big state tends to exert control on every aspect of human life, which eventually destroy the people’s “fortitude”. If we want society to progress, we need a small government - one which does not control our lives, but, rather, allows us to use our own “restraining influence” as desired by Umar, and encourages us to be self-reliant.

Stephen Covey’s second habit of highly effective people is “begin with the end in mind”. I don’t know where I put my copy of Seven Habits so I am unable to check his references. Covey believes that to be effective, we should work backwards - start by imagining where you want to be, and then think backwards on how to get there. You will then have a clearer path toget to your target.

Read what Ibn Khaldun said 600 years before Covey:

The world of the things that come into being as the results of action, materializes through thinking … This is because thinking perceives the order that exists among the things that come into being either by nature or through arbitrary arrangements. When it intends to create something, it must understand the reason or cause of that thing, or the conditions that exists among the things that come into being. (Reason, cause, or conditions) are, in general, the principles of that particular thing, since it is secondary to them, and it is not possible to arrange for something that comes earlier to come later. Such a principle must have another principle to which its own existence is posterior … Now, when man, in his thinking, has reached the last principle on two, three, or more levels, and starts the action that will bring the (planned) things into existence, he will start with the last principle that has been reached by his thinking. Thus, (that last principle) will be the beginning of his action.
Source: The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005, p. 334-335)

600 years ago, Ibn Khaldun did not just say that actions begin with the end in mind, he provided an explanation why.

Has anybody linked Stephen Covey to Ibn Khaldun? Can I claim the honour?

I haven’t a clue how the people at PAS HQ vet things they publish on their website. This paper by Sabri Haron contains some very misleading statements, if not utterly wrong. Let me quote to you the stuff he wrote about capitalism:

Kapitalisme

Sistem ini dikenali sebagai sistem perusahaan bebas. Di bawah sistem ini seseorang individu berhak menggunakan dan mengawal barang-barang ekonomi yang diperolehinya. Mencegah orang lain dari menggunakan barang-barang itu dan memutuskan bagaimana barang-barang itu diuruskan setelah dia mati.

Dalam hal ini individu bebas berbuat apa sahaja dengan harta kekayaannya asal sahaja kegiatannya tidak mengganggu hak orang lain. Oleh kerana hak-hak memiliki harta dibenarkan oleh masyarakat, keseluruhannya hak-hak ini boleh dibatasi melalui tindakan masyarakat.

Persaingan dianggap sebagai daya penggerak untuk menghasilkan operasi yang cekap. Pada umumnya persaingan dalam sistem kapitalis ini merupakan daya yang kuat dan dibenarkan berjalan lebih bebas berbanding dengan sistem-sistem ekonomi yang lain.

Sifat-sifat istimewa sistem ini ialah:

1.Ia menolak nilai-nilai akidah, syariat dan akhlak yang mulia

2.Pengambilan riba iaitu peminjaman wang melalui institusi kewangan (bank dan industri kredit) yang mengenakan riba (faedah)

3.Faktor-faktor ekonomi dikuasai oleh individu-individu tertentu secara terus menerus atau dipunyai oleh sekumpulan manusia yang tidak dikenali melalui sistem saham

4.Pemodal-pemodal bank yang besar mempunyai kuasa yang berlebihan ke atas aktiviti-aktiviti ekonomi dan seterusnya politik negara. Kuasa penentu dalam sistem kapitalisme dan demokrasi barat kebanyakannya mirip kepada pemilik modal

5.Sebahagian besar dari barang-barang dan perkhidmatan yang dihasilkan di bawah sistem kapitalisme telah dibebankan bukan sahaja dengan faedah-faedah riba, tetapi juga dengan bayaran-bayaran pengiklanan yang berlebihan

6.Kapitalisme mempunyai unsur-unsur mengasas monopoli, kerana adalah menjadi hasrat setiap pemodal untuk menguasai segalanya dan menghapuskan semua persaingan dengannya

None of the above is recognisable to me. He may have read the wrong book or he may have been taught by a wrong teacher and, like many, he may have blindly trusted what he read or was taught. In any case, he is wrong.

Capitalism is an economic system, not a religion. It is religion-neutral. Capitalists believe that means of productions should be privately-owned and the owners should be free to utilise their capital for profit if they want to.

Capitalism calls for respect towards property rights - unlike socialism which calls for nationalisation of assets.

Capitalists respect mankind’s ability to think - Allah’s most precious gift to mankind - and that is why they give utmost importance to the price mechanism. Through pricing, men as consumers can freely think and choose what to buy and what not to buy.

In the condensed version of ‘Capitalism’, Arthur Seldon said:

Only capitalism can make the consumer in us sovereign … because the competition of the market can prevent us from myopically asserting our interests as producers by protecting established but outdated industries, occupations and jobs.

Islam teaches us to respect Allah’s greatest gift to us - the mind. Capitalism allows us to exercise our ability to think in the market.

I am most baffled by Sabri Haron’s accusation that capitalism “menolak nilai-nilai akidah, syariat dan akhlak yang mulia”. How many people has he misled by this wild accusation? Where in the world did he learn this?

Earlier this month in Southampton, while talking about Political Ideologies, I was asked what I meant by ‘institutions’. First of all, values and institutions should really be looked at together. To describe both, I think this quote is one of the better ones:

What do we mean by values and institutions? Values are “conceptions of desirable, influencing selective behavior” (Values, International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences). A cluster of values constitutes a value system. Shared values imply shared conceptions of the desirable. In order to share conceptions of the desirable, of what ought to be, the group that shares those conceptions must also have achieved some shared perception of what is. Institutions I define here as commonly known rules used to structure recurring interactions and coupled with a sanctioning mechanism whose use will be threatened in case of noncompliance. We may distinguish various kinds of institutions according to their relevant sanctioning mechanisms: some rules are enforced by representatives of the state and are called external institutions … Other rules are enforced by mechanisms that work without resort to the state – such as, for example, through their effect on reputation – and are called internal institutions … (Source: Stefan Voigt in ‘Islam and the Institutions of a Free Society’, The Independent Review, Summer 2005)

Voigt went on to suggest that the core institutions at the base of free societies are (1) the rule of law, (2) constitutional democracy, and (3) market economy.

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Source: The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005, p. 35)

If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus become clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The result is that falsehoodare accepted and transmitted.

And on page 42, when discussing how other scholars had made errors, Ibn Khaldun boldly stated that he - unlike the other authors - was right and that he was:

… inspired by God. He led us (ed: i.e. him) to a science that we (ed: i.e. he) ruthlessly set forth…

He continued (p. 42) to express how important it is for mankind to think:

We say that man is distinguished from the other living beings by certain qualities peculiar to him, namely: The sciences and crafts which result from that ability to think which distinguishes man from the other animals and exalts him as thinking being over all creatures…

Source: The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005, p. 5)

Blind trust in tradition is an inherited trait in human beings. Occupation with the (scholarly)disciplines on the part of those who have no genuine claim to them is widespread. But the pasture of stupidity is unwholesome for mankind. No one can stand up against the authority of truth, and the evil of falsehood is to be fought with enlightening speculation. The reporter merely dictates and passes on (the material). It takes critical insight to sort out the hidden truth; it takes knowledge to lay truth bare and polish it so that critical insight may be applied to it.

I was profiled in The Star’s Eurofile section (by Choi Tuck Wo) last week.

See it here