Marxism or Islam - M Mazheruddin Siddiqui

MARXISM OR ISLAM ?

MAZHERUDDIN SIDDIQUI

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MARXISM OR ISLAM ?

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapters

1. Marxist Conception of History 1

2. Marxian Conception of State 13

3. Metaphysics of Marxism 22

4. Marxist Conception of Nature and the Laws of Nature 38

5. Marxist Theory of Morality 54

6. Marxian View of Religion 75

7. Marxism and the Problem of Eternal Truths 94

8. Marxism and Nationalism 103

9. Some Points of Agreement between Islam and Marxism 108

10. Moral Basis of Islamic Ideology 117

11. Economic System of Islam 135

Index 149

Marxism or Islam?-The world, both Muslim and non-Muslim, must choose between the two. I include the Muslim world because the impact of the modern West on Islamic countries has clearly demonstrated that the current religious conceptions held by the Muslims all over the world are inadequate to serve as an inspiration to progressive effort and dynamic activity. Islam has been reduced by its followers to a symbol of the past! It is no more an ideal to be realised in future. Only a native conservatism keeps the Muslims of today attached to a few principles of Islam, isolated and torn away from the organic whole of its multi-sided teachings, and even this attachment is half-hearted and unenlightened by a conscious Understanding of its real import and its quality as a dynamic social force.

In the wider field of social, political and economic life Muslims have ceased to derive inspiration from Islamic ideals. From being a code of practical guidance in the day-to-day existence of the community, Islam has become only a happy memory of the, past which provides an easy means of escape from the harsh realities of the present and from the necessity of facing them squarely. How can such a doctrine, which gives no forward look, no vision of a new future and no clue to the next step in the march of history, survive the incessant changes in the external conditions of life? A social creed to be capable of acting as a live force must have a bearing on the present and the future, and yet all the religious creeds, our present Islam included, merely carry us back to the past without showing the way to what is yet to come. This conservative attitude towards Islam is at the bottom of all evils and misfortunes from which the Muslim world is suffering, and the Islamic countries will never get out of their present

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stagnation unless they decide to follow consciously and intelligently the social theory of Islam in all its organic wholeness, carrying out all its demands and fulfilling all its requirements. The only practical alternative for the Muslims is to cast away the few lifeless remnants of Islam that still cling to them—in spite of themselves—and arm themselves with a new socio-political doctrine (which in the present circumstances of the world can be no other than Marxism) capable of giving them effective lead in the complexities of life. For, to every Muslim who intelligently believes in the message of Muhammad (peace be on him) Islam is not only his past, but also his future and, apart from it, he can conceive of no future for the Muslim world. If Islam represents merely the past of a people and has no message for the present and the future; if it is incapable of furnishing guidance in the social and political situation confronting us today, there is no meaning in continuing our lukewarm adherence to its principles out of sheer conservatism and love of the past. Half-hearted attachment to an ideology and the eclectic attitude of retaining some parts of it, which fit in with our easy-going habits and adding to it extraneous elements drawn from different social theories, can only produce a hybrid mixture lacking organic combination and, therefore, unable to impart vigour and life to any sort of corporate existence. The great trouble with Muslims is that they would mould Islam to suit their own convenience rather than allow their own lives to be shaped by it:What social theory can reform a people on these terms?

The main danger to Islam in the present-day world comes from the gospel preached by Marxism which is a living social theory because, with all its defects and weaknesses, it has a message for the future and shows the means of overcoming our present economic and political difficulties. The solution it offers is by no means freed from imperfections and defects. The remedies suggested by it can alleviate the sufferings from humanity only for a short period, but the difficulty is that no other modern social theory has evolved an alternative

PREFACE

solution. Political democracy failed to live up to its pretensions and never was successful in building up a consistent and all-embracing theory of life, while Marxism, like Islam, is a self-consistent ideology dealing with almost all aspects of human activity. Its main source of strength is that it has ruthlessly torn away from human relations the sentimental trappings which disguised their real nature and has faced with sober senses the hard fact that man's political and social relations with its fellow beings are ultimately based on material needs and requirements. The great service of Marxism to the world, in spite of the false lead it has given in other directions, lies in its renewed emphasis on the essentially physical and material foundations of human life, a fact which religious theories and political doctrines were only too apt to forget. No amount of sentimental vapourings and idealist talk of brotherly love and neighbourly affection can meet the needs of corporate existence, if this cardinal truth remains unrecognised. It is precisely of this reason that both 'religion and democracy failed to maintain their hold on mankind; they did not adequately provide for the material needs of individuals and classes.

What Marxism fails to perceive is that the material basis Of life is merely a springboard from which man lifts himself into the realm of the spiritual. The material limitations surrounding him are only so many hurdles placed in his progress towards an ideal end. The hurdles must be crossed, and not stuck to. By onesidedly and repeatedly pointing to the existence of material obstructions, Marxism and all forms of materialism damp the ardour of individuals and groups to overcome the limitations of their physical and material nature. According to the materialistic theories, mankind will always remain incapable of rising above purely material considerations and, therefore, all efforts in this direction are foredoomed to failure. On the other side, most religious theories keep their gaze fixed on the ideal end of humanity without realising that the way to it lies through material limitations whose existence must be recognised and provided

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for. If mankind is to be rightly led, it must have a theory of life which recognises both the material foundations of life—the existence of hurdles in the race towards a spiritual destiny—and the necessity of rising above those foundations by persistent efforts to overcome the obstructing material limitations, for these obstructions cannot be bypassed, as some religious theories attempt to do. Humanity must go through the life of matter in order to emerge into the life of the spirit.

.The recognition of these two complementary truths by Islam marks it out as the future religion of mankind and, therefore, makes it a formidable rival to Marxism with its onesided emphasis on the material basis of life.

The religious leadership of, the present-day Muslims charged with the duty of educating them in the principles of Islam does not seem to realise that the astounding success 'of Islam in the period following the death of. the Prophet was mainly due to its realistic attitude to life, its freedom from sentimental hotchpotch and its recognition of the glaring truth that moral life can subsist only on a healthy physical and material foundation. Of all the great religious prophets of humanity, Muhammad (peace be on him) was the foremost in paying meticulous attention to the physical and material side of life and in removing the deep-rooted misunderstanding in men's minds that spiritual life consists in blindly negating and suppressing physical and material desires. The prophet who expressed resentment at prolonging the duration of afternoon prayers and ordered the service to be shortened, because the day-time was meant for the business of life, the religious leader who prohibited celibacy and insisted on every capable adult Muslim to lead a married life, the teacher who characterised the legitimate economic activities of the individual and his effort to earn livelihood for his dependants as the highest form of religious virtue deserving heavenly reward, and the man who gave to mankind a whole system of economic and social principles of the regulation of material existence can hardly be accused of neglecting the externals of

PREFACE

life or of belittling the influence of material factors in shaping the moral conduct of man.

The greatest lesson taught by the Prophet of Islam, which later generations of Muslims completely ignored under the influence of mysticism and Neoplatonism, was that the •spiritual is only a particular mode of the material and nothing apart from it. Morality, in other words, consists in the 'regulation of material life for the collective welfare of mankind and has no existence outside such life. This is a doctrine peculiarly well-fitted to counter the materialistic theory of life built up by Karl Marx, Engels and their followers, because it contains within itself all that is true in the philosophy of materialism. At the same time it supplies the complementary truth overlooked and suppressed by Marxism that an excess of materialism is apt to defeat the very object' for which the materialists strive, namely, the physical and material happiness of mankind. Mandan dialectics which stresses the existence of contradictions in life and points to them as the source of all conflict and, therefore, of all progress, has just missed one of the most vital contradictions inherent in the nature of life itself, namely, that the love of life and its material accompaniments, when carried beyond a certain point, produces conditions fatal to its very 'maintenance and to the existence of the material enjoyments Which make it worth living. A life lived for its own sake, i.e. for the sake of material satisfaction it brings, can contribute 'nothing to the good of others. It is more likely to deprive other 'human beings of their means of enjoyment and by so doing create conflicts with the social organism. And yet materialism encourages this very attitude by denying the existence of any purpose in the universe except the maintenance and increase of life. Reduced to their simplicity all materialist doctrines and the social theories derived therefrom are no more than ways of so organising life as to provide maximum opportunities for the satisfaction of material desires. Justice, equality and all other higher values are upheld not for their own sake, but because they appear to contribute to more

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efficient material enjoyments and provide the necessary security for pursuing the life of desire. In other words, with materialism, including its Marxian version, morals are derivative and secondary, a by-product of matter. But how can you have justice, equality and real brotherhood of 'man when you degrade all such ideas to a position where they lose their self-necessity and merely subserve the demands for more and more pleasures? Such a morality lies at the mercy of man's passing emotions and can never succeed in the regulation and organisation of life, because a more efficient gratification of desires and not the restraint of desire for rational ends is the ground of its existence. There is only one way in which man can attain to self-control and escape the slavery of desire and that is to believe in his moral accountability to the Creator of life and universe. That is precisely the reason why all religions have inculcated belief in God and in the life-hereafter. Belief in the ultimate success of virtue and self-restraint, even though that success may not take place in this physical universe, is the sole support of morality. It provides a- principle of self-regulation which successfully keeps the desires of man in check so long as it is actively and sincerely held. No alternative principle of self-regulation has so far been discovered by mankind and, therefore, a return to this belief is urgently called for if mankind is to be saved from total self-destruction. Alternative methods of regulating human life proposed by democracytcommunisin and fascism have proved and are proving useless and ineffective, because they put exclusive reliance on external regulation by means of legislation and the coercive power of the state. This method of external restraint by a show of authority is only of limited use; it cannot go all the way in reforming humanity unless it is supplemented by some regulative principle springing from within the mind and heart of man, because mankind cannot always be led by a stick. Restraint imposed from without by state power or the force of public opinion can succeed only in repressing the unregulated desires of man; it is powerless to induce any change in the mental mattitude of the people without which

there can be no fundamental reform. Such change of attitude can take place only when the people voluntarily accept for themselves those principles of life which the state proceeds to apply by force in the form of legislation.

While admitting the utility of the doctrine of one God and the life-hereafter, it may be objected to that there is no means to ascertain the objective truth of this doctrine. That belief in God and in the next life is useful may be conceded, but that cannot constitute sufficient proof of the actual objective existence of God, it may be argued. This sort of objection is the result of confused thinking. If the universe is ultimately governed by some principle of unity, as the physical sciences amply demonstrate; in other words, if a single all-embracing law pervades the universe, a truth which is not denied even by materialism, then it is impossible to believe that the useful and the true are mutually exclusive of each other. What is useful in the ultimate analysis must also be true. There is no other means of ascertaining the objective truth of a doctrine such as that of the life-hereafter which in its very nature lies outside the scope of direct observation and experimental proof.

The absence of such a self-regulating principle in the Marxist theory, such as the doctrine of one God and the life-hereafter, constitutes its main source of weakness and is already having its effects in retarding the progress of communist ideas. Since the communists do not believe in the moral ordering of the universe, that is, in the pursuit of moral ideals for their own sake, irrespective of their matrial consequences, and make morality subservient to and derivative from material factors, their conduct in political and social affairs is becoming more and more guided by unprincipled expediency. The moral stature of Stalin and his colleagues in Russia stands a sorry comparison with that of Lenin and his associates. The success of Lenin and his movement was due not to the logic of history, as maintained by the communists, but to the strong moral basis of the lead given by him. The counter-revolutionary forces which

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opposed him had no moral ground to stand upon, while Leninism represented the highest principles of social justice, international morality, and was definitely superior in the moral sense to all contemporary political and social movements: The people knew that Lenin and his associates had no selfish motives and were actuated by a deep sympathy for the just rights of the weak and the oppressed. Thus the moral stand of Marxism, despite its rejection of morality except in a secondary and derivative sense, gave it success and popularity in its initial phases. But since the moral basis of Marxism was not an essential part of it but only an incident in its history, the movement soon fell from the high moral plane occupied by it and, now we find that nothing but base expediency guides the leaders of Marxism. Soviet Russia which is the spearhead of the communist movement has hardly any principle of action left with it. It has not hesitated to support policies directly opposed to the principles on which the Soviet State rests, for the sake of a few temporary advantages. The abolition of the Third International and its recent resurrection are cases in point. Either of the two must have been unjustified on Marxist principles. Then the shifting stand of Soviet Russia in international politics had given it a bad name. What justification did Soviet Russia have in claiming war indemnity from Rumania and Finland in the Second World War, when during the First World War it stoutly opposed the policy of subjecting conquered nations to such financial exactions? The same humanitarian considerations which led it to oppose the claim of war indemnities in 1918 applied in the case of Rumania and Finland at the end of the Second World War and with much greater force, because these two countries atoned for their past misdeeds by fighting on the side of Soviet Russia against their former German ally :On what principle did the leaders of Communist Russia make war against Japan when it was already going down in defeat? Did Japan violate any treaty or was it a source of danger to Russia on the verge of its extinction as a military power? Is there any difference between the cowardly attack of Fascist Italy on a defeated France and the Soviet declaration of war on Japan in

PREFACE

its last death agony? Why does Russia support. Egypt on one side in its demands on Britain and betray the Arabs of Palestine by championing the unrighteous demand for the partition of Palestine? One looks about in vain for a self-consistent principle of action in this sort of conduct and is

-forced to the conclusion that no love of justice, no kindness to the weak and no regard for truth and virtue inspire the minds of the, present rulers of Russia. Sheer expediency and self-interest seem to have taken possession of their minds. How can the communist movement survive, then, for all its self-consistent philosophy, when it has lost its moral appeal? For it hardly need be iterated that the success of a movement depends not on its historical necessity (for there is no necessity in history), but on its moral stand, the reason being that, morality is not an incidental byproduct of corporate• human existence but its very essence and;support.

Here then is a chance for Islam to reassert itself and fill the moral vacuum created by the failure of Marxism to practise the high moral ideals with which it set out, in spite of its professed rejection of moral principles in any but a derivative sense. For, although most religions are equally grounded in morality, Islam has given us a much wider and far more comprehensive view of moral life as the last two chapters of this book are intended to show. This, together with its recognition of the material limitations within which the moral nature of man has to work, gives it a unique opportunity to come to the fore-ground of human affairs. Whether this opportunity will be utilised by the followers of Islam remains to be seen, for Islam will triumph not by any logical necessity, on which Marxism rests its hopes of success, but by the free decision of,its followers to choose, voluntarily and without any sort of external compulsion, the moral way of life, and prove to the, world that they embody in their lives what is best and most moral in human nature. Failure to do this will ruin the prospects of Islam and will result in its complete disappearance, even of the moribund state in which it exists today. This decision, however, will be taken only

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when the Muslims renew their faith in the moral ordering of the universe and believe with a new and passionate intensity in their accountability to God and in the existence of a future moral world where material and physical factors will not come in the way of the purely moral effects of human acts committed in this life manifesting themselves in their completeness. This belief is the ground and basis of Islamic teachings and without it the entire socio-political structure of Islamic ideology is like a lifeless body complete with all its parts and organs and yet dead and functionless in the absence of a moving soul. And, what does belief in the moral ordering of the universe imply? No more than this that virtue, whatever sufferings or losses it may entail for short periods, pays in the long run (though as far as individuals are concerned, not necessarily in this world), and that evil and unscrupulousness meet their own defeat in the end, however long their run of success may be in the intervening periods and whatever temporary material advantages they may bring. Neither physical strength, nor material and intellectual superiority, nor yet the most extraordinary skill in the art of mendacious propaganda aimed at deceiving world opinion can help to maintain for long the political and economic supremacy of any collective group or nation, if its existence has become a source of injustice, oppression and cruelty to the weaker peoples of the world or to the weaker classes within the community itself. Only that group can survive the longest which directly or indirectly represents a movement beneficial to mankind at large and specially to the weaker peoples of the world. The idea has been tersely presented by the Qur'an in the following verse:

"He sends down water from the skies, and the channels flow, each according to its measure: but the torrent bears away the foam that mounts up to the surface. Even so, from that (ore) which they heal in the fire, to make ornaments or utensils therewith, there is a scum likewise. Thus doth God (by parables) shows forth Truth and Vanity. For the

PREFACE

scum disappears like froth cast out; while that which is for the good of mankind remains on the earth. Thus does God set forth parables" (xiii.l7).

In this verse the Holy Qur'an makes it clear that truth may be judged and recognised by its staying power, and goes on to state that (on a long view of things) only that can stay and endure which is of use to mankind as a whole. The test of survival, then, is not mere physical and intellectual fitness but also moral superiority, that is, capacity and willingness to serve the larger interests of humanity. Physical, intellectual and material strength is, no doubt; also necessary for survival, because physically and intellectually weaker individuals and communities are less serviceable to mankind. The weak and the decrepit can be of little use to others, even if they so desire. Thus strength is a necessary condition for usefulness, but its possession does not necessarily mean that it will be used for the benefit of others and specially for the good of the weaker part of humanity. It is more likely that a group or community possessing material strength may make use of it, in the absence of a moral force exercising restraint on it, to rob, oppress and exploit the weaker peoples of the world. And then its strength, far from helping it to survive, will ultimately tend to its annihilation, for the world process, as the Qur'an has shown, maintains and preserves only that which is useful to mankind as a whole and extinguishes whatever is injurious or useless.

Now the question is: Who can be more serviceable to the large interests of humanity: the community which believes in living for itself and getting the best out of life, in a purely material sense, on the assumption that the present earthly existence of man is the first and last opportunity for the gratification of desires and the enjoyment of material comforts, or one which lives for itself as well as for others and readily forgoes such of its material enjoyments and comforts as are likely to cause loss or injury to others, supported by the conviction that whatever it suffers in consequence of this way of life will receive its due reward in a future state of existence

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in which individuals and groups will be judged purely by moral standards; that is, by what they have contributed to the happiness of other men and not by what they have acquired for themselves? It is obvious that of the human groups contending for survival and supremacy that group of men will be of greater use to mankind which by an act of self-limitation accepts certain moral principles and agrees to work within their framework. But this kind of moral self -limitation can proceed only from a conception of life totally different from that which regards the world as the product of a fortuitous combination of self-active atoms developing by a self-inherent necessity to higher and higher levels. For in such a conception of life there is no room for moral effort, all human actions being predetermined, on this theory, by antecedent factors and, therefore, allowing no scope of moral choice and freedom of action. To be of use and service to humanity, an individual or group should be prepared for self - denial, on occasions ready to give to others what would otherwise go to make its own life more pleasant and comfortable. This is not an easy task, because no one likes to forgo what would make his life sweeter and materially richer, specially if he has got the• requisite strength to retain possession of it. Such self-denial and willing sacrifice can be undertaken only when men believe that the goods of this life are not, after all, the sole goods and that a better and happier fate awaits those who suffer deprivation in the process of giving to others what is, their due. Thus the utility and serviceableness of individuals as well as communities is directly proportional (other things being equal) to their belief in the moral ordering of the universe, i.e. in the existence of God and the life-hereafter, and only, that group can survive longest which combines virtue with strength and tempers power with justice. All other groups which rely on their physical and material strength and refuse to accept any moral restrictions in the pursuit of their ambitions sooner or later become a. source of evil, injustice, cruelty and oppression to the weaker parts of humanity and are wiped out of existence by some group or nation which is morally superior to them.

The future of Islam and of the Muslim worldeswill, Tierefore, be determined not, by the physical and material tortes which the Muslims are able to muster, although Material factors have their own importance and cannot be

dismissed as of little account, but by the moral strength of the hiarnic community, its capability to serve the large interests &Mankind and not its exclusive interests. Unless the Muslims develop an ideological enthusiasm to carry the message of Islam to every nook and corner of the world and come forward as'representatives of a movement aiming at the good, not of this group and that, but of the whole of mankind, they will not stand the test of survival laid down by the Holy Qur'an in the verse quoted above. It is only a people with a message and a mission to humanity that can achieve real and efficient

If, therefore, the followers of Islam develop a nationalistic ideology devoting themselves exclusively to the attainment of their own material greatness, how can they justify themselves in the eyes of the world as representatives of non-national and universal brotherhood which not only does not close the door on new entrants of foreign nationalities but positively invites them to become its equal members. Further, the Muslims would find it impossible, to deliver the message of Islam, if, by a narrow and selfish regard for their own interests, they antagonise the peoples whom they wish the message to reach. How can they expect the world to give ear to Islamic teachings if they do not exemplify in their own lives the spirit and ideals of Islam? Every misdeed, every act of injustice, cruelty and oppression committed by a Muslim, not only injures his own soul, but adversely affects the prospects and .fortunes of Islam and constitutes a definite setback to its further progress. To be a Muslim is really to undertake a great moral responsibility in the discharge of which a mad has to be morally awake every Minute and hour of his life, for Islam demands justice, truth, virtue and righteousness here and now and not, like Marxism, at some future date when power has been gained or a

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particular type of state established. Virtue, however, does not consist, according to Islam, in weak-kneed submission to and unconditional love for one's enemies or in a total unwillingness to retaliate, however grave the provocation may be. What Islam expects its followers is never to play the role of the aggressor, to be forgiving and merciful to their utmost capacity consistent with their self-preservation and, when forced to retaliate, to go no farther than is absolutely necessary to take theeting out of the enemy.

To sum up, the future of Islam and its success in the new age which is struggling into existence will depend entirely on the moral conduct of its followers and on the extent of the missionary enthusiasm which they bring to bear on their task. Unless the Muslims make a sincere effort to practise the ideals to which they profess allegiance and exemplify them in their life and character, counting no sacrifice too great for the purpose, the world will not listen to the message of Islam, however powerful and strong the Muslims may become politically. The moral conquest of the world is something vastly different front its political conquest, and political conquest itself debends for its permanence on high moral qualities, that is, on the ability of the conquerors to ensure justice, fairplay and a decent life to the conquered. Thus from whatever angle the matter is viewed, whether from the standpoint of the political future of Muslims or from the point of view of Islam's future destiny as a message of moral and spiritual regeneration to the whole of mankind, the conclusion is forced on us that a strictly moral life, in accordance with the principles of Islam, at whatever cost and sacrifice, is the only alternative left to the Muslims for withstanding the tremendous impact of Western materialism in its latest and most developed form of Marxism.

MARXIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY

The materialistic conception of history is the key to the whole system of Communist thought and lies at the root of it. Marx, who had borrowed his method from Hegel, conceived of historical process as a series of fruitful conflicts between opposite social and economic forces through whose synthesis and combination a higher social order invariably came into being. Unlike Hegel, who insisted that the changes in the actual material world are merely a passive reflection of the progress and development of the World Spirit or the Absolute Idea in its march towards self-realisation, achieved through the conflict of contradictory ideas, Marx affirmed the reality of the external world and pointed out that human ideals and concepts are themselves products of the material economic environment and the changes taking place therein. They have, therefore, no independent existence of their own. The conflict of opposites takes place, not in the realm of ideas, as Hegel maintained, but in the actual world of human affairs, through changes in the economic structure of society, the change in human ideas being but a reflection of social and economic changes. Marx, however, retained the Hegelian concept of the dialectical process, the process by which each concept generates its opposite which conflicts with its parent and gives birth to a fresh concept representing a synthesis of the two opposites. In course of time, this newer and higher concept begets its own opposite with which it conflicts, and the process goes on repeating itself endlessly. With Marx the dialectical process works itself out in the social and material surroundings of man. Each social and economic system generates opposing forces, the conflict between the two results in the appearance of a higher economic system which

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again, after a time, begets forces antagonistic to it. These come into conflict with the existing system and the result 4s a new, higher social and economic order. Thus the dialectical process which reveals itself in the conflict of opposites is common to both Hegel and Marx, though on different planes.

As pointed out by the Italian philosopher, Benedetto Croce, Hegel made an essential error in failing to distinguish between things which are merely distinct. Writing about this, Croce says:

"Who could ever persuade himself that religion is the not-being of art and that art and religion are but two abstractions which possess truth only in philosophy, the synthesis of both, or that the practical spirit is the negation of the theoretical, that representation is the negation of intuition, civil society the negation of family; and that all these concepts are unthinkable outside their synthesis—free spirit, thought, state—in the same way as being and not-being, which are true only in becoming."

To this may be added that the mistake committed by Hegel has been repeated by Marx. For example,. Marx regards "private property" and "proletariat" as two opposites, although it would be admitted.by every reasonable man that there is no necessary opposition between the two.

Applying the dialectical process to the concrete material world, Marx explains, in .the Preface to his work: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, that "the mode. of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life-processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." We would have agreed with Marx if he had said that the mode of production in material life influences the social, political and intellectual life-processes instead of saying That it determines the above processes. The use of the word "determine" in this particular context can only mean, firstly, that in the opinion of Marx men' are moved solely by


economic considerations, and, secondly, that under a given mode of production, there can be only one set form of intellectual and moral reaction. Both these assumptions are questionable. It is true that no man or community of men can fail to be influenced by economic necessities and the mode of their fulfilment, but the actual manner in which they react to this influencing factor depends on a variety of other factors. Given the same economic conditions and the same methods of production, different individuals and communities will still develop in far different ways, because of the alternative forms of action open to them. Marx tacitly assumes that there is only one set pattern of reaction to a given economic situation, which is not true. For a man faced with destitution, there are many alternative forms of conduct which he may adopt. He may shoot himself, commit burglary, take to begging or join a political party fighting for the rights of the common man. Which of these courses he will adopt depends, firstly, on his individual temperament and, secondly, on whether he takes into consideration the moral factors involved in the matter, so that his resultant action, though influenced

by the economic situation, is not determined by it, because other factors—and specially the moral factor—also exert their influence. Similar is the case with communities and groups of men. Let us take an example from history. The Greek City States, during the period beginning from 725 B.C. to 325 B.C., were faced with the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. When the pressure became acute, different states contended with it in different ways.

"Some, like Corinth and Chalcis, disposed of their surplus population by seizing and colonising agricultural territories overseas—in Sicily, Southern Italy, Thrace and elsewhere—where the native population was either too sparse or too incompetent to resist invasion. The Greek colonies thus founded simply extended the geographical area of the Hellenic society without altering its character. The agriculture which they practised and the institutions

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under which they lived were substantially reproductions of the conditions which they had left behind them in their home countries.

"On the other hand, certain states sought solutions which entailed a variation in their way of life. Sparta, for instance, satisfied the land-hunger of her citizens not by colonising over-seas territories outside the previous geographical limits of the Hellenic world but by attacking and conquering her nearest Greek neighbours in Messene. The consequences were that Sparta only obtained her necessary additional lands at the cost of obstinate and repeated wars with neighbouring peoples of her own caliber; that even when the conquest was completed, the retention of the conquered territories required a permanent military effort; and that this permanent strain bore upon Sparta herself and not upon some independent daughter state overseas who would have been responsible for her own security. In order to meet this situation, Spartan statesmen were compelled to militarise Spartan life from top to bottom which they did by reinvigorating and adapting certain primitive institutions, common to a number of Greek communities, at a moment when, in Sparta as elsewhere, these institutions were on the point of disappearance.

"Athens reacted to the population problem in a different way again. At first she neglected it-neither planting colonies overseas nor conquering the territory of her Greek neighbours—until the pressure threatened to find vent in a social revolution. At that point, when the solutions sought by other states were no longer open to her, she discovered an original solution of her own by specialising her agricultural production for export, and then developing her political institutions so as to give a fair share of political power to the new classes

which had been called into being by these economic innovations. In other words, Athenian statesmen, averted a social-revolution by successfully carrying through an economic and political revolution; and, discovering this solution for the common problem as far as it affected themselves, they incidentally opened up a new avenue of advance for the whole of Hellenic society."'

It is clear, from this example that, given the same economic conditions and the same mode of production, different alternative courses are still open to a community. There is no compulsion in economic facts. An element of free choice still exists for all the pressure exerted by economic conditions. It is, therefore, untrue to say that the economic situation or the mode of production determines all other forms of human activity. On the other hand, as the example quoted above shows, which of the alternative courses of action a community would adopt depends entirely upon its moral and intellectual development. Moral consciousness is an equally important factor with the mode of production in determining the behaviour of a groups or community. In the example given above Athens and Sparta took two different lines of action under the same economic conditions. What Athens did was

. more in keeping with the dictates of moral consciousness, while the mode in which Sparta reacted to the given economic situation cannot be justified on moral grounds. Athens and Sparta stood on different moral levels under the same economic situation, the same mode of production and the same material conditions of life, which only shows that moral consciousness is not the product of economic conditions or the mode of production but an independent factor co-existing with and reacting on economic factors. It further proves that, while economic conditions influence our individual and collective behaviour, they do not determine it in the sense that they have the final say in the matter.

1. A Toynbee, 'Study of History'

5

MARXISM OR ISLAM

Explaining the materialist conception of history further, Engels writes in a letter to Joseph Bloch:

"According to the materialist conception of history the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic element is the only determining one, he tranforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitution established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., forms of law and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the combatants, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma—also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggle and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an intersection of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (i.e., of things and events, whose inner connection is so remote or so impossible to prove that we regard it as absent and can neglect it), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary."

A careful perusal of the above passage will show that Engels is not clear in his own mind what he and Marx mean by the phrase "determining element". If the economic element is not the only determining one, as Engels recognises, it follows that for a given resultant there may be more than one determi-ning element, a statement which looks absurd, because the word "determining" can only mean either that other factors do not come in at all in the process, or, if they do come in, their influence is almost negligible. Engels might as well have used the word "decisive" for the economic factor, but, then, to say


that the economic element is decisive is to exclude, if not completely, at least to a very large degree, the other factors involved in the process; and then it becomes meaningless to admit that there may be other determining elements, besides the economic element. The last sentence in the above passage completely contradicts the previous statement that the economic element is not the only determining element. When it it stated that in the intersection of many conflicting elements, "the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary," there is an mid of the matter, because this can only mean that the other elements are swept aside by the irresistible might of the economic forces. There is thus no real scope left for other elements to exert a determining influence.

Another statement contained in the above passage also requires close examination. We are told that the economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstruc-ture also exercise their influence. The question must suggest itself to every close observer: In what manner can the foundation of a structure be said to determine its superstruc-ture? The foundation or the base of a building is a necessary condition which must be fulfilled before a superstructure can be raised on it. But a condition is not the same thing as a cause or a determining factor. Facts point to the opposite conclusion, namely, that the form of the base or foundation is itself determined by the form of the. superstructure, that is the plan of the building. Before you lay the foundation, you must have in mind some idea of the superstructure that is to be raised on it; or how you would proceed with the task of construction? The Communists invite us to join in laying the foundation of a new house for humanity, but they give us no idea of the superstructure that is to be reared on it and, we refuse to believe either that the superstructure will automatically rise out of the base or that the basis itself will determine the superstructure. A social theory should give a complete plan of life, of the foundation as well as of the superstructure proposed to be erected thereon. Communism, though it sets

7

MARXISM OR ISLAM

out in full detail the proposed basis of social structure, does not furnish even a bare sketch for the superstructure. As we have already pointed out, without a knowledge of the full plan, we cannot decide whether the proposed social structure will be worth the effort required to built it.

If the economic situation is the base, let us deal with it by all means, but the form of the superstructure is not a matter which we can afford to neglect. The religious, moral and ethical problems of life—the superstructure of the economic base, according to Communist theory—should be tackled simultaneously with the economic problems because all human problems are closely and vitally interrelated. To dismiss them as mere elements of the ideological superstructure is to ignore the truth, albeit incompletely and grudgingly, that ideological superstructure reacts vitally and purposefully on the basis itself, that is, on the economic situation. In the same passage, Engels tells us that the various elements of the superstructure—religious ideas and their further development into dogmas—also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggle and in many cases preponderate in determining their forms. The statement obviously means that because religious and moral ideas determine merely the form of historical struggles—the content being furnished by the economic situation—they are of little account from the social viewpoint. This conclusion, which is implicit in the tenor of the whole passage, is not supported by facts. The reality of a thing lies precisely in its form and not in the materials of which it is composed. It is the form of a thing which gives it its peculiar qualities on the basis of which we form our moral estimate of it. The utility of a building is judged, not merely by the materials used in its construction, but also by its form and structure. The impulse to change the existing structure of society and to correct social abuses is, no doubt, the common driving force behind all historical struggles, but the particular form which these struggles take is sufficient to decide whether the object in view will be successfully achieved or the existing social.

8


structure will suffer destruction without something better to replace it. What precise form a social struggle will assume, whether secular, atheistic or moral and religious, will itself determine many of its qualities and impart it a positive or negative value. The form of a historical struggle, therefore, 'cannot be treated as of little account and the elements which go to determine it can hardly be less important than the struggles itself.

The Marxian interpretation of history is based on the assumption that class antagonism is the cause of all historical changes. As soon as new economic classes emerge in a social order, they struggle to change the existing economic system with which the interests of the dominant class are bound up. This latter class naturally fights to maintain the status quo, since any change in the existing economic system would destroy its supremacy and with it the privileges it enjoys. The class-struggle between these two opposing forces, therefore, breaks out with all its attendant consequences. Marx denies the possibility of class-conciliation and says that there can be no meeting ground between the contending classes, or else the state, with its coercive authority, would not exist. Hence the inevitability of a violent revolution by the exploited to overthrow by force the established regime.

As to this, we can only say that Marx has slipped over the instances of class-conciliation in history. Engels himself describes the English revolution of 1689 as a compromise between the feudal nobility and the rising English bourgeois. In his essay on Historical Materialism we find the following

passage: "The compromise of 1689 was, therefore, easily

accomplished. The political spoils of 'pelf and place' were left to the great land-owning families, provided the economic interests of the financial, manufacturing, and commercial middle-class were sufficiently attended to....There might be squabbles about matters of detail, but, on the whole, the aristocratic oligarchy knew too well that its own

9

MARXISM OR ISLAM

economic prosperity was irrevocably bound up with that of the industrial and commercial middle class."

This concordant between a class representing the old tottering feudal system and one which represented the new forces proves that the possibility of a conciliation between the conflicting classes cannot be completely ruled out and that economic changes may take place smoothly without the need of a violent overthrow of the existing order. If a compromise be between feudal nobility and its antagonist, the rising bourgeois class, was possible, why should a similar compromise between the bourgeois and the proletariat be considered outside the bounds of possibility? Unlike the feudal class on the Continent, the English aristoracy had a keener perception of the changes taking place in society and a more enlightened view of their self-interest which induced them to accept in good cheer the inevitable shift in the balance of forces. If this could take place in England without any effort at the moral education of society, how much more it would happen in a society which makes concerted effort to undertake the moral education of its members and teach them by precept and example that the existence of class-exploitation is fatal in the long run to the interests of the ruling class itself and that technological developments and economic changes in society cannot allow any class to hold itself up as its permanent guardian and protector? That the dominant class in a society rarely gives up its privileged position without a violent conflict is true, but that is because of the absence of any moral perception and spiritual education in the society as a whole and not in spite of it. Even so, there is no inevitability about class-conflict and violent revolution, as.the example of English history shows.

According to Marx, the dialectical process, as it works out in history, takes the form of class-antagonism. As soon as new productive forces are generated from within the womb of the existing economic order, the oppressed class representing the new forces come into violent collision with the existing ruling class and, by overthrowing it, constitute themselves as


the new ruling authority. In support of this theory Marx gives copious illustrations from the history of the Middle Ages in Europe and the era following the discovery of America. Thus the artisans and craftsmen of the Middle Ages developed into the commercial and industrial class of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and this oppressed class successfully challenged the power and authority of the oppressors, that is, the feudal nobility which was the dominant class in feudal society. The process is repeating itself in the struggle of the bourgeois and the proletariat, the former representing the ruling, oppressing class, and the latter constituting the exploited and oppressed class.

In the above interpretation of historical changes, there are two obvious gaps which the Marxian theory has not been able to fill up. In the first place, the really exploited and oppressed class in the Middle Ages was not the trading and commercial class of artisans and craftsmen—the bourgeois of the latter period—but the serfs and peasants who were tied to land. The bourgeois was a new class altogether distinct from serfs and peasants. The struggle, therefore, between the rising bourgeois and the ruling feudal nobility cannot the correctly described as the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed. The class which was held down in subjection, i.e., the class of serfs and peasants, continued in its old position, even after the feudal nobility had been overthrown, with this difference that the mantle of oppression was assumed by the bourgeois as soon as it fell from feudal aristocracy. The proletariat, the new oppressed class, was no other than the serfs and peasants of the precapitalistic period transferred from land to factories. The labouring class in the early days of capitalism, it is well known, was largely recruited from dispossessed peasants torn away from the soil following largescale experiments in agriculture. How can it be claimed, then, that the oppressed class under feudalism overthrew its oppressors and became the new ruling class? Facts show that the oppressed and explpited class under the feudal system gained nothing from the economic revolution of society

L

10

MARXISM OR ISLAM

economic prosperity was irrevocably bound up with that of the industrial and commercial middle class."

This concordant between a class representing the old tottering feudal system and one which represented the, new forces proves that the possibility of a conciliation between the conflicting classes cannot be completely ruled out and that economic changes may take place smoothly without the need of a violent overthrow of the existing, order. If a compromise be between feudal nobility and its antagonist, the rising bourgeois class, was possible, why should a similar compromise between the bourgeois and the proletariat be considered outside the bounds of possibility? Unlike the feudal class on the Continent, the English aristoracy had a keener perception of the changes taking place in society and a more enlightened view of their self-interest which induced them to accept in good cheer the inevitable shift in the balance of forces. If this could take place in England without any effort at the moral education of society, how much more it would happen in a society which makes concerted effort to undertake the moral education of its members and teach them by precept and example that the existence• of class-exploitation is fatal in the long run to the interests of the ruling class itself and that technological developments and economic changes in society cannot allow any class to hold itself up as its permanent guardian and protector? That the dominant class in a society rarely gives up its privileged position without a violent conflict is true, but that is because of the absence of any moral perception and spiritual education in the society as a whole and not in spite of it. Even so, there is no inevitability about class-conflict and violent revolution, as.the example of English history shows.

According to Marx, the dialectical process, as it works out in history, takes the form of class-antagonism. As soon as new productive forces are generated from within the womb of the existing economic order, the oppressed class representing the new forces come into violent collision with the existing ruling class and, by overthrowing it, constitute themselves as


the new ruling authority. In support of this theory Marx gives copious illustrations from the history of the Middle Ages in Europe and the era following the discovery of America. Thus the artisans and craftsmen of the Middle Ages developed into Or commercial and industrial class of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and this oppressed class successfully challenged the power and authority of the oppressors, that is, the feudal nobility which was the dominant class in feudal society. The process is repeating itself in the struggle of the bourgeois and the proletariat, the former representing the ruling, oppressing class, and the latter constituting the exploited and oppressed class.

In the above interpretation of historical changes, there are two obvious gaps which the Marxian theory has not been able to fill up. In the first place, the really exploited and oppressed class in the Middle Ages was not the trading and commercial class of artisans and craftsmen—the bourgeois of the latter period—but the serfs and peasants who were tied to land. The bourgeois was a new class altogether distinct from serfs and peasants. The struggle, therefore, between the rising bourgeois and the ruling feudal nobility cannot the correctly described as the struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed. The class which was held down in subjection, i.e., the class of serfs and peasants, continued in its old position, even after the feudal nobility had been overthrown, with this difference that the mantle of oppression was assumed by the bourgeois as soon as it fell from feudal aristocracy. The proletariat, the new oppressed class, was no other than the serfs and peasants of The precapitalistic period transferred from land to factories. The labouring class in the early days of capitalism, it is well known, was largely recruited from dispossessed peasants torn away from the soil following largescale experiments in agriculture. How can it be claimed, then, that the oppressed class under feudalism overthrew its oppressors and became the new ruling class? Facts show that the oppressed and exploited class under .the feudal system gained nothing from the economic revolution of society

10

MARXISM OR ISLAM

except that there was affected a change of masters and an alteration in the conditions of oppression.

There is another marked difference between the struggle of the bourgeois against feudal aristocracy and the conflict now in progress between the proletariat and the capitalist class—a difference which Marx and Engels have not taken into account. While the bourgeois class was, no doubt, devoid of political power under the feudal system, it gradually gained economic power until it far outstripped the ruling class in point of material wealth and economic prosperity. The increasing economic power of the trading and industrial class stood in sharp contrast with its exclusion from political power, a contradiction which had to be resolved by a violent conflict. This is admitted and even pointed out frequently by Marx and Engels in their writings. But there is no parallel to this in the struggle being conducted by the proletariat against the bourgeois. The labour class as a whole has gained nothing in economic power since its appearance as an active social force. Its economic power has registered no increase since then and the capitalist class is far superior to it in point of material means. Indeed, if the prediction of Karl Marx is to come true, the proletariat will gradually sink into utter abject poverty. On the other hand, the political power of the proletariat is by no means insignificant. In their trade unions, and in their weapon of mass strikes, the labourers wield a formidable power which is not without its effects in the political sphere. The bourgeois in their struggle against the feudal nobility did not have the same advantages. The two struggles, therefore, do no stand on the same plane and to lump them together as illustrations of the dialectical process working itself out in the form of class-struggles is to ignore the basic dissimilarities between the two.

Tracing the origin of the state, Engels says in a letter to Conrad Schmidt

"Society gives rise to certain common functions which it cannot dispense with. The persons selected for these functions form a new branch of the division of labour within society. This gives them ; particular interests, distinct too from the interest of those who gave them their office; they make themselves independent of the latter—and the state is in being. The new independent power, while having in the main Jo- follow, the movement of production, also, owing to its inward indepengence--the relative independence originally transferred,to, it and gradually further developed—reacts in its turn upon the conditions and course of -production."

The question naturally arises whether this process would repeat itself in the first phase of Communism, that, is, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, and whether those elements which run the proletarian state would not develop a certain independence in relation to the rest of society. This may also give them particular interests "distinct from those who gave them their office". For, in the first place; scone sort of divition of labour would exist• even in the Communist society. Granting that all will have' the leigure to participate in the political life of, the state, all cannot have the requisite qualifications to handle state affairs. The actual- consluct of a state requires expert knowledge and <a special executive capacity which is not so common as is generally supposed. It is not merely a question of the mass of people having:sufficient

13 12

MARXISM OR ISLAM

leisure to attend to state affairs as is made out by the Communist writers. Granted that, under Communism, the productive forces will grow fast and all the springs of social wealth will flow more freely to afford the people adequate leisure to apply themselves to political questions, there is no reason to believe that, barring individuals of an active, energetic and ambitious nature, the mass of common people will ever come forward in the political field and actively interest themselves in state affairs. There is, therefore, every 'likelihood that the state power in what is called the first phase of Communism may acquire a large measure of independence in relation to the rest of the society and develop interests of its own, distinct and even aitagohistic to those of the mass of people. It may, however, be pointed out by Communists that this danger has been sufficiently offset by the abolition of private property. The door to the acquisition of wealth and property having been barred, no danger remains of the ruling class or the group of people in charge of state affairs developing any interests distinct from thoie of the common people: This argument'completely leaves out of account the fact that-wealth and Property are only forms of power, the acquisition of whkh is the principal motive force behind man's 'activity and that there is a power impulse in human beings which is more fundamental than the impulse of greed. In a commercial and industrial society the power impulse uses the possessive impulse as its instrument, because property brings power with it. But the same impulse may operate in other forms. Possession of political muthority is itself an advantage and-a source' of satisfaction to ambitious men even when it promises no material rewards. Of the many motives which influence and determine the course of human activity; love of power is certainly the strongest and most abiding in its effects. The men at the helm of affairs in the first phase of Communism are, very likely to acquire a vested interest in retaining and perpetuating their political influence. That is why the Communist theory that the state power will wither away after the oppressor class has been suppressed sounds so unconvincing. No group of men in possession of political

14

MARXIAN CONCEPTION OF STATE

attliority has voluntarily abdicated its power in history and it isatoo much to expect that Communism will exterminate the ptsWer impulse in men along with the'extermination of class-exploitation. Everyone who knows about the conflict between Trotsky and Stalin in the first phase of Russian Communism will have his own doubts about the predicted withering away of the Communist State.

' The idea that the state power will disappear in the final phase of Communisin is derived from the Comrhunist doctrine that the state is an organ of class exploitation. In explanation of this, Engels says:

"The state is therefore by no means a power imposed on society from the outside: just as little is it the reality of the moral idea, the image and reality of reason. Rather. it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contra-diction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economi&interests, may not consume themselves and society in a sterile struggle, a power apparently standing above society becomes necessary, whose purpose is to moderate the conflidt and keep it within bounds of `order' and this power arising out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly separating itself from it is the state."

In this passage Engels seeks to prove that the irreconcilability of class-conflicts is the main season for the emergence of the state which is, therefore, charged with the duty of holding the exploited class in subjection. But he states, at the same time, that the purpose of the state is to moderate the conflict of classes and to keep it within the "bounds of order". This amounts to an admission.that the state exercises a restraining influence on the ' dominant class of society and comes in the way of unchecked and naked class-exploitation.

15

MARXISM OR ISLAM

The state cannot cast its influence on one side only, that is, on the side of the exploiting class, in its efforts to suppress the hostile elements of the .population; to do so would be to tilt the balance still further against the exploited class and to give up its role as a moderating force. The exercise of a moderating influence obviously carries with it the conclusion: that the state appears as a power friendly to the oppressed classes, in however slight g degree, and act in opposition to the wishes of the dominant class by mitigating unchecked, downright class-exploitation. To put it in another way: but for the state, class-exploitation would be more ruthless and the hardships of the oppressed classes more unbearable. How can the state be regarded, under these conditions, as the prime organ of class-exploitation, and when to this is joined the consideration stressed by Marx himself that the class-structure in a particular society is the necessary concomitant of the existing economic situation and that only with the-appearance of new productive forces, it is possible to alter the existing division of classes, one wonders whether the stigmatisation of the state as the organ of class-exploitation is really justified, in view of the fact that it has no power, even if it wished, to alter the existing class-structure of society and the balance of forces in the class-conflict. The morality of the state, therefore, it appears, is always higher than the morality of the dominant class in society.

That the state is not an organ of' downright and unchecked class-exploitation and that moral considerations do, after all, influence the policy of the state and its outward exPression—the arm of law—in some degree, however small, Engels has been forced to admit in the following passage of the letter just referred to above: •

"In a modern state, law must no only correspond to the general economic position and be its expression, but must also be an expression which is consistent in itself, and which does not, owing to inner contradictions, look glaringly inconsistent. And in order to achieve this, the faithful reflection

MARXIAN CONCEPTION OF . STATE

en of economic conditions is more and more. infringed 5 :t E upon. All the more so the more rarely it happens that a ,no'? code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated se , expression of the domination of a class—this in itsel f

would already of fend the 'conception of justice.' " sir (Italics ours) bn Here is an admission by Engels that the legal system of a ubdciety is not a faithful reflection of economic conditions but • embodies a higher morality than that justified by the class-

configuration of society. As to'the argument that this is due to `''the need for internal self-consistency, one may point out that fi this requirement can as well operate in the opposite direction, 9/iiat is, in the direction of making the code of law a more ‘Illiorousexpression of class domination and more ruthless in riffi ef f ec ts on the oppressed class. Internal self-consistency can `be achieved in either of the two ways. That the more moral and more humane course of mitigating unadulterated class-

';exploitation is always followed indicates the presence in human mind of a moral consciousness independent of the stage of economic development (and not its passive expression). This moral consciousness is, no doubt, thickly overlaid and repressed by the economic interests of individuals and classes specially in societies which make no effort to awaken and utilise it. But it is capable of becoming, when aroused by the active efforts of the community, a potent force powerful enough to influence and determine the economic structure of, society. We are further supported in this claim by Engels's last words in the passage quoted above. Engels says, in effect, that if the legal system were the blunt,

,unadulterated expression of class-domination, it would offend our "conception of justice". Thereby he recognises that Our conceptions of justice, virtue and morality, etc., are diways a step further than justice, virtue and morality, etc., 1

embodied in the existing economic structure of society. We are, therefore, led to the conclusion, on Engels's own _glowing, that our moral conceptions and ideas of justice and virtue, etc., are not mere products or reflections of the stage

17 16

MARXISM OR ISLAM MARXIAN CONCEPTION OF STATE

of economic development reached by society, but are independent factors existing, in their own right. As regards the question whether the state is an organ of class-exploitation, we may conclude from what Engels has said that, although the state does represent, to a very large degree, the forces that make for the oppression of lower classes, it is also the sole power that stands for a certain measure of righteousness and justice in social affairs and thereby prevents unchecked and unrestricted class-oppression. But as we have indicated above, the degree of social righteousness and justice embodied in the state depends largely on the moral consciousness of the community. If this consciousness is actively aroused by a concerned effort of the individuals and groups within the state, a far higher standard of social justice can be secured, because, as we have seen, the moral consciousness of man is an independent factor and by no means a product of the economic system.

In the same letter from which we have just quoted, the following observations have been made by Engels in respect of state power:

'The reaction of the state power upon economic development can be one of the three kinds: It can run in the same direction, and then development is more rapid; it can oppose the line of development, in which case 'now-a-days state power in every great nation will go to pieces in the long run; or it can cut off the economic development from certain paths, and impose oifit certain others."

In this passage Engels admits the possibility of a state being conducted along the line of economic development. But a state following this course can hardly be described as an organ of class-exploitation. If it works in the direction of the economic movement, it must, of necessity, give full scope to any new productive forces that may arise in society, but, then, how can it ally itself with the existing dominant classes, who, according to Marxian theory, are, by their very nature, resistant to the new economic forces and opposed to the

18

echanges necessitated by them? The state, therefore, should it ,decide to follow the' direction of economic movement, will 'have to fight its way against the combined opposition of the dominant classes. • In other words, it will become the :instrument of the new 'progressive forces insistent. on ,,changing -the existing class-structure of society. And yet Marx and Engels freely label all states as organs of 'class-

Lexploitation, which can only mean that they:admit the above npossibility in abstract, but deny it in actual fact. In any case, however, whether this is merely a theoretical possibility or:the ,existence of states following the same direction as the =economic_ movement is a historical fact, there appears no reason, why all states should of necessity become organs of class-domination.

The Marxian thesis that the state would wither away in the later phase -pf Communism is based on the same conception of the state as an organ of class-domination. As soon as a classless society has come into being, there will be no need of the state; because tiO class-exploitation would then be possible. Engels elaborates this argument aS follows: "

"As soon as there is no longer any class of society to be held in subjection; as soon as along with class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the former anarchy of production, the collisions and excesses arising from these have also been abolished, there is nothing more to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act in whiCh the state realty comes forward as the representative of society as a whole—the seizure of the Means of production in the name of society—is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of a state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then becomes dormant of itself".

one may put the question to the Communists whether the seizure of the means of production by the Soviet Government in Russia and the expropriation of capitalists and landlords•

19

21

MARXISM OR ISLAM MARXIAN CONCEPTION OF STATE

was the last independent act of the Russian Communist State and whether the interference of Soviet State in'social relations has 'become superfluous' in one sphere after another or shows signs of increase. Surely, the Communist State in Russia has interfered more Ninth the social relations of the Russian people than any other state has done so far in respect'of its own pedple. We are also entitled to enquire whether the internal organs of the Soviet Government, such as the' law courts and the police; are: falling into disuse: Having liquidated the capitalist class# the landlords and the richer peasants (Kul aks), there- is' o reason why Soviet Russia should maintain, for internal purposes, at a high cost the: Various administrative organs of government. The Communist demand • for the abolition of class divisions and the formation of a classless society raises very important questions, namely, whether the ideal of a classless society, in the real sense of the word, is capable of realisation in aetual praCtice, and whether the diVision of society into classes is not a natural necessity born of the inherent Inequalities of men. It is possible, no doubt, to abolish ,the existing class-divisions, but who can predict that this will not lead to the appearance of new classes? Capitalism eliminated the class-divisions existing in its own time which had hardened into the rigidity of a caste system, and under which the accident of birth determined the class-affiliations of a man, As a reSult, the rigidity, ofclass-divisions was softendd hnd the ties of birth and family , were eliminated. Nevertheless, new , classes formed on a different basis came into being. Would not the process repeat itself' under Communism? The abolition of private property cannot level up ,the natural inequalities of mei. People of an active, ambitious and, dqminant type would still have an advantage over weaker natures. It is quite possible that by a natural affinity all such people may be drawn ! together and constitute a distinct class ready to take hold of important positions in the state. As we have already seen, possession of political power is a source' of emotional satisfaction to dominant natures, even if it brings no additional material advantages. Once power passes into the hands of such people, a' new ruling class will take

20

shape as reluctant to relinquish power as any other ruling class in history. The people cannot assert themselves in opposition to their rulers unless they have the support of the armed forces, and the armed forces are likely to fall under the command of the same type of individuals. The need of leadership in the different spheres of life and activity will remain as urgent as ever even after the destruction of capitalism; and those who, by the help of their superior qualities, rise to the position of leaders will sooner or later constitute themselves into distinct classes and acquire special interests not necessarily identical with the interests of the common people. The Communist effort to establish the existing classes is quite capable of meeting with success, but a classless society, in the sense of no class having: any interest distinct from the other, is an aspiration-very unlikely to come to fulfilment.

METAPHYSICS OF MARXISM

In his book, Materialism, Marxism, Determinism and Dialectics, Professor Das Gupta lays down the following as one' of the fundamental principles of Marxism: "That there is an objective reality standing outside and, independent of our mind or thought," He further points out that the source of all our knowledge is objective natural law, not properties of our mind and its innate faculty of apprehending certain a priori truths.

Without entering into abstruse discussions about our ideas of reality, one may straightly put the question whether there can be any reality independent of man, independent of his mind and personality. If there is any such reality outside of us and independent of us, we are not concerned with it as human beings, and that which does not concern us, affect us or touch us is immaterial from our point of view and, therefore, unreal for us. Marxism, which claims to give primacy to practice as against theory, can hardly, with consistency to its own practical ideals, advocate a stand which severs reality and truth from the world of action and human practice. A reality which has no reference to us, to our practical needs and our moral strivings and which stands in splendid isolation from our deepest moral aspirations as something outside and independent of us can have no claim to be regarded as such. Only that can be real which refers to us; all else is unreal.

Underlying this trend of thought is the idea that the human mind is not part of reality and that in the act of knowing the external world, the knower can separate himself


from the thing to be known. This "severance between knowledge and reality," says Nicolas Ber Dyaw:

"Is the fatal result of rationalism which has not been thought out to the end. It denies that the act of knowing is an existential act. But if reality stands over against knowledge, there can be no interconnection between the two, and knowledge does not form part of reality. Hence, knowledge is no something, but is about something. The knower) does not take his knowledge seriously. The world of real ideas ceases to existfor him, and he is left only with ideas about the real; there is rity God, but WY' various ideas about God which he investigates; there is no good and evil, and so on.... A modern knower ' who places himself outside reality cannot be known,' since only reality can be the subject-matter of knowledge. He refuses to form part of reality and does not want his knowledge to be a living existential fact.".. Science and scientific foresight give man power and security, but they can also devastate his consciousness and sever him from reality. Indeed, it might be said that science is based upon the alienation of man from reality, and the reality he knows is external to him. Everything becomes an, object, i.e. foreign to man and opposed to him. The world of philosophic ideas ceases to be my world, and becomes an objective world standing over against me as something alien to me."

,

To this it might be added that the Marxian view of reality, as something entirely removed from and independent'of the human mind, is based on the method adopted by'the physical sciences in the investigation of material processes. These sciences conceive of reality as Something impersonal, matter-like which can be looked at from outside and from which the investigator can separate and isolate himself. But' there appears

1. The Destiny of Man.

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no reason why reality which comprehends human personality should be regarded as such. The mind and personality of man is also real, because it is part of the universal reality. Even a rank materialist will not deny that the personality of man has, at least, an equal claim, with matter, to be regarded as real. It follows, therefore, that reality which is all-pervading cannot be impersonal. It must needs be supra-personal, and our method of approach to it must be radically different from the scientific approach to impersonal matter. The methods of physical science, true in the world of impersonal, inanimate objects, cannot be applied to processes on a higher level which involve personal and supra-personal elements, and, therefore, defy all analytical methods of dissection, classification and piecemeal investigation. Our approach to reality should be a personal approach, although this approach too can yield only a partial knowledge of reality which is past the level of personality and is the highest form of being. Reality, as such, in its fullness, is unknowable, except to the extent of its own self-revelation.

-What is this personal method of approach to the understanding of reality? It is the method of living contact, of personal faith and co-operative endeavour. If you wish to understand a man, the proper way to do so is not to watch him from afar as an outside spectator fixing in a cold, indifferent manner your intellectual eyes on him, studying in isolation the various phases of his life and activity and then to form your estimate of him by piecing together the results of your observation. The scientific method of detached observation, of dissection, and of analysis cannot be successfully employed in the sphere of personality. It will not go far and, if persisted in, will give you .a wrong picture of the object of your study. Here one, must proceed by developing direct,• close and sympathetic contact with the personality which one would like to understand. It is only by partaking in, its activities, by sharing its life, its aims and methods, in short by a process of co-operative endeavour with it that one can truly understand it. But this presupposes an attitude, not of cold detachment

and intellectual indifference, but one of personal faith in and intellectual sympathy with the object of one's study. This personal methods of approach is the only possible way to the understanding of reality, for man is a part of reality and can never dissociate himself from it, just as he cannot dissociate himself from himself. He must share the life of reality, must follow its direction, not by a logical necessity, but by his free choice. To sum up, the correct attitude of life is the moral attitpde. The scientific attitude can work only in the realm of inanimate nature and cannot be extended to the level of personality except in so far as certain aspects of personality fall within the realm of nature. Now the moral attitude is just that personal attitude to which a reference has been made. It, insists on faith, not as opposed to reason but as something grounded in reason, and on personal co-operative action with the life and objects of reality, Physical sciences and social theories, like Marxism, based on the methods of physical sciences, exclude the element of personal faith and sympathetic action. Their attitude is a knowledge attitude which demands cool detachment and indifference to the purpose and direction of things. The moral and religious attiturde is, on the other hand, a practical attitude. It consists not merely in understanding things but in giving them a spiritual direction, in reshaping them to our higher purposes—the purposes of reality. For this, as I have shown above, personal faith is essential, faith that there as a reality which has a direction and an ideal tendency, that it is not indifferent to what we do, that it helps those who share its ideal objects and strive for their attainment in co-operation with it and ultimately destroys those who strive for other objects. Thus the Qur'an says:

"As for those who strive in Our (Cause), We will certainly guide them to Our Paths, for verily Allah is with those who do•right" (xxix. 6,9).

"And Allah is not unmindful of all that ye do" (iii. 99).

"If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you" (styli. 7).

1

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"For Allah is with those who restrain themselves, and those who do good!" (xvi. 128)

These verses dearly show that the Qur'anic conception of Reality is fundamentally different from the Marxian conception of it, as something foreign to us, standing over against us like a big mountain, solid, fixed, immovable, impassive and unreibonsive to human aspirations. The Queanic view of reality is that Of a movement, a flux in a particular direction, having an ideal tendency. This reality is not impersonal, that is'to say, it is not indifferent to man's personal aspirations. Neither is it non-moral, in the sense of being indifferent to moral good or evil. It invites our co-operation, offers us guidance and assures us of its response, provided we put our faith in it, strive for the realisation of the moral good by`following the direction of its movement and do not place ourselves athwart its ' designs. This presupPoses human freedom and rules out logical necessity, because if we were bound by necessity, we would not be free and could have neither the power nor the inclination to take the reverse direction and strive for morally unworthy objects. The choice rests entirely with inan whether he would respond to the call of reality, follow its direction, serve its purposes, or go the opposite way and place himself in a relation of antagonism to the flow of reality. He who spurns the proffered hand of co-operation denies his own true nature for, being part of reality, he Cannot rationally separate himself from it and follow the reverse direction. There is, of course, as I have alriady indicated, no compulsion, no logical'necessity involved in the matter. But all such as refuse to co-operate with the life-process, the universal creative activity, the ultimate reality, do so at their own peril, for, by going against the stream of life and the direction of the purposive life-movement, they involve themselves in self-contradiction and face spiritual decay, extinction and death.

The difference between the Marxian view of reality and the Islamic view, therefore, reduces itself to this: according to the former, reality is a blind force, unconscious of its own

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direction, driven by a relentless inner necessity to the creation of higher values, which are, however, much more transient and ephemeral than the lower values out of Which they arise. Thus, matter is more permanent, more abiding than the human mind which is, admittedly, a much higliet value than matter itself. The Islarilic conception of reality; on the other hand, is that of a living,Versonal—rather, supra-personal-- force, self-determined; piiiposive, highlyConscious of its directiOn and deeply interested in the moral development of its highest creation—the individual human personality—helping it, guiding it and leading it to perfection, provided the proferred help and guidance is accepted and the appropriate effort is put forth brmans,There is thus no external or inner necessity involved in the moral progress of humanity. In other words, this progress is not inevitable but absolutely a matter of free choice and reqpisite effort.

So far we have discussed the question whether reality is something objective in the sense that it stands apart from us, and independent of us. Now we shall take up the question whether the source of our knowledge is objective natural law, as asserted by the materialists, or properties of the human mind, as insisted upon by the idealists. The, plain answer to this question is that both are sources of our knowledge and neither of the two; taken alone, can complete the process of knowing. The idealist position has been thoroughly battered down in the philospphical writings, of Karl Marx and gngels, so we need not labpur the point further. But the materialist position is equally vulnerable. The external world of material objects, no doubt, furnishes the mind with stuff for thought, but is the mind which transforms the raw stuff into the finished product, which we call ideas. Nature can give us no more than bare, lifeless facts; it is the human mind that vitalises those facts into meaningful id6as. The mind of man is not a passive receptacle of impressioris from outside, not 'a mere ieflection of external events. It plays a vital active role in giving shape and Colour to outside impressions. The relation between the external world and the life of the mind is one of

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at one level reappears as mind at another. It is to this essential unity of the material and the spiritual worlds that the Qur'an has drawn pointed attention in the following verse:

"He is the First and the Last; the Evident and the Immanent" (lvii. 3)

God is not only the source of all creation, but also its final end; cause and effect, external environment and the inner 'World of human mind meet together in and derive their :separate existence from Him.

The question of the body-mind relation, the relation between the world of human spirit and the material objective world has given rise to a good deal of confusion in -philosophy. While idealist philosophers, like Berkeley, deny the reality of the external world, consistent materialists deny with equal force the independent reality of the human mind. Marxism, true to the materialistic'tradition, rejects the claim of the mind to govern the life of matter. Mind, in the Marxist philosophy, is secondary, being derived from' matter. It exists in subordination to matter, as a reflection of material processes. Matter, on the other hand, is primary, self-existent, eternal, uncreated, a sort of divinity creating and pervading all things. In his Thesis on Feuerbach, Engels defines the materialist position when describing how Feuerbach abandoned his Hegelian idealism and turned into a materialist. Thus he writes: '

"With irresistible force Feuerbach is, finally forced to the realisation that the Hegelian premundane existence of the 'absolute idea,' the `pre-existence of the logical categories' before the world existed, nothing more than the fantastic survival of the belief in the existence of an extra-mundane creator that the material sensuously perceptible world to which we ourselves belong is the only reality; and that our consciousness and thinking. however super-sensuous they• May seem, are the product of a material. bodily organ, the brain. Matter

MARXISM OR ISLAM

mutual interaction. Each one has its own contribution to make, so that when an idea, finally emerges from the mind, both the external world of material objects and the human mind can claim its parentage. As,in physiological functions the coroperation of external environment •and physical organism is required, similarly in the act of knowledge both the world of external material objects and the human mind, that is, man's consciousness and personality, are implicated. Discussing the nature of physiological function, Dewey has pointed out that:

"breathing is an affair of the air, as truly as of the lungs; digestion an affair of food as truly as of tissues of stomach; seeing involves light just as certainly as it is of the eye and the optic nerves; walking implicates the ground as well as the legs."

In a similar manner thinking involves the characteristics and properties of the individual and group brain, as well as the impressions received from the objective external world..

If the external world alone were the source of human knowledge, all persons of the same age and brought up under similar circumstances must always hold similar, if not identical, views about social, economic and religious matters. In fact, people of the same age, living under the same conditions of life, hold diametrically opposite views about social' and religiout questions. The same set of sense-impressions produces different and, sometimes, opposite reactions, on the minds of different people indicating that individual characteristic and personal qualities playa vital part in determining the outcome of the human brain-processes.

The truth of the matter is that both matter and mind, the external world and the inner life of the spirit, are parts of the same all-inclusive reality and the distinction drawn by Marxism between the human mind and the objective world is an artificial distinction which does not correspond to reality as such The same creative energy that manifests itself in matter

2. Human Nature and Conduct. 29

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is not a product of mind but mind itself is merely the highest product of matter." (Italics ours.)

It is clear from the above passage that Marxism regards matter as primary and mind as secondary or derivative by explaining all mental and spiritual phenomena in terms of material processes. But the entire Marxian thesis is built on certain presuppositions for which no adequate proof is forthcoming. In the first place, marxists cannot give a single instance of matter actually developing before our human eyes into the bodily organ, called brain, through any other process except that prescribed by nature. No individual in the whole history of human race has recorded the actual observation of a piece of matter transforming itself into the human mind. Thus sq, far as actual human observation is concerned, there is no ground for the Marxian claim that mind is the product of matter. Nor has any, scientific experiment been devised to demonstrate the passage of matter into mind. No scientist has yet succeeded; in transforming material processes into brain process. The laboratory for such experiments awaits for its existence the magic touch of the Marxian wand. In so far, therefore, as `actual human observation and laboratory experiment are concerned, Marxists have nothing on their side. We are left only with the alternative of indirect inference frnria the geological remains of an age when there was no human eye to observe natural processes and no human hand to record them in writing. And this is the sole ground for the claim advanced by the Marxists. Thus Leninsays:

"Natural science positively asserts that the earth once existed in a state in which no man or any other living creature existed or could have existed. Inasmuch as organic matter is a later oppearance, a result of a long evolution, it follows that there could have been no pet-eiving matter, no 'complexes of sensations,' no self which is 'inseparably' connected with the environment, as Avenarius would like to have it. Hence, matter is primary,, and mind,


consciousness, sensation are products of a very high developrnent."3

This quotation serves to show that the Marxists are prone to take as unquestionable truths all the conclusions of physical sciences. In the first place the assertion of natural science that the earth existed prior to man is unsupported by any positive proof. HOw can we ascertain whether the earth existed prior to man, when there was no human being to observe its existence? An observation presupposes the existence of an observer, but here we have an observation without the observer. Could anything be more illogical? Who observed the earth, before man appeared on it? It is just possible, as Bertrand Russell has pointed out, that the earth may have been created simultaneously with man, complete with all its fossils and rocks. There is no direct evidence to disprove this thesis. The, existence of the earth prior to man is, at best, an indirect inference from certain facts. But if indirect inference, as distinct from direct observation and experiment, can be'taken as a reliable source of knowledge, then the belief in the existence of a creator transcending the material physical universe and all its contents is equally grounded in reason and scientific knowledge. How can one who observes the inexhaus-tible creativity of nature, its purposefulness, its conscious selectiveness directed to the production of the higher from the lower, its preservation of that which is morally useful and destruction of that which is socially injurious fail to draw the inference that behind nature lurks an all-pervading self-conscious mind of whose incessant creative activity the processes of nature are but out-ward manifestations? If the prior existence of earth is to be believed, the prior existence of God can be much more justifiably believed. Both are indirect inferences from the observation of material facts and the tendencies apparent in them. Taking for granted that the earth existed prior to man, how does it establish the proposition that matter is primary and mind secondary, in the sense that mind is the product of matter? The mere existence of the earth and

S. Materialism and Empiro-Criticism.

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the material substances it contained could hardly suffice to create life on it, unless suitable conditions had been provided for the maintenance, preservation and growth of life. Natural science itself furnishes evidence of a preparatory period when the elements of nature worked in close harmony to bring about conditions suited to the appearance and growth of life. Before life appeared upon our planet there was a peculiar fitness of environment for it, which appears to be in the nature of a preparation. Among remarkable illustrations of this fitness, scientists mention the presence, upon the cooling surface of the earth, of the necessary proportions of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, and the peculiar character of their compounds; the great quantities of water and carbonic acid; the nearly constant temperature of the ocean; the ample rainfall; the unique expansion of water at the freezing point, preventing rivers and lakes from freezing solid in winter; the thermal qualities of water, together with its high specific heat moderating the summer and winter beat of the earth; and the latent heat and solvent power of water.

The incessant activity of nature and the perfect co-operation of elements to produce conditions favourable to the birth and continuation of life bear unmistakable traces of a design and purposiveness which completely knocks the bottom out of the materialist claim that life appeared as a chance-product of matter by the fortuitous combination of self-active atoms and molecules. The evidence in favotir of a conscious design and an all-pervading purposiveness in nature is so overwhelming that it can be explained in no other way except by supposing that nature is a will, consciousness, purposiveness and creativity which manifests itself in the production of higher and still higher values. However much you may try, you cannot avoid either of the two assumptions, if the processes of nature and the appearance therefrom of higher creations are to be satisfactorily explained. This first assumption leads you directly to God, the second is merely a cloaked way of affirming His existence while appearing to deny Him. There is no scientific method of ascertaining which of the above two


assumptions is more rational for science parts with you at the 'doorway of reality leaving you to seek your path into the inner recesses of the temple. Which of these two assumptions we are to adopt, will be determined ultimately by an act of faith; for , as I have already indicated, reason cannot go all the way with us. But even if we choose the latter way of explaining the life-process and its origin, and credit matter with a self-active nature endowed with a will and consciousness, we shall be already transforming our conception of matter into the conception of a being which is more akin to divinity than to matter, as we ordinarily understand it. Matter, invested with self-activity, consciousness and purposiveness, is lifted up to the level of mind and personality, nay, even higher, because these are really attributes of the mind. And then it becomes meaningless to speak of mind being the product of matter, because matter itself is proved to be a form of mind. The fact is that matter, life and mind are all intermediate categories; whether we look backwards to the first cause, to the very beginnings of existence as such or forwards to the ultimate destiny of things and the end of all life and existence, we are faced with a reality that transcends all categories and defies all explanation. Hence the Qur'an is justified in speaking of God as. the First and the Last, the Invtard and the. Outward and there is equal truth in the Qur'anic assertions:

"Whithersoever ye turn, is the Presence of God" (ii. 115).

If we take matter and the objective world of material objects as the sole reality and consider the mind and personality of man as secondary and derivative and, therefore, unreal or less real than matter and the external objective world, we are immediately faced with a contradiction which Marxism gives us no means to solve. How does it happen that the human mind, which is secondary and derivative in the Marxian theory, operates upon matter and shapes it to its own purpose? That which is real submits passively to, and allows itself to become an instrument of that which is unreal, derivative and secondary! That the human mind and personality is more effective than matter, no one will deny, for the material

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objects of the external world are our willing tools. We use them, shape them, and transform them as we like. And yet Marxists would have it that they, are real, eternal, indestructible, while we who rule over, them are unreal, transient and ephemeral,beings. It appears' that the full sense and implication of reality has not been investigated by Marxists. Because matter existed prior to man, they have assumed that it is more real and more enduring. But if priority in time is the only criterion of reality, then everything higher in the scale of being must be treated as less real than things lower. The Marxians forget that priority in time is not the true criterion of reality; it is, effectiveness, utility, potency and power that determine the level of reality. Although, man appeared later in time, he is altogether more real than matter, because he is more effective, more useful and more powerful. Who is more real, one may ask, the child or the man who has grown up to manhood? You cannot assert that my reality lay in my being a child and that I am unreal or less real now, as a grown-up man. The truth is that my being a child once does not, cast the slightest reflection on my reality, as a man. I am more real now, because I am more effective, more powerful and socially more useful. The mind and consciousness of man &rew out of matter; they were not created by matter, just as I grew up from a child, but the child did not make a man of me. It is wrong to say, therefore, that our mind and consciousness are products of matter. That the mental process is preceded by material processes is no reason for regarding the former as the prdrluet of the latter. Man's mind and his moral consciousness may have come into existence through the operation of material agencies, but that does not the least prove the contention that they were created by material agencies. And even if we suppose that the child makes the man, that matter creates intelligence and moral consciousness; that again does not disprove the reality of human intelligence and moral consciousness. Whatever the materialiSts may say, the fact remains that in point of effectiveness and, therefore, in the scale of reality, mind and personality occupy a much higher level, and we judge a thing to be real by its effectivenesS and utility. The


mind and personality of man, therefore, and all that inheres in them, moral consciousness, spiritual aspiration and the desire for reaching out to God, are more real, more enduring than matter and the material objects of the external world.

Islam does not deny the reality of matter and of the world of material objects. What it denies is the Marxian proposition that the material perceptual world is the sole reality and that human mind and consciousness are products of matter and, therefore, secondary and, M a sense, unreal. The Qur'an says:

"We made from water every living thing" (xxi. 30).

This puts in a nutshell the Islamic viewpoint. Man was created from matter, but not by matter. The creator was God, the eternal spiritual energy pervading the entire material universe.

According to the Marxian theory, reality exhausts itself in the material 'perceptual world, but the Islamic view of reality is that, although it comprehends within itself the material perceptual world, it is not exhausted in the material world. On the other hand, it transcends the physical world of matter and is capable of creating new worlds and fresh forms of life governed by non-physical laws. From these two divergent views of reality flow two entirely different conceptions of the destiny of individual human personality. In denying the possibility of any form of existence which is not governed by our present cosmic, physical laws, Marxism denies, in truth, the intrinsic worth of the individual, as I shall explain later. Islam not only admits the possibility of a fresh existence for man, but positively insists upon .belief in an after-life as one of the essential articles of its creed without whose acceptance no one can become a Muslim. In its repeated insistence, Islam really stresses the worth of individuality. If the development of individuality is an end in itself and not a means of social development, the existence of a future life becomes a logical necessity. On the assumption that individuality perishes with the physical death of the individual, the distinction between ill-developed and well-developed individuals becomes unnecessary, for those who have deve-

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loped on healthy lines share the same fate with those Whose development has been unhealthy. The virtuous, who stand for noble ideals, and the vicious, who pursue socially harmful ends, are lumped together and made to suffer a common destiny in physical death and extinction. On the Marxian theory, both Lenin and Rasputin, who worked with widely divergent and conflicting aims, ultimately meet with an identically similar treatment at the hands of the life-proceSs. It does not matter in the least if Lenin worked for social justice and the good of his fellowmen, while Rasputin intrigued and conspired to maintain an oppressive social system. In their ultimate destiny, they have nothing to envy. It is against this non-moral attitude that the Qur'an raises its voice:

"What! do those who seek after evil ways think that We shall, hold them equal with those who believe and do righteous deeds,- -that equal will be their life and their death? Ill is the judgment that they make" (xlv. 21).

The reason why Marxism ignores the question of the individual's ultimate destiny and limits it to the term of his early existence, which really amounts to a denial of the individual having any intrinsic value, apart from the society of which he is a member, is that the whole philosophy of Marxism is the philosophy of social development, in which the individual does not come in at all except as the passive instrument of impersonal social forces. Although it has nowhere' been expressly stated by Marx and Engels, the conclusion is implicit in their writings that, the individual exists for society and not society for the individual. The Marxists fix their gaze on social movements, relegating into the background the individuals without whom no society and, therefore, no social movement is conceivable. What is society after all, except a training-ground of moral behaviour for the individuals who constitute it. It possesses, no doubt, a secondary value in that it is the necessary medium for the moral development of individual human personality. This is the viewpoint of Islam which accords primacy to the


individual but at the same time recognises the importance of social organisation. The individual, according to Islam, is the end, but because his development can take place only in society, the latter is important as a means, but this importance should not be exaggerated so as to put in the shade the primacy held by the individual. Society provides the conditions necessary for the individual's choice of good and evil and his moral effort in the direction of his choice. This is because morality is a social phenomenon. If men were individually self-sufficient, no question of morality could have arisen, but because man cannot be without society and has to enter into some sort of relation with his fellow-beings, the necessity of observing the moral law impinges itself on his consciousness. But this does not mean that social life is an end in itself. It merely shows that these conditions furnish the test for the moral consciousness of man and provide opportunities to make good his claim to be a moral being by pursuing socially desirable ends and eschewing that which is socially injurious. Therefore, if the moral development of the human individual is the end and social development is only a means, the individual cannot suffer total extinction by physical death. Were he to suffer complete annihilation, his individuality, developed after, so much effort and struggle, would also perish and the whole process of his development would end in self-defeat, because it would have come to naught. It would really amount to nature's self-stultification. Having created the highest value—the individual human personality—and provided in social life the means, of its development, how can nature negate and extinguish that which it develops with so much care? Islam solves this contradiction by printing out that reality does not exhaust itself in the material perceptual world but is capable of creating a fresh system of life governed by laws which are different from our present cosmic laws. In this new system of life the individual will continue his existence to enjoy the fruits of suffer the consequences of his moral conduct in the present physical universe.

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4 MARXIST CONCEPTION OF NATURE

AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

Discussing the origin of thought and consciousness in man, Engels writes in Anii-Duhring:

"But if the further question is raised: What then are thought and consciousness, and whence they come, it becomes apparent that they are products of the human brain and that man himself is the product of Nature, which has been developed in and along with its environment.; whence it is self-evident that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of Nature, do not contradict the rest of Nature, but are in correspondence with it."

This is all very reasonable, but we have already seen in the previous chapter that Engels speaks of mind being the product of matter, and here we have the statement that man, with all his bodily organs, including the brain, is the product of nature. One is naturally tempted to enquire whether Marxism equates nature with matter and the material processes. Is nature identical with the lifeless matter, as we know it, and the processes through which it passes, or does it transcend them? The deeper we reflect and the more closely we observe the material processes, the more apparent it becomes that, although the force we call "nature" operates upon matter and makes it an instrument for the creation of higher products, it is itself in some sense distinct from matter and the material processes and does not exhaust itself in them. The relation of nature to matter appears to be much the same as that of the workman to his tool. Marxism attributes every

MARXIST CONCEPTION OF NATURE. AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

particular piece of the finished product to the lifeless tool and indignantly refuses to look beyond it to the workman that is to the intelligence, consciousness and will embodied in the

,product. It is this intelligence, will consciousness and purposiveness which we find reflected in what are called the laws of nature, and, when we speak of nature, we do not refer to matter as such or the material processes but to the laws which govern them We thus see that there is a deeper reality underlying and pervading matter and the processes through which it passes and that is the law which the material objects have to follow in their formation and development. But, the existence of what are called natural laws presupposes the existence of a regulative intelligence. If there were no regulating force and no purposive intelligence directing evolutionary process and the multitudinous changes taking place in organic an inorganic matter, the whole external universe would have presented the spectacle of a disorderly aggregate of things and objects without any origanisation and unity. The fact is that the whole scheme of material life would have been wrecked, but for the regulative intelligence operating behind physical changes and fitting them in a unified whole. When a person admits, therefore, that nature follows ascertainable laws; he admits by implication, However much he may repudiate it by his logic, the existence of a conscious purposive intelligence. The only question remains whether this intelligence is inherent in matter itself and has no further existence apart from it or it is in some sense independent of matter. Marxism denies that there is any will or purposive intelligence above and beyond matter. Thus we come across the statements in Historical Materialism that:

"the entire nature world is governed by law, and absolutely excludes the intervention of action from outside,"

and again,

"but nowadays in our evolutionary conception of the universe, there is absolutely no room for either a creator or ruler; and to talk of a supreme being shut

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out from the whole existing world implies a contradiction in terms."

Marxism thus admits the existence of a purposive regulating intelligence, for, what is law except the manifestation of this intelligence, will and purposiveness. Only it denies their existence outside the material universe. The two passages quoted above lead us to the conclusion that Marxism is opposed not so much to the doctrine of God as to the Conception of God as an outside creator. But this conception of God is a characteristic only of the more primitive religious thought. The higher religions have superseded it by the doctrine of Divine immanence, according to which the Divine essence is immanent in all material objects and living beings. Thus the Qur'an says:

"Withersoever you turn there is the presence of God" (ii. 115)

This plainly means that the spirit of God is, eternally moving in every object, animate and in-animate. The objection of Marxism to the idea of an outside creator, therefore, loses force, if we conceive of the Divine every as animating every particle of matter and causing all organic and inorganic changes. Moreover, ideas of "outside" and "inside," "far" and "near" can apply only to, material bodies which occupy space, but what meaning can such terms have in relation to the absolute being which encompasses the whole material universe, which is above space and time and is pure will, intelligence and consciousness? The categories of space and time belong only to the world of relative beings,- to the multiplicity of objects in the universe, but the absolute unity which is all-inclusive is clearly non-spatial and timeless. Therefore, its creative activity cannot be likened to that of a human creator standing outside the object of his creation. We may agree with Marxism that the entire natural world is governed by a superior will and regulative intelligence and absolutely excludes that there is any such thing as an impersonal law in nature without a will, purpose and direction. A law without an act of will and consciousness

MARXIST CONCEPTION OF NATURE AND THE LAWS OF NATURE

behind it can hardly deserve to be called by the name of law. The conception of law includes within it the idea of the mind whose will and intelligence it embodies. And since the attributes of will, intelligence and consciousness can be predicated only of a personal being, it follows that the laws of nature which embody these attributes are derived ultimately from a force which is by no means impersonal but possesses in the highest degree all that is implied in the term "personality".

The doctrine of Divine immanence, however, should not be understood to mean that the Divine essence is exhausted in its particular manifestations, i.e.. in the objects living and non-living, of the material universe. While the entire material world is pervaded by the personal or rather supra-personal force which we call God, that force at the same time retains a distinct entity of its own, apart from the particular objects in which it manifests itself. God is immanent in the physical universe, but, at the same time, transcends it, which however, does not mean that He exists outside the world of mattes), for, as already stated, the concepts of space and time from which the idea of distance is derived cannot apply to the all-inclusive unity. Such categories have meaning only in relation to multiplicity, not to unity.

It is this doctrine of transcendence that comes in for criticism when Marxism denies the existence of an outside creator. For Marxism claims that whatever reality there may be, if there is any reality at all it is exhausted in the multiplicity of material objects and has no existence apart from them. This is what it means when it attacks the conception of a Divine Creator. And yet, strange as it may appear, in its explanation of historical accidents, Marxism involuntarily admits the existence of a transcendent will, distinct from the will of individuals and groups. Thus referring to the apparent reign of accident in nature and history, Engels remarks: ....

"In one point, however, the history of developnient of society proves to be essentially different from that of nature. In nature—in so far as

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The above passage is a typical instance of how Materialism thinkers deliberately close their eyes against clear signs and convincing proofs pointing to the existence of an all-pervading intelligence, will and consciousness in nature—the existence, in other words, of the Divine being—and seek refuge in such vague and undefined expressions as the "inner general laws of history" or the "will of history," explaining one unknown by another unknown. If we exclude the element of accident from the domain of history and at the same time recognise the ineffectiveness of the individual and collective will of human beings, it follows-logically that the course of history is governed by the greater will or consciousness which over-shadows the will of individuals and groups. We thus find that Engels admits, in effect, though he does not say it in so many words, both the immanence and the transcendence of a superior will which manifests itself in the will of individuals and nations and yet rises above their conflicting wills and is distinct from them. Therefore, this will, whether you call it the will of history or the will of God, is, in a sense, outside the material universe, a position which, as we have seen, Marxism vehemently attacks, for it leads directly to the idea of an outside Creator. But we have made it quite clear that the doctrine of Divine transcendence is totally different from that of an outside Creatoi\ because, although the Divine existence is distinct from the existence of the material universe, God is immanent in the entire world of matter, just as the "will of history," or, to be more scientific and intellectually honest, the will of God, is immanent in the wills of individuals and groups and yet distinct from them, but not outside of them. It is to this apparent contradiction that the Qur'an refers when it says:

"But ye shall not will except as God wills" (1xxxl. 29)."

This does not mean that the will of each individual or group is identical with the. Divine will, but that the superior will of God asserts itself through the several conflicting wills of individuals and groups.

MARXISM OR ISLAM

we ignore man's reaction upon nature—there are only blind unconscious agencies acting upon one another and out of whose interplay the general law comes into operation. Nothing of all that happens—whether in the innumerable apparent accidents observable upon the surface of things or in the ultimate results which confirm the regularity underlying these accidents—is attained as a consciously desired aim. In the history of society, on the other hand, the actors are all endowed with deliberation or passion, working towards definite goals; nothing happens without a conscious purpose, without an intended aim. But this distinction, important as it is for historical investigation particularly of single epochs and events, cannot alter the fact that the course of history is governed by inner general laws. For here, also? on the whole, in spite of the consciously desired aims of all individuals, accident apparently reigns on the surface. That which is willed happens but , rarely, in the majority of instances the numerous desired ends cross and conflict with one another, or, these ends themselves are from the outset incapable of realisation or the means of attaining them are insufficient. Thus the conflict of innumerable individual wills and individual actions in the domain of history produces a state of affairs entirely analogous to that in the realm of unconscious nature. The ends of the actions are intended, but the results which actually follow from these actions are not intended; they ultimately have consequences quite other than those intended. Historical events thus appear on the whole to be like-wise governed by chance. But where on the surface accident holds sway, there actually it is always governed by inner hidden laws and it is only a matter of discovering these laws."

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Two further remarks must be made about the passage quoted above. Engels sees only blind unconscious agencies at work in nature and says that the general law comes into operation out of the interplay of these blind and unconscious agencies. This attempt to explain the phenomenon of consciousness in nature (which is what every rational mind would understand by the term law) by reference to unconscious and blind agencies does not seem to succeed very well, because law, by a logical necessity, must be assumed to have an existence prior to its particular manifestations in nature in the form of blind and unconscious agencies. This is actually what Engels has to admit in the last sentence of the passage quoted above. He says that, although accident appears to reign on the surface, actually its course is always governed by inner hidden laws. There is absolutely no reason why this should not apply in an equal measure to the course of events in nature. In nature also, with all its apparent accidents, there is a deep underlying law governing the course of events. Now, this primacy of law to its particular manifestations in nature and in history—a fact which is fully and unreservedly admitted by Engels—establishes beyond doubt the conclusion that even more primary than matter is the law which governs it. The law precedes particular events both in the world of matter and in the realm of human history (and let us remember that according to the latest scientific discoveries matter itself is nothing but an event in time). But if we accept the primacy of law to everything else in the material as well as the human world, we are admitting the primacy of will, intelligence and consciousness. Before there was life or matter, there must have been the law to direct its course, or, in other words, there must have been that of which law is an expression, i.e. intelligence, will and consciousness. The, inner hidden laws of history and the natural laws of the universe, therefore, ultimately lead us—whether we will or not—to the existence of God, and having gone so far and admitted the primacy and ultimacy of law, if Marx and Engels turn back from God and deliberately close their eyes against Him, we can only throw back the charge of Engels against himself and those of his own

44


way of thinking that they surreptitiously acknowledge God, while appearing to deny Him. I would go further and say that they ,are guilty of a grave intellectual and moral dishonesty. The primacy of law and, therefore, of will and intelligence in nature, has also been unconsciously admitted by Engels in the following passage of Anti-Duhring:

"The principles are not the starting point of the investigation, but its final result, they are not applied to nature and human history but abstracted-from them; it is not nature and the realm of humanity which conform to these principles, but the principles are only valid as they are in conformity with nature and history. That is the only materialistic conception of the matter...."

In simple language this means that principles are discovered, not invented,: by the human mind. They are already at work in nature and history, whether we recognise their existence or remain ignorant of them, We, have thus to assume the prior existence of principles to which nature and human history conform. It is not true to say that nature and history do not conform to principles. On the other hand, it is precisely because natural and historical events follow a regular` egular Course, that principles can be derived therefrom The phenomena of regularity, of recurrence and repetition, under certain conditions, furnish the basis of predictability both in nature and human history and give us general laws for guidance. We derive these laws from nature and history and apply them again to the further behaviour of men and things. In other words, principles are derived from the past incidents and applied to the future behaviour of human beings and material objects. They connect the past to the future. If every incident in nature and history were unique, there could be no basis for scientific predictability. This leads us to two, conclusions. Firstly, that there is an underlying permanence, a sort of immutability in nature and history, amidst the vast welter of external changes, a position which Marxism vehemently repudiates, as we shall see later. Secondly, nature

45


and history do not follow a blind, unregulated course, but are guided at every step by a conscious intelligence which manifests =itself in the form of governing principles. These principles and the intelligence and conscious will which they embody have a -prior existence. In other words, they are eternal and primal. We are thus again face to face with 'God, however much we may avoid Him.

Pursuing his argument further in regard to the nature of principles, Engels says:

"If we deduce the world schematism not from our minds, but only through our minds from the real world, deducing the basic principles of being from what is, we need no philosophy from this purpose, but positive knowledge of the world and of what happens in it; and what this yields is also not philosophy, but positive science. -

The above argument in support of the sufficiency of science and of the positive knowledge of the word is open to serious criticism. All that the study of nature and of human history—the physical sciences and historical knowledge—yields us is a Mass of bare facts which furnish no guidance as to the true Objectives of social conduct What happens in nature and history throws absolutely light what ought to happen. Physical sciences and the knowledge of social and political movements show lid things as they are, but they hardly give us any clue to things as they ought to be That is because historical and natural facts possess no meaning in themselves unless the human mind invests them with meaning. If knowledge of objective facts were sufficient to decide social issues, there would be absolute unanimity of views in all parts of the world in regard to the ethics of social conduct. Such unanimity on social questions is, however, farther from realisation in the present age of advanced scientific knowledge as it was during the pre-scientific age. And the reason is obvious. Different men and groups of men read different meanings into the same mass of facts, because they think not merely with their heads but with their hearts.

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The direction of human will is a determining factor in the deduction of conclusions from the data furnished by science and history. That is because social morality consists in changing facts according to man's view of what ought to be and not in accepting things as they are or as they have been. In other words, the moral "ought" stares us in the face even when we have learned all the relevant facts from scientists and historians, and it is the moral "ought" that governs social questions and determines their issues. Science and history, therefore, both fail us in the realm of moral and social values. To cite a few examples: What does the principle of natural selection teach us? We find that nature pitilessly eliminates and destroys the weaker species in the struggle for existence. Does it follow'from this that we ought to let the weaker parts of humanity go to wall? Social morality teaches us the opposite lesson that we ought to help and preserve the weak from destruction. But this moral "ought" has not been deduced from nature or history. It is the demand of our moral consciousness. Hence we come to the'conclusion that positive science is of no help to us on the moral plane, because the laws of morality are not wholly deducible from the laws of nature or history. Similarly, We learn from history that by dint of incessant propaganda whole nations can be drugged with false doctrines and made k serve and toil for unworthy causes. Does this mean that the peoples of the world ought to be so humbugged? However much one may study the phenomena of nature and the events of human history, one cannot arrive, merely by such observation and study, at the true principles of social morality.

Another difficulty also arises if we follow that the laws of nature as a sufficient guide and ignore the laws of morality which in some cases supersede natural laws. If all our principles are deduced from what happens in nature and history, then it follows that all the natural and social phenomena are equally justifiable from the moral viewpoint and there is no distinction between right and wrong. 'Both Capitalist exploitation and the Communist hatred of it stand,

47

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on this principle, in- the same category. Because both are products of natural circumstances, there is nothing to choose between them. It is because of this line of reasoning that, the appeal of Communism is not to the moral justice of its cause but to the physical force behind it. Communist revolutionary activity is justified, not because it is morally good, but because it is backed by the physical force of the most numerous class. As we have already seen, the laws of nature and of history are an insufficient guide where moral and social issues are involved, unless they are supplemented by the laws of morality. The moral consciousness of man being itself a product of natures is not antagonistic to nature and its laws, but it definitely occupies a higher level and;possesses a greater validity than the laws derived from external nature. We may even go so far as to assert that moral laws are but another form of natural laws issuing at a higher level and providing correctives to the guidance furnished by natural laws. Therefore, the Marxian thesis that the laws derived from nature and history possess exclusive validity, while what are called moral laws, which embody the moral consciousness of humanity, are merely by-products of the material environment, seems to err on the side of over-emphasis on one aspect of the matter. The Islamic viewpoint takes in both sets of laws, moral and natural, laws derived from, external nature and history as well as the laws delivered by the moral conscience of mankind. The two sets of laws conjointly work together, the, moral laws supplementing those derived from nature and history and modifying their effects. Islam does not deny validity of natural laws; only it repudiates their exclusive title to the guidance of mankind. Thus the Islamic ideology and ethical practice rest on this double system of laws which are one in point of fact. We quote a few illustrations. In the economic sphere, Islam recognises the law of nature that a community cannot remain healthy and vigorous in which the mass of people are poverty-stricken and in which there are great in-equalities of wealth and fortune. Therefore, Islam prescribes Zakat (poor-tax) and abolishes interest. In the social sphere, the law of nature is that a

ARXIST CONCEPTION OF NATURE AND' THE LAWS OF NATURE

Community cannot maintain its bodily health and intellectual vigour if it falls a victim to sexual immorality. Therefore, Islam forbids adultery, prescribes marriage and permits polygamy, if certain conditions are fulfilled. For the same reason it prohibits drinking because the habit of drinking ultimately involves those addicted to it in sexual immorality. In the international sphere, the experience of mankind teaches Us that a world divided by racial, tribal and national loyalties can prosper neither materially nor spiritually. Therefore, Islam recognises no distinction of race, <nationality and tribe and builds its social fabric on a universal basis which cuts across national and racial loyalties. In the external sphere, we find that a community which adopts a contemplative attitude towards life in contrast with the active, and develops too great inwardness of thought, neglecting the outer world and the practical necessities of life, succumbs sooner or later to more active communities. Therefore, Islam forbids monasticism and prescribes Jehad which covers the conquest of nature, control of external forces and a struggle against the evils of social environment. In the sphere of inner, life, it is an inevitable social law that if a community becomes too much engrossed with the ;outer world and devotes itself exclusively to the control of external forces forgetting, the necessity of self-control and the need of self-conquest, it soon creates social conflicts within itself. Therefore, Islam enjoins prayer and fasting, teaches fear of God and inculcates belief in the after-life for the purpose of moral self-control.

In discussing the activities of nature and the conception of natural law, the most important question that calls for consideration is whether nature is a moral or a non-moral force. It is not sufficient to say that nature does this and nature does that without defining what we mean by nature. Is nature a blind, unconscious force, whose creative activity is unenlightened by conscious ends or is it a purposive and intelligent power fully interested in the objects of its creation? What does nature aim at7 Does it senselessly create individual human being to no purpose except to serve a brief

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term of existence and then to pass away into nothingness? Does it provide human beings with means of sustenance that they may only preserve their physical life? Is the incessant activity of nature directed merely to the sustenance of the physical, life of human beings or does nature have in, view the moral education of individual human beings and the sustenance of physical life is merely a means to that end? Unless we have, some sort of answer to these fundamental questions, all our assertions in respect of nature and its laws must remain meaningless and we shall be taking certain things for granted without enquiring into the reasons thereof.

It is true that the activity of nature, in so far as it manifests itself at the non-hurnan level, that is; in the realm of inanimate objects and the animal kingdom, is patently non-moral aiming only at the physical sustenance of the species, their growth and development, and is calculated merely to ensure the survival of the physically stronger without the least consideration-as to how that strength will be utilised by the Surviving species and irrespective of any good other than the physical well-being of its living creations, which appears at this level to be an end in itself. Below the human level, there is no question of competing ends' objects desirable and undesirable, and of choice between them, a feature which marks the life of rational and moral beings. The animate objects have no alternative ends set before them to be able to exercise their choice. Their ends are already predetermined for them and involuntarily each species follows the law of its being by a inner compulsion. Freedom and morality, which is the product of freedom, do not exist in any sense for the animal species. Brute, strength and physical fitness is the sole criterion of fitness for survival. The stronger preys upon the weaker by a sort of necessity and nature itself permits the unmitigated exercise of brute strength without providing any deterrent to check the warfare of the stronger against the weaker. It appears that physical strength, mechanical efficiency and power-for its own sake are upheld by nature as the sole objectives of animal existence. However, as soon as

MARXIST CONCEPTION_ OF NATURE AND; THE LAWS OF NATURE

we enter the realm of humanity, we find that nature changes her methods and requires from its human creations, as the necessary condition of their survival, something more than physical fitness and intellectual strength, namely, the capacity and willingness to give the physically and intellectually weaker part of humanity more than what is strictly due to it, judged by its physical and mental •efficiency. Social morality emerges as a further test of fitness for survival, besides physical and intellectual health. The two latter factors are not superseded by this new factor; it is superadded to them. Justice and kindness, love and pity, regard for the rights of the weak and charity for one's fellow-men, moral qualities which have no existence on the sub-human level, are called forth as additional factors necessary for the survival of human groups. As between two groups of human beings, equal in other respects, that group is bound. to lead a more effective and lasting existence which displays more of these moral qualities in relation to its members. The moral consciousness of human beings revolts against a too rigid application of the principle of, natural selection at work in nature which demands that the physically and mentally weaker members of the community should be pitilessly eliminated, in the interests of group strength and neither mercy not grace should be shown to those who prove unfit, either mentally or physically. On the other hand, social morality consists just in this that the strong, whether in poimt of physique or intellect, should not be allowed to prey upon the weak and to deprive them of•their rights. It may be, contended that while it is true of the behaviour of individual within a group that they act morally in relation to each other and modify the operation of the law of nature which shows no mercy to the physically unfit, yet in the struggle between the diverse groups of human beings, natural selection operates unchecked and without any qualification in the sense that the fitter and more powerful groups always prevail over and hold in subjection the weaker groups of humanity. To this it may be replied that the law of natural selection suffers modification even in this sphere in that, of any two dominant and powerful groups the power and

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domination of that group is always more enduring which is kinder and juster towards those whom it holds in subjection and less prone to exact the full advantage of its position as ruler and master The history of mankind is replete with instances -of nations who, by every test of physical and intellectual fitness were marked out as rulers and conquerors but failed either to subdue the weaker nations around them or, having subdued them, were unable to , maintain their hold, because they had to face the rivalry, of equally powerful nations who had this further advantage on their side that they were morally superior, being just and more humane in their treatment of the conquered. Whether we take single groups of human beings in isolation or look at them in their struggle against each other, we find 'that no mere physical fitness and intellectual vigour but also moral superiority determine their chances <of survival and progress. On the human= plane, therefore, nature seems more concerned with the moral development of its creatures and the sustenance of physical life becomes for it merely a means to that end. In thefealm of humanity, nature sets alternative ends before individuals and groups'and requires them to choose those which are nobler and more beneficial to humanity at large. If their choke is wrong, nature's punishment is not long in coming. Thus freedom of moral action comes into being at the human level and this freedom involves for" Mankind a test of their intellectual perception as well as of moral effort in the direction of what is good and desirable. There is no such freedom, as already shown above,'in the animal kingdom for the ends of animal creation are already predetermined for it. Preservation, growth and development of physical life is the all-absorbing concern of nature at this level and no question arises as to how and'for what purposes, whether good or evil, the physical powers thus built up will be used by the animal species. With human beings, however, the matter is different. Here, the development of physical strength and intellectual vigour is not an end in itself. How, in what way and for what purposes that strength'and vigour is to be Utilised becomes an additional consideration. Ends and the means employed to


attain them appear as new and decisive factors. Man is required not merely to develop power but also to use it for the good of his fellow-men, that is, for rational and moral purposes. Strength with justice and power with virtue is the ideal which nature has set before the human species and deviation from that ideal inevitably meet with punishment at the hands of nature in the loss of power and strength by the erring group.

Therefore we are led to the conclusion that nature is a highly moral force, intelligent, conscious and purposive, a power working for goodness and virtue. And conformity with nature, on which Marxism lays stress and which is the sole means of success and well being, is not merely conformity with the laws of external world and laws which govern .the bodily and mental life of mart; but it is primarily, as far as human beings are concerned, a matter of perceiving the moral law as it manifests itself in the history of mankind and of shaping our individual and social conduct accordingly. Both our intellectual and moral faculties are, involved in the task. Happily; so far as the task of perception, that is, of the exercise of the intellectual faculty, is concerned, nature has taken upon itself to help us and guide us in the matter by creating individuals from amongst ourselves who were gifted with extraordinary moral insight and spiritual perception and specially fitted with all the, moral and intellectual faculties necessary for the guidance of mankind. They were the great religious prophets of humanity. So far the way has been eased for us. It is now more an effort of the will, than of intellect, that is required from us to ensure conformity with the laws of nature.

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MARXIST THEORY OF MORALITY According to Karl Marx:

"the mode of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life-processes in general."

From this it follows that human morality too is determined by the mode of production. In other words, human beings have no choice in matters of morality, because their moral ideas and, ethical standards . are given them ready-made. This interpretation of Marx's ideas about morality is confirmed by Engels in Anti-Duhring when he says:

"We maintain on the contrary that all former moral theories are the products, in the last analysis, of the economic stage which society had reached at that particular epoch. And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality was always a class morality; it has either justified the domination and interests of the ruling class, ar, as soon as the oppressed class has become powerful enough, it has represented the revolt against this domination and-the future interests of the oppressed."

If moral standards are products of the economic system, as Marx and Engels assert, it is obvious that individuals and groups have no choice in respect of them. Every individual and group must, of necessity, conform to the moral code emerging from the existing economic system. The question is whether we can blame any individual, group or class for its moral conduct, if it is not free to accept or discard the standards set for it. And where there is no freedom, there can be no morality, for moral conduct applies just to those types of action in respect of which man enjoys freedom of choice.

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An action which proceeds from external necessity, under the compulsion of outward circumstances, has no sort of morality about it. We praise a man for his good acts, just because we feet that, had he willed, he could as well have chosen the opposite course. If we felt that the action proceeded from him by the necessity of a particular situation, that would instantly destroy our admiration of him. Similarly, we blame a person and condemn him for wrong conduct, precisely because we realise that the right course was open to him, but he deliberately chose the wrong one. If we felt that the wrong conduct was the result of circumstances beyond his control, we would not be moved to condemn and revile him. Thus morality presupposes freedom, ability to choose, select, accept or repudiate. Therefore when Marxism claims that our moral notions and ethical standards are the necessary product of the particular economic system in which we live, it asserts something which, if it were true, would leave no room for praise or blame in respect of any sort of conduct. On this theory all human acts, goad and evil, stand on a par. The cruelty and rapacity of the capitalist have nothing reprehensible about them and scarcely deserve a word of condemnation, because they are the necessary product of the economic system, and the capitalist class has no choice in the matter. The communist activity to change tbe existing order and the capitalist efforts to preserve if are equally justified, on this basis. And yet the communists inveigh so loudly against the innocent capitalists, condemn them for all social evils and spare them neither abuse nor insult, knowing full well that their morality is the inevitable product of capitalism, and the individual capitalist as well as the class, as a whole, has no choice in the matter. One can only express one's surprise at this inconsistency of logic.

From the theory propounded by Marx about the derivative nature of morality, it logically follows that the morality of every succeeding epoch is necessarily higher than that of the age preceding it, because we learn from Marx that the economic system existing at any particular epoch of

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history is always replaced by a higher system as soon as the new productive forces generated within it have successfully otherthrown it. Since the new economic order emerging from the old is altogether more progressive and embodies a greater measure of social justice, on the Marxist theory, it is obvious that it must bring with it a higher type of morality. These conclusions are supported by the passage we have just quoted from Anti-Duhring which states:

"And as society has hitherto moved in class antagonisms, morality was always a class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class or, as soon as the oppressed class has beome powerful enough; it has repre-sehted the revolt against this domination, and the future interests of the oppressed. That in this process there has on the whole been progress in morality, as in all other branches of human knowledge, cannot be doubted. But we have not yet passed beyond class morals. A really human morality which transcends class antagonisms ind their legacies in thought becomes possible only at a stage of society which has not only overcome class contradictions but has' even forgotten them in practical life" (Italics ours)

From this passage we learn two things about the Marxist view of morality. Firstly, that it is a branch of human knowledge, secondly, that as human knowledge necessarily rises and expands in every fresh epoch, so that the level of knowledge at a particular stage of history is inevitably higher than that of the preceding stage. Similarly, human morality records continuous progress rising higher and higher with the march of history. In other words, Marx believes, along with the bourgeois intellectuals, in the inevitability of human progress. Now this characterisation of morality as a branch of knowledge betrays a lack of understanding as to the true nature of morality. There is a world of difference between the moral consciousness of man and his intellectual consciousness. Morality is not a matter of knowledge only, and moral


progress does not always run parallel with intellectual progress. Morality is an affair of will, of self-regulation in obedience to the demands of a higher law. Knowledge once acquired becomes a permanent possession of the individual concerned and of the group to which he belongs. There is no possibility of, a relapse or fall to the lower level when a particular stage of knowledge has been reached. Each subsequent age builds on the foundation already laid by its predecessors and adds something to it. The structure goes on thing ever higher. Not so with morality. The moral level reached by a community may be lost by its successors. As against civilisation which includes science, industry, economics and all other externals of life and which can only increase and expand with every succeeding epoch of history, culture and morality have to be won afresh by every generation, for morality involves self-discipline, control, of desires and regulation of the will in pursuit of some high ideal. This demands ever fresh efforts on the part of individuals and groups. In this realm there is no lasting success, no permanent progress, and the moral level reached by an individual or a group ,by persistent efforts of the will may be,altogether lost, if there is the slightest slackening of the effort and the smallest compromise with the demands of unregulated desire. Human morality, whether of the individual or of the group, may, at any time, record a relapse or a retrogression entailing the total loss of whatever has been achieved in the past. There is no such danger in the realm of knowledge, where failure of the effort may at the worst stop further progress but will in no case involve the loss of the existing level. Hence there is no inevitability about moral progress, in contrast with the scientific and industrial progress, which is continuous, unbroken and admits of no retrogression. The only misfortune that may befall it is a condition of stagnation.

The verdict of history is also against the Marxian theory of the inevitability of moral progress according to which every advance in the economic, scientific and industrial field is necessarily accompanied by, a corresponding advance in

•

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morality. The morality of the Romans under the Republic was definitely higher than under the Roman Empire, specially in its later phase. There was a greater measure of equality and mutual understanding among the various classes of people in Republican Rome. The social system similarly embodied a greater measure of economic justice in the Republic, and inequality as between the various classes was far less marked than under the Empire, and yet no one can dispute the great advance made by Rome since the days of Republic in the externals of civilisation, in industry, administration, 'political organisation and in the greatly extended means of communication. And as we proceed further down the stream of history and come to the barbarian invasion of Rome and the separation of the Eastern Empire under Constantine; we find a progressive decline in morality of every kind. There was greater cruelty, more despotism, less unity and mutual understanding among the people in this period than at the time when Roman civilsation was less advanced. Writing of this period of the Roman Empire, a historian says:

"It is manifest that to the bulk of its inhabitants the Roman Empire did not seem to be a thing worth fighting for. To the slaves and common people the barbarian probably seemed to promise more freedom and less indignity than the pompous rule' Of the imperial official and grinding employment by the rich. The looting and burning of palaces and an occasional massacre did not shock the folk of the Roman underworld as it shocked the wealthy and cultured people to whom we owe such accounts is we have of the breaking down of the imperial system. Great numbers of slaves and common people probably joined the barbarians, who knew little of racial or patriotic prejudices, and were open-handed to any promising recruit."

We will only remark here that such defection from the national cause would have been unthinkable to any Roman, whether patrician or plebian, under the Roman Republic.


The same phenomenon is observable in the history of Muslim civilisation. The early Muslims under the spiritual leadership of the Prophet of Islam and the first four orthodox Caliphs were a pattern of moral excellence,such as the world has not seen since then.Their social system was built on the foundation of human equality and brotherhood. Their economic fabric rested on a similar basis of equality. Whether we see them in their mutual relations with each other, in their treatment of their slaves or in their conduct towards the conquered people, we are forced to admit their overwhelming moral superiority over the Muslims of the later period, although in the intellectual and scientific field they •had nothing to show as compared with their successors of the Abbasid period. As the Arab civilisation progressed, however, though there was greater knowledge and a vast intellectual advance, there was less virtue, less justice, and lesser equality. The Muslims of the later Abbasid period, which was an epoch of intellectual efflorescence, were already deep in the morass of vice and immorality and fast on the road to decline.

Innumerable other instances could be given from history to show that morality far from progressing with the advance of knowledge: and civilisation actually tends to fall in level. And the reason is obvious. As MacIver says:

"Civilisation is cumulative. The new model betters the old, and renders it obsolete. The achievement perpetuates itself, and is the basis of further achievement. Civilisation is rightly described as a `marchjor each step leads to another forward step. Great historical catastrophes can interrupt this accumulation, but nothing seems to break it altogether. It is a poor age indeed that does not add some stone to this rising edifice of civilisation. But culture is not cumulative. It has to be won afresh by each generation. It is not a simple inheritance like civilisation. It is true that here too past attainment is the basis of present achievement,

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but there is no surety, that the present will equal, still less that it will improve on, the past."

failure to distinguish between civilisation and culture, which is based on morality, that is responsible for the Marxist thesis that each economic system, since it represents an advance on the preceding social order, brings with it a higher type of morality.. As we have seen, economic and industrial progress has little to do with the advance of morality. In most cases the progress of morality is inversely proportional to the progress in scientific knowledge and economic organisation. Given the same economic order of society and the same mode of production, morality may, either advance or decline. The progress in the external organisation of society, including the economic system, is not always reflected in the moral level of society. A higher economic system may coexist with greater immorality. The economic organisation of the Roman Empire and the Abbasid Arabs was surely much superior _to that which existed respectively in the days of the Roman Republic and in the period of early Islam and yet moral standards had visibly fallen in both.

The difficulty with Marxism is that it looks for morality only in the economic field and wholly identifies it with the measure of social justice- embodied in the economic system. Thus, if a particular social system carried with it a lesser measure of economic justice than that which followed it, Marxists assume that the people living under the former or, at least, the class, whose domination it represented, had a lower morality than the people who lived under the more developed system which came later. For example, Marxists point out that morality in the slave-owning society was, definitely, lower than in the feudal society, and the feudal society had a lower level of morality than the capitalist society. Here again Marxism falls in the error of looking for morality in matters with respect to which individuals and peoples have no freedom of choice and over which they have hardly any sort of control. An economic system cannot be made and, unmade according to the wishes of men. Marx himself says:

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"No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed, and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself."

What does this mean except that individuals and peoples are powerless to change an established economic , system, unless the appropriate conditions have made their appearance necessitating a change, and if men and women have no choice in the matter, if they are powerless to make a move in the direction of change without the existence of necessary conditions, how do they deserve praise or blame and how does the question of their moral standards come in, in the absence of all freedom of choice? People who lived in the slave-owning society could not, even if they had wished, without the necessary technological conditions being present, change their economic system so as to bring it on a level with the feudal system. Similarly, without the new productive forces which heralded the birth of capitalism, could the feudal landlords introduce the more developed capitalist system amidst them, even if they had tried; or could they follow the moral standards appropriate to the conditions of capitalism? Such being their powerlessness, how can a lower morality be attributed to them than the morality of those who came later in the respective epochs of feudalism and capitalism? One might as well put forth the claim that we, modern's, are better off in morals, because we ride in motor cars and the ancients had a lower morality, because they used bullock carts.

It is obvious that moral standards cannot be applied to things the shape of which is determined by scientific and technical advance but only to those which can be changed and modified by the will of men and in respect of which they can exercise freedom of choice. No question of morals can arise in regard to economic system, if their form and level and the measure of social justice embodied in them are determined by the technical progress of society. It is, therefore, illogical to

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claim that a higher economic system, because its economic benefits reach a larger number of people, necessarily represents an advance in human morality, since those benefits result from the technical progress made by the society and not from a greater sense of justice among the people.

Of course, the Marxists may reply to this by pointing out that as soon as new productive forces make their appearance in an economic system and come into conflict with the existing conditions of production, it becomes apparent to all but the most blind that the existing social order has become oppressive and the relations between the various classes stand in need of readjustment. As such times it becomes the obvious moral duty of the people to change the existing social system and those who still lend their support to the forces struggling for its maintenance are obviously contravening the basic law of morality and occupy a definitely lower level of morality, it being in their power to effect a change in society. This is quite true, but the difficulty is that Marxism gives us no clue to determine at what precise moment of time a change becomes necessary in the existing social structure, due to the appearance of new productive forces. It requires unusually keen intellectual insight to detect the rise of the new productive forces and the incipient conflict between them and the existing conditions of production. Until the new productive forces have sufficiently developed and their conflict with the existing conditions of production has assumed the form of an open fight between the representatives of the future social order and the advocates of the existing system, it is not possible for men of average intellect to realise the oppressive and unjust nature of the social system in which they live and to which they become habituated. Should they, then, be held morally responsible for an attitude of acquiescence in the existing order of society, until such time, and can it be said of them that they are morally on a lower level than people living under the higher economic system born of the conflict of these forces? And there is another question: What about human morality during

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those sufficiently long periods when no new productive forces have yet appeared in society and the economic order rests on a comparatively stable basis, as a result of the harmony between the forces of production and the conditions of production?' Does no question of morality, of virtue, and of justice arise in such a society? Are there no alternative modes of conduct, some morally describable and others morally condemnable, under such conditions?

Marxism also fails to account for differences in the level of, morality existing in two different societies with more or less similar economic systems based on the same mode of Production and the same division of classes. If morality is a product of the economic system of society and reflects the level of economic development reached by it, societies having the same economic foundations with identically similar class-divisions should be governed by more or less similar ethical and moral standards. Actually great differences in moral standards are found to exist in societies passing through the same phase of economic development. As an illustration, we may compare the morality of the Romans with the morality of the early Muslims under the Caliphate and the Umayyads. According to the well-known Marxist division of historical epochs, the Romans as well as the early Muslims belonged to a slave-owing society, that is, the economic: structure of the Roman Society as well as of the early Muslim that is, the economic structure of the society rested on a basis of slave-ownership. They both followed the same means of production, the methods adopted by them in the distribution of collective wealth closely resembled each other, while property relations in both societies between the various classes were also identically similar. Naturally one might conclude from this, on the Marxist theory of morals, that Roman morality and Islamic morality, being respectively the products of two social systems which stood on exactly the same stage of economic development, showed no marked differences to each other and represented the same level, of moral development. But this conclusion, which is the only one that

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can be arrived at on the basis of Marxism, is not borne out by history. Any unprejudiced historian will testify to the far superior level of morality in the Islamic society and to the absence of all class-conflicts among the early Muslims such as mark Roman social life in all periods of Roman history. Leaving aside the period of early Caliphate when Islamic morality had reached a level never since attained by any group or nation, even in the age of their moral decline which set in with the Umayyads, the Muslims were far in advance of the Romans in their moral and ethical standards.. For a moment we shall leave out of consideration .the moral standards observed by the two peoples in the spheres of social, political and family life and confine ourselves to the purely economic fields to .show by comparison how greatly the Muslims differed from the Romans' in their conduct towards what Marx would call,the oppressed class of society, that is, the slaves. For in this field the hard facts of economic life and not mere sentiments and noble feelings regulate the conduct of one class towards another. When we study the condition of slaves in the days of Rome and their condition during the period of Islamic ascendancy, we find a marked improvement in their lot which, it must be emphasised, was not warranted by any change in the economic facts of life. Although Islam did not abolish slavery and could not abolish it even if it had tried to do so because the technological conditions necessary for a change-over to the higher economic system were not present, it effected such great reforms in the institution of slavery as to transform it into something quite different from what it had been.

The most important step taken by Islam in the direction of reform was to forbid all forms of enslavement other than enslaving the prisoners of war. Under the Romans, a person could be enslaved if he was unable to discharge his debts or if he was caught in the act of stealing property. Children could also be sold as slaves by their free parents. All these forms of slavery were abolished by Islam. Only prisoners of war could be appropriated or sold as slaves. This was unavoidable in


those days because there was no regular method of exchanging war prisoners who could not, in any case, be set free, for in that case they would have gone home and returned to fight against the Muslims. Again, the slaves, under the Romans, could have no family. Even if a slave was married, there was no security that husband and wife would not be separated. Similarly, there was nothing to prevent the separation of slaves' children from their parents. Islam not only gave them full rights to have their family but also forbade the separation of slaves from their near kinsmen. Thus wife .could not be separated from husband, nor children from the parents, nor brother from brother and sister from sister: The Roman slave had no legal rights against his master and could not sue him directly for any cruelty done to him. In the Islamic polity the slave could bring a suit against his master in a law court, if the latter failed to feed and clothe him properly. A regular governmental department was set up in the days of the Prophet to hear the complaints of the slaves against their masters and redress their grievances.

During the period of Roman ascendancy nothing was done to persuade the people or compel them to free their slaves. On the other hand, we find that certain laws' were promulgated in the years A.D. 4 and A.D. 8 placing restrictions on their freedom. According to these laws, slaves under the age of thirty could not be set free. To safeguard the position of creditors, it was laid down that a debtor could not

vy free his slaves. If any person had more than one slave, he was I legally prevented from granting freedom to more than half of

them. No such restrictions were placed by Islam on the freedom of slaves. On the contrary, everything was done through legal injunctions and moral persuasion to secure freedom to as Many slaves as possible. Morally it was

$ considered highly meritorious to set one's slaves free and the Muslims vied with each other to earn the pleasure of God by releasing their slaves to complete freedom. Moreover, the Qur'an as well as the Prophet prescribed in a number of cases

1. (i) Aelia Sentia, A.D. 4: (ii) Fufia Conina, A.D. 8.

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that certain acts of omission and commission can be expiated only by the grant of freedom to the slaves owned by the wrongdoer. Legally it was laid down that if a slave wished to make an agreement with his master stipulating that he should be set free on payment of an agreed sum, the master could not refuse his request: Thus the Qur'an says:

"And if any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing (to enable them to earn their freedom for a certain sum), give them such a deed if ye know any good in them. Yea, give them something yourselves out of the means which God has given to you" (xxiv. 35).

The second Caliph, Umar, interpreted this verse to mean that the master was under a legal obligation to comply with the request of the slave, if the latter wished to secure his freedom by such agreement. Even if it ,was not considered legally binding on the master to enter into such agreement with his slave at the latter's request, there is no doubt that this was a method frequently resorted to, and with success, by the slaves under Islam to get themselves free. Again, Islam laid down that if a female slave became pregnant by her master, she could not be sold to anyone. After she gave birth to a child, she became legally the equal of her master's wife with all the latter's rights and, after the death of her husband, automatically got her freedom. Similarly, if a master agreed to his slave becoming free after his death, the slave could not be sold to anyone else during his master's 'lifetime and was assured of full freedom after his death.

The great achievement of Islam in the matter of, slavery shows that human morality is not determined in all its aspects by the economic system of society and that with the same economic structure, the same mode of ,production, and the same property relations, one society may achieve a greater progress in social morality than another by eliminating the causes of injustice, cruelty and oppression from within, while the basic economic structure on which it rests may remain unaltered. Of course, when an economic system has become

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patently unjust and oppressive and the technological means of changing it are ready at hand, it would imply a failure of moral sense in a community if it resists the forces working for . a revolutionary reconstitution of society. But such periods are necessarily of a much shorter duration than periods of comparative stability, and it is in these latter periods that morality manifests from within, in removing the smaller maladjustments of social relations, and preventing the dominant classes from misusing their social power. Morality, therefore, has still a vital function to perform from within a social system, whatever its nature, and cannot be dismissed as of little importance, simply because its revolutionary aspect is in abeyance for a time.

Marxism, however, confines morality to the economic field, and even in this restricted sphere its theory of morality is suited only to those comparatively shorter periods of revolutionary struggle when society is suffering from the birth-pangs of a new order. Of these periods, it is broadly true, as we have shown, that the highest morality consists in a concerned effort to replace the existing oppressive system by another more in keeping with the altered conditions of life, using only the minimum of physical force in the process and that too when all methods of peaceful persuasion and moral propaganda have proved unavailing to effect the desired change. But we should guard against the mistake of looking for morality only as it manifests itself on the economic plane. Morality, to be truly called as such, should be reflected in the smaller relations of life, as much as in its larger relations. It is a doubtful sort of virtue which makes grandiloquent claims about removing the contradictions of economic life but does not shed any luster on the day-toLday existence of men, nor shines through the small affairs of life. Flow can an individual or community observe morality on a higher plane, if it does not conform to moral standards in the narrower spheres of life, such as the family, the class or the city? Charity, it is said, begins at home. Social justice on a higher plane is a very big affair which can be realised only by those who have first

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learnt to be just and truthful in the small matters of life. Marxism begins at the wrong end in demanding from the outset a revolutionary struggle to build up a juster social order. What it ignores is that the moral effort should begin from the smaller and simpler affairs of life and gradually spread to wider and higher spheres. It is only when the smaller relations of life have been put on a juster basis that any improvement can be effected in the larger relations. This is what Islam teaches -us in contrast with Marxism. The moral struggle of Islam began in the humbler spheres of private, family and social life and gradually spread to the economic and political fields. The battle of morality' and virtue was fought by the Muslims first with themselves, then with their friends, kinsmen and fellow-citizens. Only when the Muslims had proved their mettle in these narrower spheres and acquired habits of truthfulness and justice in the smaller relations of life, this struggle was transferred to the higher spheres of political and economic life and steps were taken by the Prophet of Islam to reorganise the political, legal and economic system of life on a new and juster basis.

Marxism repudiates the commonly accepted theory that the moral law is immutable and that men should conform to a settled and fixed code of morality, irrespeCtive of external conditions. Engels says in Anti-Duhring:

"We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable moral law on the pretext that the moral world too has its permanent principles which transcend history and the differences between nations."

This repudiation of the moral law is justified on the ground that "the conceptions of good and bad have varied so much from nation to nation and from age to age that they have often been in direct contradiction to each other". Pursuing his agreement further, Engels points to the diverse theories of morality preached in his own time and enquires which of them is true:

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"But how do things stand today? What morality is preached to us today? There is first Christian-feudal morality, inherited from past centuries of faith; and this again has two main subdivisions, Catholic and Protestant moralities, each of which in turn has no lack of further sub-divisions from the Jesuit-Catholic and orthodox Protestant to loose 'advanced' moralities. Alongside of these we find the modern bourgeois morality and with it too the proletarian morality of the future, so that in the most advanced European countries alone in the past, present and future provide three great groups of moral theories which are in force simultaneously and alongside each other. Which then is the true one? Not one of them, in the sense of having absolute validity; but certainly that morality which contains the maximum of durable elements is the one which, in the present, represents the overthrow of the present, represents the future: that is, the proleteratian."

The type of argument employed by Engels in the above passage hardly does credit to so great a philosopher. Changes in man's conceptions of good and bad do not affect the proposition that there is a standard law of morality true for all ages and times, and in the measure that men deviate from it, they have to suffer the consequences of their deviation. Men's conceptions about the laws governing physical bodies have changed as often as their conceptions of moral good and evil, but would anyone claim that the physical laws themselves have undergone changes on that account? Our conceptions of physical and moral laws are quite different from the nature of the laws themselves. If somebody thinks that the fire does not burn or that the poison does not kill, that will not in the least affect the properties of fire and poison, and if he is audacious enough to act on his conception of the properties of fire and poison, he will soon realise his mistake. Unfortunately, while errors of thought can be easily detected in the physical realm by direct experimentation, they are not susceptible of easy

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discovery in the moral world for the simple reason that individuals and groups cannot be handled and experimented upon like a piece of lifeless matter. There are other reasons also why this easy method fails in the sphere of morality. The consequences of moral, acts do not reveal themselves immediately, unlike those of physical act. If a person puts his finger in the fire, the effect makes itself felt immediately and unmistakably. But any person or community of persons may indulge in a moral vice, such as sexual laxity (by leading a life of promiscuous sexual relations) without feeling for a long time its injurious effects. That is because morality arises from the social nature of man and the moral effects of human actions, since they concern the life of the group or the community, work themselves out of very slowly being often spread over the lives of many generations of men. Individuals committing moral crimes may altogether escape, in this world,2 the consequences of their misdeeds, but the community or group to which they belong must unavoidably suffer from the evil effects of the wrongs done by them. A whole generation of men can defy with impunity the laws of social health, commit injustices and oppression and grow fat on the toil of their less fortunate brethren, but that will not save their succeeding, generations from the fires of class war, civil strife and foreign subjugation. What is true of vice is also true of virtue. "Before virtue the gods have set toil." Virtuous men and women have often to suffer for their good deeds, are persecuted, harassed and even killed by their fellow-men, but the effect of their moral struggle is beneficial, at long last, to their community. Thus we find that the immediate consequences of moral actions are often in direct contradiction with their ultimate effects.

2. The existence of an after-life derives further rational proof from this contradiction inherent in morality. After all, it is individual men and women who are responsible for good or evil and not the community, which has only an imaginary existence, apart from its members. If individuals can escape the effects of their misdeeds or be denied the fruits of virtue that our world is only a partially moral world; a fully moral world awaits existence.

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And there is another difficulty in this realm which makes the task of scientific investigation more difficult In the physical realm causes and effects can easily be isolated from each other and studied in their isolation, so as to preclude any error arising from the mistake of attributing some effect to a different cause than that from which the effect really sprang. And when, as sometimes happens in physical diseases, the patient is suffering from such a complication of diseases that the task of disentangling cause from effect, and of assigning to each effect its proper cause, becomes well-nigh impossible, the treatment fails and the case is given up as hopeless. In the sphere of physical acts such cases are rate, but in the field of morality this is a general rule rather than an exception, because moral habits interpenetrate and affect each other. A number of moral factors operate to produce a certain moral effect and it is not easy to say precisely which of these factors is mainly responsible for the effect produced. And then there is the further difficulty that the injurious effects of an immoral habit among a people may be overlaid and offset by the operation of other habits which are morally good. Thus the evil effects of drinking or of the decline of sexual morality may not make themselves felt seriously for some time in a community with a habit of political obedience, law-abidingness and a high sense of national discipline. That does not, "however, mean that the immorality is not having its effects. These two causes, firstly, the apparent contradiction between the short-term consequences and the long-term effects of moral actions, secondly, the multiplicity of factors operating in the multiplicity of factors operating in' the moral held to produce a given moral resultant, make it difficult to assign to each separate effect its corresponding cause and are in the main responsible for differences and disagreements among men as to what is truly moral and what is immoral. These disagreements produce a variety of moral theories holding the field at the same time. But the existence of these various theeries and of the different types of morality cannot invalidate the proposition that there is a standard law of morality, a type of life which is the most desirable and that, in

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the measure in which the followers of a moral theory deviate from this true law of morality, they suffer the evil consequences of their deviation, just as the existence of so many, brands of Socialism, from Fabian Socialism, State Socialism down to Menshivik Socialism and Bolshevik Socialism with its further subdivision into Trotskyte Bolshevism and Stalinist Bolshevism, cannot destroy the truth embodied in the theory of Socialism, nor blind us against the fact that some of these theories are truer than others. After all, the general sense of humanity ultimately decides which of the moral theories contains the greatest elements of truth and that type of morality prevails at last which satisfies in a greater measure than others the social and moral nature of man.

As for the claim advanced by Engels in the passage quoted above that of the current moral theories that is the true one "which, in the present, represents the overthrow of the present, represents the future: that is, the proletarian," one might be permitted to enquire how the proletarian morality differs in essentials from the bourgeois morality of the capitalists. We shall have to judge either of the two moral theories on its own merits and not on its representing a future or past order of society, a thing which is entirely irrelevant from the moral standpoint. Marxism, which believes in the inevitability of moral progress, may claim that its moral theory is superior because it represents the future, but those who do not share its views in the matter and believe that morality is a thing to be striven for and realised anew by each generation of men will hardly be disposed, without further examination of the proletarian morals,, to admit this claim. And when we examine the morality preached by the communists, we find that it does not differ in, any real sense from the morality of the capitalist class. Both of them are indifferent to the nature of the means adopted for .the realisation of their political and economic ends, and justify themselves on the plea that their means are noble.. Thus communists as well as capitalists violate the first law of morality, which insists that only fair means should be adopted to gain one's ends, however noble those ends may be in

themselves. This adjustment of means to ends is the essential. basis of morality and is entirely justified on rational grounds. Ends and means cannot be too rigidly separated from each other, and the end of an action is often shaped and determined by the very means adopted for its realisation. Thus ignoble means adopted to secure a noble end not only destroy the nobility of the end, but affect the mental and moral purity of the agents themselves in the very process of the realisation of their end. And when the agent himself has developed an immoral outlook in the process, by following unfair methods, the end achieved will never produce the consequences desired, for those consequences had been assessed on the supposition that the moral purity of the agent will remain unsullied, which does not happen when evil means have been adopted to secure an end, however just. And what sort of morality do the communists preach in the sphere of private and family life? Is it in any way different from bourgeois morality? Do they believe in the sanctity of marriage, do they condemn promiscuous sexual relations, do they preach abstention from intoxicants, have they laid any stress on the rights of kinsmen and neighbours? If they do some of these things, they do it by policy, not by moral conviction. For example, the rigid discipline enforced by the communists on the members of their own party in respect of sexual indulgence and the use of drinks is dictated by motives of pure expediency and is by no means an article of faith with them. Their moral theory leaves all such matters untouched and yet, unconsciously, by the rigorous enforcement of this moral discipline on their own elect, communists acknowledge the utility and efficacy of those moral teachings which have come down from the past. Only they follow that morality for limited purposes and, as a matter of expediency, while religion claims for it universal application and, from a temporary short-term makeshift, elevates it into a permanent law of life. And in this it is fully justified on any rational examination of the matter. If avoidance of promiscuous sexual relations, abstention from drinks and inculcation of brotherly relations towards each other is considered necessary for

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maintaining the health, efficiency and unity of thought and action of a selected party, why should the same moral habits be not considered essential for health, well-being and unity of larger groups and of humanity in general and why should it be preached to them that moral purity in such matters is not at all necessary so long as they remain united in the resolve to overthrow the present economic order of society?

6

MARXIAN VIEW OF RELIGION

"All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men's minds of those external forces which control their daily life, a reflection in which the terrestrial forces assume the form of supernatural forces," says Engels in Anti-Duhring and, further elaborating his argument, countinues:

"But it is not long before, side by side with the forces of Nature, social forces begin to be active; forces which present themselves to man as equally extraneous and at first equally inexplicable dominating, them with the same apparent necessity, as the forces of Nature, themselves. The fantastic personifications, which at first only reflected the mysterious forces of Nature, at this point acquire social attributes, become representatives of the forces of history."

This is how Marxism explains the beginnings of religion. The origin of religious feeling in man, and his various ideas about God, is traced back to his dependence on external and social forces beyond his control; forces which shaped his life and destiny without reference to his own will and constantly interfered in the pursuit of his aims and desires. From this it is sclinehow concluded that the religious ideas of mankind have no substratum of truth, because they represent the fanciful imaginations of human beings and are unsupported by objective facts. This explanation of a thing from its origin is typical of Marxist thought. Marxists are habituated to look backwards to see how a thing came into existence and from what origins it took shape and, having traced the origin of an

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idea or that theory to some lowly source, they triumphantly declare that theory or idea is no longer valid now in circumstances different from those in which it arose. But an explanation from origins is not the whole explanation of a thing. It is not merely backwards to the beginning of a doctrine or theory that we should proceed but also forwards to its objects and ideals, to what it seeks to realise, in order that we may be able to discover the whole truth about it. Unfortunately, Marxism is incapable of this forward look. It is wedded to the past, although it must be conceded by every

. rational mind that we ought to judge things and ideas, not merely by what they have been, that is, by the circumstances of their origin, but by what they are trying to be; in other words, by the ideal objectives they seek to realise. To point out that man has had a lowly origin coming out of a clot of blood and that he had been once upon a time a helpless child unable to stand on his feet and requiring the help of his parents is not at all an explanation of his position as a grown-up individual seeking to reach out beyond the narrow mental confines of his boyhood. We should judge him not by his past but by his future, that is by what he is seeking to be and what he is trying to achieve. Similarly, it is absolutely immaterial to the validity of religious truths as to how and in what circumstances they came into being. It is not how religion began but what it is seeking to achieve that ought to decide our attitude towards it. If religion stands for human equality, social justice and moral and material advancement of mankind, we should have no grudge against it because it arose out of circumstances which no longer exist. If the circumstances in which a theory or doctrine originates are the, sole decisive factors, we may as well point out that Marxism with all its philosophy arose out of the fear of economic insecurity in an age when the religious sense of humanity had suffered a setback and that, therefore, its philosophical doctrines, including its atheism and materialistic approach to human problems are a fantastic reflection in the minds of the communists of that fear and insecurity and decadence of true religious feeling. We may on the same ground go on to predict


that as soon as a juster social order is evolved and the religious consciousness of humanity is reawakened, Marxism with all its materialistic preachings and atheistic doctrines will vanish into thin air. It is clear that this sort of attitude to social and philosophical doctrines is highly unscientific. Marxism and any other doctrine, social or religious, ought to be judged on the score of its social utility and ideal tendency and not on the basis of its past or of the corruptions that may have crept into it in the course of its development.

Explaining why religion still continues to exist in spite of the onward march of science and the greater control acquired by humanity over the forces of external universe, Engels says:

"Bourgeois economics can neither prevent crises in general, nor protect the individual capitalist from losses, bad debts and bankruptcy, nor secure the individual •worker against unemployment and destitution. It is still true that man proposes and God (that is, the extraneous forces of the capitalist mode of production) disposes. Mere knowledge, even if it went much further and deeper than that of bourgeois economic science, is not enough to bring social forces under the control of society. What is above all necessary for this is a social act. And when this act has been accomplished, when society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these means of production which they themselves have produced but which now confront them as an irresistible extraneous force, when, therefore, man no longer merely proposes, but also disposes, only then will the last extraneous force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect."

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Excellent piece of penmanship! What a clever attempt has been made to confuse the issues in question and to reduce the great religious doctrine of one God (which thousands of years of atheistic preachings have not been able to destroy) to the lifeless byproduct of man's economic environment! And how naively it is assumed, without making any effort to assumption, that as soon as society takes possession of the means of production and uses them on a planned basis man will no longer merely propose but also dispose! In the first place, it has yet to be proved that the idea of God is merely a reflection of unsatisfied economic desires and wants and not of man's spiritual'longings and moral shortcomings. Secondly even if it is taken for granted that financial crises, economic bankruptices, industrial unemployment and physical afflictions have produced such ideas as those of God and afterlife, is there any reason ta believe that merely the social act of planned production and collective ownership of wealth will remove from society all the economic evils; social conflicts and physical diseases which put man in the mind of his Creator. To bring into being a society which is absolutely free from all traces of social inequilibrium, in which control over the external forces of life has reached such an acme of perfection that neither disease, nor, distemper, nor yet any physical affiction can overtake man; a society in which death itself has been conquered, and where perfect social equality, brotherhood of man and regard for one's fellow beings have driven away all jealousy, all ambition to outstrip each other in the possession of wealth and power, requires not a social act but a moral act of the highest order and •presupposes a state of moral perfection in humanity of, which, there are not even the faintest signs in spite of socialised Russia, capitalised America and that great international farce which goes by the name of United Nations Organisation. Marxist reading of human psychology seems to be a very poor one It is supposed without any convincing reason that the external conditions of a society and in particular the defects of the economic structure are responsible for all social evils and when the production and distribution of wealth have been socialised, these evils will

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automatically disappear. No one denies that the external social environment of man is in part, responsible for social evils, but that is not the whole of truth. The main root of social conflicts is man's own want of moral self-control, his-desire for more wealth, more comforts, and more power over his fellow-men. Socialism can, eradicate the evils which spring from poverty, but it can hardly do anything in respect of evils which(spring from man's lust of power, desire for glory and his ambition to excel his fellow-men in all that gives social respect ;and influence. Most of our social evils come directly from this source, specially when we refuse to accept any, moral restrictions in the .pursuit "of our_ ambitions. ,How. does Socialism propose to remove these mainsprings of social conflict? It is abvious that such evils can be eradicated only by a greater measure of moral self-control and that man must proceed to conquer his own egotism and selfishness before he can dream of controlling social forces. It is not so easy as the Marxists imagine to reform society by a simple social act of collective ownership of production, and ,so ?long as social conflicts and physical afflictions remain in any degree, the idea of God cannot be displaced from men's minds.

What Marxism ignores in respect of religion and its teachings about God is that the conception of God arose from man's being a dependent creature. If man were a self-sufficient • being, if he could achieve what he desired, if he could secure what he willed, without any opposition, without any struggle and without iany possibility• of failure, there would have been`no feeling of dependence on another and greater being and the zconception =of God could, notaave entered the human mind. But a wide,chasm separates the ideal from the actual, and between our desires and achievements there is a gap which can be filled only by the intensest efforts which as often as not end in failure. And this is due, not merely to external forces beyond our control, but alsceto our lack of perception, our, own failure to adjust means to ends and above all, to the multiplicity of conflicting wills and discordant aims of different individuals who cross and

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conflict with each other. This is the moral situation on the basis of which the conception of God arises and Marxism gives us no means to resolve the conflict of wills, because it is inherent in creation itself. We have already• seen in the previous chapter that Engels recognises that the result of human actions is not always that which is intended and that our or the conflicts of numerous opposing wills flow consequences which none of the agents desire. What does this mean except that a superior will prevails over the wills •of individuals and gives us a sense that our wills themselves are ultimately controlled and shaped by the will of God. This is a situation which will recur in the socialist order of society as well because there too individuals and groups with discordant aims will conflict with each other and out of their mutual conflict will come out something which no one willed. The idea of God, that is, of a superior will, cannot be made to disappear under Socialism, unless of course Socialism succeeds in abolishing the diversity of human wills which, even if it were possible, would produce a colourless, dead uniformity of thought and action stopping all progress and movement, because progress is born of opposition and resistance.

The attitude of Marxism to religion is, to say the least, highly unscientific and based on insufficient historical data. The characterisation of religion as the "opium of the people" shows that the Marxists have either left unstudied or deliberately ignored those historical periods in which religion appeared as a great revolutionary force working for human equality and social justice. They quietly assume, on the other hand, that religion has always been on the side of the vested interests being the ideological reflection of the interests of the ruling class in society. Such a view, uncharitable as it is, displays a lack of balance and moderation and a spirit of unreasoning prejudice which hardly does credit to a movement which claims to rest on a scientific basis. There have, no doubt, been epochs of religious decadence, when religion has been shamelessly exploited by the dominant


classes of society to serve their nefarious purposes and to keep down the oppressed classes in contented subjection. But the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of religion, for if there were no religion, the exploiting classes would have invented or discovered some substitute social and metaphysical theory in justification of their conduct. It is in the nature of man to seek moral justification even for his misdeeds and, where religion does not serve this purpose, he freely makes use of anything that suits his purpose. Hobbes was no believer in religion and yet he carne forward to justify pure unadulterated despotism and absolutism on political grounds making clever use of Social Contract theory. The Nazi movement in Germany was certainly not a religious movement. It was deadly opposed to Christianity and yet it found justification for its racial theory in historical facts and science itself was made to subserve the necessity of bolstering up. Nazi racial arrogance. Scientific, knowledge too is not immune from such misuse and exploitation, and yet no one blames it on this score.

The great periods of religious awakening were always marked by demands for social equality and economic justice. The leaders of religious movements, the divinely inspired prophets were always men in whorn the poor and the downtrodden found a champion of their social and economic rights and the wealthier classes scented danger to their established economic position. It is for this reason that the followers of all these great religious prophets were largely recruited from the lower strata of society, a fact which was pointed out by their 'enemies who came from the richer classes, as constituting a sort of blemish on the character of their movement. Thus the Qur'an relates how the Prophet Noah was taunted by the chieftains of his nation for having gathered around him men of lowly origin:

"But the Chief of the believers said: ' We see (in) thee nothingbut a man like ourselves, nor do we see that any follow thee but the meanest among us. Nor

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do we see in you (all) any merit above us—in fact we think you are liars" (xi. 27.)

This shows that the religious movements initiated by the great prophets invariably provoked resentment of 'the ruling classes by their levelling and equalising trend. How unfounded is the charge then that religion has always served as, a tool in the hands of the exploiting classes'

The Marxists' attitude to religion is deeply coloured by the peculiar historical< Circumstances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries during which ^ the modern socialist movement was born. The whole of this period was a period of religious decline, one in which materialism was taking hold of theteducated classes and all the higher values of life were being pressed to the service of man's material interests. Religion itself, as the history of Protestantism abundantly shows, had lbecome a pawn in the political game. Finding itself faced with this peculiar situation, Marxism committed the mistake,of assuming, without much attempt at the studyof the religious history of non-European peoples, that this situation has been a permanent feature of man's history and that religion has, always been and will always remain an instrument, oft , oppression, a handy tool of the exploiting classes to blunt,the edgerof the revolutionary instincts among the oppressed. classes. And yet even in this long period of religious decadence- on which Marxism bases its conclusions, instances were not wanting of religious fervour assuming a revolutionary, turn.. In his article Historical Materialism, Engels refers to the work of the Salvation. Army and, its patently revolutionary aspect. Describing the attempts of the capitalist class to press, the religious movements of the time to their service, Engels writes:

"If the British bourgeois had been convinced before of the necessity of maintaining the common people in religious mood, how much more must he feel that necessity after all these experiences? , Regardless of the sneers of his continental compeers, he continued to spend thousands and tens of

MARXISM OR ISLAM

thousands, year after year, upon the evangelisation of lower orders; not content with his own religious machinery he appealed to. brother Jonathon, the greatest organiser in existence of religion as a trade, and imported from American Revivalism Moody and Sankey, and the like; and, finally, he accepted the dangerous aid of, the Salvation Army, which revives the propaganda of early Christianity, appeals to the poor as the 'elect, fights capitalism in a religious way and thus, fosters an element of early Christian class antagonism, which may one day become troublesome to the well-to-do' people who now find the ready money for it." (Italics ours.) The last sentence in the above passage contains the

admission that there is nothing essentially reactionary about religion and that it is capable of fighting exploitation and oppression as truly as any other social movement; how else could a religious organisation like the Salvation Army "fight capitalism in a religious way"? Even in the history of Europe where politics has always dominated religion, instances are not wanting of religious movements which aimed at and fought for social and economic equality. Whenever the slumbering religious conscience of European people was awakened, there went with the, religious revival a demand for social equality. Thus equalitarian ideas appeared in the peasant revolts of the, fourteenth century, in France in 1351, in England in 1381, when the existing social tyranny was attacked on religious grounds by the lower strata of society. The religious awakening in Bohemia produced by the teachings of Huss had much the same consequences. The Bohemian followers of Huss believed that the law of Gospel is a kind of communism in which the Christians dwell together in freedom and equality with no distinctions of rank and privilege such as are imposed by human laws and institutions. And the same phenomenon is, discernible in the English Puritan movement of the seventeenth century which was a movement of religious revival. The spirit of social equality was visibly embodied in the army collected together by Oliver

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Cromwell. It is well known that in this army, called the Ironsides, footmen, draymen and ships' captains held high commands side by side with men of family Such is the leveling quality of religious fervour. What then is the substance in the charge levelled by Communism that religion has always served the interests' of the dominant class in society? On the other hand, the whole history of mankind bears witness to the truth that periods of great religious awakening have always been marked by social and economic reforms and that it is only in periods of religious decadence that evil-minded men have been able to exploit religion for unworthy ends.

In dealing with'religion according to its own materialistic conceptions, Marxism takes all its data either from the history of ancient religions or from the ecclesiastical history of Europe and, on this inadequate basis, builds up to its own satisfaction a theory of religion corresponding to its economic and social convictions. It is strange to find that nowhere in the Marxist literature has an attempt been made to discuss the role played by Islam in the social and economic reformation of human society or to test the truth of its theory by reference to the religious teachings of the Prophet of Islam. It could not have been by mere accident that Marx and Engels failed to take into account the revolution effected by Islam in the moral and material life of mankind. The failure seems to have been deliberate and wilful, for had such an attempt been made by the propounders of the Marxian theory, they would have come up against facts necessitating a radical restatement of their materialistic doctrines. As regards ancient religious concepts and the religious teachings of Christianity, let us remember that they Were very incomplete expressions of the religious instincts of mankind and it is only in Islam that the religious consciousness of humanity found its most pdfect expression. Marxian ideas of religion, if they are to have any validity in the present circumstances of history, must therefore stand' the test of facts furnished by the religious history of IslanS


In the materialistic interpretation of religious ideas, the substance of the Marxist argument is furnished by the history of Protestantism in Europe and profusely indeed do the Marxists draw upon this source. Thus the "ineradicability of the Protestant heresy" is ascribed to be "invincibility of the rising bourgeois" and calvinism is specially held up as an illustration of how the economic interests of particular classes can disguise themselves in the garb of religious doctrines. This explanation of religious changes as the necessary result of economic conflicts is only partially true. There is no doubt that economic necessities occasioned the rotestant revolt against Papal authority and yet this is only one aspect of the matter. The main cause of the Protestant revolt and the particular form it assumed lay in the weakness of the Christian doctrine itself and not in the external changes or the social forces which led to the break-up of the feudal society and the appearance of the bourgeois class with distinct economic interests.

The main weakness of Christianity lay, in two directions, resulting, as time went on, in the increasing inability to control the material forces of life. Firstly, Christianity never made an attempt to conduct a state on the basis of its religious principles and, therefore, furnished no tradition to its followers in the art of Government and the practical management of socialand economic affairs. Further, it failed to define with clear precision its attitude towards political authority. Jesus Christ (peace be on him) began and ended his career as a religious preacher and had never had any opportunity of setting up a state .based on his religious doctrines which coutd give some idea to his followers as to how human affairs could be conducted on moral principles. This explains why the early Christians, even in the heyday of their power and glory, did not attempt to wrest political power from the hands of pagan emperors of Rome, the reason being that they had no alternative political theory and no tradition of government based on religious principles. And even after the conversion of Constantine no demand, was put forth by his Christian subjects to alter the basis of the Roman state so as to

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make it in accord with the moral and religious teachings of Jesus Christ (peace be on him). The Christians were satisfied with the personal conversion of Constantine and the official recognition of Christian worship. This shows that Christianity had never been a socio-religious doctrine like Islam and in this lay the seed of the future divisions among the Christiahs about the temporal and spiritual aspects of life and, the complete secularisation of politics in a yet later period which_ reduced religion to sheer impotence. This weakness would not have done much harm, if, in the formulations of Christian doctrines, the exact nature of political allegiance had been made clear and the relationship between religion and the state more precisely defined. We find nothing of the kind in Christian doctrines except vague teachings such as "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's," which apparently amounts to the recognition of two coordinate authorities in human affairs, a situation which bears in itself the seeds of everlasting conflict as the later history of the church was amply to prove3

This ambiguity is further increased, when we read the letter written by St Paul to the Romans in which he says:

"Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil" (Romans, 13, 1-3). Loyalty to two co-ordinate authorities has been replaced

here by absolute submission to the state on the assumption that all authority is derived from God. There is not a word in the teachings of either Jesus Christ (peace be on him) or of St Paul as to the duty of resistance to wicked rulers. What a Christian community is expected to do when the authority of the state is exercised in manifest disregard of Christian ethics or, in defiance of it, has nowhere been clearly laid down. To`quote the words of a modern writer On politics:


"The irlossibilities of conflict and ambiguity in such a conception are apparent; indeed it is hard to imagine any really Christian form of society in which difficulties of this sort might not arise, since they reflect a complication in moral life itself."

And indeed complications did arise. For a time the Christian church functioned in close alliance with the imperial authority and the emperors patronised the church organisation. This period, beginning with Constantine under whose benevolent patronage the doctrinal dissensions of the church were patched up in the Nicene creed, did not, however, last long. Soon the pope, at the head of the Christian church, began to function as a co-ordinate authority claiming equal voice in state affairs. To this period belong controversies such as that over investiture. The dual authority of the pope and the> emperor, however, created grave confusion in the body politic, until at last the situation could no longer be suffered to drift and "the Bobylonish captivity" of the pope at the hands of the French king put an end for ever to the arbiters of Christendom. From this position, when the popes became a tool in the hands of rival kings the transition to Protestantism which signallised the revolt against Papacy was but natural; for Papacy had ceased- to command the unified allegiance of the diversity of races and peoples who constituted Christendom. The seeds of Protestantism lay in the doctrinal beliefs of Christianity, the social and economic changes brought by the decay of feudalism merely furnished them a favourable soil.

The failure of Christianity to capture the state and utilise-it for moral and spiritual ends thus paved the way for its later decadence. Had this failure- been accompanied by a total renunciation of politics on the part of ecclesiastical authority, the consequences would not have been so disastrous, for the history of mankind proves that religion can function as an effective force either as A state or in absolute independence of the state, but never as an adjunct or co-partner of the state. The Christian church, however, even in the days of its utmost

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power, represented by popes like Gregory VII, did, neithr take sole possession of political athority, nor did it divest itself of

'its political trappings, but continued to exist alongside the secular arm as a state within a state, a position which in its very nature was full of explosive elements. To quote H. G. Wells:

"It had its own law-courts. Cases involving not merely priests but monks, students, crusaders, widows, orphans and the helpless, were reserved for the clerical courts: and whenever the rites and the rules of the church were involved, the church claimed jurisdiction over such matters as wills, marriages, oaths, and, of, course, over heresy, sorcery and blasphemy. There were numerous clerical prisons in which offenders might pine all their lives. The pope was the supreme lawgiver of Christendom and his court at Rome the final and decisive court of appeal. And the church levied taxes; it had not only vast properties and a great income from fees, but it imposed a tax of a tenth, the tithe, upon its subjects. It did not call for this as a pious benefaction; it demanded it as a right. The clergy, on the other hand, were now claiming exemption from lay taxation."

This shows that the Christian church, far from being the visible embodiment of the religious consciousness of its followers, had become a purely secular organisation for the defence of material interests of the priestly class The epilogue to this strange drama in the rise of defiant Protestantism is not surprising, and let it not be forgotten that these developments were not caused by external circumstances and changed social and economic conditions, but by weakness within doctrinal Christianity, in the inadequacy of its religious teachings and lack of clear precision in the definition of its attitude to political authority. How different is the religious history of Islam. There, we have a perfect socio-political doctrine which

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defines with clearrecision the attitude of religion towards political authority Says the Qur'an:

"Obey God, and obey the Apostle, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to God and His Prophet (for decision)" (iv. 59). It has been made clear in this verse that the primary

allegiance of a Muslim is to God and .the representative of God, that is the Prophet; and that allegiance to the powers that be is merely derivative, the final arbitration in all matters resting with God and His Prophet. The position is unambiguous and does not admit of dual control such as the Christian prescription of obedience to God and to Caesar , envisagebsi And Islam did not merely formulate a political theory ut conducted a full-fledged political state not for days or months but for a period extending over forty years beginning from the Prophet's migration to Medina and ending with the death of the fourth orthodox Caliph. The Prophet of Islam did not only preach certain principles of human conduct but proceeded to organise and conduct a state based on them illustrating how the mundane affairs of humanity could be managed and directed in accordance with religious principles. He thus left behind him a great tradition of political rule which has never ceased to influence his f011owers throughout the centuries that have elapsed since his death. The doctrinal structure of Islam is as complete as anyone could wish. It does not consist of a few casual remarks by the teacher, but contains a whole body of political and legal prescriptions possessing a perfect logical coherence. It was due to that when, with the passing of orthodox caliphate, the political form of Islamic democracy suffered an eclipse, its legal and social structure remained intact and the whole history of Islam during the last thirteen centuries bears undying testimony to the stability of its social and legal structure. Not a single instance can be quoted from Islamic history to show that any potentate or any group or sect of Muslims has ever disclaimed allegiance to this structure of legal prescriptions or has sought

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to displace them by some alternate body of laws. There is no parallel again in Islamic history of a religious reformation movement like Protestantism which made each nation and each secular ruler his own arbiter, and a guide unto himself in matters of faith. There have been individual deviations from the laws of Islam, but no collective movement to replace them by an alternative system has yet made its appearance. And the unity of Islam has withstood the teat of fissiparous tendencies in the divergent national ambitions of the different Muslim states. National churches are a thing unheard of for the followers of Islam.

1 reonflict between spiritual and temporal orders in the 1 1

..,,, 1 Islamic polity could not arise because Islamic religious theory I makes no distinction between the temporal and the spiritual. 1 The temporal in Islam is only a particular aspect of the

: I spiritual and not a separate category in itself. The Prophet described the earth as a mosque. And, consistently with this doctrine, Islam closed the door for ever against a separate priestly class with an organised external church functioning as a co-ordinate authority alongside that of -the state. There are no clergy in Islam, there is no separate organised church, there is no and there never was any question of an independent judicial authority in the form of clerical papal courts, there is nothurch-taxation apart from the taxes levied by the state, and, therefore, there has never heen any claim on the part of Muslim divines for exemption from lay taxation or any dispute as regards the legal jurisdiction of lay courts. All Muslims without distinction of class are equally subject to the laws made by the state and to the financial obligations imposed by it A separate church organisation. never existed among Muslims, because, from its very inception, Islam realised that its strength lay in the power to inspire men and women with its religious faith and not in the external sanctions of an organised church.

Thus a comparative study of the history of Christianity and Islam and their religious doctrines establishes the fact beyond any possibility of dispute that the two religions are

MARXIAN VIEW. OF RELIGION

entirely different in their outlook, in their methods of social organisation, in their attitude towards political and social affairs and in the means they adopt to inculcate religious faith among their adherents. And this fact is borne out in the actual historical development of the two faiths. How then Marxism, which derives all its ideas about religion from the ecclesiastical history of Europe or from ancient religions, can apply them to Islam which is something essentially different from religion as it is understood in Europe and which, in truth, is the cmisummation and perfection of the religious consciousness of mankind.

Another important weakness of Christianity, which in later history proved fatal to its power and resulted in the complete secularisation of European life with the consequent loosening of moral bonds, consisted in its emphasis on the negative side of life and its inculcation of purely passive virtues. Christianity provided no outlet to the energies of the active and dominant type of human beings. Its religious teachings had afar greater'appeal to men of a passive nature, men who gloried in weakness and powerlessness. The ambitious, power-loving type of man found little in the Christian doctrine to satisfy his energetic nature. This weakness is apparent in all its moral teachings which lean on the side of non-resistance and moral escapism. Thus we find in Matthew the injunction of:Christ (peace be:on him):

"Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other cheek also."

And again:

"Put thy sword in 'its place, for all that take the sword shall perish by the sword?

The Qospel of St John records*

"My kingdom is not of this world."

And there are similar others teachings of much the same tenor. It was for this reason that when the instinct of self - expression, reasserted itself in Europe after a long period of self-suppression, men of strong natures turned away more

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and more from Christian ethics. Thus we find Machiavelli complaining in the sixteenth century that

"Our religion places the supreme happiness in humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects, whilst the others [religions of antiquity], on the contrary, place the supreme good, in grandeur of soul, strength of body and all such other quaLities as render men more formidable.... These principles seem to have made men feeble and caused them to become an easy prey to evil-minded men, who can control them more securely, seeing that the great body of men, for the sake of gaining paradise, are more disposed to endure injuries than to avenge them."

Islam, on the other hand, provided equally well for both sets of men, for the passive type as well as for active natures, rather more for the latter than the former. Contrast with the Christian prescriptions quoted above the following injunction from the Prophet of Islam:

"Whoever from among you sees an indecency, let him change it by his hands; if he cannot, let him do that by his tongue; if he cannot, let him do it by his heart through disapproval, prayer to God, etc, but this last would testify to the extreme weakness of faith."

And again we find the Qur'an stating:

"And why should ye not fight in the Cause of God and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated and oppressed?-men, women, and children, whose cry is: Our Lord! rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors, and raise for us from Thee one who will protect, and raise for us from Thee one who will help!" (iv. 75.)

And further on:

"They (the angels) say: 'In what (plight) were ye? They reply: 'Weak, and oppressed were we in the

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earth.' They (the angels) say: Was not the earth of God spacious enough for you to move yourselves away from evil?" (iv. 97).

A number of other verses could be quoted from the Qur'an to show that Islam has adopted a positkve attitude towards life and inculcated active virtues in its followers. In particular the doctrine of Jehad (holy war') in Islam calls forth all the active faculties of believers and renders them immune from falling into passivity. This doctrine which calls upon Muslims to resist all forms of evil covers a much wider range of conduct than is generally supposed. Jehad is not restricted to actual warfare in the defence of religion but extends to all virtuous efforts, including the efforts made by believers against theMselves in maintaining the purity of their moral lives in the face of low temptations and desires. Similarly, the struggle of individuals and groups against external moral and social evils also comes under the category of Jehad.

A comparison of Islam .with Christianity in any of their aspects shows that the former is absolutely free from those peculiar weaknesses which caused disruption in the Christian church and gradually loosened its hold on the minds of its followers. Marx's theory of religion, which derives the substance of its argument from the history of Christianity specially in the age of its decline, is, therefore, totally inapplicable to Islam. Had Marx and Engels lived in any of the Islamic countries and studied the religious conceptions and social structure of Muslims, they would have arrived at different conclusioris in respect of the role played by religion in the history of human civilisation.

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MARXISM AND THE PROBLEM OF ETERNAL TRUTHS

In Anti-Duhring, Engels devotes a whole chapter to the discussion of what are called eternal truths and shows that there are not truths which can claim to be eternally valid. He divides the realm of human knowledge into three great departments. The first depdrtment includes, according to him, all exact sciences which are susteptible of mathematical treatment. He shows that even the results of a science so exact as Mathematics are becoming increasingly controversial and "the virgin state of absolute validity of everything mathematical has gone for ever." Similar is the case with physics and astronomy. "As time goes on final ultimate truths become remarkably rare in this field.' The second department of science, which concerns the investigation of living organisms, is shown by Engels to be even more sterile as far as the discovery of eternal truths goes. Coming to the third great department of knowledge, that is, the historical group of sciences, Engels says:

"Therefore, knowledge is here essentially relative inasmuch as it is limited to the perception of relationships and consequences of certain social and state forms which exist only at a particular epoch and among a particular people, and are of their very nature transitory. Anyone therefore who sets out on this field to hunt down final and ultimate truths, truths which are pure and absolutely immutable, will bring home but little, apart from platitudes and commonplaces of the sorriest kind—for example; that, generally speaking, man cannot live except by


labour; that up to the present mankind for the most part has been divided into rulers and ruled; that Napoleon died on May 5, 1821, and others of the kind."

Thus Marxism denies that there can be any absolute or eternal truth and believes in the relativity of all moral and spiritual teaching. That is to say, like the bourgeois intellectuals of Western Europe, it repudiates the claim of religion to guide human affairs in the modern industrial age, since the truths preached by religion were appropriate only to particular epochs of historyand are not but of date now

After reading all that Engels has written about the problem of eternal truths, one feels that there is some confusion in the mind of the writer as to what he understands by "truth". For example Engels derisively includes among eternal truths the statement that Napoleon died on 5 May 1821. It is dear, however, that this is a statement of fact and not a truth. That Napoleon died on 5 May 1821 is a bare, uninspiring fact which, can hardly rouse anyone to action, although it does add to one's knowledge. But truth is not simply a fact. It is the starting point of moral endeavour, a vision that inspires men to action, or, to be more precise, truth is that which furnishes a guide to moral action. The death of Napoleon provides us with no guidance as to the shaping of our moral conduct and, therefore, does not fall within the category of a truth. Or take Boyle's law to which a reference has been made by Engels. This law states that if the temperature remains constant, the volume of a gas varies inversely with the pressure applied to it. This again is a statement of fact and not`a truth leading to a moral action. A hundred such cases may be cited to show that all facts are not truths and, therefore, even if it were conclusively proved that facts have a transitory value and are only partially tine, that cannot establish the relative nature of truth.

As far as truth is concerned, it may be pointed out that what we mean by truth is not single, isolated and scattered bits of facts, but some leading idea or a system of ideas which

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gathers up into its organic unity the diverse fragments of isolated truths and assigns to each its relative place in an ascending order of importance showing by the juxtaposition of opposite truths the relative limits within which each separate truth possesses validity... It is in, respect of this sovereign idea oresystematised body of truths, and nbt the isolated fragments which make it up, that eternal validity and immutability is claimed. Thus if we say, "Do not kill," we are giving expression to a partial truth which would be completely misleading if it is not supplemented by its opposite: "You ought to kill in the interests of justice." The Biblical command "Thou shalt not kill" has come in for severe criticism on the same ground that it is unconditional and unqualified. The Qur'anic injunction, "Do not take the life which Allah had forbidden, save in course of justice," is not, however, vulnerable to this criticism, because it takes into consideration the complementary truth. The conditional character of each single truth has been fully recognised by Islam and was well-understood by the immediate followers of the Prophet. Thus the Qur'an prescribed that a thief ought to be punished by the amputation of his hand, and this was the actual legal punishment for theft and robbery in the days of the Caliphs. But Umar, the second Caliph, issued an order in his regime to the effect that no thief should be so punished during periods of famine, and his order was upheld by his compeers, there being not a single dissentient voice among the companions of the Prophet to dispute the validity of this interpretation. What did this denote except that the conditional validity of single, isolated moral and legal precepts was recognised by the early Muslims, but the Islamic system of, law and morality as a whole was taken to be unconditionally and eternally true. The incident also shows that the general moral principle that theft is bad and punishable is applicable only in so far as there exists no ostensible or reasonable motive for the act. To this extent its truth is limited and conditional, because if, through some defect of the social system, poverty becomes widespread, and, as a result of it, men are provided with a strong incentive to commit theft, the moral depravity


involved in the act is shifted from the individual to the society. Thus theft and robbery are morally condemnable only in a society which provides no motives for such acts. The partial and conditional character of this truth thus becomes easily manifest but it is soon lifted to the plane of eternal validity as soon as it has been placed in juxtaposition with its opposite or complementary. In other words, it is eternally and immutably true that theft is a moral vice in a society which provides necessary wants. Marxists will of course reply that if the motive for stealing is done away with, there will be no theft and, therefore, the eternal validity of the principle that theft is bad will automatically lapse. This is actually the argument used by Engels in repudiating the existence of eternal truths. Thus he states:

"From the moment when private property in moveable objects developed, in all societies in which this private property existed there must be this moral law in comon: Thou shalt.not steal. Does this law thereby become an eternal moral law? By no means. In a society in which the motive for stealing has been done away with, in which therefore at the very most only lunatics would ever steal, how the teachers of morals would be laughed at who tried solemnly to proclaim the eternal truth: Thou shalt not steal!"

The facile optimism which leads Engels to suppose that the motive for stealing can be completely done away with will not be shared by many people. The best society, no doubt, would be one in which theft has been reduced to a minimum by a fair and equitable distribution of wealth so as to leave no incentive for people to steal. But that humanity can ever reach the state of moral perfection, when no individual would be guilty of such acts can be dreamt of only by a few utopian idealists. Even if society is completely freed from all incentives to theft, there would remain a certain number of people whose avarice would not stop content with what they possess, who would always seek the opportunity to appropriate for themselves the better things possessed by others of which they feel deprived. The unbounded optimism

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of the followers of Marx who believe that merely by changing the, external environment, the nature of man can be so completely changed that no possibility of a relapse to evil ways can again arise is purely a matter of faith with hardly any scientific ground to stand upon. If men acted only from the external motives supplied by their social environment, such eternal and everlasting reform could be easily effected. What Marxism ignores is that the roots of social evil are embedded in the minds and hearts of men and the causes of moral vice lie as much in men themselves as in their social environment. The inner motives of greed, avarice, love of ease and comfort, the desire to excel others in whatever makes them socially respectable and the ambition to have more and more power and influence over one's fellow-men—these are motives which no amount of social legislation and external reform can eradicate, and it is such motives which yield a plentiful crop of evil, whatever the nature of the social environment on which they operate. Even supposing that all evil can be suppressed by a thorough social reform based on an economic reconstitution of society, what security there is that such a condition of society will be permanent, eternal and everlasting? We learn from Marx and Engels themselves that all social and economic revolutions and all states of society are passing, transitory and subject to changes. An ideal condition of society, the product of an economic revolution, may, after some time give place to a less perfect type of society, the relations of social classes may be disturbed, the distribution of collective wealth may become, unjust and inequitable, and "Thou shalt not steal" may reappear to claim moral and legal validity once again. Surely the opponents of eternal and immutable truths cannot claim eternity and immutability for their own scheme of social organisation. We thus find that "Thou shalt not steal" is a moral precept whose validity is unaffected by changes in the economic organisation or society, although it expresses only a partial truth and must be supplemented by its opposite, namely, "Thou shalt not tolerate a society in which men are driven by poverty to commit theft and robbery."

MARXISM AND THE'PROBLEM OF ETERNAL TRUTHS

In dealing with the problem of eternal truths, we should enquire how men came to have what are rightly or wrongly called eternal truths. Looking at the matter from this point of view, we find that every social and religious theory (and all religious theories are ultimately social theories) starts with a definite conception of life, and of the beginning and end of human creatidn. In presenting its conception of the universe, the social or religious theory has to make certain basic assumptions, which serve as its fundamental postulates, about the nature of the historkal process and of the way in which man ought W react to the innumerable'external influences around him consistently with that view of his destiny which the theory has already postulated in accordance with its conception of life. I have used the world "assumptions". in regard to fundamental postulates, because so limited is our knowledge of the deeper mysteries of the universe that whatever we think about the beginning and end of creation and of man's ultimate destiny will always remain at best in the region of probability and never come to possess that certainty which direct observation and experimentation alone can give. This is as much true of the latest modern social theories claiming a scientific basis as it is true of ancient religions. If direct observation and experimentation .were possible is

of such postulates, mankind would have unanimously agreed on some, particular creed which had, the support of scientific evidence and all religious and doctrinal differences would have been, resolved long ago. The very, persistence pf

such differences shows that in matters like these scientific certainty is impossible of achievement..

Now these fundamental postulates of social theories and the type of moral reaction to the 'surrounding external influenCes which they recommend 'to their followers in conformity with their view of human destiny constitute in their totality what are called eternal truths and they are not peculiar to religious creeds which have come down to us from ancient times. Every social theory, however modern and fresh from the crucible of time, is forced by the very nature of

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things to postulate certain truths, which are eternally valid in the eyes of its followers, for, if any of these truths become liable to revision and modification at any time now or in the future, the entire structure of ideas and practicalprinciples on which the theory is built at once falls to the ground. Marxism which is so loud in the denunciation of eternal truths has its own fundamental postulates for which it claims and must claim eternal validity. Below we give some of the eternal truths of Marxism, eternal in the sense that if any of them were to lose, its validity at any time in the past,, present or future, the entire theory of Marxism will go to pieces now. Thus Marxism lays down as eternal truths:

(I) That "the world is not to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex of processes, in which things apparently stable as well as their mind-images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change of coming into being and passing away, in which, in spite of all seeming accidents and of all temporary retrogression, a progressive development asserts itself in the end." ,

JOY That "in the social production which men carryon they "enter into definite relations that are indispensable and indebendent of their will; these relations of 'production correspond'' to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of pidduction constitutes the economic structure of society the real foundation on which rises a legal and political structure and to which correspond definite forms^of social consciousness. The. mode 'of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life-processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."

(3) That "no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it' have been devetdped; and new higher relations of production never


appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society."

(4) That "the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not, in the minds of men, in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in the changes in the mode of production and, exchange; they are to be sought not in the philosophy but in the economics of the epoch concerned."

F These are some of the fundamental postulates of Marxism and, unless they are .taken as eternally valid, the whole Marxist theory of life and the practical principles derived therefrom are reduced to meaninglessness. Actually the Marxists believe in the eternal truth of these basic ideas and they have no other alternative except to hold such a belief. For example, no Marxist will or can assert that the world ever was or will be other than a cumplex of processes. Similary, if he remains consistent to his principles, he will, vehemently deny the suggestion that the mode of production ever ceased or will, at any time in future, cease to determine the political, legal and intellectual aspects of life. What does this mean except that these basic principles of Marxism are eternal truths in the eyes of its followers. How then does Marxism object to other social and religious theories-having their own fundamental postulates and the practical principles derived directly therefrom, which must, by the very nature of things, be held as eternal truths by their followers?

Marxists will, not doubt, reply that they do not regard any part of the Marxist theory as final and eternal and that this theory is open to revision and modification in the light of future investigations. Thus Stalin says:

"We do not regard Marxist theory as' something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the cornerstone of the science which Socialists must further advance in all directions, if they wish to keep pace with life, We think that an independent elaboration of the Marxist theory is specially essential for Russian Socialists,

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for this theory provides only general guiding principles."

It should be borne in mind, however, that whatever elaboration of the Marxist theory takes place in future, it can' only follow the general lines already laid down by Marx and Engels. In other words, that elaboration must be on the basis of the guiding principles referred to by Stalin. The guiding principles or the fundamental postulates themselves must remain unaltered, for any revision; elaboration or modification on any other basis, except that already laid down, will result in the formulation of an entirely fresh theory which will not be Marxism but something entirely different. The fundamental postulates of the Marxist theory will always remain what they are; that is, their eternal validity will always be unquestioned.

As far as the religious theory of Islam 'is concerned, it claims nothing more than to have furnished the guiding principles of life on the basis of which an elaboration of the theory does and has taken place according to the genius of each epoch. This fresh elaboration of the Islamic theory in accordance with the circumstances of each age has been sanctioned by Islam under the doctrine of I jtehad, which literally means independent judgment, the only condition laid down being that, in this 1 jtehad, or elaboration of the theory, Muslims must strictly adhere to the fundamental postulates and the general guiding principles already liid down for them.

MARXISM AND NATIONALISM

Communism started as a great international movement and aspired to bring the oppressed masses of all nations under a single international organisation capable of superseding • national loyalties and aiming at the forcible overthrow of the capitalist society by means of an international revolution. Nearly a hundred years have passed since this aspiration was brought forth in the "Communist Manifesto" which enshrines in moving language the hopes, aspirations and the future programme of the Communist Party. But the expected world revolution failed to materialise. Marxism has, no doubt, got a firm hold in Russia and has been able to create an order of society more or less in its own image but, strange as it may appear, Soviet Communism has more and more taken on a national aspect and its international ideal and programme of action has progressively suffered in'importance until it seems to have gone completely out of picture. Even if Communism becomes, at any time in future, the dominant social order of the world, it will not be by the spontaneous revolutionary action of the oppressed classes of mankind, but by the conquering might and power of Soviet Russia. In other words, it will be an order of society superimposed from without, not one arising from within by the operation of natural, economic and ideological forces. There must be something wrong in the theory of Communism itself, which is responsible for the failure of international revolutionary forces to achieve by concerted and unified action what the communists of Russia

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have achieved in a single country. Let us, therefore, turn to the theory.

On the very first page of the "Communist Manifesto" we find the statement:

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeymen, in a word, oppressor and oppressed carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight."

It is, of course, true that in all hitherto existing societies, the economic struggle between the lower and higher classes has been unceasing. It is also true that the reality of class-struggles within states and nations had never been given due recognition by historians and philosophers, before the time of Marx, and it was only after Marx and Engels had presented their theory of history that this aspect of social history was forced on the attention of the educated classes and its importance was gradually realised, but it is wholly untrue that class-struggles within societies were either the main or the determining factors in shaping the course of history. The social conflict of classes was one among the many forces that have moulded the destiny of mankind. Other forces equally powerful and more decisive have operated side by side, not the least among them being •nationalism and group loyaly which, in moments of national peril, has always superseded and transcended class loyalties. The authors of the "Communist Manifesto" forget that the same patricians and plebians who fought with each other on economic issues banded together and fought under one banner the enemies of Rome. The vast expansion of the Roman Empire was achieved, not by patrician families, but by the sweat and blood of the plebians, and this, in spite of the divergent and clashing interests of the two classes. And similarly, during the feudal age, while the slaves and serfs struggled with their oppressors and carried on, as Marx and Engels point out, an uninterrupted fight against them, there were numerous

MARXISM AND NATIONALISM

occasions when, forgetting their own class interests, they came out under the banners of their lords and zealously fought their enemies. Thus we find that both in ancient and medieval times, while class differences have persisted and class-conflict continued without interruption, the sense of group loyalty has always over-shadowed.-the differences and conflicts among classes.

In reply to this criticism, the communists point out that during ancient and feudal times Class-consciousness had not yet developed to the point where it could break through national and group loyalty, but since the advent of industrialisation, this defect has been largely remedied, and the class'solidarity of the proletariat is growing stronger every day. With the development and growth of class-consciousness, the national idea will cease to exercise the same hold over the mind of the oppressed classes as it has done hitherto. But what has been our experience during the last two centuries which have witnessed the growth and spread of industrialisation on a world-wide scale with the consequent deepening of class-consciousness among the labouring classes?

The two great wars of 1914 and 1939 have conclusively shown that Communism has not been able to cut at the root of national loyalty and that nationalism, as a unifying force, has proved much stronger than Marx and Engels had estimated, for, in spite of the rise and success of Communism in Western countries especially after the Russian victory over Germany, Communism has not only been unable to Supersede nationalism, but has itself consented to work within the national framework. Moreover, class-conflicts have nowhere, not even in the face of Soviet victories, broken through the national solidarity of the Western countries. In no country of Europe, including Bulgaria, over which Russia exercised a predominant influence, has there been a successful proletarian revolution against the ruling class and this at a time when such a revolution had every prospect of success, with the armies of Soviet Russia fast approaching their country. Germany and Hungary both literally fought to the

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last breath against the Soviets, before they succumbed to the overwhelming superiority of the Russians in men and material, and till the last moment there was no sign of revolt on the part of the labouring classes.

Nor has Soviet Russia, in its treatment of the conquered territories, given proof of its freedom from national sentiments and from the ideology which inspires the other greater powers in their conduct towards the weaker nations of the world. How has the Russian treatment of Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary differed from the treatment meted out by the English and Amercians to their conquered territories? Have not the Russians exacted their full share of reparations from the conquered? Have they not encouraged by questionable methods men and parties who are willing to serve as their tools and put down, with an iron hand, all those who had any sympathies with the Western democracies? One would have naturally expected from Soviet Russia, in view of its professed humanitarian and cosmopolitan ideals, that its arms would be directed only against the capitalist rulers of Rumania, Hungary and. Germany, and that once this oppressor class has been eliminated, the masses of Rumania, Hungary and Germany, would enjoy the same rights and privileges and would be treated in the same way as the Russian proletariat, for, was not the proletariat of all the countries of the world one great brotherhood standing for the same ideals? Has this hope been realised in any one of the countries subject to Russian domination? One has only to visit these countries to see that their proletariat does enjoy the same ideals? Has this hope been realised in any one of the countries subject to Russian Domination? One has only to visit these countries to see that their proletariat does enjoy the same status as the Russian proletariat. Communism in Russia has not made it less nationalistic minded than other Western countries and so has falsified the hope expressed in the "Connunist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels:

"In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to. In

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proportion as the antagonism between the classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end."

Vain hopes and pious aspirations! Actually, Soviet Russia has demonstrated that Communism is as much consistent with nationalism as capitalism had been in its own days. The existence of similar and uniform social systems in two or more different countries has never meant that the causes of friction and war have been removed or that the exploitation of one country by another has come to an end. If the Russian proletariat can exploit the German proletariat, what hope there is that the same thing would not happen when Communism has become the social order of the whole world?

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9 SOME POINTS OF AGREEMENT

BETWEEN ISLAM AND MARXISM

In his thesis on Feuerbach, Karl Marx states: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is however to change." In this brilliant presentation of a vital truth, Marx comes nearest to Islamic teaching's. Like Marxism, Islam is not concerned with abstract, metaphysical truth but demands a thorough readjustment of practical social relations on the basis of its fundamental tenets. It is opposed to all theorising and logic-chopping which is not related to the practical needs of individual and social life. Thus the Prophet of Islam (peace be on him!) decreed:

"Reflect over the creation, not the Creator."

And again:

"The best of Islam in a man is his leaving alone things which are unnecessary."

It is also related that once the Prophet overheard some of his Companions discussing the question of free will and predestination, whereupon he showed great resentment and warned them to eschew all discussions of this nature. At the same time, however, the Holy Qur'an as well as the traditions of the Prophet abound with instructions to the Muslims to follow the path of enquiry and investigation in all matters connected with the practical world. Thus the Prophet enjoined on his followers:

"Seek knowledge, even though it be in China"

and the Qur'an has described it as one of the characteristic virtues of the Muslims that "they remember Allah, standing, sitting and reclining, and consider the creations of the heaven

SOME POINTS OF AGREEMENT. BETWEEN ISLAM AND MARXISM

and the earth, (and say): 'Our Lord! Thou created not this in vain'" (iii. 191).

This practical attitude towards life is characteristic of all religion and sharply distinguishes it from philosophy. The religious instinct of man comes into play when there is some dissatisfaction with the existing state of things and a desire to change them for the better. Thus almost every religion worth the name demands from its followers a fresh attitude to life and a change of habits and practical modes of behaviour. But while all other religions confine such demands to individual, private and family life or, at best, extend them to the sphere of a man's immediate social neighbourhood, Islam is the only religion that calls upon its fellowers to undertake a total reconstitution of the social, fabric in conformity with its fundamental tenets. Most religious creeds, while insisting upon just and virtuous conduct in relation to one's parents, kinsmen, friends and even enemies, ignore the supreme importance of ensuring justice in the social order and political order itself and leave this sphere wholly untouched. On the other hand, Islam demands justice and virtue, not only in the restricted spheres of private life, family and the immediate social neighbourhood of man, but also calls upon its followers to fight for justice in the social and economic order of society peacefully at first by moral persuasion, and forcibly if all the peaceful methods have been tried without effect. This aspect of Islamic teaching was clearly brought out in the wars undertaken by the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, after the death of the Prophet against those who refused to pay the poor-tax but promised to observe all other moral and legal restrictions imposed by Islam, including the duties of praying, fasting and undertaking the annual pilgrimage to Mekkah. Some of the companions of the Prophet were disposed to allow this concession, as a matter of expediency in the highly dangerous and disturbed condition of Arabia immediately after the Prophet's death. But Abu Bakr refused to listen to them and finally converted them to his view, after which he Carried out a series of military operations against the recalcitrants and

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compelled them by force of arms to pay the poor-tax. Those who still refused were declared apostates and exterminated by the sword, in spite of their willingness conform to the principles of Islam in every other respect.

Thus Islam broadened the conception of virtue and morality by extending the sphere of moral values to cover the economic and political order of society. The Muslims were called upon, not merely to purify their personal, private and family life, but also to undertake the task, of purifying the economic and political structure of all injustice, oppression and corruption. Of course, personal purity and virtuous conduct in family life was made a condition precedent to the task of social and collective effort in the direction of change. This was necessary because any group or body of persons whose personal and private life is not free from moral vice can hardly be expected to -observe the higher principles of social morality in the larger and more difficult sphere of collective life.' This obligation to fight for justice and truth in social and political order of society is called Jehad in the Islamic

terminology which literally means "striving". Jehad cannotes

both peaCeful resistance to evil and actual warfare for setting right the collective order of society. Thus the Qur'an says:

"Only those are Believers who have believed in Allah and His Apostle and have never since doubted, but have striven with their belongings and their persons in the Cause of Allah. Such are the sincere ones" (xlix. 15).

"0 ye who believe! Shall I lead you to a bargain that will save you from a grievous penalty? That ye believe in Allah and His Apostle and that ye strive in

SOME POINTS OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN ISLAM AND MARXISM

the Cause of Allah with your property and you persons" (lxi. 10-11).

"Allah loveth those who fight in His Cause in battle array, as if they were a solid cemented structure" (lxi. 4).

"Do ye make the giving of drink to pilgrims or the maintenance of the Sacred Mosque, equal to (the pious service of) those who believe in God and the Last Day, and strive with might and main in the Cause of God? They are not comparable in the sight of God" (ix. 19).

It is, clear from the above verses that Islam demands from its followers something more than the performance of a few rituals and ceremonies or the observance of a few rules of conduct in the restricted spheres of private and family life. Were its demands so limited, they would not have provoked that immense and widespread conflict with the dominant classes of the Arabian society of which the issue was settled by a series of wars spread over nearly a decade, nor would such restricted demands have required from the Muslims those constant sacrifices in men and money to which the Qur'an makes pointed reference when it exhorts its followers to strive in the way of Allah with their wealth and lives. This striving with wealth and life was necessitated because Islam undertook to change the whole order of society existing in its time and did not confine itself to the task of purifying the individual and private lives of its followers. This represented a notable departure from the theory and practice of other religions which concentrated exclusive attention on individual moral purification.. But it should also be remembered that, while Islam differs in this respect from other religions, it differs lso from the modern social creeds, such as Democracy, Communism and Fascism all of which ignore the importance of personal moral purity and rely exclusively on political power and social legislation to change the habits and outlook of men. These modern "religions" seek to build up social health by introducing changes from without, forgetting that

1. This is the vital and all.-important difference between Islam and Marxism. Marxism does not concern itself with the personal and private life of individuals, so long as they support and fight for its social programme. But Islam demands that before you proceed to set right the social system as a whole, you must qualify yourself for the task by observing in your private and family life those principles of virtue and justice which you would like to form the basis of the social order.

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the improvements effected by external agencies, such as legislation, yield very superficial results, unless they are accompanied by changes from within. Islam was the first and remains to this day the only social creed in the whole world which realises the interdependence of the inner and outer world and seeks to change both of them simultaneously and alongside each other. After all, social morality is nothing but the reflection of the moral habits and outlook of individual men and women and it can never rise above the moral standard attained by the individuals. On the other hand, it is equally true that the moral outlook and habits of the individuals depend to a large degree on their social environment and the nature of the social system under which they pass their lives. Morality is the product of the interaction of these two elements; i.e., the outlook and habits of individual men and women and their social surroundings, and any movement or creed which ignores this double aspect of social problems can only end in failure, however much success may attend it in the initial stages. That is the reason why Islam insists on individual and personal virtue by commanding its followers to observe in private and family life certain ethical standards laid down by it and, at the same time, calls upon them to be prepared to set right the collective basis of their social order, even if such effort involves sacrifice of the lives and property. This is what it calls Jehad or striving in the way of Allah with one's wealth and life.

A second point of agreement between Marxism and Islam is their intensely pragmatic outlook. Although they do not go all the way with pragmatism, they judge the correctness of a theory by the practical success which it is able to achieve. Thus Engels says:

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory, but is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth, e.g., the reality and power, the

this-sidedness of his thinking. The dispute over the


reality and non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

And again:

"The success of our actions proves the correspondence of our perception with the objective nature of the objects perceived."

As these quotations serve to show, Marxism gives more importance to the practical effects produced by a theory than to the , correctness of the logic behind it. The same is true of Islam to a certain degree. Thus we find that the Qur'an justifies many of its commandments by referring to their social advantages. Speaking of prayer it says: "Prayer keeps you away from lewdness and iniquity" (xxix. 16). Similarly, it justifies prohibition of drinking and gambling by referring to their injurious social effects:

"They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: 'In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but sin is greater than the profit" (ii. 219).

In connection with the division of spoils, the Qur'an says:

"What God has bestowed on His Apostle (and taken away) from the people of the townships,— belongs to God,- -to His Apostle and to kindred and orphans, the needy and the wayfarer; in order that it may not (surely) make a ciicuit between the wealth among you" (lix. 7).

These are only a few examples, among others, which show that, in formulating its moral and legal precepts, Islam has always an eye on their practical results and social utility. Thus success in one form and another is the test of theory, both in Islam and Marxism, though, of course, their conceptions of success differ in many respects. This is the reason also why both these social theories are strongly convinced of their ultimate success and triumph over their antagonistic forces. Marxism believes that the victory of Communism is inevitable. We find this predicted in almost

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every piece of Marxist literature and particularly in the "Communist Manifesto" which states:

"The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeois, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeois produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeois therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable?

Similar, the Qur'an assures the Muslims of the victory of Islam saying: "So lose not heart, nor fall into despair: for ye must gain mastery if ye are true in Faith" (iii. 139). One important difference should however, be noted. Marxism believes that it will .triumph by a logical necessity. But Islam predicts its own ultimate success on grounds of moral necessity. On the Marxist theory, the bourgeois involuntarily paves the way for the communist revolution and the laws of economic development necessarily lead the world towards the communist social order. The success of Communism is, therefore, inevitable and assured. But Islam makes its own success conditional upon the sincerity of its followers. It says: "Ye must gain mastery, if ye are true in Faith" which means that success is not assured beforehand but depends upon the depth of attachment to its truth. However, it is confident of its success, because it believes that this is a moral world in which superior morality eventually defeats evil forces, although the struggle is long and hard and its course is market by varying fortunes. According to Marxism, the course of history is governed by an inner logic which leads inevitably to progress and development, with one social order giving place to another which is more developed and better suited to the new conditions of life. According to Islam, the moral effort of human beings determines their progress, which is by no means inevitable. Success comes to that social order which represents


the largest measure of virtue and justice, but this virtue and justice can be attained only by a conscious and voluntary effort of the individuals constituting a social group.

These divergent conceptions of the ultimate causes of historical development are reflected in the technique followed by marxism and Islam to push forward their respective programmes of action. Islam begins its revolutionary effort by an appeal to the moral consciousness of human beings irrespective of their class or nationality. The appeal of Communism is to the physical forces at its command in the allegiance of a class vastly superior in numbers to the other classes of society. Islam recognises that even among the oppressor class there is always a large number of men and women who are capable of moral response to the appeal of justice and equity and whose support must be sought and gained before a final and frontal attack is launched on the forces of evil. Communism recognises no such necessity and begins its activity by inciting class-hatred and rousing class-prejudices, although the very fact that certain individuals from the capitalist class have joined the communist movement and become its zealous workers shows that not all men are moved exclusively by their class interest but have an innate moral sense which makes them revolt against injustice, even if the interest of their class is bound up with its continuance. If an appeal is made to the innate moral consciousness of men, which is often driven underground due to false education or extraneous social influences, and not to their class interest, a large number of men from the exploiting class, though not the majority of them, can be won over to the side of the revolutionary struggle against an unjust economic system. What Communism does is to drive away into the camp of oppressors this large body of persons who have the moral sanity to recognise the oppressive role of their class, because the appeal of Communism, being primarily to class interest, affords no common ground to the members of the various classes whose interests clash with each other. Such an appeal to class sentiments can have only one outcome: to add the strength to the determination of the dominant class to

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preserve and perpetuate its domination and to prevent that large body of men and women who are capable of moral response to the appeal of justice and equity from joining the revolutionary forces. What Islam does, on the other hand, is to appeal directly and primarily to the moral sense of people to their innate sense of justice. It makes no mention of class interests, with the result that all, those elements of ' society which recognise the injustice of the existing social system come together under one banner, irrespective of their class or nationality. A large body, of men, even from the exploiting class who follow their moral urge, join the movement against exploitation. It is only when all resources of moral persuasion and peaceful propaganda have been exhausted and, people have been convinced that the movement stands for the good of all, that Islam resorts to force against those who came in its way. While Communism places its sole reliance on force and on the brute strength of the, majority, Islam makes use of force only as a last resort.

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Explaining the purpose of creation, the Qur'an says:

"Blessed be He in Whose hands is Dominion; and He over all things hath power;—He created Death and Life that He may try which of you is best indeed" (lxvii. 1).

And again:

"And He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days—and His Throne was over the Waters—that He may try you, which of you is best in conduct. But if thou [0 Muhammad] were to say to them, `Ye shall indeed be raised up after death, the Unbelievers would be sure to say, 'This is nothing but obvious sorcery'" (xi. 7).

"It is He Who beginneth the process of creation, and repeateth it, that He may reward with justice those who believe and work righteousness" (x. 4).

As the above verses show, according to the Holy Qur'an, the universe is a process of trial and education of human beings. All the diverse situations in which man finds himself--poverty and riches, disease and health, strength and weakness, political supremacy and foreign subjection—and all the physical and intellectual powers with which he has been endowed, as well as the limitless material wealth placed at his disposal by nature on land and sea; in the use and misuse of all these things he is being tried, tested, and educated. But this education, of course, depends on his ability and

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willingness to read and pay heed to the lesson and warnings administered to him by nature—the "Signs" as the Holy Qur'an calls them.

"How many Signs in the heaven and the earth do they pass by? Yet they turn (their faces away from it)" (xii. 105).

It is because the non-believers are either unable or unwilling to learn and understand the moral lessons—or Signs of God in the Qur'anic terminology—furnished by the natural and historical events, that their moral education remains incomplete for which they have to suffer in the life hereafter. The Qur'an makes pointed reference to this when it says:

"But those who were blind in this world will be blind in the Hereafter, and most astray from the Path" (xvii. 72).

Now if, as the Qur'an states, our present life in this physical universe constitutes a trial, and the end in view is the moral education of mankind, this presupposes, firstly, that man is morally free, that is, he has the power of selection and choice and his actions are not predetermined by any sort of necessity, inner or external; secondly, that he is endowed with an innate moral consciousness which makes him instinctively prefer moral good to evil, unless something comes in his way to prevent him from so doing; thirdly, that the path of moral rectitude is strewn with impediments which are not overcome except by hard struggle and sacrifice. The trial and moral education of human beings is unthinkable except on these presumptions because if man were not morally free and all his actions were controlled and determined by external necessities, there would have remained hardly any ground for choice and freedom of action and for moral struggle on which development and progress in morality depend. Take animals, for example, whose habits and actions are the inevitable result of their physical condition and material surroundings. It is obvious that they can hardly be the subject of any trial in the moral sense, because they have no freedom of choice on which such trial may be based. Similarly,if men had no innate moral'


consciousness and did not possess an instinctive liking for good—whatever their idea of good may be—as against evil the moral strain involved in choosing and adhering to virtue in the face of hardships and sufferings would have been too great for humanity to bear. Actually the test is not so hard, because neither human nature nor the physical universe is ethically neutral. On the other hand, both of them positively support and encourage virtuous effort. That is what the Qur'an means when it says:

"0 ye who believe, if ye will aid the Cause of Allah, He will aid you" (xlvii. 7).

That is, the universe and human life are so constituted that as soon as a community of men takes up the cause of God or, in other words, begins to work for high moral ends, help and support come to it from all sides, from other human beings who realise the worth of its endeavours and from nature itself. That is because, with all its physical appearances, this is a moral universe, though only partially moral, in the sense that physical and material causes too operate in it and have their effects. The existence of this innate moral consciousness in human beings is further proved, firstly, by the fact that nobody commits evil for its own sake, unless he expects some advantage thereby, while there are always men and women who follow the good for its own sake, irrespective of any material considerations. Secondly, even when a man commits evil, he seeks some moral justification for his conduct. No individual or nation exploiting and oppressing another has said: "Yes, I know that this is a tyranny, exploitation and oppression, and yet I indulge in it and will continue to do so." Both individuals and nations hide their misdeeds and, when exposed, resort to all sorts of subterfuges to find and place before the world some moral justification for their acts. They do this because they instinctively feel and acknowledge to themselves the wrong done by them and yet are unwilling to make a public admission of it. The very effort of individuals and nations to explain away their evil deeds under the cover of false

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pretences points to the existence of a moral consciousness in them. As to the natural impediments in the way of moral effort, it is evident that if there were no obstacles to arrest the moral progress of men and the goal were easy of access, success would have been of little worth and the process could have involved no trial of the moral sense. It is precisely because the road to virtue is full of impediments, dangers and pitfalls that the wayfarer who attains his goal feels that he has successfully gone through the ordeal and come out triumphant.

The physical and material basis of human life constitutes the main source of moral difficulty in the pursuit of goodness. In its form and structure, man's life is material but, in its direction, ideal tendency and ultimate destiny it is spiritual. Now, the function of matter, as we learn from the scientists, is to offer resistance. In the physical world, matter has got a negative value in that it impedes motion and in so doing produces mechanical force. Mechanical force, as we know, is measured by the amount of resistance overcome. Thus the resistance offered by matter is a necessary condition for the existence of mechanical force, because where there is no resistance, there can be no mechanical force. Correspondingly in the moral sphere, although man's physical desires and material necessities present innumerable obstacles to his moral development, they are necessary in the sense that, without the resistance offered by them, the moral force in man could never come into play. It is only by regulating, controlling and overcoming our desires and by rising above purely material considerations that we justify our claim to be moral beings. If there were no desires, pulling us away from the path of moral rectitude, if there were no material necessities persuading us to abandon the path of virtue, our moral sense could not have been provoked to that effort and resistance of desire which alone constitutes morality. The material and physical basis of life; therefore;'is not to be despised and rejected from the moral viewpoint but to be met and welcomed because the

moral edifice can be reared only on the material foundations of life.

It is of course true both in the physical and moral spheres that if the resistance is too great, the force, physical as well as moral, fails in its effects and succumbs to the resistant object. Thus a moving body comes to a stop if the resistance opposing it is greater than it can overcome. Similarly, different individuals and communities possess the moral force in varying degrees and if their physical desires and material necessities impose a too heavy strain on them, their moral sense becomes inadequate to the task set for it and fails to produce any effect. That is the reason why, in cases of dire economic necessity or physical affliction, ordinary men and women are deflected from the path of moral virtue and their essentially physical and material nature asserts itself to the suppression of the moral sense. The Prophet of Islam gave expression to this truth when he said: "Extreme poverty leads to disbelief and atheism."

But this failure of the moral sense in abnormal and extreme conditions only prove that the moral consciousness of man operates within physical and material limitations. It can furnish no argument against the existence of the moral sense as such or against the capacity of man to develop his moral consciousness under normal conditions of existence, when the extremely heavy strain on morality has been removed.

As I have already shown above, the physical and material limitations of man are necessary to the development of his moral sense, because it is in resisting and overcoming these limitations that the moral consciousness of man is put to test and his power of resistance drawn forth. It follows that the material life of human beings with its physical desires and social demands is not only not opposed to his moral and spiritual development, but is absolutely necessary to it. Morality, in other words, is essentially social and co-terminous with social life. If man could live an individually self-sufficient life without any need of establishing material relations with his fellow-beings, the moral problem could not*

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have arisen. Justice, truth, fair dealings with others, honesty and all other moral virtues are possible of existence only in social life. In monastic seclusion virtue loses all meaning and necessity since there is no good to be considered by the recluse other than his own good and no injury to be averted except injury to his own person, whereas morality consists in forgoing our own good in the interests of, a greater good and sacrificing such of our comforts and pleasures as interfere with the happiness of others. Thus morality subsists on the material relations of life and is nothing else than the harmonious adjustment of these relations in the interest of the whole, that is, for the good of mankind at large. It presupposes, therefore, the existence of social life and cannot function apart from it in monastic seclusion. This is the Islamic view of morality as proved by the strict prohibition by the Qur'an of monasticism and that kind of other worldliness which leads certain people to sever themselves from the current of social life and seek their salvation in the retirement and solitude of a secluded life.

"But the Monasticism which they invented for themselves, We did not prescribe for them" (lvii. 27).

From the Islamic viewpoint our animal desires and material wants are in no way antagonistic to moral: and spiritual progress. It is only certain modes of, their fulfilment which are opposed to morality because of their socially injurious nature. Needless self-mortification and denial of material satisfaction were never recommended by Islam. On the contrary, the Qur'an has positively commanded the Muslims to enjoy the good things of life within the limits prescribed by it. Says, the Qur'an:

"0 Children of Adam, wear your beautiful apparel at every time and place of prayer; eat and drink, but waste not by excess, for God loveth not the wasters. Say: Who hath forbidden the beautiful (gifts) of God which He hath produced for His servants, and the things, clean and pure, (which He hath provided) for sustenance?" (vii 31-32).


The above verses' of the Holy Qur'an make it clear beyond doubt that gratification of physical desires and satisfaction of material wants are not regarded by Islam as in any way opposed to the life of the spirit. What is morally reprehensible is a life of unchecked desires which recognises no restraints and brooks no discipline. Self-control, not self-suppression, is the goal of morality. Moral life consists in the regulation of desires for the realisation of rational ends and in the ability to suppress desire when it tends hamper the effort at such realisation, not in aimless self-denial and sacrifice of material comforts without end or purpose.

We have seen that our present life, according to Islam, is a process of trial and moral education, and this trial presupposes moral freedom and an innate moral consciousness in, man which comes into play in the form of resistance to physical desires and material limitations. Now let us see how the moral education of mankind proceeds and in what way it can be furthered and perfected.

As already stated, self-restraint and self-discipline is the core of morality. To a certain extent, this self-restraint and self-discipline is forced upon man by conditions of life. Within a single group of human beings each man finds himself compelled by the need of social co-operation and the demands of corporate existence, to recognise certain limits to his desires and ambitions, for if he were to break all restraints and go forward with his own individual scheme of life irrespective of what happened to otherwise, the very foundations of corporate existence would be shaken and his own happiness imperilled therewith. This is a check provided by the social nature of man and his individual insufficiency. Just as in physical life, men are held in check from over-indulging their appetites by the fear of illness and other affections consequent on physical excess, similarly in collective life men who need the help of each other are restrained from acting too selfishly by the fear of alienating those whose co-operation is essential to their success. And correspondingly in the international field, each collective group is forced to observe restraint in

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the pursuit of its collective desires, because if it carries its ambitions too far, other groups are likely to be provoked into resisting its efforts. Fear of individual and collective retaliation has a sobering effect on individuals as well as nations and restrains them from the unfettered pursuit of their personal and collective desires. In all these cases, whether they relate to the individuals within a group or to the groups themselves in their mutual behaviour towards each other, there is involved control and restraint of desire and denial of emotional satisfaction, however temporary it may be, which characterises the life of moral 'beings.

But these natural checks on unfettered self-indulgence, important as they are in teaching self-control and moral self - discipline to human beings in their individual and collective life, are neither absolute nor unfailing in their effects. They are effective within a very narrow and limited field and do not always prevent individuals and nations from tramping on equal rights of others. And when an individual or nation trespasses on the just liberties of, another individual or nation or disregards its interests in order to further its own, it immediately looks about for some device to avert the natural consequences of its actions and to dull the edge of retaliation provoked by its misdeeds. For this purpose, erring individuals and nations resort to lying propaganda with a view to making sure that public opinion remain neutral or at least. lukewarm in its opposition to. them. They even try to deceive their victims by fair-seeming words and false promises of future good behaviour towards the latter, so that they may be lulled into a false sense of security. By these means they try to escape the natural checks and limits set by nature before human desires and ambitions. Moreover, the degree of restraint shown by individuals and nations in their dealings with others is proportional to their relative powerlessness. The conduct of less powerful individuals and nations is marked by a greater degree of restraint, since they are exposed to effective retaliation. But the check does not operate to the same extent on the stronger and more influential individuals and groups,


because they have less to fear from their prospective victims. Thus individuals and nations in the plenitude of their power are far less amenable to the moral self-descipline involved in the natural law of retaliation. There is hardly any force to keep the stronger individuals and nations within the bounds of reason and moderation and it is precisely such individuals and groups that are guilty of injustice, tyranny and other vices. Education provided by natural checks and restraints is therefore, inadequate to meet the moral needs of humanity. Apart from this, such education is highly artificial. Moral self-discipline, to be real and effective, must be. voluntary. But in the, case of natural checks and restraints there is no willing surrender of the self on the part of individuals and nations to the demands of moral law. When individuals or groups are prevented from doing mischief by the fear of undesirable consequences, they gain nothing in morality as there is no willing self-abandonment to the requirements of moral justice. The restraint on such individuals and groups is, imposed from without by the pressure of external necessity, and their own attitude suffers no change, with the result that as the compelling external influences are removed, their evil desires regain their hold upon them. Considerations of expediency and not of morality restrain them from doing what they like. This sort of imposed discipline can hardly deserve to be called moral self-discipline, for morality is nothing if it is not free and voluntary. Therefore, the discipline which nations and individuals acquire from the operation of natural checks and restraints is highly artificial, superfluous and ephemeral. It represents no real moral advance, for such advance can result only from a voluntary and willing submission to the moral law uninfluenced by the fear of external sanctions. That is the reason why the Qur'an gives no credit to the non-believers for any of their good acts because the good they do is either the outcome of their fear of evil consequences or is inspired by the hope of some immediate advantage to themselves. It is not the result of their heartfelt attachment to the moral principles of action. Thus the Qur'an says:

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"But the Unbelievers,—their deeds are like a mirage in sandy deserts, which the man parched with thirst mistakes for water; until when he comes up to it, he finds it to be nothing; but he finds God (ever) with him, and God will pay him his account: and God is swift in taking account" (xxiv. 39).

What is true of the external restraints provided by the social nature of man and the needs of corporate existence is also partly true of the legal restraints embodied in the law of the state, because law is also derived from the same source and depends for its effectiveness on the availability of physical force to back up its demands. But for the coercive power 'of the state, ready at all times to mete stern punishment to the lawbreakers, it would be very difficult to get any law obeyed by the majority of individuals in any community. To the extent that law represents organised physical force and depends upon it for enforcing its decrees, it reflects the moral backwardness of the community, because, as has also been stated above, morality consists in willing obedience to the demands of moral consciousness. Moral conduct is always voluntary and untainted by the fears of unhappy consequences or the hopes of material rewards. The coercive nature of law and its dependence on physical force robs it of that voluntariness and spontaneity which characterises morality. That is the reason why social legislation always fails in its purpose, however great the physical force at its disposal, if there is general unwillingness in the community to obey its decrees. Of course, in so far as law represents the agreed determination of the members of a community to abide by its regulations and carry out its behests, it does reflect the moral progress of a community. But this equation of law and morality must be qualified by two important considerations. In the first place, law is of necessity the reflection of average morality. It cannot go beyond what the majority demands, but the moral level reached by the majority is not the highest that the community is capable of. Individuals who stand on a higher moral plane can find no favour with the legislator,

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since the latter has always an eye on the multitude and is afraid of going beyond the requirements of average morality. Of course he is not to blame for it, for law connot distinguish between different individuals and must serve the general needs. Law, therefore, represents the morality of the average man and positively hinders the efforts of individuals occupying a higher moral stage to take it to their level. Secondly, it gives us no means to judge the moral level of particular individuals, because different persons obey its decrees from different motives. Some individuals of course abide by the legal restraints in full consciousness of their moral necessity, but by, far the greater number of people acquiesce in their enforcement for fear of the legal penalties consequent on their violation. There is no means of knowing whether the submission of an individual to law is a free and voluntary act dictated by no other motive except the conviction that it serves the interests of humanity and is, therefore, morally good, or whether his submission to it is reluctant, enforced and dictated by considerations of expediency. Thus it becomes impossible to assess how far a piece of social legislation carries the willing assent of the community and how far its success is due to the physical threats accompanying its violation. Therefore, social legislation can never be the true index of the stage of moral development reached by a community, and if a person measures the moral advance of a people by its statute book, he is likely to go wrong in his estimate.

Nor can legislation do much to further the moral advance of a people. It can merely create the conditions within which moral values may flourish and morality may develop, but its own contribution to the moral progress is very limited. For in the first place law can provide only for general situations and remains ineffective in respect of all human acts which defy generalisation and are the outcome of particular needs and requirements. Moreover, it is not possible for any legislator to force and make provision for the actual circumstances in which a piece of legislation will be enforced, and yet it is

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precisely these circumstances that determine to a very great extent whether the law as it is can apply to the situation or it must suffer modification in the special circumstances of the case, if its object is to be realised. Correct application of law to particular circumstances requires not only keen intellectual perception, but also the right moral attitude consisting in the

'determination to see that the object of law is fulfilled. This is possible only if those who execute the law hold the conviction that it is morally necessary. The utility of law, therefore, depends on the destee of moral consciousness that goes to its execution. The reason why we hear frequent complaints that the law is being violated in spirit by its guardians is that the so-called guardians of law feel no attachment to the ideal for which the law stands and are unconcerned about its moral purpose with the result that they misapply it by insisting on its letter. Thus the development of moral consciousness is a prior condition for the success of legal restraints.

It should be noted in this connection that law does not produce morality but is itself the product of a people's moral habits. We are generally deluded into thinking that legislation can change the habits and mode of life of a community. It is forgotten, however, that legislation can go no farther than is warranted by the moral character of the people. Any law which is in advance of the general level of morality must remain a dead letter, a fact which is amply illustrated by the history of legislation. The prohibition law in America is a case in point. It had to be expunged from the statute book, because it went against a general and deep-rooted habit. The ineffectiveness of law to change the moral habits and the outlook of a people lies in its compulsive and coercive nature. To rule by means of law only is tantamount to depend exclusively upon legislation, for moral education of a community is like depending wholly on the rod in teaching a child. The rod is no doubt useful on occasions, but its frequent use spoils the child. Similarly, absolute dependence on legislation for the moral education of a people will always end in failure, since human beings cannot and should not be led


and driven by a show of external force and authority. Habits of life imposed from without can never take root in the minds of men. Moral education, to be effective, must being by effecting changes within, that is, in the moral attitude and spiritual outlook of men. Only then will external changes of a permanent character follow and not otherwise. Of course, legislation is a useful auxiliary to the moral effort which aims at revolutionising the inner life of men, their moral outlook and habits. It is necessary in so far as it creates those conditions within which such moral reformation can take place, but as an independent factor in the moral education of human beings, it has never been and never will be of any value.

Marxism, along with other modern social theories, places exclusive reliance on state power and state regulation to mould the moral habits and outlook of men, but, as we have seen above, the success of legislation and the coercive authority of the state employed to alter the habits of life depends to a very large degree on the moral consciousness of people. Moreover, this reliance on external compulsion and the coercive power of the state destroys freedom of action. More legislation means more compulsion and less opportunity for the people to act on their own initiative, and, in the absence of such opportunity, there is very little scope for the development of morality since only such of our acts are moral which are voluntary and uninfluenced by external factors such as the fear of state authority. In a society in which a large part of the life of individuals is regulated by the legal decrees of the state, how can it be possible for men and women to follow the path of virtue voluntarily and of their own accord, when they are already under compulsion to act in a particular way in regard to most affairs of their life? The ever-widening scope of social legislation in modern times has left an extremely narrow field of action for the exercise of free choice by men and women and for self-regulation which is the essence of morality. An excess of state regulation has turned people into automatons following, by enforced

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obedience and as a matter of life-less habit, a set pattern of life laid down by the state. The springs of moral life are dried up, because very little freedom has been left to individuals to act voluntarily and freely in the direction of one's choice. This tendency of state legislation to dominate human life to the exclusion of free moral action will not only continue under Communism but assume much wider proportions; since Communism envisages a far more complete state regulation of life than our present capitalist-cum-democratic system; and if people are made in this manner to arrange all their affairs and determine all their actions in accordance with the dictates of an external authority backed by physical force, will there be left for them any field for free choice and voluntary action? Taken for granted that more state regulation will give lesser opportunity to people to commit crimes and act in a socially injurious manner, it does not follow that people will become more virtuous under these conditions, for virtue under restraint and external compulsion is not true virtue. It lasts only so long as the pressure remains and implies no real change of habits and outlook. As soon as the pressure is removed and the external sanctions compelling men to be law-abiding disappear, their suppressed nature comes out into the open and does more mischief than if there had been no suppression. State authority and social legislation as a method of moral education are, therefore, only of a limited value and must not be relied upon to the exclusion of everything else.

Now, let us see what are the methods used by Islam to develop the moral consciousness of humanity. Islam too makes use of state authority and social legislation for the purpose of moral education, but not as an independent and self-sufficient factor. Legislation in Islam serves as an auxiliary to its main method of moral instruction. It is employed to create the necessary conditions of an ordered and peaceful life which is the essential condition of all moral activity. But Islam dqes not place exclusive reliance on state authority and the arm of law. On the contrary, it leaves a wide field of free action to individuals in order that they may exercise their choice and

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voluntarily follow the path of virtue and morality. In this field of free action, it makes use of another method to restrain people from misusing their freedom and making a wrong choice. It drives home in their mind the conviction that this world is a testing place, an arena of moral trial for them and that another and more perfect world awaits existence in which the full effects of their moral conduct would reveal themselves. Belief in the essentially moral foundations of life and its continuation beyond death, in another form, in which only the moral effects of our actions will determine our happiness or misery, is the basis of Islamic ideology and also the main instrument with which it prevents indivic'ual men and women from going astray in those parts of their life which are not externally regulated by means of state legislati

The root cause of all evil, according to Islam, is the misconception in the minds of men that they can escape the moral consequences of their actions, if only they are clever enough to cover their misdeeds by an appearance of saintliness and develop, in addition, sufficient material strength to ward off all danger of retaliation. This belief is combated by Islam with the doctrine of the life hereafter and the conception that even our present world is at the bottom a moral world wherein, although physical and material factors to have their effects and determine to a certain extent the happiness or misery of man, yet in the long run the moral effects of human conduct prove decisive. According to Islam, whatever temporary benefits an individual or nation may receive, for short periods, as a result of its superior cunning or superior physical and material strength, ultimately its fate will be decided by the degree of moral consciousness that inspires and informs its conduct. Thus a powerful nation may, for a considerable time, hide its misdeeds by means of false propaganda designed to humbug the world by high-sounding noble phrases and no actual harm may come to it from its tyranny or injustice, in the ultimate reckoning its evil deeds will not go unpunished and its later generations are bound to taste the evil fruits of the crimes committed by their

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ancestors. In the case of individuals it is possible that they may escape for a whole lifetime the consequences of their tyranny, injustice and other vices, if they command sufficient influence in society or government, or if they are clever enough to dodge the police and deceive public opinion by giving false reasons for their misconduct, yet they will not be let off by the all-pervading moral law whose dominion stretches beyond the narrow limits of earthly existence and, if not in this world, they will meet with punishment in the next life, where the moral effects of human action will reveal themselves in their fullness and purity undisturbed by physical and material factors. The belief in the moral ordering of the universe and the ultimate triumph of moral effects over purely physical and material effects is the main instrument of moral education with Islam. The more a Muslim believes in the moral nature of this universe and in the ultimate success of moral methods, the more likely is he to keep to the path of virtue and justice, and to resist all seductions of immorality and the false promises of world glory and material happiness with which evil desires seek to beguile him. If a man believes in the life hereafter, and feels convinced that whatever temporary advantages evil and injustice may bring in this world, his ultimate and lasting happiness depends on adhering to virtue and goodness, his chances of refraining from evil are definitely greater than those who believe that this our present life is the only life and that if we only take care to do evil in a clever way, there is no authority whose punishment we need fear.

The fact that in the present earthly existence of man the moral effects of human conduct reveal themselves only in part and that full moral consequences of human acts will make themselves felt only in the next life, which is a continuation of the present existence, is again and again emphasised by the Holy Qur'an so that evildoers may not be deceived by their apparent success, nor the virtuous disheartened by the ill-success of their moral efforts. Drawing attention to this important truth, the Holy Qur'an says:

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"If God were to punish men according to what they deserve, He would not leave on the back of the (earth) a single living creature: but He gives them respite for a stated Term: when their Term expires, verily God has in His sight all His servants" (xxxv. 45).

"If Gad were to punish men for their wrongdoing, He would not leave, on the (earth), a single living creature: for He gives them respite fora stated Term: when their Term expires, they would not be able to delay (the punishment) for a single hour; just as they would not be able to anticipate it (for a single hour)" (xvi. 61).

"But your Lord is Most 'Forgiving, Full of Mercy. If He were to call them (at once) to account for what they have earned, then surely He would have hastened their Punishment, but they have their appointed Time, beyond which they will find no refuge" (xviii. 58).

This doctrine that the full consequences of man's moral conduct make themselves felt in the next world is quite consistent with the Islamic conception of our present life as a period of trial, for no one can expect to see, while the period of trial lasts, the exact balance-sheet of his gains and losses.

It will be seen that while Islam excludes a considerable portion of human life from state control, so that human beings may be able to exercise their free choice and act voluntarily in regard to all affairs not covered by the laws of the state, yet, even in this field of free action, it furnishes mankind with a principle of self-regulation which has the effect of restraining individual men and women from going the wrong way, and of encouraging them to be steadfast in virtue, in spite of any hardship that may attend their efforts. By driving home the conviction that the moral effects of human actions ultimately prevail against their physical and material effects and that the law of righteousness is decisively supreme in the' end, it destroys any illusions that men may entertain about their

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ability to escape, by means of their cleverness or by building up sufficient physical and material strength, the inevitable moral consequences of their actions. Nor does Islam leave humanity in .the dark as to what is really good for it and what is evil. On the other hand, it explains in great detail its conceptions of good and evil. Only it does not make use of external authority to enforce those conceptions on the believers, In this manner the moral development of humanity is furthered by the twofold method of state legislation and the inculcation of belief in the supremacy of moral law, that is, the existence of an after-life, with the result that those who believe in the doctrine of a future existence cease to be dictated solely by considerations of worldly expediency and act morally in the full confidence that their moral stand would ultimately lead them to success. Thus Islam supplements the natural checks and restraints on human beings and the compulsive regulation of their life by the state with the moral education based on the doctrine of one God and the existence of the life hereafter.

11

ECONOMIC SYSTEM OF ISLAM

Islam in its economic aspect has been identified by some with the capitalistic mode of life. Others have found in its teachings ample evidence to justify a communistic form of society. Some, again, have tried to equate it with a feudal social order of the medieval type. There are parties which, without explicitly saying so, invest private property with a religious sanctity as if it were one of the fundamental pillars of Islam. Their opponents, building on the sole authority of Abu Dharr, encourage the belief that the abolition of private property was a part of Islam's Original programme which was shelved when the reactionary Umayyad party gained the upper hand in the counsels of the Muslim state during the Caliphate of Uthman, No agreement on the economic teachings of Islam thus appears to be within sight. This •is hardly an auspicious sign for the future of Muslims, because economic life, like sex life, is one of the most important determining factors in the progress and evolution of a civilisation. A nation that cannot order its economics on healthy and strong foundations has little prospect of success or prosperity, particularly in an age which is passing through one of the greatest revolutions of history.

What is overlooked by these different contestants in the field of Islamic economics is that terms like Capitalism," "Feudalism" and "Communism" are products of recent thought and connote a state of affairs which was non-existent at the time when Islam made its appearance in the world. It is, therefore, a misnomer to apply and one of them to Islam. The

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utmost that can be asserted of Islam is that it reveals certain trends more akin to one of the economic orders referred to above, or that in its spirit it is more in accord with one of them rather than others. Nor should it be forgotten that, unlike Communism or Capitalism, economic life was not the sole concern of Islam. True, it dealt with economic problems too as and when they arose, but it did not view them in isolation from spiritual, social and sex problems. Having been the highest exponent of the doctrine of Tawhid, or unity of life, Islam made no sharp distinction between economic economics, politics and other spheres of life. The existence of man, like other aspects of his life, was, in the eyes of Islam, a part of his spiritual existence and man's total outlook on life governed also his conduct in the economic sphere. Islam, therefore, did not proceed directly to improve the economic structure of society as it was found in its own day. It gave primary attention to the improvement of man's total outlook on life, because, unless the entire scheme of human values is recast as a result of a change in man's mental climate, partial improvements in any one isolated sphere of life are bound to prove illusory and evanescent, since a constant process of action and reaction is always at work between one sphere of life and another. To produce desirable results in one field of human conduct, it is necessary to deal with the whole of it in all its manysidedness, and this is possible only through a total reconstitution of the entire human outlook as a unified whole.

In the economic sphere proper, it must be remembered, Islam was not faced with any of the economic problems which arose under Feudalism, Capitalism and Communism. The nature of the economic problems dealt with by Islam was not similar to that of the contemporary economic problems. If, therefore, anyone applies the specific economic injunctions of Islam to the economic issues which modern society is confronted with, he will only make confusion worse confounded, for those injunctions were directed to the solution of problems which do not exist today. Of course, there are two ways in which Islam can still furnish guidance


on contemporary economic problems, however different their nature may have become. First, Islam did, in dealing with specific problems of its own age, proclaim certain general economic principles of universal import which may apply to any society at any time. For example, when dealing with the disposal of Fay' property, the Qur'an proclaimed:.

"What God has bestowed on His Apostle (and taken away) from the people of the townships,— belongs to God, —to His Apostle and to kindred and orphans, the needy and the wayfarers; in order that it may not (merely) make a circuit between the wealthy among you" (lix. 7).

Here the Qur'an has made it clear that it does not like a society wherein national wealth remains concentrated in a few hands instead of flowing through the entire social organism and enriching all its parts like blood in a man's body. Again, in earmarking portions of the Fay' property for helping the orphans, the needy and the wayfarer, the Qur'an has made it clear that people who have become economically helpless through no fault of their own are entitled to a share of the national income which they can religiously and legally claim from the duly constituted authority. It is not right to throw such people on individual charity. Secondly, even when no general principles have been enunciated by Islam, it is still possible to deduce certain principles from its specific economic injunctions and reapply them to problems arising under changed conditions. For these specific injunctions show the way in which Islam would have dealt with modern problems, if they had arisen in its early days. For example, it is related on the authority of Ubaidullah b. Adi that on the occasion of Hajjat-ul-Wida (last pilgrimage), two men claimed charity from the Prophet of Islam when he was distributing alms. The Prophet looked up to them and finding them hale and strong, said to them: "if you want something from me, I can give it, but strong and healthy persons able to earn their own living deserve no financial help" (Abu Dawud). This is a principle applicable even in out own times, although

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conditions have changed. The state is not under any obligation to afford economic help to people whose earning capacity has not been marred or destroyed by age or natural defects or disabling accidents. Propertyless widows alone form an exception to this general rule.

It is unscientific to seek reasons for or against specific policies regarding such matters as landlordism, redistribution of land on a more equitable basis, cooperative farming, collectivisation of farms, nationalisation of industries, etc., which never arose during. The life time of the Holy Prophet and in the Society in which Islam took its birth. Islam simply did not state its attitude to such questions, because it had no need to do so. We shall have to decide such questions either from a purely humanitarian viewpoint, or from the general trend of Islamic teachings, keeping in view its total attitude to human life and basing our decision on a correct appraisal of the probable political and social consequences likely to arise from any policy that may be followed with regard to them. If the probable social and political consequences of our decisions are such as Islam would have approved, those decisions must be regarded as proceeding from Islamic teachings, whether or not they have the support of precedent and authority. It will be replied by those who do not agree with this view-point, that in regard to landlordism at least, Islam does provide us with specific guidance, because the Prophet himself gave and distributed landed property amongst his followers and did not in his own day attempt the abolition or restriction of landed property. This raises the question whether the Prophet's decisions with regard to the distribution of land were not affected by forces and the conditions beyond his control. In other words, if Islam had found in Arabia conditions appropriate for the restriction of landed property, would it still have tolerated the existing system of land distribution? This is in reality part of a larger question whether religious movements of the type of Islam can be forced by limiting circumstances of their age and time to cry a halt at certain measures which are regarded as only a halfway house towards

138


a distant goal; or no limitations of age, circumstance, time and place are capable of affecting them. In other words, is it possible to make a distinction between the actual achievements of Islam and its ideal objectives?

Before we take up this question, let us study the actual social and economic conditions of Arabia at the time of Islam. It is maintained by some people who have been influenced by the materialistic interpretation of history that Islam was born in, and bore the stamp of, a slave-owning society. But, is this true of Arabia at the time when the Holy Prophet went on his mission of preaching Islam? The proportion of slaves in Arabia to the free population was so small that it hardly needs mention. There were individual slaves here and there, but their number was small. In the great Empire of Persia adjoining north-east Arabia, slavery was not a very striking phenomenon and we do not find any mention in history of Persian slaves working on lands or employed as household menials in large numbers. Only the Roman Empire to the north-west of Arabia was based on slavery and there we find slaves being employed on a large soale in farms and small factories. But Arabia was not a part of the Roman Empire. It remained for the most part secluded from external culture and political influences. North Arabia, except for the small border state of Banu Ghassan, was conspicuously free from Roman influence. Only in the south during the brief period of Abyssinian rule under the Aksumites, the Roman influence could have indirectly percolated to some degree and brought in its train the institution of slavery in Arabia. This is enough to dispose of the theory that Arabian society at the birth of Islam was a slave-owning society and Islamic teachings in part were conditioned by the nature and requirements of that society.

Now, let us see whether feudalism in its ordinary sense was the prevalent economic order of Arabia when Islam made its appearance there. If feudalism means the concentration of large areas of land in the hands of a few rich landlords with the majority of poor cultivators working as serfs, this was a

119

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social phenomenon strikingly non-existent in Arabia; with the exception of the rich Yemen province, most of the land was barren and uncultivable. Here and there, as in Ta'if and Khyber, small areas of land were fit for cultivation, but even there no disproportionately large area of land was held by a single individual or f amily There is no mention in the history of Arabia of a single rich landlord, because the nature of the country's soil precluded the appearance of this form of land-ownership. Landlordism or feudalism, as it is understood today, could hardly have made its appearance in a country like Arabia whose area of cultivable land is narrowly limited by the absence of rain and irrigation and the sandy desert soil. The result was that. Islam was not confronted with the question of landlordism in its modern form. This fact is generally ignored by those who seek to justify landlordism in Pakistan on the score that Islam in its own day made no attempt to change the existing system of land distribution. The answer is that Islam was not face to face with landlordism as a social evil, there being no large landlords in Arabia. It would have been a different matter if there had been in Arabia large tracts of land in possession of individual landlords with the mass of peasantry working as hired labourers or tenants-at-will: Had such a situation arisen and Islam still tolerated the big landlords, there would have been some justification for the claim that there is nothing religiously wrong in the existing system of land distribution which has left the large mass of peasantry property less and rightless in regard to the land on which it has to work.

These facts also explain the Prophet's taking no objection to the distribution of conquered lands among his followers. For example, when the lands around Medina belonging to the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadhir came into the possession of the Holy Prophet, he divided them among the migrants and the poor Ansar. Similarly, after;bis victory over the Jews of Khyber, the Prophet saw nothing objectionable in dividing the lands of Khyber among the warriors of Islam, who had borne the brunt of fighting over many years. It is clear that when the

140


Prophet took this step, there was not the slighest danger of landlordism making its appearance in Arabia, or large areas of land passing from the hands of cultivators into the hands of a few rich landlords. The tracts of land distributed by the Prophet were too small for this to happen. Had there been the slightest danger of land becoming concentrated in a few hands, there is reason to suppose that the Prophet would have acted otherwise. Then there was another reason tclo why the Prophet was led to distribute the conquered land among his followers. The nascent Islamic State of Medina had still no organised treasury and made no payment towards the salaries of its civil and military employees. The soldiers of Islam fought the wars against the unbelievers as volunteers whose services brought them no material reward. It was, therefore, both natural and necessary that, failing other forms of remunera-tion, the soldiers should receive portions of the lands conquered by them, because they could, not indefinitely support them-selves and their,families on nothing, The Prophet's action was thus dictated by a social and political necessity and it cannot be adduced in, support of the theory that, since Islam in its own day made no change in the system of land distribution in Arabia, the present-day Muslim governments „should also desist frozn redistributing land on a more equitable basis. Then there is sufficient evidence to show that, although political and social conditions forced the Prophet to tolerate the, distribution of land among his followers, he did not approve of any arrangment which left unnessarily large tracts of land in the hands of a few individuals and devprived a large number of people of any share in landed property. For example, there is the following tradition of Rat'? b. Khadij:

"During the days of the Prophet, there was more land in the hands of some people than they needed, so they let it, out on one half, one-third or one-fourth of the produce. The Prophet said to them that he whp had a larger share of land than he needed should either cultivate it himself or pass it on as a gift to one of his brother Muslims."

141

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This shows that the Prophet really disliked a state of affairs in which a large number of people remained landless while a few had more than sufficient land at their disposal. Although he did not go to the length of stopping this by means of legislation, his objective was unmistakably clear. Probably he realised that in the state:of affairs then prevailing; state interference in this matter was not desirable. So he defined his ultimate objective, but made no interference in the existing arrangements.

There is evidence at hand to show that the more .intimate companions of the Prophet recognised the ideal objectives of Islam. This is particularly evident from a number of decisihns taken by Umar in his own time, realising that conditions had changed since the days of the Prophet and new readjustments were necessary to fulfil the objectives laid down by him. -But it must be rernembered also that at no time during his rule, the second Caliph departed from the real intents and purposes of his master. An example of such adjustments may be found in his famous decision to abolish the shares of Mullafat-il-Qulub (those whose hearts had to be won over to Wain) in the distribution of Zakat. When these people claimed their portion of Zakat, Umar flatly refused to give in, saying that the Prophet had fixed a share for them in the proceeds of the Zakat, because Islam in his time was still struggling against the forces of disbelief, and it was necessary to hold out some promise of material reward to those who were wavering or remained indecisive in the adherence to Islam. This necessity, he added, had passed with the political and social victory of Islam. It was, therefore, no longer necessary to provide material incentives to those who wished to come over to Islam, for such incentives were already operative.

The same breadth of vision and intellectual courage characterised the decifion of Urnar with regard to the distribution of conquered lands in Syria and Iraq. When the Muslim army demanded that; in accordance with the precedent set by the Prophet in the case of lands conquered in Khyber, the rich lands and estates in the conquered territory of-Syria

and Iraq should be divided among the warriors, Umar refused to accede to their demand. He knew that when the Prophet distributed the lands of Khyber amongst his soldiers, there was no danger of Muslims falling into the evil of landlordism and abandoning the life of toil and struggle in pursuit of their high ideals. But, with the conquest of Syria and Iraq, this danger did not any longer remain in the, region of remote possibility. Umar saw that, if he distributed the conquered lands to the Muslim army, he would be creating a class of landlords who would contribute nothing to the glory of Islam and would be content to live a life of ease and comfort out of the income derived from land. After three days of celeberation, he at last found the necessary authority, and, before an assembly of notables, said to, be the largest in his regime, he justified his decision by quoting the following verses of the Holy Qur'an:

"What God has bestowed on His Apostle (and taken away) from the people, of the townships,— belongs to God,—to His Apostie and to kindred and orphans, the needy and the .:wayfarers (Some part is due) to the indigent Muhajirs, those who were expelled from their homes and their property and those who came after them..,.(lix. 7-10).

From the last words of Qin' ahic text, the second Caliph argued that any property acquired as a result of conquest by arms is not the sole possession of the existing generation of Muslims. The coming generation has also its- 'share in such property and, therefore, it is the state and not the individuals into whose possession and administration it should pass. Nearly all the companions of the Prophet -accepted this explanation and the lands of conquered Syria and Iraq became state property. This shows that the Islamic state has a wide latitude in the matter of land distribution.

The second Caliph also took another revolutionary step in the matter of acquisition of land by Muslims. He prohibited the purchase of landed property by the Muslims in the conquered dominions. As in the case of the distribution of conquered lands

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in Syria and Iraq, this step was necessitated by the growing tendency of the Arab conquerors to purchase large landed estates and develop into a hereditary landed aristocracy. When the strong hand of Umar was removed, the danger foreseen by him materialised with full force, so that the: whole of Sawed (Babylon) became a vast landed property of the Quraishite chiefs, specially'• the Ummayyads who, taking advantage of their kinShip with the third Caliph, carved out big estates for themselves. The haughty Sa'id ibn al-As went to the extent of declaring: "The Sawad is nothing but the estate of the Quraish; we take from it whatever we like, and leave what we like."

So far we have discussed the policy of the Islamic state with regard to the distribution of land. Let us now consider the trend of Islamic teachings in respect of other forms of wealth. While the Qur'an looks askance at the accumulation of wealth in all forms, the Hadith contains different kinds of injunctions. This conflict in Hadith literature may be susceptible of two explanations. In the first place, it is possible that the holy Prophet, in dealing with concrete problems, found that the limiting circumstances of the time would not allow him to go as far as he would have wished. So he had to tolerate many unpleasant practices as a matter of,practical necessity. Or it may be that the Hadith literature does not faithfully reflect the teachings of the Prophet. As Hadith had not been collected during the lifetime of the Prophet, the spirit of, a later age and its changed outlook coloured and distorted the actual words of the Prophet. This does not mean that the Muslims made any deliberate attempt to, twist the Prophet's commands so as to bring them into line with their own ideas aqd aptitudes. It only shows that the psychology of indilviduals and the mental climate of society affect our understanding of the words and deeds, of great men.

Let us deal first with the Holy Qur'an. The Qur'an sums up its attitude towards wealth and property in a remarkable passage which contains a scathing condemnation of all forms of acquisitive living and an exhortation to lead a life of creative activity:

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"Fair in the eyes of men is the love of things they covet: women and sons, heaped-up hoards of gold and silver; horses branded (for blood and excellence), and (wealth of) cattle and well-tilled land. Such are the possessions of the world's life; but in nearness to God is the best of the goals (to return to). Say: Shall I give you glad tidings of, things far better than those? For the righteous are Gardens in nearness to the Lord, with rivers flowing beneath; therein is their eternal home; with Companions pure (and holy); and the good pleasure of God. For in God's sight are (all) His servants,—(namely), those who say: 'Our Lord! we have indeed believed: forgive, then, our sins, and save us from the agony of the Fire!' —Those who show patience, firmness, and selfcontrol, who are true (in word and deed); who worship devoutly; who spend in the way (of God); and who pray for forgiveness in the early hours of the morning" (iii. 14-17).

Here, the Qur'an enunciates an exalted ideal of creative activity and declares that the love of lower desires, of property and, wealth, etc., is definitely an ignoble way of living. Of course, the Qur'an does not expect that all men will ever rise to the height of its ideal, but it points the way. Any society that approximates most closely to the Queanic life of creative activity as opposed to acquisitive effort is bound to rise superior here and hereafter to one which follows the ignoble way of living depicted by the Holy Qur'an.

Again, the Qur'an has unreservedly condemned the hoarding and accumulation of wealth and with holding its use for social and religious purposes:

"And there are those who buy gold and silver and spend it not in the way of God; announce unto them a most grievous penalty—on the Day when heat will be produced of that (wealth) in the fire of Hell, and with it will be branded their foreheads, their flanks, and their backs,-'This is the (treasure)

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which ye buried for yourselves, take ye, then, the (treasures) ye buried" (ix, 34-35).

These verses are fully representative of the Qur'anic attitude towards wealth and property and they breathe an anti-capitalistic spirit. These give a direct lie to those who hold that, if a Muslim has paid two "and a half per cent Zakat on his wealth and property, he becomes absolved of all social responsibility and is at liberty to do whatever he likes with the rest of his surplus wealth. If Islam proceeded no farther in the organisation of social security than levying a tax of two and a half percent and distributing its proceeds to the poorer sections of the community, it was because the technical means for a more complex organisation of social security were lacking in the then existing conditions of the world generally, and Arabia particularly. It cannot mean that this was the ultimate goal of Islam or that the Qur'an prevents the Muslims from taking fui•ther and wider steps towards organised measures of economic uplift and social security.

That the Qur'an disapproves of the practice of keeping more- wealth than one really needs is evident from the following verse:

"They ask thee how much they are to What is beyond your needs" (ii.219).'

These teachings leave no manner of doubt as to the ultimate objective of Islam in regard to the economic organisation of society. If Islam did not find in its own day conditions appropriate for the full implementation of its economic programme, the blame does not rest with it. It is the duty of the present-day Muslims to go ahead and realise, in an age of more developed resources and techniques, the social and economic objectives laid down by the Qur'an.

When we come to the Hadith, we find, as already stated, a conflict of tendencies. In some places the Prophet seems to have encouraged the keeping of wealth for future needs, specially the needs of children. For" example, Abdullah b. Abbas says that if the people reduce from one-third to one-


fourth the amount of property that they will give away, it is better for them, for he says:

"I have heard the Prophet of God saying that you can spend in charity a third of your wealth and property, but even one-third is a large amount."

Here is an advice different from the Prophet's own practice who, according to Abu Hurairah, is reported to have said:

"Had there been gOld for me like the Itiount of Uhud, it would have pleased me that three nights should not pass over me with something with me therefrom, except what 'I should keep in wait for debt?

Again, there is a tradition reported by Sa'ad b. Waqqas, who was a rich man. Sa'd reports:

"The Prophet of God came to visit me on my sick-bed in the year of his last pilgrimage. I said to him, 'Prophet of God, you see sickness has made my condition serious and I am a man of wealth and there is no one to inherit my wealth except a son. Should I give away two-thirds of it in charity?' The Prophet said, 'No.' I said, 'Whether half would suffice.' He said, 'No.' I said, 'Whether one-third should do.' He said, 'Yes. But even one-third is 'a large amount. It is better that you should leave your children rich rather than poor, stretching forth their hands before man."

In this tradition also, there is a tendency to justify accumulation of wealth for the sake of one's family. The reason obviously for this sort of advice lay in the conditions of the time. Because social security measures were not fully developed and individuals could hope for little economic help from the state, it was but practical wisdom to advise people not to spend away the major portion of their wealth even on social charity.

In contrast with the Traditions revealing a tendency to justify limited accumulation of wealth, there are others in which unlimited charity has been prescribed and the Muslims

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have been exhorted to part with all their surplus wealth. For example, a tradition reported by Abu Said al-Khudri says:

"While we were on a journey with the Messenger of Allah, there came a man riding on a mule. He was turning his look right and left. Then the Messenger of Allah said: 'Whoever has got an additional back with him, let him give it to one who has got no back for him (to ride upon). And whoever has got additional provision, let him give it to one who has got no provision for him.' Then he described about various kinds of property, till we saw there is no right for any of us, in any surplus property" (Muslim).

INDEX

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al Df a a-ly ae St ft le

a-e- ed

Abbasid, 59, 60

Abdullah b. Abbas, 146 absolutism, 81

Abu Bakr, 109

Abu Datvud, 137 Abu. Dharr,135

Abu Hurairah, 147

abuses, social, 8 Abu Said al-Khudri, 148 Adam, 122 adultery, 49

after-life, 35, 49, 70 N, 78, 134; see also Hereafter

Aksumites, 139

America, 11, 78; prohibition law in, 128 American Revivalism, 83 Americans, 106 Ansar, 140

Anti-Duhring (Engels), 38, 45, 54, 56, 68, 75, 94

Apostle, 89, 110, 113, 137, 143; see also Messenger, Muhammad, Prophet

Arabia, 109, 13841, 146 Arabs, 144

aristocracy, English, 10; feudal, 11, 12

astronomy, 94 atheism, 76, 121

Athens, 4,5

atoms, 32 automatons, 129

Avenariiis, 30

B

Babylon, 144

"Babylonish captivity," 87 bankruptcy, 77, 78

Banu Ghassan, 139

Banu Nadhir, 140 being, absolute, 40; Divine, 43

Berkeley, 29

Bloch, Joseph, 6 Bohemia, 83

Bolshevism, Stalinist, 72; Trotskyte, 72

bourgeois, 9-12, 56, 72, 114; British, 82 Boyle's Law, 95

Bulgaria, 105, 106

C

Caesar, 86, 89 Caliphate, 63, 64

Caliphs, 59, 89, 96

Calvinism, 85

Capitalism, 11, 20, 21, 55, 61, 83, 107, 135,136

capitalists, 55, 72; and landlords, ex-propriation of, 19

carbon, 32

carbonic acid, 32 caste system, 20

Chalcis, 3

China, 108 choice, freedom of, 54, 61

Christ, 85-86, 91

Christendom, 87,88

Christian Church, 87, 88, 93 Christianity, 81, 83, 84-86, 87, 88, 90, 91,

93

Christians, 83, 85, 86 City States, Greek, 3

class-affiliation, 20; -antagonism, 9, 10, 56; -conflict, 10, 16, 105, -con-

149 148

sciousness, 105; -division, 20, 63; -domination, 17, 19 -exploitation, 10, 15-19; -oppression, 18; -hatted, 115; -interests, 105, 115, 116; -prej-udices, 115, -struggle, 6, 9, 12; -war, 70

classes, oppressed, 82; exploiting, 81, 82

classless society, 19, 20

Communism, 7, 14, 19, 20, 48, 84, 103, 105-107, 111, 113, 116, 130, 135, 136; first phase of, 13, 14; Russian, 15

"Communist Manifesto," 103-104, 106, 114

Communist Party, 103

Communists, 7, 19, 55, 72, 73, 76, 103, • 105

Companions (of the Prophet of Islam), 108, 109

consciousness, 38, 40, 43, 44; moral 5, 17, 18, 34, 35, 47, 51, 115, 118, 119, 121, 123, 128, 130, 131; religious, 88, 91

Constantine, 58, 85, 87

Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy A (Marx), 2

Corinth, 3

creation, beginning and end of, 99, pro-cess of, 117

Creator, Divine, conception of, 41; exis-tence of, 31; see also God

Croce, Benedetto, 2

Cromwell, Oliver, 83

crusaders, 88

D

Das Gupta, 22

desires, unsatisfied economic, 78

despotism, 81

Destiny of Man, The (Nicolas Ber Dyaw), 23 n.

destitution, 3, 77

development, economic, 17, 63; moral, 63; social, 36, 37; technological, 10

Dewey, 28

MARXISM OR ISLAM

dialectical process, Hegelian concept of, 1, 2, 10, 12

draymen, 84 drinking, 49, 71, 113

Dyaw, Nicolas Ber, 23

E

Eastern Empire, 58

economics, 57; bourgeois, 77; Islamic, 135

egotism, 79

Engels;6, 8, 9, 12, 13 15-19, 27, 36, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 54, 68, 69, 72, 75, 77, 80, 82, 84, 93-95, 97, 98, 102, 104-106, 112

England, 10,83

English Puritan movement, 83

equality, 83; and brotherhood, human, 59; and social justice, human, 80; human, 76; social, 81

equity, 115, 116

escapism, moral, 91

essence, Divine, 40, 41

ethics, Christian, 86, 92

Europe, 11, 69, 83, 84, 91, 95, 105; ec-clesiastical history of, 91

existence, Divine, 43; struggle for, 79

exploitation, 47, 83, 106, 107, 116, 119

F

family life, 110, 110 n., 111, 112

family, ties of, 20

farming, co-operative, 138

farms, collectivisation of, 138

Fascism, 111

fasting, 49, 109

Fay', 137

feudalism, 11, 87, 135, 136, 139, 140

Feuerbach, 29, 108

France, 83

freedom, 50, 83

150

INDEX

G

gambling, 113

Germany, 81, 105, 106

God, conception of, 79, 80; existence of, 44; First and the Last, 33; presence of, 33, 40; prior existence of, 31; superior will of, 43; will of, 80; see also Creator good, and evil, 23, 69; supreme, 92

Gospel, 83

greed, 14, 98 Greek colonies, 3

Gregory VII, 88

Nadia:, 144, 146

Hajjat-ul-Wida, 137

Hegel, 1, 2,

Hell, 145

Hereafter, 118, 134; see also after-life

historical process, 1; epochs, Marxist division of, 63

Historical Materialism (Engels), 9 39, 82

materialistic conception of, 1, 6; mate-rialistic interpretation of, 139

Hobbes, 81

Human Nature and Ccesduct (Dewey) 28 n.

Hungary, 105,106

Huss, 83

hydrogen, 32

Idea, Absolute, 1, 29

idealism, Hegelian, 29

idealists, 27, 97

ideas, conflict of contradictory, 1; reli-%ions and moral, 8

Iftehad, 102

immanence, Divine, 40, 41

immorality, 59, 71; sexual, 49

impulse, possessive, 14

industrial age, 95

industrialisation, 105

inequilibrium, social, 78

Ineradicability of the Proletariat heresy," 85

injustice, 66, 110, 115, 131

insecurity, fear of economic, 76

instincts, revolutionary, 82

intelligence, 41, 44; all-pervading, 43; conscious, 46; conscious purposive, 39

interest, 48

"invincibility of the rising bourgeois," 85

Iraq, 143-144

Ironsides, 84

Islam, 35-37, 48, 49, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 68, 88-91, 92, 93 96, 108-116, 121, 122, 123, 130-32, 133-137 139-141, 142, 143, 146; no clergy in, 90; religious theory of, 102

Italy, Southern, 3

Jehad, 49, 93, 110, 112

Jews, 140

John, St. 91

Jonathon, 83

Justice, 17-18, 51, 62, 68, 109, 110, 115-116, 122; moral 48, 125; social, 61, 67, 76; see also injustice

K

Khyber, 140, 142, 143

kindness, 51

Kaiaks, 20

L

labour, division of, 13

land, distribution of, 138, 140; -hunger, 4

151

Id

er al 3f a a-ty Ie

St ft to

1-e-

MARXISM OR ISLAM INDEX

landlordism, 138, 140, 141, 143 Last Day, 111

law, and morality, Islamic system of, 96; primacy and ultimacy of, 44

laws, moral, 48

Lenin, 30, 36

Life, appearance and growth of, 32; ex-istence of a future, 35; hereafter, 131 (see also Hereafter); higher values of 82,

M

Marxist theory of, 101; purposive, 26; -process, 33; unity of 136

Machiavelli, 92

Maclver, 59

man, brotherhood of, 78; created from matter, not by matter, 35; more real than matter, 34; natural in-equalities of 20; origin of religious feeling In, 75

mankind, moral and material advance-ment of, 76; moral consciousness of, 48; moral education of, 118, 123; religious instincts of, 84

marriage, 49, 88, sanctity of, 73 Marc, Karl, 1-3, 6, 9-12, 16, 19, 27, 36,

44, 54, 55-56, 60, 64, 84, 98, 102, 104-106, 108; his theory of religion, 93

Marxism, 25, 28-30, 33, 35, 36, 38-41, 43, 45, 53, 55, 62-64, 67, 68, 72, 75-77, 79-80, 82, 84, 91, 95, 98, 100-102, 103, 108, 110n, 112-114, 129; fun-damental principles of, 22

Marxists, 30, 31, 34, 36, 60, 62, 75, 79, 80, 82, 85, 97, 101, 102

materialism, 82

Materialism and Empirico-Criticism (Lenin), 31 n.

Materialism, Marxism, Determinism and Dialectics (Das Gupta, 22

materialists, 27, 34

mathematics, 94

matter, life and mind, all intermediate categories, 33; materialistic concep-tion of, 45, relation of nature to, 38

Matthew 91

Mecca, 109

Medina 89, 140, 141 Messene, 4

Messenger, 148; see also Apostle Muhammad, Prophet

Middle Ages, 11

middle class, industrial and commer-cial, 10

migration, Prophet's, 89 monasticism, 49, 122

Moody, 83

morality, 47, 51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 68, 69, 71, 72, 114, 121, 122, 123, 125-126, 128-129, 131, Catholic and Protestant, 69, bourgeois, 72, 73; Christianfeudal 69, derivative na-ture of, 55; first law of, 72, ; Is-lamic, 63, 64; Man's ideas about, 54, Marxist view of 56; proletarian, 72, Roman, 63; sexual, 71; social, 51, 66, 110, 112

moral progress, Mandan theory of the inevitability of, 57:

morals, Marxist theory of, 63

Mu'allafat-ul-Qulub, 142 Muhajin, 143, Muhammad, 117, see also Apostle,

Messenger, Prophet.

Muslims, 59, 63-65, 68, 89, 90,. 93, 96, 102, 108, 110, 111, 114, 122, 135, 141, 143, 146, 147.

N

Napoleon, 95

nationalism, 103, 105, 107

natural science, 31, 32,

nature, all pervading purposiveness of 32,; a will, consciousness, purpo-siveness and creativity, 32, inex-haustible creativity of, 31; its con-scious selectiveness, 31; its pur-posefulness 31; Marxist conception of, 38 ff.; phenomenon of con-sciousness in, 44; self-stultification _ of, 37

Nazi Movement,81

Nicene creed, 87 Noah, Prophet, 81 nobility, 9, 10; feudal, 11",12

0

oligarchy , aristocratic, 9

opposites, conflict of, 1,2 oppression, 11, 82, 83, 110, 119

orphans, 88, 137, 143

otherworldliness, 122 oxygen, 32

P

Pakistan, 140 Papacy, 87

Papal courts, 90 patricians, 104

Paul, St. 86

Persian Empire, 139 physical sciences, 24, 25, 31, 46

pilgrimage, 109 plebians, 104

polygamy, 49

population, pressure of, upon the means of subsistence, 3

poverty, 79, 117 power, lust of, 79

pragmatism, 112 predestination, 108 "pre-existence of the logical categories,*

29 production 3, 5, 13, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63,

66, 100-101, anarchy of, 19 and re-production, 6; collective ownership of, 79; means of, 19, 77, 78; planned, .78

proletariat, 2, 10-12, 105, 106 dictator-ship of, 13; Russian 107,

property, 14; private, 2, 14, 20, 97, 135

Prophet (of Islam), 59, 65, 68, 84, 89, 90, 92, 96, 108, 109, 137-139, 140-

143 144, 146, 147; see also Apostle, Messenger, Muhammad

Prophets, 53, 81, 82 Protestantism, 82, 85, 87, 88, 90, purity, moral, 74, 111; personal, 110

Q

Quraish, 144 Qur'an 25, 29, 33, 35, 36, 40, 43, 65, 66,

81, 89, 92, 93, 96, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 117-119, 122, 123, 125, 132, 137, 143-145, 146

R

Rafi' b. Khadij, 141

Rasputin, 36 rationalism, 23 reality, 22, 24,25, 29,33, 34, 39, 41,112;

all inclusive, 28; Islamic view of, 26, 35; Mandan view of, 23, 26; Qur'anic conception of, 26; ulti-mate, 26

reformation, social and economic, 84

regularity, recurrence and repetition, phenomena of, 45

religion, and art, two abstractions, 2; the not-being of art, 2 ,

retaliation, 124, 125

revival, religious, 83 revolt, Protestant; against Papal au-

thority, 85 revolution 9, 10; Communist, 114, eco-

nomic, 11, 98; English of, 1689, 9,

Roman Empire, 58, 60, 104,139

Romans, 58, 61-65, 86 Rome, 64, 85, 88, 104, Republican, 58,

60 Rumania, 106 Russell, Bertrand, 31 Russia, 19, 20, 78, 103, 105, 106; Com-

munist State, 20; Soviet, 103, 105, 107

Russians, 105, 106

153

)r,

nd rt-er ;al of a a-ly he 1st ft he n-e-ed

152

Sa'd b. Waqqas, 147 Sa'id ibn al-As, 144 Salvation Army, 82, 83 Sankey, 83 Sawad, 144 Schmidt, Conrad, 13 secularisation, 91 selection, natural, 51 self-abandonment, 125; -control, 123; -

control, moral, 49; -denial, 123; -discipline, 123, 125; -realisation, 1; regulation, 129, 133; restraint, 123, suppression, 123

serfs, 11 Sicily, 3 slave-ownership, 63 slavery, 64, 66 slaves, 64-66, 104,139; treatment of, 59 Social Contract theory, 81 Socialism, 72, 79, 80; Bolshevik, 72;

Fabian, 72; Menshivik, 72; State, 72 Socialists, 101 social security, 146 society, moral education of, 10 sorcery, 88 Soviets, 105 Soviet State, 20 space and time, categories of, 40 Sparta, 4,5 Stalin, 15, 101 State, Mandan conception of, 13 ff. strikes, mass, 12 Study of Blom, A (Toynbee), 5 n. subjugation, foreign, 70 Syria, 142-144

MARXISM OR ISLAM

Thesis on Feuerbach (Engels), 29 Thrace, 3 tithe, 88 Transcendence, 41, 43 Trotsky, 15 truth, 110, 114, 122; objective, 112;

truthfulness, 68 truths, eternal, 94, 95, 97, 99-100;

isolated, 96; opposite, 9R religious 76; ultimate, 94,

tyranny, 119, 131,132

U

Ubaidullah b. Adi, 137 Uhud, 147 Umar, 66, 96, 142-144 Umayyads, 63, 64,135, 144 unemployment, 77, 78 United Nations Organisation, 78 unity, 41; absolute, 40 universe, a process of trial and educa-tion of human beings, 117, Uthman, 135

V

values, higher, 32; moral, 110, 127; virtue, 17, 70, 109, 110, 119, 120, 129;

moral, 121; passive, 91 war prisoners, exchanging, 65; wealth, 79; accumulation of, 144, 147;

collective, 63; collective ownership of, 78; distribution of collective, 98; fair and equitable distribution of, 97; hoarding and accumulation of, 145 material, 12; national, 137; pro-duction and distribution of, 78, social, 14

INDEX

will, Divine, 43; superior, 43, 80; tran-scendent, 41

wills, 88; conflict of, 80; diversity of human, 80

world, reality of external, 1; spirit,1

Y

Yemen,140

Zakat, 48, 142, 146

Or, 1'

er, ,nd at-ter ..;a1 of a

tly he )St

aft he tn- re- led

Tall, 140 Tawhid, 136 tenants-at-will, 140

H.G., 88 widows, 88, 138

154 155

Marxism or Islam - M Mazheruddin Siddiqui

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