Sekhemu said:7. So, what Governor Sani Yerima has started and against which many Nigerians are protesting is the tip of the iceberg. What are to follow if he succeeds and if he spreads his idealogy to the other states of our country can only be imagined. the Sharia Economic Ethics and Economics are at times draconic and pervading.
Islamic Economic Ethics and Economics
8. For upwards of ten years, 1969-80, I had the opportunity to sever as one of twelve consultants to the World Council of Churches in Geneva in an organisation which we named "Advisory Committee on Technical Services (ACTS) Which has now been renamed "Action by Churches Together (ACT)". It was as a member of that organisation that some of us suggested that the time was ripe to intesify dialogues with our brothers and sisters of " other living faiths." One of the most prominent of the faiths is the Muslim faith. We had very close contacts with our Muslim brothers and, today, I have very important Muslim friends across the globe. I learn almost as much of the Koran as I learn and continue to learn about our Christian Bible. So, few Christians are as sympathetic to the Muslim religions as I am. Nevertheless. I never cease to let our Muslim brothers know that in the modern day and age religious fanaticism and the debasement of non-Muslim religious practitioners, including Muslim women, do more damage to the Muslim faith and the muslims than ever before.
The Two-Fold Nature of Islamic Economics
9. A grasp of the dualism inherent in Islam is essential for the understanding of the ideological basis of Islamic Economics and Islamic Economic Order.
(a) On the one hand, Islam is a monolithic religion which, like Christianity, is a set of doctrines which are supposed to be binding on the believer.
(b) on the other hand, Islam is also considered to be an official state ideology with the Islamic religion establishing the guidelines and the sets of values and thereby providing the legal basis for the entire political, social and eonomic spheres of the Islamic state. The Sharia regards Islam as a social order, a philosophy of life, a system of economic principles, a ruling order to which the Muslim belieiver must conform.
10. Muslims cannot, therefore, operate full Islamic law of Sharia, except in an Islamic State. So, Yerima is less than sincere, when, by launching Sharia, he denies declaring Zamfara an Islamic State. If and when the full Sharia Law becomes operational in Zamfara State in January 2000, we must accept that Zamfara has, ipso facto, become an Islamic state with the federal Republic of Nigeria. Zamfara State would then be similar to when Christians operated a Theocratic State by which its internal contradictions had to cease when the church and state became seperate and the "Protestant Ethics" ceased to be the dominant economic ethics of the modern state. The full Sharia advocates are still living in that 14-16th century period of the Theocratic State. Just as we Christians lost the battle for theocratism to secularism, I have no doubt that the Muslims will more than lose the attempt to re-enact their own form of Sharia State.
11. In the wake of the re-islamisation that increased, especially since the 1970's of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, Islam became more associated with the idea that the Capitalist and the socialist economic systems are alien to the presence of Islam and that a "third force" needs to be fashioned out, based on the Islamic concept of Justice, Fair distribution of economic resources, property rights, inheritance and the right of "Will" on the death of the Muslim. So Islamic economic salvation is being sought through obedience to the old traditional Islamic principles and orthodoxy. Economists have asked, and quite rightly, whether the economic backwardness of most Islamic countries today is not attibutable to their desire to return to traditional, outmoded and impracticable Islamic principles, given the increasing inter-dependence in the world economy and the increasing emphasis on fundamental human rights, particularly of the women vis-a-vis their men folks.
Basic Principles of Islamic Economics
12. A major factor hindering the spirit of modern economic development in the countries where Islamic rule is sometimes seen in the Islamic belief in the doctrine of pre-destination, and even in magic which crops up in Islamic suras of the Koran [Sura 2, line 102; Sura 7, line 117; Sura 10, lines 76-81; Sura 20, lines 37-49], though the highest authority in Islam subordinates magic to the will of God
cont'd
Has there been a continuation of this post anywhere?
I checked a few message boards which dealt with this issue of Sharia's impact on non-Islamic cultures in Nigeria but nothing updated.
