In the name of Allah most gracious most merciful
Assalaamu alaykum wa rahmatuallahi wa barakatuhu
 

Identifying the fault line

  By  Sharique Naeem

Today, the rising crime level in our society is alarming. The cause of this rise in crime, is often thought to be poverty, so in order to eliminate crime, minimizing poverty is deemed essential.

Illiteracy rate is a major factor that contributes to poverty, so in order to reduce poverty, literacy rate must be increased. However, the government is unable to spend more on education, because it is a low level priority in our budget, and some of the budget priorities are often dictated by international monetary institutions like IMF, World Bank etc.

The government must comply with their directives as a prerequisite for getting loans. To avoid, international dictation in spending and resource allocation, the government needs to gain enough revenue to sustain itself without foreign aid. To generate revenues, various taxes need to be enforced, on things as little as crossing a bridge, and eating a candy bar. Such taxes, e.g. the production tax and tax on natural resources (oil, gas, water etc), make transportation expensive and causes increase in prices of utility products. Hence they increasingly overburden the poor masses. This in turns pushes certain sections of society towards poverty, and adds to unemployment, as businesses begin to go down, thereby further fueling the crime rate.

This whirlpool is self-propelled. The source for all these problems boils down to one thing alone, and that is the flawed system. It therefore stands to reason, that the only rational approach, is to cure the disease, which gives birth to manifold problems of our society, rather than curing the symptoms.

This disease is the capitalist system - a system designed by men to exploit men. The logical cure is the re-establishment of an Islamic State, i.e. Khilafah, where the source of law, is not the narrow, finite, self-interest based motive of men, but the source is the infinite wisdom of the Most Merciful, our Creator, Allah.

 

Also Published as: Crime and punishment-The Nation (2^nd Feb. 2006)

-The Post (22^nd Jan. 2006)