THE ECONOMIC DILEMMA OF THE MUSLIM WORLD

Islamic Studies 35:3 (1 996) 297
which he applied to every economic experiment whether within or without
Germany.
However, human reality is to be explained, not on the basis of a single
equation but of a double equation:
(1) Biological Equation puts a man on an equal footing with his
fellow human being in any place, so that he is able to do what another man can,
though certain individuals may be superior to others in certain respects.
(2) Social Equation differs from one society to another, and within
a society from onc period to another according to the degree of development or
backwardness.
As for the first equatioo, it is bestowed by God; He created man of the
goodliest fabric and distinguished him with honour above all in the world (see
Qur'2n 3:95). It is a gift granted by Him, the Mighty and the Exalted, to the
entire mankind.
As for the second equation, it is a gift of society to all its members.
Like a common denominator, it stamps their behaviour and defines the degree
of their effectiveness in confronting difficulties in a way which distinguishes
them from the members of another society or from another generation of their
society, provided the time gap is sufficient to stamp the society with another
style, conforming to a different social equation.
It should be mentioned that from an economic point of view, there are
two sources of social equation: the society we have designated as the northern
hemisphere and the other, which we have designated as the southern
hemisphere. Each of them stamps the behaviour of their individuals with a
definite degree of effectiveness. We can consider the latter as a measure of the
capability of the individual to command, according to his milieu, the means of
social life. Such capability differs today from Washington-Moscow axis (the
northern hemisphere) where civilisational power prevails, to Tangier-Jakarta
axis where such power makes default, as if a sum-total of fundamental
conditions had intervened tacitly, to determine the attitude of the individual in
facing problems and subsequently, the outcome of this attitude. The sum-total
of these conditions forms what we have termed social equation. It tacitly
conditions the attitude of the individual and its rcsults, subjecting the latter to a
sort of inevitability. evoked perhaps by our susceptibilities.
But if' we grasp the nature of this inevitability. we might realise the
extent of its hold on our conduct at the present time and the extent of our
freedom with regard to it. Such a realisation would help us whenever we decide
to change our social equation by means which have allowed other societies to
change it like Japan at the end of the last century or China in the middle of the
present century.
Let us make two suppositions:
(1) A new-born baby arrives on the Washington-Moscow axis. It
will decidedly submit, from the very first moment, to the law of big numbers,
that is, the law of satistics. Thcre would be for it, as a child, in education and
health care and, as an adult, in employment, a share in proportion to the extent