Message From the President: The Islamic Formula to Eradicate Poverty and Hunger (Part 1) by Dr. Zaher Sahloul
Seeing people begging for money is a familiar scene at many street intersections in Chicago. Men and women, old and young, can be seen under bridges at night, sleeping under a pile of dirty blankets with their meager personal belongings nearby. Food pantries and soup kitchens are overwhelmed to their fullest capacities. Poor neighborhoods are common landmarks of every major inner city. Every Mosque has a long list of families who need assistance for basic life necessities. In the U.S. alone, 47 million people live without basic healthcare  insurance, and 37 million Americans live below the poverty line. Living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world in the 21st century does not guarantee automatic immunity from poverty and hunger. Globally the outlook is even more grim: 1.4 billion people live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day, and 25,000 children die daily as a direct result of poverty. In the midst of this calamity, Europe spends more than 105 billion dollars on alcohol alone; the wealthiest 20% of the world account for 76.6% of total consumption; and the world spends annually more than 780 billion dollars on arms and weapons. One of Australia’s Green Party politicians commented on the Iraq war saying, “With a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the Iraq war, the U.S. and Australia could ensure every starving, sunken-eyed child on the planet could be well fed, have clean water and sanitation and a local school to go to.”
History tells us that poverty became extinct when the Zakat system, as a part of a comprehensive Islamic economic system, was implemented during the rein of Omar Bin Abdel Aziz (717-720 ACE), the Umayyad Caliph whose empire stretched from the shores of the Atlantic to the highlands of Pamir. Zakat collectors at the time could not find people who were in need to receive Zakat money. Yehia bin Said, a Zakat Collector under Omar bin Abdel Aziz said, “Omar bin Abdel Aziz sent me to collect alms from Africa. I collected the alms and then looked for the poor to distribute the alms among them but I found none, nor did I find anyone who might have accepted these from me.”
The comprehensive economic and financial system that eradicated poverty during the golden age of Islamic civilization can still provide practical steps to fight poverty and hunger at the age of globalization. The recent global economic crisis has reopened a vigorous debate about the need for a new and more just financial and economic system to replace the current “toxic” system that is based on greed and speculation. Muhammad Yunus, the Muslim Bangladeshi who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2006 for his innovative ideas in fighting poverty by using microlending, once said, “Poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built and feel so proud of, which created poverty then.”
According to Professor Tariq Ramadan in his book, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, the Islamic economic system is built on the following foundations:
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Collectivity: Four out of the five pillars of Islam (prayer, Zakat, Fasting and Haj) have double dimensions; individual and communal. It is impossible to forget the interest of the community or the society and focus on the interest of the individual. Muslims believe that worship and rituals without charity are meaningless. In one of the Chapters of the Holy Quran, Allah says in the Surah of Help: (Have you seen those who believe not in the real faith?; Those who turn away the orphans, and ignore the hunger of the needy. So woe to all those who pray, unmindful of their prayers; Those who only make a show of worship, while withholding help from those in need).
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Spending for the sake of God and in order to please Him: The Quran says: (Those who feed the beggar, the orphan and the prisoner, for nothing but for the Love of God). Success pertains to this life, but more importantly pertains to succeeding in the hereafter. In a famous Hadith the prophet Mohammad said, “No one fulfills his faith unless he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.”
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