We have defined Islamic Revolutionary thought as the imperative to remove the dichotomy between Divine Revelation and state authority, or between the religious and the secular domains of human existence, and to establish the unconditional and unqualified ascendancy of the Qur´an and the Sunnah over all spheres of life, so that the Islamic System of Social Justice can be established in its totality and, as a consequence, all forms of political repression, economic exploitation, and social discrimination can be eliminated from human society. The achievement of this goal in 7th century Arabia was the greatest accomplishment of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and it is this triumph of the Prophet which is acknowledged by historian Dr. Michael Hart in these words: “he [Prophet Muhammad] was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels.”
The Islamic System of Social Justice, as established by Prophet Muhammad (SAW), continued in its ideal form for at least 30 years after his death, and then it started to decline. Gradually, however, the ideal unity between the religious and the secular gave way, and a dichotomy appeared in the Muslim society between the political rulers and the religious leadership, and then the latter themselves got divided into the scholars of the law (ulama) and the mystics who concerned themselves mainly with the purification of the soul (sufia); in this way, the “unity” gradually degenerated into a “trinity.” The political and moral decay of the Ummah continued to worsen with each passing century. In the meantime, the development of physical sciences and technology in Europe under the influence of Renaissance and Reformation — which were themselves a result of Islamic influences reaching Central Europe through Muslim Spain — led to a power potential which resulted in the conquest of Muslim lands by the forces of Western Imperialism. The evolution of social sciences in Europe also accelerated, and French and Bolshevik revolutions gave fresh dimensions to the human thought, including the ideas of freedom, democracy, human rights, equality, and the need to eliminate all exploitation.
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…]Iqbal has expressed his abhorrence of human sovereignty, in a most subtle and perspicacious manner, in the following couplet of his masterpiece Iblees ki Majlis-e-Shura:
We ourselves have dressed Kingship in the garb of Democracy,
When man has grown to be a little self-conscious and self-observant.
In other words, Iqbal is saying that the consciousness of human rights, which prospered in Europe under the influence of Renaissance and Reformation, was essentially a positive development in the human social evolution. However, it was Satan and his agents who diverted this consciousness towards popular sovereignty, and in this way the rule of a king was replaced with the rule of the people. Both forms of political systems are equally unacceptable from the Islamic perspective, as absolute sovereignty belongs to no one but the Creator, Owner, and Ruler of the universe, Almighty Allah (SWT). The very concept of human sovereignty is a form of filth, and will remain so whether it belongs to a single Pharaoh and Caesar or whether it is distributed piecemeal to a few million citizens of a country.
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…] It is an indication of the rich and versatile personality of Allama Iqbal that, even though his main subject was metaphysics, he still had a deep interest in the comparatively dry and dreary science of economics. Iqbal was fully cognizant of the fact that, in today´s world, economic and financial matters have assumed central importance in the human society, and that man has now been reduced to Homo economicus for all practical purposes. Regarding the issue of “Capital”, Iqbal makes it clear that while Islam takes advantage of the human desire for profit and encourages investment as well as cultivates a healthy competitive environment, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever of the menace of capitalism taking root in a true Islamic society, as the very foundation of capitalism — interest or usury — has been strictly prohibited by the Qur´an. Keeping in view the references to riba in various other couplets of Iqbal, it is our humble opinion that the degree to which Iqbal recognized and expressed the immorality and vice of riba is simply non-existent in the writings of any other scholar or intellectual.
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