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Forum Post: A Sufi's take on Capitalism

Posted 9 years ago on July 24, 2014, 11:07 p.m. EST by SalmanEagle (-1)
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I love that Occupiers are looking for an alternative. Here is my weak effort at one as a teacher of Sufism - the mystical core of Islam:

http://bluecane.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/faqr-reverse-capitalism/

Faqr: Reverse Capitalism

I established in a critical earlier blogpost that God suffers due to non-acknowledgment, and doing good to others lessens God’s suffering by realizing Him, as proven also by the narration from Prophet Muhammad (peace):

“Verily, Allah will say to his slave when He will be taking account of him on the Day of Judgement, ‘O’ son of Adam, I was hungry and you did not feed me.’ He will answer: ‘How could I feed you? You are the Lord of the worlds!’ He will say: ‘Did you not know that my slave so and so who is the son of so and so felt hunger, and you did not feed him. Alas, had you fed him you would have found that with Me……..’”.

Now, if we consider God as our Beloved – then knowing that helping someone relieves our Beloved, shouldn’t we reward the person who brought their need to us for resolution? Why, he enabled us to heal our Beloved, we definitely ought to reward the person whose need we met!

This is the basis of a new type of economy in which – instead of you selfishly demanding money for rendering someone a service, you give money to the person whose need you meet. You reverse capitalism! This is called Faqr, literally: begging others to bring their needs to you so you can realize God and rend His suffering.

Ofcourse, this SOUNDS impractical but think of it this way: instead of money accounting for liability (what one is owed) it can account for an intangible asset (kindness). We reverse the equation. This is akin to seeing the glass half full instead of half empty.

How does the Faqeer, the one who rewarded the person he served, get compensated? By others showing him similar kindness inspired by his example. We have to create a new culture, it will take some time but this is the only solution to the Earth’s myriad problems.

Capitalism, although better than other ideologies, has still been a failure. An example is the pharmaceutical industry. They charge for meeting the patients’ need for medicines, yet it is in the pharmaceutical’s interest not to find a cure for the ailment because if it does so – its revenue stream will end.

In the system of Faqr, the patient would be paid by the pharmaceutical for seeking medicine. Those who run the pharmaceutical1 would inturn show their personal needs to others and get compensated. Since better service, like finding cures, would inspire and attract more providers that can meet the pharmaceutical operators’ needs – therefore the conflict of interest that occurs in Capitalism is resolved in Faqr.

Workers would compete in kindness to attract more providers inspired to meet their needs. Money would be earned, not for hoarding, but for making others happy and slowly evolve into GIFTS instead of worthless paper. Gold and silver would become the standard gift – a currency once more.

As silly as this post sounds, it is Haqq (Truth) – I have earlier given you the iron clad philosophical logic from the Quran about how God is realized through doing good, why would you charge the needy person who enables you to realize God – and since this is Haqq therefore it will succeed, no matter how unlikely such success:

Quran 17:81 – “And say: ‘Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish’”.

It is a sin to charge the person you serve, its like taxing God. I understand that we are imprisoned in the current system and have to commit the travesty of charging the person who brings us a need – but if we join together then we can create small communities of interdependent folk that pay the person whose need they meet, inviting the helped person to join them in turn. By CONTROLLING one’s wants, anyone can save money for the purpose of rewarding the one they serve. I have launched a project “Saltanat Of Love” (saltanatoflove.org) to realize the vision of a kind world out of passion for God. Join me.

Note: This article is the fulfilment of a dream I saw in 2009 while choosing my major at university. Shaykh Nazim, head of saints, said in the dream: “Salman is our economist”. Thus, I picked an Economics major. I hope I can somehow resolve the economic problem – the poverty and suffering in this world.

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1 The pharmaceutical would limit the number of people it can treat because it can only pay so many patients, but since pharmaceuticals would increasingly become driven by volunteers – the number of pharmaceuticals would increase as capital needs would be eliminated.

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