Hope in hopeless times

By

Prof. Zia-ul-Haq Husamuddin

Many years back perhaps when I was on a vacation in

India while I was a student in England visited a graveyard
and noticed a very young child sitting between graves
trying to eat a loaf of stale bread. He was trying to eat
the white part by removing the fungus which has formed
on the bread. I enquired about his parents he replied that
his father was no more and his mother is hospitalized and
he has no where to go. I left him to his fate and moved on
with my life as if he was a piece of art, like a sad dismal
painting of Van Gogh. The boy is not alone in his misery;
he got company in fact lots of company, our world is full
of poverty, injustice, helplessness but the question is do
we have hope? Is there any hope in these hopeless
times?

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark said "Islam is

the best chance the poor of the planet have for any hope
of decency in their lives. It is the one revolutionary force
that cares about humanity." I wonder how the Mullahs
would react to such a statement, many times I avoid
them because they are so intellectually predictable or
perhaps I should put it as predictably unintellectual. For
long these heavily bearded men has clergized the Islamic
civilization and their rhetoric from the pulpits has failed to
reap any tangible results. Religious jargon, boring lengthy
lectures on morality and impractical approach took the
most important thing away from the Islamic world, Islam.
Islam is a sure way of eradicating poverty. Long before
even Keynes proposed his economic theory and the
western world applied the concept of welfare state it was
Islam which championed the fight against poverty and
injustice. Wealth creation is an important part in
community development. Poverty is a parasite which
devours an individual’s basic rights to live life in a
decent manner. The Prophet strongly advocated
business entrepreneurship and this was one of the main
reasons that the Muslim community never faced abject
poverty.

If Islamic civilization has to be revived in a peaceful

manner then somebody has to finance it and we cannot
expect this task from Bill Gates, Muslims has to take the
initiative and this will only happen when we have
wealthy practicing Muslims. We stand at the crossroads,
either we will be perished in the annals of time as once
upon a time great civilization or we emerge a tide of
hope to the millions who live in hunger and injustice. The
quest to make a better world I believe starts from self-
reformation and that is what will be the first step
towards bringing a change, a change which I dream will
bring an era of sustainable development, respect for
human rights and eradication of social evils. Muslim
Entrepreneurship on the basis of Islamic principles is the
only way to drastically improve the society economically
and fulfill basic necessities of the people. I hope to see a
time when no little boy has to eat fungus ridden bread
and we have enough wealth to make this dream come
true.