A commenter on Hood Bradford’s excellent Islamic Law etc recently posted an entirely off-topic but interesting quote from the American satirist and political writer PJ O’Rourke.
Also, the Islamic religion has the right attitude. In the Koran, Sura II, verse 275, states, “God hath permitted trade.” The Koran orders the use of honest weights and measures, the fulfillment of contracts, and the payment of debts. And one of the sayings attributed to Muhammad makes him not just the Prophet of Allah but the prophet of Adam Smith: “Only God can fix prices.”
This quote is taken from an old piece in The Atlantic Monthly entitled, “Letter from Egypt”. The article is not available online in its entirity but it does pose some interesting questions. In seeking to understand what led to the Muslim world losing its position relative to Europe, O’Rourke pins the blame on bad economic policies that deviated from the above proscription.
The Muslim conquerors of the Fertile Crescent may have come from independent and roughly democratic Arab tribes, but they quickly glommed on to state power, as did their Seljuk and Ottoman Turk successors. Despite the laissez-faire prescriptions of the Koran, and the Prophet’s warnings against price controls, the Islamic state proceeded to interfere grossly with the economy. The pre-eminent Western historian of Islam, Bernard Lewis, estimates that Middle Eastern agricultural yields began a decline in late Roman times that has continued almost to the present day. As for commerce, Lewis has written, “Governments seemed to have reasoned that if they could earn so much a year by taxing the pepper trade, they could earn even more by taking it over entirely.” This works so well in Cuba. Lewis argues that Islamic commercial wealth was not destroyed by European innovations in ocean shipping. Rather, Europeans were driven to the sea lanes because in the 1400s the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt nationalized the spice trade and forced the Kmart of nutmeg-and-ginger caravans into Chapter 11.
8 comments ↓
I found this article and meant to comment on it in light of the Communist economic leanings of some Islamic groups
I found a copy online here if anyone is interested in reading the entire piece.
Amir,
Don’t know if you’ve seen this, but this is interesting as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....man_Empire
Here is another article that appeared:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13...../newsweek/
There are so many Muslims that think that big government/regulated economy is part of Islamic economics
I would draw everyones attention to the superb piece on the the Islamic finance blog regarding current trends in Islamic finance
“How the Banks are Subverting Islam’s Ban on Usury
By Tarek El Diwany
Financial Times July 14 2006″
link: http://iqtisad.blogspot.com/
Does anyone know the source of what is mentioned below? is it a hadith? If so what is its authenticity? If someone can get O’rourke’s e-mail address we can ask him where he read this.
And one of the sayings attributed to Muhammad makes him not just the Prophet of Allah but the prophet of Adam Smith: “Only God can fix prices.”
It appears to be the first part of a longer hadith in which the Prophet Muhammad (saw) was reported to have said:
I think it is also mentioned in Economic Concepts of Ibn Taymiyah by Abdul Azim Islahi. If I can find more info, I’ll post it later insha’Allah.
Feza
I think the line “only god can fix prices” should be interpreted as “no man (or woman) can fix prices”. Knowing Mr O’Rourke’s work as I do, I think he probably made it up. I’ll bet the inspiration was Lee Trevino’s famous line (often quoted by the late Hunter S Thompson), that “only god can hit a one iron” .
I think Mr O’Rourke’s point is that it is fundamentally against the tenets of any religion based on fairness and doing good works, to have evil small minded businessmen colluding to fix prices, thereby reducing consumer welfare.
If you want to get the full piece it is republished in his recent book (read essay collection) Peace Kills: America’s Fun New Imperialism.
The more correct version of the Hadith is, I think:
(Partial Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 23, Number 3443)
Narrated AbuHurayrah:
A man came and said: Apostle of Allah, fix prices. He said: (No), but I shall pray. Again the man came and said: Apostle of Allah, fix prices. He said: It is but Allah Who makes the prices low and high. I hope that when I meet Allah, none of you has any claim on me for doing wrong regarding blood or property.
(http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/abudawud/023.sat.html)
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