Capitalism, Environment and Sharia

 

In the name of Allah the most Beneficent and Merciful

Capitalism, Environment and Sharia

Our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said

"If the Final Hour comes while you have a shoot of a plant in your hands and it is possible to plant it before the Hour comes, you should plant it." “The believer is not he who eats his fill while his neighbor is hungry.” “There is a reward for serving any living being.” “If a Muslim plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, it is regarded as a charitable gift (sadaqah) for him.”

The above, and many more similar hadith, clearly require us to be guardians of nature, be conservators of resources, and strive towards sustainable living not just for us but for the entire earth.  Unfortunately, the world we are living in is going in the opposite direction. I won’t waste your time in detailing the environmental disasters that we are all witnessing on a daily basis but will go straight to the fundamental reason for it : Capitalism.

It is not just me who is saying it, some of the most brilliant western minds have warned about it “It seems unlikely that civilization can survive the existing capitalism.” - Prof. Noam Chomsky, UCD Philosophy Society Inaugural Lecture 2013. The late Stephen Hawking warned that our current view of wealth could ultimately cause the human race to perish (
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3714876/Will-greed-doom-Stephen-Hawking-warns-current-view-wealth-ultimately-cause-human-race-perish.html#ixzz4GpJVH2kQ ) “Unfettered capitalism is a revolutionary force that consumes greater and greater numbers of human lives until it finally consumes itself.” -- Chris Hedges.

The above three are about a decade old when the following two had not happened.

1)     Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (https://www.climatepartner.com/en) – This is basically grouping of very big Western banks and hedge funds. Their “noble” objective is to use their immense financial power to produce a global net zero carbon economy.

2)     In Semptember 2021 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) launched a new investment vehicle—‘natural asset companies (NACs)’ (https://fortune.com/2021/09/14/nyse-natural-asset-company-ieg-esg-investment-vehicle) These companies will “hold the rights to the ecosystem services produced on a given chunk of land, services like carbon sequestration or clean water. The ultimate goal of NACs is not sustainability or conservation – it is the financialization of nature, i.e. turning nature into a commodity that can be used to keep the current, corrupt Wall Street economy booming under the guise of protecting the environment and preventing its further degradation.” (https://www.rcreader.com/commentary/natural-asset-company-launch-advances-wall-streets-nature-takeover )

 

In order to understand the importance of NCAs one has to understand that the current financial system is basically based upon debt ( even money is a form of debt but that is another debate ). Every debt is basically a lien on underlying asset. The financiers promote debt because it secures future revenue streams for them. Previously the debt was based upon things like houses, factories etc and natural world was not part of it. Now with this scheme nothing is off the table. “Indeed, while the asset classes of the current economy are value at approximately $512 trillion, the asset classes unlocked by NACs are significantly larger at $4,000 trillion (i.e. $4 quadrillion). Thus, NACs open up a new feeding ground for predatory Wall Street banks and financial institutions that will allow them to not just dominate the human economy, but the entire natural world.” Recall the 2008 financial crises and guess how many executives involved in it were jailed? ONE. How many people lost their homes? Estimates are from 6 to 10 million ( https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/17/what-we-learned-housing/ ) Again keep in mind that at that time there were no NACs so the loss, as devastating as it was for individual home owners, was no where near the death and destruction that this new financial structure will bring for the whole humanity.

The magic being taught in the Management Science and Economics departments of universities all over the world, including ours, is that Capitalism with all its shortcomings is the only system that we have, and it will somehow rectify the problems. But it is like expecting mosquito to come up with solution for malaria.

The solution lies only in implementation of Sharia because Allah is the Creator and Owner of everything, and He alone can decide what is good for not just the humanity but for all life forms. If we don’t then I am afraid that we are going to get into a bigger disaster than Covid-19. It happened before NACs. Imagine what can happen when these NACs have control on all sort of life forms and their CFOs are trying to outperform each other. Jurassic Park will look so benign.