CAPITALISM KILLS
Just like viruses, capitalists colonise the entire planet. They nestle their products everywhere and infect everything and everyone for total market domination. Capitalism induces wants, turning its targets into insatiable consumerists who compete for the latest material goods.
Greed fuels the capitalist-consumer relationship, ever deepening their desire for plunder. The conditions that this hedonic partnership creates are deadly to the world and its inhabitants. Its forces are so powerful that people would volitionally enslave themselves to a lifetime of meaningless and often unpleasant labour to attain some worldly goods, most of which are not utility. While those in power rape and pillage the world’s ever-dwindling resources with impunity.
In truth, capitalism has hijacked every aspect of human life and commodified it, even death, through the proliferation of weapons for war.
Journalists Jon Schwarz and Elise Swain write: ‘Capitalism has truly perfected the creation of wants.’
It has also created the modern cycle of everyday life deemed normal by most.
It is this voracious and irresponsible acquisitiveness that Allah repeatedly warns us about: ‘Rivalry in worldly increase has distracted you. Until you enter your graves’ [102:1-2].
God teaches us three valuable lessons: The problematic nature of wanting worldly increase, the fact that we compete with each other in its acquisition and that this behaviour distracts us from preparing for our impending death.
This hubbal māl—passionate love for acquiring wealth—is futile because the more we have, the more we tend to want. This lustful temperament has led to the reckless world of casino capitalism and financial freefall. We live in a world of overflowing wealth, gigantic cornucopias of money, money breeding money, thanks to the ribā (usuary) system, and derivatives, and futures and all these strange instruments, which human ingenuity concocts, to conjure money out of money. So much money, and yet, so much poverty.
The polarisation between rich and poor gets greater and greater. The economics of this world is indeed an injustice: ‘They have bought error in exchange for guidance, so their trade reaps no profit, and they are not rightly guided’ [2:16].
But those who truly believe, those with wisdom, deposit their wealth in an eternal account: ‘Those who recite God’s scripture, keep up the prayer, give secretly and openly from what We have provided for them, may hope for a trade that will never decline’ [35:29].
EVIL APPOINTMENTS
People’s wilful rejection of unfiltered, clear-cut truth always stuns me. The phenomenon gets me every time, and then I reason why.
But I am reminded that the Prophet’s role was to spread the message and bear witness: ‘Can you [Prophet] make the deaf hear? Or guide either the blind or those who are in gross error?’ [43:40]. In this rhetorical verse, Allah teaches us that power solely rests with Him, and not even the Prophet (s) could shift hearts.
If the prophetic message, delivered by one with the most majestic character, met opposition, those presenting truth with lesser abilities today will undoubtedly experience the same. Like the Prophet (s), our role is to seek truth and share it with our own, those in the streets and the halls of power.
One of Allah’s 99 names is al-Haqq, the Truthful. Falsehood is antithetical to God, who is truth manifest.
Those who knowingly withdraw from the truth, distort it or cover it up for petty gain set themselves as rivals to God: ‘If anyone withdraws himself from the remembrance of (Allah) Most Gracious, We appoint him an evil one, to be an intimate companion to him. Such (evil ones) hinder them from the Path, but they think they are being guided aright’ [43:36-37].
The Orwellian world we currently inhabit resembles one where evil companionship is ubiquitous, and everything is upended. And those who are pathless and infected by wicked comrades want us to believe that evil is good and good is evil. That war is peace, and peace is war. That apartheid is democracy and resistance to this fallacious lie is terrorism.
And when witnesses of injustice counsel, “Do not spread corruption in the land,” they reply, “We are only peace-makers!” [2:11-12].
If we contemporise this verse and apply it to Israeli tyranny, it will read, “Do not commit genocide,” they reply, “We are only defending ourselves.”
These verses cannot be more poignant in our current times with the blatant obfuscation of truth that pervades it.
Saving the future from ecological catastrophe is high on the global agenda. And so it should be.
However, a more sinister danger lurks that threatens our future exponentially more than climate disasters do. It is the mining of our children’s minds for independent thinking.
Children in Western societies often develop in a highly polarised environment. One pole drives popular culture via various media platforms, and the opposite instils family values, often through religion, morality and ethics.
TV and social media provide the content and school the stage to re-enact the media programming narrative. This daily rehearsal reinforces the narrative and stunts the mind to think outside this framework.
Popular culture is the antithesis of religion, and since children are more immersed in the former, it will trump the battle of the poles.
According to global statistics, children will have consumed nearly 10,000 hours of television by the time they reach the age of fifteen. This figure is staggering and equates to 416 days of viewing. Unfortunately, the proliferation of smart devices and social media further adds to this obscene number.
Psychologists opine that these children will no longer possess the ability to think independently because their thoughts and decisions will always pass through the media culture filter.
Even children with a strong counter-narrative will still struggle with cognitive dissonance. They may believe in family values but simultaneously desire to partake in conflicting cultures.
It behoves every parent to save their children from this fate. If we do, we will simultaneously save the planet by growing its future caretakers.
Until next week, InshaAllah
Zaahied Sallie
Author of The Beloved Prophet – An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme
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