There are two kinds of
institutions in any society: institutions that are inculcated within the souls
of women and men that make them pursue a futurist pattern of behavior construed
to create more and more material welfare for every body in one’s environment,
like the spirit of Omar Bin al Khattab who had always kept looking for
improvements in every things and on all fronts. These are the within
institutions that make a necessary condition for development. They are similar
to the internal screening of Chapra but they are developmental in nature while
Chapra talked only about a moral control screen.
The other type of
institutions makes the sufficient condition. They are manifested in the
external organizational setting that enables the human element to implement its
developmental ideas and plans. These institutions include the rule of law, the
right of private ownership and private growth, role of women, the setting of
the third sector, the charity, that covers the organization of non-exchange
transfers including the role of Zakah and Awqaf. While the second type of
institutions is very important and is normally regulated by law, all of its
components have internal reflects. In the writings on Islamic economics over
the last half a century, we’ve neglected both types of institutions as well as
the internal reflect of the latter. We did not give adequate attention to
building developmental mentality and spirit; we did not emphasize the ethics of
thrift, perfection and growth of which our religion is the richest of all
religions on earth. We’ve always thought that what matters is –by an act of
law- eliminating Riba and that will do the needed miracle, all of it.
Although we’ve studied the
minute details of the institution of the prohibition of Riba especially from a
legalistic point of view, we did not gave enough time to studying the
institution of Private ownership or the economic role of woman in the Muslim
society. We shied away from scientifically criticizing the status qua because
we did not want to be thought of as generalists or Islamic activists. We
neglected a major factor of the vicious circle of backwardness, women left
behind of development, and even some of us thought of it as an Islamic pride!
The external institutions
of Zakah and Awqaf have recently received some of our grace but unfortunately
with very little original thinking and a lot of third Hijri century
formulation. We dared not rethinking these institutions under contemporary
setting. Instead we assimilated the traditional Fiqh of these two institutions with
little attention to changing circumstances, forms of assets, modes of
production and the changing functions and functionaries of money.
The Zakah and Awqaf
institutions we think of today are exactly the same that were applied when
agriculture was irrigated by “the Saniyah” and a nice person is appointed as a
Mutawalli regardless of the invention of the concept of corporation!
Institutional restructuring
requires fresh innovative thinking that is only restricted by the necessary
uncontroversial implication of the Revealed Truth. We need to revitalize the
functions of the two pillars of the third sector, Awqaf and Zakah, in a way
that makes them fulfill in a contemporary system, their envisioned role as they
did in a simple economy in the past; and we need to integrate their functions
within the overall framework of the Islamic economic system and philosophy.
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