Recently in Islamabad the Saudi ambassador expressed optimism about the outcome of the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s special summit to be held in Makkah.
Ambassador Ali Awadh Asseri said he hoped the OIC would be restructured so that OIC could effectively handle the challenges that the Muslim nations face. The ambassador was also concerned, above all, about the “negative perception of Muslims” in the world.
Indeed the summit must address this, as it always attempts to. These concerns notwithstanding, this extraordinary summit forces a deeper reflection on the state of the Ummah.
When more than fourteen hundred years ago the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) instructed his followers to “acquire knowledge even if you have to travel to China”, he was underscoring the critical place that knowledge and scholarship must have in a nation as well as in an individual’s life. And how scholarship was responsible for the ascent of Muslim societies is a matter of recorded history, as is, unfortunately, how ignorance caused the sharp descent. The application of knowledge in the management of a society is inextricably linked to the progress of a society — whether intellectual, economic or spiritual.
Today in the face of a million mounting challenges, we fail to acquire knowledge in all spheres of human activity ranging from the hard sciences to the social sciences, from the arts to psychology and from technology to environment, only at our own peril. Today more than just reason, to which those in power and authority have seldom yielded, it is an urgent necessity for the very survival of the human race that we embrace the available knowledge and make new discoveries. Without it there can be no dealing with the crisis of disease, of the scarcity of natural resources, of natural disasters, of man-made disasters, of social conflict, etc. Without the tool of knowledge, state and society cannot acquire the wisdom so essential to deal with the widespread conflict and chaos that are inevitable outcomes of a mismanaged planet.
While the chaos signals less than perfect management of our planet, the uneven spread of chaos talks of some greater success stories at managing the “collective society” than the rest. Dare we state the obvious, and say that our Ummah has been the least successful. Knowledge was the dividing factor. The world witnessed the journey of the Muslim power and glory into oblivion and of the others toward their imminent power and glory. The power and the glory they acquired by ‘outdoing’ the other by the tricks of the many traits that constituted rudimentary governance then.
Charles Issawi’s seminal work on the economic history of Egypt in the eighteenth century documents this phenomenon very ably. The West was feeding knowledge into the avenues of power. The exercise of power was being invested with “wisdom” in the pursuit of the objective it had defined for itself. For the pursuit of specific commercial and political objectives appropriate systems, adequate institutions were put in place.
Freedom of thought enables inquiry without which new knowledge cannot be created and intellectual stagnation often renders redundant that which cannot provide answers and solutions to the new questions and the new challenges.
Conversely where there exist in society institutions that inquire, that create new knowledge and that draw on other sources of knowledge, that society will be more dynamic, more democratic and perhaps better placed to address the crisis of its times. This is a necessary condition that must prevail for the management structures in society to not atrophy. No global collective objectives can be achieved unless the mess within is cleaned up.
The abiding question for our times is how best to organize collective existence within a nation-state and even beyond. Linked to it has been the abiding struggle of how to exercise power and authority in a wise manner so that it advances the good of the maximum number. Rousseau put forward the social contract. Machiavellian dictates were to promote the survival of the incumbent, the authority of the ‘Prince.’ However these opposing approaches, one protecting the “ruled” while the other the “rulers,” must merge in one because of the human condition. The nature of our contemporary challenge is such that it offers no cushion to the rulers. The society and its managers shall swim or sink together. Hence Machiavellian’s clients too must follow the logic of Rousseau because today the larger good also includes the good of those who exercise power.
In the absence of knowledge where do we stand today? Out of 191 countries of the United Nations, 57 are in the OIC. Muslims number over 1.25 billion — one-fifth of the world population. We also possess roughly one-fifth of the world’s landmass. We own some of the most abundant energy and mineral resources in the world. We possess 70 percent of the world’s energy resources. And we supply 40 percent of the global exports of raw materials. Yet the OIC has less than 5 percent of the world GDP. The GDP of the entire Ummah is roughly $1,400 billion while that of Japan alone is $4,500 billion. The highest GDP of a Muslim country is $185 billion while that of tiny European countries with no natural resources is above $200 billion. Our knowledge hubs are few. We have only 500 universities and 1,000 PhDs per annum. Japan alone has more than 9,000 universities and England alone produces more than 2,000 PhDs a year.
In trade and foreign direct investment, the OIC countries’ performance is again dismal. The OIC’s share of world trade is only 6 to 8 percent. Hardly $15 billion of foreign direct investment is attracted by all the OIC countries. This figure is roughly that of Sweden or Thailand alone. China alone has FDI of $50 billion. What is most saddening is that intra-OIC trade is a small fraction of its total trade volume.
None of this will change unless we do not fix our fundamentals. What then is needed? Acquisition, spread and integration of knowledge in the functioning of state institutions, accountable exercise of power and rule of law not the rule of the strongest in our societies. The state of the Ummah cannot improve unless we get all this right.
At Makkah, from where Prophet Mohammad started his journey of the ultimate struggle armed with the ultimate knowledge and immense wisdom, the OIC must declare the pursuit and spread of knowledge as its primary task.
