By Omar Asad Shaikh. USA
Muslims need to build institutions for their survival. Institution are integral part of Islamic concept of (social, political and religious) life. From Establishment of Salah to distribution of Zakah and from Awqaf management to Education ( both religious & scientific) institution plays critical role.
Muslims don’t have to invent wheel it exists in not only conceptual form but was put to work in past and it really worked miracles.
But to run Muslims need people! And *PEOPLE* (me, you, we) are *real issue*. Muslim have to develop Islamic understanding of fairness, justice, accountability, meritocracy, transparency and without it, building institution is like constructing a building with just bricks without a material to hold it. It can’t be built and even if get erected will fall to ground at smallest disturbance.
I don’t mean Muslim must wait for all people to develop these attributes, No, but we Muslims need a minimum threshold at least a handful (Prophet waited for 300, let us have few thousand in 20 Crore) who put community interest over self interest and ego.
In last 30 / 40 years huge investment were made which runs into hundreds & hundreds of Crores to develop infrastructure, to build schools, Masajid, etc. And today, whatever little was achieved has turned into private and family owned businesses.
It is utter shameful to take even one rupee from people as their contribution and then turn that party, school, real estate, media house into personal property with no transparency & accountability.
Let is make sure what ever we build, we first create a system to sustain its operation and a process to manage it.
(www.siyasat.net is Ahmedabad,Gujarat, india based Website)
