London, Saturday 5 April 2008 - Global Vision 2000, an independent international Islamic thinktank, hosted a special one day conference on 'The Global Financial Meltdown, Socio-economic Injustice and War: Cause and Remedy.' The event brought together some of the UK's leading Muslim and Western political and economic thinkers and movements in order to present a holistic diagnosis and set of prescriptions on what needs to be done to address the crisis and turbulence in the global financial markets and the impending recession associated with what is being referred to as the credit crunch.
Moeen Yaseen, Director of Global Vision 2000, set the scene by outlining the main conference objectives - demystifying economics and finance and sharing knowledge in search of solutions. Repeated reference was made to the need for a global paradigm shift in the social, political and economic spheres. However, Yaseen insisted that the aim was not to take sides as an enemy or friend of the state, but rather to take a firm stand on issues of truth and justice. His opening address was quickly followed by a series of brief introductory talks bringing the domestic and international implications of the credit crunch into clear focus and calling for increasingly radical solutions to the problem of transnational finance capitalism. GLA Assembly member, Murad Qureshi, began by pointing out that economics is not a science but rather the examination of relationships of lenders to borrowers. He also referred to the significance of sovereign funds and Islamic liquidity in the global economy. Lindsey German, Left list Respect Coalition Mayoral candidate, went on to state how a third of all housing deals in the UK fall through and that while Britain is the fourth richest country in the world, many of its citizens are living in poverty. She also drew attention to the fact that 3 billion Pounds had been spent on the "War on Terror" while pensioners and schools were suffering neglect. Most importantly, attention was drawn to the possibility of social unrest as a consequence of an increase in the cost of rice and other foodstuffs. Finally, John Rees, Convenor of the Stop The War coalition, arguing that the existing neo-liberal paradigm was in disarray, picked up on the need for a paradigm shift involving communities of collaboration and the development of an economic system under democratic control of the majority as the world heads towards a global recession.The first session of presentations was opened by Islamic finance expert and author of The Problem With Interest, Tarek El Diwany, who provided an overview of the existing debt-based money system and its national and international implications. Beginning with a brief presentation on the history of banking and the fraud of money creation, El Diwany went on to point out the deceit of distinguishing between interest and usury, insisting that Islamic banking practices were not, in fact, Islamic since they were tied up with usurious institutions and practices. El Diwany maintained that gold was a more stable unit of currency than paper or 'fiat' money and, somewhat in the spirit of the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes", claimed that honesty about such matters would result in the collapse of the global financial system, something that the banks and finance capitalists simply could not allow to happen.
Daud Pidcock, international Islamic reformer and co-founder of the currently suspended Islamic Party of Britain, continued the critique of banking, maintaining at the outset that, in terms of its effects, debt-based money was more rightly understood as 'lethal', rather than 'legal', tender. Focusing initially on the Iranian situation, he reinforced El Diwany's point regarding the deceit involved in differentiating interest from usury, maintaining that the legitimisation of the former and the ban on the latter was nothing other than a Trojan horse designed to undermine Islamic financial insitutions. According to Pidcock, society was plagued by a new idolatry - the pathology of debt - and people now fought for their interest not their rights.Canon Peter Challen of the Global Justice Movement and Christian Council for Monetary Justice then spoke on the need for a modern universal paradigm capable of achieving justice, working for everyone and protecting the earth. In particular, he pointed to the necessity for reciprocal money flows and the availability of peoples liquidity for a wide range of productiveness.
Global Vision 2000 consultant and author of Globalisation or Recolonisation? The Muslim World in 21st Century, Dr Muhammad Ahsan, went on to present evidence of the widening gap between 'The West' and 'The Rest' with a focus on the Islamic world. Implications of Fukuyama's 'End of History' and Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations' theses for the Muslim world were explored and a three-stage proposal for reforming the OIC in order to achieve the long-term objective of socio-political and economic independence was outlined.Banking consultant and former adviser to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) on regulatory matters, Muhammad Rafeeq, spoke next on the need for parallel global international Islamic financial institutions given that "there should be no Halal windows on haram palaces" and that Western financial institutions had lost more money than actually exists. He then revealed how poverty is created by BIS through foreign exchange, an idea originating in the UK and one of the principal means by which political control of a declining British Empire was replaced with economic control in order to maintain Western hegemony. Rafeeq insisted that a solution to global poverty was to be found in basing the exchange rate on a national minimum wage (or income) so that all people had equal purchasing power.
Sajjad Khan, Editor of New Civilisation magazine and member of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain, addressed the issue of the formation of new power blocs in the context of a changing global economic situation. Arguing that increased financial regulation was not the solution to the current crisis, he went on to describe the need for a new paradigm of international relations in light of the emergence of India and China as regional economic powers. However, Khan warned that the emulation of Western finance capitalism by these countries would, ultimately, lead to further crises. On his view, what was required was a radical shift to an economic model which prioritised distribution of wealth based on a wealth tax such as the Islamic zakat rather than a tax on income. Khan concluded with a statement on the inevitability of regional integration of the Islamic world under a caliphate and the prospects for peaceful co-operation between nations.Bandung2 research activist, Dr Syed Mustafa Ali, opened the afternoon session with a talk entitled "The Colour of Money" which explored the differing implications of the credit crunch for white and non-white people under the contemporary global system of white supremacy (racism). Ali maintained that the 'Casino capitalism' associated with modern finance was, in fact, a form of 'controlled chaos' engineered in order to maintain white privilege. On this basis he argued that the credit crisis was only a crisis for some; for others, it was yet another opportunity to make money and consolidate power. Ali ended by referring to earlier proposals made by Ahsan, Rafeeq and Khan and pointed to the necessity of strategically decoupling from the global racial economy in order to replace it with an alternative system based on justice.
Dr Tony Kempster, pacifist Vice-President of the International Peace Bureau and Chair of the Movement for the Abolition of War, followed with "Disarmament for Development" in which he referred to terrorism as a second order threat and an excuse for militarisation. Kempster insisted that nations needed to kick the nuclear addiction and that environmental issues and population control were the real issues of the day. However, in concluding, he pointed to the centrality of the money issue by conceding that there was a need to "take another look at usury."Chris Cook of Open Capital, originally invited to talk about the issue of peak oil, and intending to give a presentation with the interesting title "Peak credit", was, unfortunately, unable to attend due to unforseen circumstances as were representatives of the LaRouche organisation who were to make a brief presentation on emergency bankruptcy legislation. In their place, Ian Henshall, author of 9/11: The New Evidence, continued the exploration of war by examining 9/11 in relation to the human and financial costs of the "War on Terror".
Sabine McNeill, Organiser of the Forum for Stable Currencies, then spoke on the theme of "Social Business and the Future of Capitalism", as an advocate of the political and economic philosophy of Nobel winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus.James Stuart Gibb, Convenor of the Bromsgrove Group, was scheduled to give a brief presentation on defending national economic sovereignity based on five acts of economic self-preservation but declined in order to make additional time available for questions during the panel discussion.
Civil engineer, Peter Forrest, of the Holistic Education Foundation and TGL (The Green Light), concluded the second session with an interesting presentation on unlocking human creative potential and grassroots development of an ethical economics based on a system with some similarity to the LETS (Local Exchange Trading System) concept.The last words were reserved for Global Vision's Moeen Yaseen who commented on the need to carefully review the recommendations made by the various speakers with the aim of developing strategies for handling the current crisis and, ultimately, moving beyond it to a world order based on a radically new paradigm rooted in social justice.
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