The current prevailing understanding of the free market as characterised by neo-liberalism allows persons of either an individual or a legal nature to gain possession of almost all resources and commodities, thereby excluding the rights of others to control them.

The consequences of this understanding are very apparent if you consider natural resources such as oil. A handful of families and companies control these natural resources, and are thus authorised and empowered by law to exclude others – in this case, the rest of society – from the revenue they generate and the profits they secure.

The richest 1% of the world’s population have accumulated more wealth than the remaining 99%.

This concept has had a dramatic impact on our world. According to an Oxfam study of the worldwide distribution of wealth, projections for 2016 show that the richest 1% of the world’s population have accumulated more wealth than the remaining 99%. In addition, riches are increasing faster than ever before. Private wealth adds up to more than 160 billion US dollars. Also, food production worldwide is enough to supply the entire world population with sufficient food – yet according to the UN Development Programme (UNDP), in 2014 more than 1.5 billion people were living in multi-dimensional poverty, meaning that they lacked food, healthcare, education, and an adequate standard of living. Redistribution, then, is taking place not so much from rich to poor, but from poor to rich.

Humanity as a body



We must therefore ask ourselves the fundamental question of whether we humans want to see ourselves holistically, as a body that is, for the most part, developing healthily, or whether each of us should individualistically accept the disadvantages caused by others and structure his life according to his own self-interest?

Here’s a thought experiment to illustrate the problem. Imagine that our organs and limbs – i.e. every part of our body – were free to determine for themselves what they wanted to do and behave however they liked. Imagine that the left leg decides to walk to the left, but the right decides to walk to the right. The question of which direction the whole body will move in is easily answered: nowhere. Or let’s assume that, as the result of an injury, the brain needs blood and oxygen, but the organs responsible – the heart and the lungs – refuse to help, or will offer to do so only if the brain, which is entirely without means, reciprocates, which at the moment it cannot do. One wonders how long such a body will survive.

People all over the world are fleeing crisis regions and war zones, in their hundreds, thousands, soon in the millions, hoping for a better life. This is a problem that affects the whole of Europe, irrespective of the questions of whether Europe should take in more or fewer refugees or whether it should take them in at all, or of how the people of Europe are reacting. Some are protesting against it; others are mobilising in order to donate, to give, to help. The helpers are not necessarily well-off, or people who can easily afford it, as recent events on the Greek island of Kos showed. Even needy people, who have little themselves, are helping those who, in comparison, have even less. The characteristic of wanting to give, and being able to give, seems to be a natural predisposition that people are born with. It is referred to in Islam as fitra – instinct – and is an essential element in the Islamic concept of an ethical and socially sustainable understanding of economics. This natural predisposition to give, ‘to do good’, arises from a spontaneous inner willingness.



