By: Imad A. Ahmad.
Minaret of Freedom Institute, 4323 Rosedale Avenue
Bethesda, Maryland 20814, (301) 656-4717
1. DECENTRALIZATION AND THE PREFERENCE FOR PRIVATE PROPERTY
My research (Ahmad 1993a, 1994) established that Abu Bakr followed the Prophet's sunnah to the letter. In the Prophet's time three methods of land title were known: individual ownership, communal ownership, and state ownership. The Qur'an neither advocated nor rejected any of these. The Prophet made use of, and thus legitimized, all three of these. However, he showed a preference for decentralization. In Medina he not only confirmed the existing individual ownership, but granted allotments for residences and farms to those who could make use of them. The state held only those lands needed for state purposes, and any property taken for state use was paid for. Communal usage was also defended, as in the prohibition of burning bushes within 12 miles or hunting within 4 miles of Medina, evidently aimed at protecting communal grazing. The Prophet limited "communal" property to three cases: water, grazing, and fire.
As the Muslim community came into possession of a dazzling quantity of lands under Umar, new challenges were confronted. Umar disliked the prospect of taking away these enormous tracts from the conquered people and giving them to the relatively few Muslim soldiers. While such an action might appear, on the surface, to follow the practice of the Prophet, it would violate the spirit of decentralization that had been its foundation. When the victorious soldiers demanded that Umar distribute the conquered lands among them, Umar met with his cabinet and devised the following solution: Noting that the previous owners of the land had paid a land-tax to their Persian overlords, he decreed the following resolution:
1) land covered by peace treaties belonged outright to the former owners, with no taxes except as specified in the treaties;
2) privately-owned land conquered by force would be turned over to the former owners with their property rights restored, provided they agreed to pay a vastly reduced (typically by two-thirds) land-tax, called kharâj, to the Muslim state;
3) unoccupied lands, wasteland, and Sasanian crown lands (as well as lands abandoned by the aristocracy) became the property of the state; part of these became the Muslim equivalent of crown lands, with sale prohibited (fay'), while another part was made available for homesteading on a usufruct basis, that is, in exchange for kharâj payment, provided the land was put to use within three years.
What are the implications of Umar's decree for Islamic economic policy? In particular, what was the purpose of the immobilization of the Sawad lands?
Some scholars (e.g., uz-Zuman 1981) seem to be under the impression that Umar denied right of sale of any lands on which kharâj was paid (which would in effect make them state property rented to the tenants), supposedly to prevent the wealthy conquerors from buying out the property rights of the native people and instituting a feudal society. This view has been refuted by those (e.g., Morony 1981, in Udovitch 1981) who have shown that such acts actually seem to have arisen in the Umayyad period. Their attribution to Umar was an invention that served to justify that dynasty's departure from the sunnah of Muhammad and Abu Bakr. In fact, the prohibition of sale of kharâj-land to Muslims only emerged after 100/718-19 (Lambton 1953, p. 53). The evident purpose "was to maintain the kharâj status of the land through the fiction of communal or state ownership. Islamic legal scholars like Mâwardî ultimately reached a position that while the property in the Sawad could not be sold, the enjoyment of such property could be sold," according to Morony (1981), who further claims Umar II's policy was a special policy not intended to be applied outside Sawad. Thus, the implication that Umar deviated from the sunnah seem unjustified, and the innovations attributed to him were probably introduced by the Umayyads.
Only through zealous protection of the property rights of the people (both their private property and the environment) can society spontaneously develop the optimal division of labor that characterizes productive economies. While earlier Islamic scholars, like Ibn Taymiyah, took the legitimacy of property for granted, Ibn Khaldun pointed out its scientific necessity for a prosperous society. He quotes from Al-Mas`udi report of Môbedhân's speech before Bahrâm: "Men persist only with the help of property. The only way to property is through cultivation [lit. `imârah]. The only way to cultivation is through justice" (Ibn Khaldun 1967, v. I, p. 64). Wehr (1976) translates `imârah as "building, edifice, structure" or "real estate, tract lot." From the context it seems we should take cultivation as development in its widest sense, not restricted to agricultural activity. This fits in with Ibn Khaldun's (1967, v. I, p. 80) assertion that four things make man unique: crafts and science; the need for "restraining influence and authority"; earning a living; and civilization. He emphasizes the need for human cooperation and social organization, for without it, "God's desire to settle the world with human beings and to leave them as His representatives on earth would not materialize" (Ibid., p. 91).
The idea that property is a consequence of development does not differ from--and anticipates--Locke's notion that use establishes the right of property. We find in Ibn Khaldun the economic concepts which appear in a rudimentary form in earlier Muslim writers have acquired a sharp definition. His analysis of the issue of the need for social cooperation stands up to Adam Smith's discussion three centuries later:
[T]he individual human being cannot by himself obtain all the necessities of life. All human beings must cooperate to that end in their civilization. But what is obtained through the cooperation of a group of human beings satisfies the need of a number many times greater (than themselves). For instance, no one by himself, can obtain the share of wheat he needs for food. But when six or ten persons, including a smith and a carpenter to make the tools, and others who are in charge of the oxen, the plowing of the soil, the harvesting of the ripe grain, and all other agricultural activities, undertake to obtain their food and work toward that purpose either separately or collectively and thus obtain through their labor a certain amount of food, (that amount) will be food for a number of people many times their own. The combined labor produces more than the needs and necessities of the workers. (Ibid., p. 272).
The function of political authority is to defend the stability of the social organization against aggression and injustice for "when civilization has thus become a fact, people need someone to exercise a restraining influence and keep then apart, for aggressiveness and injustice are in the animal nature of man" (Ibid.). It is only for this reason that someone must have authority over others, "so that no one of them will be able to attack another. This is the meaning of royal authority" (Ibid., p. 92). Ibn Khaldun ridiculed the claim of the philosophers that the ruler is necessarily one endowed by divine guidance for the exercise of the restraining influence of the religious law by noting that the majority of people have political communities without revealed guidance (Ibid., p. 93).
According to Ibn Khaldun there is only one effective method for government to increase its revenues, and that is "through the equitable treatment of people and property and regard for them" so that "they have the incentive to make their capital bear fruit and grow." His bottom line is found in the section title "Injustice brings about the ruin of civilization" (Ibn Khaldun 1967, v. II, p. 103):
It should be known that attacks on people's property remove the incentive to acquire and gain property. People then become of the opinion that the purpose and ultimate destiny of (acquiring property) is to have it taken away from them. When the incentive to acquire and obtain property is gone, people no longer make efforts to acquire any. The extent and degree to which property rights are infringed upon determines the extent and degree to which the efforts of the subjects to acquire property slacken.... Civilization and its well-being depend on productivity and people's efforts in all directions in their own interests and profit. (Ibid., p. 104)
Once a government has lost popular support, it is sustained by force.
Even though coercion makes its appearance at that time [the later years of a dynasty] and the revenues decrease, the destructive influences of this situation will become noticeable only after some time, because things in nature all have a gradual development.
In the later (years) of dynasties, famines and pestilences become numerous. As far as famines are concerned, the reason is that most people at that time refrain from cultivating the soil. For, in the later (years) of dynasties, there occur attacks on property and tax revenue and, through customs duties, on trading. (Ibid., pp. 135-136)
Ibn Khaldun leaves no room for uncertainty as to his definition of injustice:
Whoever takes someone's property, or uses him for forced labor, or presses an unjustified claim against him, or imposes upon him a duty not required by the religious law, does an injustice to that particular person. People who collect unjustified taxes commit an injustice. Those who infringe upon property rights commit an injustice.... (ibid., p. 107)
Muhammad (peace be upon him) forbade injustice because the purpose of the law is the preservation of civilization, that is, "(1) of the religion, (2) the soul (life), (3) the intellect, (4) progeny, and (5) property (Ibid., p. 107)." Decentralization of ownership of the resources down to the level of the individual, protected by a system of well-defined private property rights including the internalization of costs incurred by environmental impact must then be the first concern of any Islamic government towards the end of an economically successful society.
