Articles

International congress On Psycho- analysis, Past, Present and Future

Villa San Carlo Borromeo
Senago - Milan
March 31 - April 2, 2000

God, Finance, and Islam
in the Post-modern Age

Paper presented by
Sherif Hetata


When "Armando Verdiglione" suggested that I write a paper for this conference entitled "God, finance and Islam" I was a little surprised. I did not see its relevance to a conference dealing with psycho analysis and wondered why a novelist and a medical doctor like myself should write on a subject far removed from the literary activity in which I am now engaged.

However after thinking the matter over for a few days I decided to accept. I felt that a venture into areas with which I am not familiar could be interesting, would teach me something new and would require overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge which has been one of the plagues of post-modern thought preventing us from understanding what is going on in the global capitalist system which rules over our lives.

Why the growing interest in Islam?

During the past decades, political, academic and intellectual circles in the United States and Europe have developed a special interest in matters related to Islam. This interest goes back to the period of colonialist expansion and the orientalist schools. Nevertheless it never reached the proportions we are witnessing today.
Islamic studies and departments have been established in most American and European universities. Conferences on various aspects of Islam have become a common occurrence. Religion has a great influence on society, on our ways of thinking, our values and our lives. Yet at the same time political, academic and intellectual circles in the "Western World", seem to concentrate their attention on Islam. The other two monotheistic religions namely Judaism and Christianity do not receive any thing near the same attention as is given to Islam. There are few if any departments on Judaic or Christian studies in the universities, few if any conferences held to study and discuss different aspects of these two religions as they have operated, and continue to operate in our post modern age.

I often wonder why, and I would like the participants attending this congress to wonder with me. For if we are to speak of God (Allah) and Finance their Judaism should be a subject which occupies our minds, for in this era of global transnational capital the controlling role of Jews (not to say Zionism) over world finance, their preponderant role in the corporate system of the United States and Europe is striking and has important consequences for people in the Arab region and in many other parts of the world. It helps to explain the powerful economic and military ties between the United States and Israel and the existence of a Judeo Christian alliance which weighs heavily on the internal and external policies of successive American governments.
Before I go further I would like to assure the participants in this congress that I am against all forms of discrimination religious or otherwise. Yet I cannot help hit see how religion is being used by those who rule the world to serve their political ends, how Bush spoke in the name of God to mobilize thirty states in a war against the devil Saddam Hussein, how Huntington's "clash of civilizations" ends in the need to protect the Christian civilization by reinforcing the military might of the United States and NATO.

Why has Islam become so prominent a subject in the political and cultural debates of our day? Is there any relation between the development of global finance capital and religious fundamentalism, between "Allah" and "Macdonald's".

People living in the parts of the world where Islam is the predominant religion are located in what has come to be known as the "South" (as opposed to the North). In the bipolar global system which prevails in our age, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing at a rapid rate. Muslims in their vast majority are the poorest of the poor, and number closely on a milliard or more people (200 million in the Arab region and 800 million in Asia). Muslim populations are increasing at a rate out of all proportion to their income and standards of living. The Muslims are considered by the affluent West as a threat to its stability as a factor of unrest, as a danger. The seven most developed industrial countries with a total population of around 800 million account for 80% of the total wealth of the world and over the centuries their ruling classes have instilled deep seated fear and contempt of these hungry hordes.

Over 80% of the world's resources of oil are concentrated in Muslim countries in North Africa, the Gulf region, West Asia, and the North and South Caucasian Republics of the former Soviet Union where Muslims constitute the vast majority.

The increasing poverty, insecurity, and marginalisation of Muslim populations, the failure to establish workable national democratic systems in the face of an international capital closely knit to local privileged classes and economic development policies geared to the needs of global capital, dependent on loans, and on "structural adjustment" orchestrated by the World Bank have together led to catastrophic results in the countries of the South. Increasing social and economic unrest, bordering on despair and a complete loss of hope have lead people to seek solace in religion, in God. The breeding ground has been created for a conservative religious revival, for the rapid growth of fundamentalist forces, of extreme forms of fanaticism and terrorism. The fundamentalist movements are encouraged and used by international and national conservative forces to serve their political and socio-economic aims.

Islamic fundamentalism has become an important political movement during the last decades. Christian fundamentalism in the United States and Jewish fundamentalism in Israel also occupy a prominent position on the economic and political scene. From the very beginning the Moslem Brotherhood was encouraged and nurtured by the British colonialists. In the Arab region after French and British interests could no longer maintain a preponderant role the United States stepped in. The Fundamentalists switched their allegiance to the new master. With Saudi Arabian money and CIA technical and logistical support they built up a Holy war (Jihad) army in Peshawar to cross the borders into Afghanistan and fight against the Soviets. "Taliban" is a heritage of this period.

Israel encouraged the growth of Hamas, an off shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to struggle against the Palestinian liberation Movement. President Sadat the ally of the USA supported the reemergence of the Islamic fundamentalists (Jihad, Gama'a Islameya and the Muslim Brothers) to fight against the political parties and forces that opposed his policies.

The Islamic fundamentalists adopt a cultural stance against the West, against the corrupt "infidels" whom they say wallow in material worldly pleasures. But where finance is concerned their economic interests intertwine closely with those of the transnational corporations in oil, arms, drugs, gold, currency exchange as well futures, stocks, shares and bonds. Kuwait owns a 20% share in Chrysler Daimler, Mercedes Benz and a trilliard and a half US dollars are invested by the Gulf royal families in the West. Allah and money are an integral part of the global capitalist network, of transnational corporations .

In the name of Allah the fundamentalist movements fragment the unity of people, of the democratic and national forces. They lead the struggles of people away from the issues which affect their daily lives by involving them in religious strife, in bloody massacres and civil wars. They encourage backward dogmatic thinking, retard the intellectual and cultural development of nations, and communities. They marginalize women and minority groups belonging to other religions.

Allies of global capital, of the United States, and other Western powers they are used as instruments of pressure on governments who exhibit some independence, they participate in acts of provocation, serve as alternatives to corrupt regimes supported by Western governments when these regimes lose their credibility. In Europe fundamentalist forces bring grist to the mill of the racist movement directed against North African, Turkish and Iranian immigrants who after serving their purpose as cheap labor are no longer needed.

Islam has once more become the spectre haunting Europe (and the United States). After the collapse of communism "Muhammad" has replaced "Marx". The military industrial complex in the United States, the Pentagon and NATO, the transnational corporations need to find new enemies to increase the sale of arms, to wage an economic military crusade and expand their world market. Islam is serving this purpose. It has reintroduced its God (Allah) into international economic and political relations to give itself a global reach, to conceal the economic relations which bind it to the West. God (Allah) and finance are two faces of the same coin. One face is culture, the other money. Ostensibly contradictory they complete one another. Global capitalism and religious fundamentalism work together to maintain the hegemony of transnational corporations, of 434 milliardaires who own as much wealth as half the population of the globe. The USA and Saudi Arabia are culturally antagonistic but they work hand in hand to maintain the American domination of our region. Transnational capital knows no nation, knows no God, but uses God and Allah and Jehovak to maintain and reinforce the global market.

Muhammad and Money:

When the prophet Muhammad started to preach his new religion in the city of Mecca, the Hijas was a land of tribal traders. Numerous camel caravans traveled to neighboring countries, served as the trade link between Asia and Africa.

Muhammad was brought up in this tribal trading society. When still a young man he married "Khadiga" a rich widow about twenty years older than himself. After this marriage she handed the management of her commercial affairs to him and was delighted to discover after a few years that her wealth was increasing at a steady rate.

It was therefore natural that the teachings of Islam should reflect the society in which it was born. Muhammad sought to transform it from a warring tribal society where there was no security for trade or for the life of individuals into a stable well knit nation (Umma) where the trade and life of its peoples could prosper.
As the years went by Muhammad proved to be not only a good trader but also an astute politician and statesmen. His pragmatic trading background coupled with a natural intelligence and the hardships he had to go through first as an orphan then later as the Messenger of a new religion prepared him well for the role he was to play.
It is not surprising therefore that in the Quran Allah extols trade as a respected occupation on condition it is carried on in an "honest way" (what this means exactly the Holy book does not say). In Islam money is held in high esteem in contrast to early Christian teachings. The Quran says that "sons and money" are the "zinat" (embelleshments) of our life on earth.

Later on the Arabs (Muslims) build up a trading empire which extended from Spain (Al Andalous) to Indonesia. Traders and ships rode the seas and oceans linking what was later to be called the Far East to Europe.
The Crusades were organized in the name of Christianity to recapture Jerusalem the Holy city but the main aim of the successive military expeditions was to regain control over the trade routes and ensure that it was the Europeans (the Christians) and not the Arabs (Muslim infidels) who pocketed the profits.
The imprint of money and trade on Islam is a declared part of its ethos. In that sense Islam is less "chaste" than Christianity when dealing with the material bodily things of life like money and sex. In some ways it is closer to Judaism.

Yet in Islam although profit is considered legitimate, interest on deposited money is not. This may be one of the reasons why the Arabs and Muslims failed to adapt and prosper when usury, banking, and loans became the financial backbone of mercantilism, manufacturing and later of capitalist industrialization. In this sense Muslims were "anti-capitalist" and this proved to be a handicap in their economic development. In some ways this reminds us of Catholicism which considered usury inimical to the faith. This stance of Catholicism reflected the interests of the feudal system. As a result the Jews stepped in to fill the gap and became the rich money lenders and bankers of the world.

More recently this financial dichotomy between interest and profit in Islam became the scene of struggles between the economic interests behind the political forces of religious fundamentalism and the more modernizing and secular forces of the State. For example in Egypt when the influence of the rich Gulf countries and in particular Saudi Arabia increased as a result of the oil boom during the eighties many Muslim religious groups and scholars exerted pressure to make the authorities consider interest as anti-Islamic. The Egyptian government was obliged to seek a "fatwa" (religious directive) from the Mufti of Islam. Indicating that to earn interest on money was in no way against the faith, and thus protect the local and foreign banks from the onslaught of Islamic financial capital swollen by profits from the oil boom.

To this day "Islamic Banks" continue to insist that they do not pay interest on deposits. Their contention is that dividends paid by them to their clients on money deposited are the result of investment in industrial and commercial activities. The dividing line between profit and interest however remains unclear and this permits them to raise or lower dividends above or below the usual rates.

The most glaring example of a financial swindle swathed in the garb of Islam was what happened in Egypt during the nineties of the previous century. At that time the country witnessed a mushrooming of so-called investment companies launched by individual families. The establishment of these investment companies was linked to a "money boom" arising from the "open door" economic policies inaugurated by Sadat in 1974 and the increasing role of speculative capital on the market. The growth of speculative capital in Egypt was closely connected to the oil boom which poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of the Royal families, and with the three and a half millions of Egyptians who emigrated in order to work in the Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the Emirates) and in Libya.

A non-official black money market developed and was accompanied by investment in non-official "sweat" or "black" workshops and small industries. Relatively big sums of money accumulated in the hands of upper, and lower middle class families. This money was mostly idle and lay there seeking profitable outlets. Most of it had been funnelled from the Gulf countries to Egypt by a small number of exchange brokers who made huge profits out of their operations. It was the same brokers who had the idea of collecting this money so that they could profit at both ends. They established what they called Islamic Investment companies. The next step was to convince the families they had already contacted before as brokers for many years to deposit their money in these companies.

By the end of 1986 that, is within a period of not more than five years they established around 280 Islamic Investment companies of which only 190 were officially registered with the authorities. By June 1988, 406,000 investors had flocked to these companies and half a milliard Egyptian pounds had been deposited in them. The investors were like moths in the night attracted to flare lamps. There was no holding them back since the companies paid rates of interest as high as 25-30%. The investors were mostly if not all bearded men and veiled women deeply impregnated with a conservative Islamic culture arising from the general atmosphere of the country, but also as a result of years spent in the Gulf region. There was a continuous promotion campaign sponsored by many religious dignitaries and Sheikhs close to establishment circles and institutions in Egypt and the oil countries. They were handsomely rewarded for their "ideological" contributions. This campaign depicted money deposited in these investment companies as "holy" and "blessed" and as a consecration of "Allah's" will. Newspapers were full of "devout" advertisements with photographs of inaugural company ceremonies with a religious dignitary cutting the ribbon. The ceremonies were surrounded with religions fanfare, and opened with long recitations from the Quran. The men who had founded the investment companies were often pious bearded men with a blue prayer bump on their heads from repeated prostration, wearing white gallabeya's and turbans, their big toes protruding from leather sandals and with a procession of veiled wives in tow. The word "Allah" floated high over their company buildings and was printed in gold letters on their cards and on all correspondence. They were supported by powerful circles and people in the higher echelons of the state or in Parliament many of whom were hidden or declared shareholders in the companies. Judges, eminent doctors, lawyers and engineers had links with these enterprises or had deposited money in them. Political parties like the "Moslem Brothers", the Islamic socialist Labour party led by "Adel Hussein" a former "Marxist" turned devout, by the Wafd and by a network of religious movements and organizations like "Al Gameya al Shareya" or Al Tourouk al Soufeya". Bribes were distributed left and right to pave the way and were called "Baraka" meaning "blessings".

When the crash came hundreds of thousands of families lost their life's earnings. It transpired that to pay the high interest rates the people owning and controlling the Islamic Investment companies had been dipping into the deposits paid by a growing number of new investors. Each new wave was providing the funds to pay the dividends owed to previous investors. This swindle was concealed by convincing the greedy and gullible beneficiaries that their money was being invested in extremely lucrative industrial, building and trading activities.

All these investment companies had been operating illegally since the law permits only authorized banks to accept money deposits. But the authorities whose palms had been well greased with oil money had become blind and deaf to what was going on.

The time came when these companies were no longer able to pay the high dividends because there were no new waves of clients coming in so they absconded with milliards of Egyptian pounds. Most of them went abroad, one or more were put in prison where they continued to ply their trade from a prison cell provided with television, telephone and fax under the benevolent eyes of the prison authorities who were also enjoying the fruits of investment in Allah.

The parallel economy of Allah in Egypt is closely linked to the official more secular economy. Nevertheless it still manifests itself as an entity with a certain economic and cultural independence connected to the Gulf countries and through them or directly to the transnational finance corporations. An important sector of the big and middle bourgeoisie linked to currency exchange operations, import export trade, Wilson and black market speculation and to Islamic banks or companies is part of the Gulf oil international finance network and has adapted the deeply conservative religious ideology of the Islamic semi - tribal rulers. Fundamentalist political movements have been continuously encouraged and supported by these rulers. Mosques are being built everywhere with money from oil sources. The media (press as well as television, publishing companies. etc) are largely controlled by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. During Ramadan, the month of fasting, thousands of tables are spread under make-shift marquee tents and hundreds of thousands of people are given a free fasting meal by the rich, devout capitalists in society. These tables are called "the tables of the all Merciful" (God).

The link between money and Islam (religion) is everywhere to be seen and permeates into every aspect of our lives.

The ruling classes capitalize on this link, on the economic distress and insecurity of millions of men and women in our country. They reinforce it continuously in order to make people accept their fate in a world which dismisses those who have no money.

In the age of globalization the relation between religion (not only Islam) and finance is visible everywhere to different degrees. In the United States the Christian coalition and other fundamentalism movements now account for 20% of the electoral vote which will probably go to the ultra-conservative George Bush. The transnational corporations need fundamentalist, need Allah and god and Jehovah, need the most reactionary movements in religion to continue to rule us the way they do.

Money, Women Traders and Islam in Senegal.

During the four years that I spent as head of a team of Experts on Migration in Africa the International Labour Organization sent me on several missions to the Senegal. Since I married Nawal El Saadawi the Egyptian feminist writer and psychiatrist, I became interested in issues related to women and participated in founding the Arab Women's Solidarity Association.

On one of these missions to the Senegal while talking with a woman researcher and activist she mentioned something about an economically important sector of women called "Mondou-Moudou". Later they became the subject of research projects, but here I would like to confine my self to a few remarks about this interesting and economically active sector of Senegalese women.

"Moudou Moudou" in the Senegal is a nickname that refers to all traders who show a great enthusiasm for making money, have a sense for commercial activities, are very versatile traders and combine these characteristics with a strong attachment to the Islamic religion. They are usually women who have migrated from the rural regions to Dakar, but they can also be found in other places in Africa, in the United States, Europe, and Australia.

Originally in the Senegal and other West African countries it was only men who left their country to live abroad and be obliged to face the very hard life that emigration implied. Women in the local religious tradition and customs were expected to stay "decently" at home.

Paradoxically it has been religion and particularly Islam that offered women in the Senegal and other countries of West Africa like Nigeria and the Camerouns the possibility of travelling abroad and of developing trade activities and an international network through which these activities flourished. Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the Prophet Muhammad was much more liberal in his vews about women than most of the Muslim religious leaders and dignitaries of our day. But in any case money is very powerful and has always been capable of twisting the teachings of religion in any direction it liked, of using God for its purposes. "Khadija" the wife of the Prophet was used as an example for African women whose ambition was to become traders, and to legitimize their trading activities. Women traders interviewed in a research project undertaken by Fatou Sarr in 1988 said that trade was recommended by the prophet and when I asked one of them, a powerful ebony black handsome woman smoking a water pipe she gave me the same answer and added "that Allah had blessed it for women before men. Had he not decided that Muhammad should marry a women trader to prepare him for the mission he had to fulfil?".

Morocco was the first country to which these women went. That was in the 1970's. They went as pilgrims on chartered flights to visit the tomb of "Sheikh Ahmed Tijane" the founder of Tijanism. They took with them Senegalese products which they sold in Fez and Casablanca and took back Moroccan goods especially jewelry, clothes, and dresses.

The pilgrimage to Mecca also became the occasion for big trading activities and while the women went to fulfil the religious ceremonies, and get God's blessing, they also traded in Senegalese food and specialties and bought stocks of jewelry and clothing to sell at home. But the importance of the Mecca pilgrimage is that it has permitted them to set up an international network through the contacts they made with people from all over the world.

Most of these women belong to a Sufi sect called "Mouridism" and they contribute generously to its leaders, and "marabouts" in exchange for their holy blessings. They also collect money for the improvement of the mosque in Touba. Many of the lesser women traders are also griottes (dancers, musicians and hair braiders). They tend to be more religious than the rich traders but also more free in their sexual relations. Some of them combine prostitution with a great degree of religious fervour as though trying to atone for their sins.

The Comprehensive Call to God (Islamic Finance in the Sudan).

In 1989 a coup engineered by the National Islam front (a Sudanese offshoot of the Muslim Brothers) in coalition with the armed forces led by Mohamed Bechir took over power. Four years later I spent one month in the Sudan on an ILO mission related to workers rights. I found an atmosphere of terror reigning every where, and had to avoid meeting any of my old friends who had been involved at one time in progressive political movements, or in organizations related to human rights.

The NIF represents a minority constituency in Northern Sudan. It gained less than 10% of the votes in the last free election. Its dependence on terror, on the army and its skilful use of political Islam, in addition to the division in the ranks of the more progressive and liberal forces gave it a disproportionate ability to influence events.

The experience of the past decades had convinced the NIF of the need to do two things: the first was to establish a range of "front" organizations which would continue to operate even in the context of a wide crack down on its Islamist forces. A second was to develop a potential for copying and adapting Western modes of financial and civic organization. Out of this sprang Islamist financial services beginning with the Faisal Islamic bank and Islamic relief and development agencies as a part of the Comprehensive Call to God.

The establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist regime with its base in the North of the Sudan drove many of the pagan inhabitants in the South towards a fundamentalist Christian response. Evangelical churches both in the South and amongst Southerners displaced to the North grew exceptionally fast during the 1990's and attracted hundreds of foreign missionaries. From the mid 1990's some of the most fervent backers of the Southern based Sudanese Peoples Libernation Army have been Christian extremist organizations based in America, Europe, and South Africa. Some of the literature of these organizations resembles the claims of the most extremist fringes of the NIF. For example Frontline Fellowship a militant South African based movement claims that it aims to win the whole of the Sudan "back to Christ" and describes itself as "storming the bastion of false religion".
Hassan al Turabi the leader of the NIF maintains that an Islamic State cannot isolate itself from any part of life or society because Islam is a comprehensive, integrated way of life. The division between private and public, the state and society that is familiar in Western culture has not been known". The state is only the political expression of an Islamic society".

Thus within the higher echelons of the state apparatus "renovated" and "restructured" by the NIF/armed forces coalition there has been built up a nexus of specialized security forces, "Jihadist" (Holy Struggle or War) philanthropic organizations, commercial companies and international terrorist organizations. For example some Sudanese security forces fund themselves partly through deals with Islamic philanthropic organizations having foreign connections. Islamic humanitarian and commercial organizations share the
same vehicles, radio communications and staff members with security organizations. Together they control other commercial enterprises and jointly run research centres and, until very recently, a camp for training terrorists.

All this is part of a concept of Islamic finance. Another of the cornerstones of Islamic finance is that it is based on the concept of duty, not on the concept of charity derived from Christianity and which tends to humiliate the recipient.

The Zakat is a form of taxation, traditionally used for a variety of purposes including supporting religious schools and mosques, aiding the poor and indigent, assisting pilgrims, converting non-Moslems and supporting Jihad. It has been described as a form of social security: its collection and distribution are based on principles of obligation and equity. This is one reason why the public private and state-society distinctions have become less meaningful in the Sudan.

In Northern Sudan, one of the means of maintaining the supremacy of the Islamic project is by establishing a powerful economic base. The Islamisation of the banking system and state finance in Sudan, which began in the late 1970s, has been one of the main impetuses for the growth of the Islamic humanitarian sector. When the Faisal Islamic Bank was first established in 1978, to be followed by a host of others, it gained most attention because of its 'Islamic' principles, notably its refusal to charge interest. However, in retrospect, the most significant element in the growth of Islamic banking was the way in which this enabled the NIF to build a political constituency and an economic base.

The tax free status of Islamic financial houses was and is a crucial component in their profitability and their capacity to reach a wider social group than the conventional banking system. These privileges exist not only in the Sudan but in many Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia. Given that the majority of Sudan's hard currency reaches the country in the form of remittances from Sudanese expatriates in the Arab world, and that successive governments have tried but dismally failed to capture these remittances through official channels, the Islamic finance houses have been well-placed to fill a very important niche in the market.

Another important innovation has been the extension of credit to groups that never qualified for financial services before, in particular small-scale entrepreneurs. Before the Islamic banks appeared, the Agricultural Bank of Sudan loaned only to large farmers, leaving smallholders dependent on the highly exploitative traditional shayl system of mortgaging crops. Similar practices operated in trade and industry. Small-scale industries and micro-credit have also been a specialty of some Islamic humanitarians. The Islamic model of credit, whereby the bank and the client enter into a partnership, is well-suited to small-scale development in a country like Sudan. Some Islamists, such as Dr Sulaf el Din Saleh, have sought to use micro-credit and similar economic means as a method of building an Islamist constituency. They have used models drawn from Asia (such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) and from the literature on intermediate technology, filling important gaps in the credit market - and also building a constituency.

Since the NIF siezed power, the Islamisation of finance has been much more thorough-going and has extended to the revenue collection system. Numerous quasi-governmental organizations have been established, such as the Diwan al Zakat, the Sharia Support Fund, the Islamic Pious Endowments organisation, and the Social Solidarity Fund (Al Takaful). The Diwan Al Zakat is a Da'wa-ist organisation entitled to collect zakat contributions: it is in effect a privatisation of tax collection. The moneys it collects are distributed directly to Islamist organisations such as those mentioned above.

The Sharia Support Fund was set up by Presidential Decree. Formerly non-governmental, it receives money from the Diwan al Zakat, as well as enjoying tax-free status. The President of the Republic is its Patron. The Fund states as its objectives:

• Supporting the institutions, organizations and projects aiming to carry out Islamic missionary activities;
• Constructing mosques and Koranic schools and encouraging the worship of Allah;
• Supporting Sharia research, education, information and publication, and
• Mobilising and providing military training for PDF and coring for the families of martyrs.

Al Takaful obtains its funds from its own commercial activities, from Diwan al Zakat, from grants and endowments from private individuals, and from levies on the salaries of state employees.
The financial networks of political Islam in Sudan have become extremely complicated and far-reaching. They are well-entrenched and will survive even if there is an abrupt change of regime in Khartoum. However, the iron laws of economics still hold in an Islamic state- a government nearly $20 billion in debt, with little to export and fighting an expensive war cannot expect to remain solvent. The Islamist financial project has its limits, which have very probably been reached.

Conclusion

As a result of the advanced technology upon which are built highly developed systems of information and communication global capitalism exhibits a remarkable degree of versatility. Flexible new systems of management depending on decentralization and remote control are now capable of dealing with the giant enterprises as well as medium, small size and even house hold activities. All these are utilized in the transnational quest for maximizing profits, accentuating the centralization and concentration of capital, and increasing the outreach of the global market.

The global network is capable of combining the most sophisticated post modern forms of production depending on knowledge with the most back ward traditional units or groups of economic activity. International finance capital has no problem in dealing with variety, with difference, with a whole range of socio-economic structures, that is to say with chaos. At the top lies the oligarchy of the few built on the highest centralization and concentration of capital ever known in history where 500 transnationals account for 82% of the world's investment and 80% of its trade. At the bottom the world is faced with a growing process of fragmentation built on ethnic, religious, social, gender and social class divisions. Thus fragmentation amongst the many serves to maintain and consolidate the hegemony of the few.

Finance and Allah (God) serve to rule and exploit the more backward peoples of our global world, the teeming millions of Muslims in Asia and Africa. Behind the infinitely rich and complicated mosaic of peoples, languages, religions, culture, ethnic groups and identities operates the unified power of money and military might, where God and Allah and Jehovah are used in the service of the hegemonic few who rule the world.
This alliance between money and religion must be broken if God and Allah and Jehovah are to return where they belong, to the poor and suffering and destitute of out post modern world.