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Islam and Class

By: Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari

Anyone who thinks that other nations have
raised up the under-privileged classes in society in a
way in the least like that which Islam has successfully
followed in its fight against tyranny and oppression
misses the point and shows that he has not the faintest
perception of the inner truth of Islam, and its humane
social justice. No other system has hitherto been able to
bring such an ideology so effectively into practice.

Even the Communists, who call themselves foes of
religion, acknowledge the amazing renascence brought by
the powerful and fundamental doctrines of Islam. The
monthly Mardum, organ of Iran's Tudeh
(Marxist) party, (No. 2, Year 3), wrote: The
appearance of Islam at the beginning of the 7th century
AD is a turning-point of history It changed the face of
community living. Its victorious progress, in the course
of less than a century, from the Arab homeland as far as
the Loire in the West and as Sind and the Amu Darya in
the East, forms a fascinating page. The Jezirat-ul-Arab
provided the centre for the spread of the religious
ideologies of Judaism and Christianity. Yet the Arabs and
Bedouin were still idolaters. Mecca was a commercial
centre run by the moneymakers, turning the nomad tribal
way of life into feudalism : and it was here that Arab
nationalism first began to be felt and to break out. Its
people were money-grubbers and small farmers owning
slaves. To this world Islam came as a revelation and as a
democratic revolution against the moneylending oligarchy,
who drove the first Muslims out of Mecca. Islam possesses
the idiosyncrasies of all moralistic religions, yet it
has kept its feet firmly on the ground of this material
world we live in. It eschewed monkery and concentrated
its attention on the equality of human beings regardless
of race and tribe, the equal rights of women with men,
the manumission of slaves, the care of the indigent; and
provided so simple a set of principles that it is
distinguished from all other religions. It was these
qualities that enabled it to arouse a social renascence
of lifegiving inspiration. It brought a heavy pressure to
bear on the minds of the bloodthirsty arrogant ruling
class : offered villagers and poor town-dwellers a road
of salvation in this world, expelled the troops of Roman
and Persian emperors and installed its own form of rule
from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees.