Feeds
Has the IPA (gasp!) “sold out to Muslims”? July 7th, 2007
So, what was the IPA on about in publishing such a scandalous betrayal of western cvilisation, (sic) and, for that matter, a complete falsification of the history of classical liberal economics? There are those already speculating on the motivation of the IPA? - What is the deal behind it?, and, there must be something very rum (sic) because they still refuse to retract and correct, why have they sold out to muslims and in such an ugly fashion? The cretins at the IPA may not like it, but senior figures have made their disgust plain.
Andrew Kemp and I wrote a piece in last edition of the IPA Review on a strand of Islamic thought that could be considered sympathetic to the free market. (The article is here: “Islam and the Free Market“). The piece is pretty simple, covering three areas - the aspects of the Qur’an which praise commerce and the exploitation of natural resources for human gain, the economics of the 14th century Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun, and the potential problem of usury for Islamic commerce.
We explicitly did not try to maintain that the Qur’an or Islam itself was inherently pro-capitalist or liberal, or peaceful or something else - I don’t believe that religions can be ‘inherently’ anything. Instead, we argued that it is possible to cherry-pick a tradition of free market or pro-commerce thought out of Islamic intellectual history. As we wrote,
None of this discussion is to imply that the Islamic religion is consistently or inherently liberal, or necessarily free market. If nothing else, the process of discerning a liberal tradition in Islam illustrates the subjective nature of theology - individuals interpret sacred texts, rather than being controlled by them.
This modest argument has not been popular. (The quote which opens this post is from the latest, and certainly the most vitriolic, response at a blog called Mangled Thoughts. He goes on to characterise our piece as a ‘nasty little bit of toilet paper material’, but at least he calls my front cover ‘handsome’.)
Prodos opened the condemnation by accusing us of supporting a “free market dictator” - the Islamic Free Market Institute Foundation which we mentioned in the article approvingly quotes George Bernard Shaw on its website.
A blogger under the name Strider, before having read the article, speculated that the IPA was desperately searching out new sources of funding, (”the IPA was getting strapped for cash”) and that we wrote the piece to try to get support from Emirate Airlines. He went on to read the article, conceding that it may not be all wrong (”That might well be the case, but it is important to avoid the temptation to rewrite history.”) but nevertheless, the IPA should shut down. (”perhaps it is time after 60 years for the IPA to pack up its tents and go away.”) I can assure Strider that we were not paid to write the article, and that for the last two years the IPA has experienced a sustained boom in financial support.
Gerard Jackson, of Brookesnews, has provided the only lengthy criticism of our piece, in this podcast with Prodos, and apparently in a subsequent lecture. Speculating that we were ’spoonfed’ our argument from some nefarious source, he badly misreads our article.
Over the course of an hour, he argues against a strawman - our article does not claim that Ibn Khaldun invented economic theory. Instead, we briefly write that “it is hard not to imagine that the leading scholars of the School of Salamanca did not have at least a passing familiarity with Ibn Khaldun’s work”. We know that Islamic scholarship was influential within the Scholastic movement - Ibn Rushd (Averroes) was highly respected by Thomas Aquinas and others as a expert commentator on Aristotle. Much Greek writing was translated into Latin from Arabic, rather than the original Greek. Furthermore, Medieval European scholars often traveled within the Islamic world and had extensive contact with their Arabic counterparts. It’s unlikely that Ibn Khaldun would have escaped the attention of Christendom.
Regardless, Jackson does not address our main contention - it is possible to detect within Islamic intellectual history a distinct, although not anywhere near dominant, strand of free market or pro-commerce thought. If there is a problem with this argument, I would be eager to hear it, but so far angry rhetoric and misreadings have dominated the critical response.
Why might this be the case? Our article was written for a audience sympathetic to the free market, asking them to reassess their existing views on the viability of Islamic liberalism. We argued that the myopic argument that there can be no free Islamic nation because Islam the religion is somehow internally deficient does not stand up. Liberal thought has existed within an Islamic framework. And perhaps this can be leveraged into a modern Islamic liberal tradition and hopefully provide a basis for a genuinely liberal Islamic state.
The response by Prodos, Gerard Jackson, Strider and Mangled Thoughts illustrates how certain segments of the right treat the War on Terror as simply a War on Islam - and they appear to be angry that Andrew and I would even consider sympathising with their enemy. Worse - we have “sold out to muslims”, as if it is every Australian’s duty to stay strong against the advancing Muslim hordes.
They dismiss Islam as a religion of violence without seriously looking at the importance of different intellectual traditions within Islam, and the way these can and have changed over time. Surely, when the Islamic world is filled will illiberal governments, it is vital to try to rejuvenate those traditions to encourage other, more liberal, paths of development?
Your penultimate paragraph is an interesting but naive position. As I have argued in my critique of your article (which you appear to have ignored in this posting), there are various aspects of Islam which are inherent to it which are anti-thetical both to free markets, and more importantly, to individual freedom (eg the status of non-Muslims, although this is only one of several points I made).
I suggest that the best contribution Islam has made to the development of the free market (as suggested by PJ O’Rourke in Peace Kills), was the Ottoman Caliphate’s assuming state (ie Islamic) control of the spice overland trade, which forced the nations of western Europe to become sea faring powers in order to trade with the far east, which led to the spread of nascent capitalism and western civilisation across the world.
But I still believe that the IPA is strapped for cash, and declining in support, as evidenced in the lack of private sector sponsorship and ads in your pages, as compared to the early 1990s. Has it served its purpose or it is now going to adapt to arguing a cash for individal liberties under sharia law?
Regards
Strider
Comment by Strider — 8/7/2007 @ 1:25 pm
Averroes and Aristotle are entirely beside the point, and you have not addressed what mr. jackson set out on economic history.
Cherry-picking!? Is not evidence of traditions, any type of tradition.
What you have written doesn’t support the paper at all.
Next, since you raised Averroes, Aristotle and Aquinas, it was worth a digression by a summary expansion on Aristotleanism in Western Philosophy and Theology, and Averroes place in it -
Rebuttal of Chris Berg’s Apologia( his defence of the IPA - Berg- Kemp Paper)
Comment by Douglas — 10/7/2007 @ 2:28 pm
I don’t pretend to know anything about economics , but I’m a little confused by the penultimate paragraph of your article where you say “as if it is every Australian’s duty to stay strong against the advancing Muslim hordes.”
Do you mean that it is NOT the duty of every Australian to stay strong against the advancing Muslim hordes ?
I presume in context it was meant as a smug dismissal of those who believe that there IS a serious threat from Islam , but I would appreciate your clarification of the point .
Comment by Kevin — 10/7/2007 @ 6:30 pm
Strider writes:
He also wrote:
It’s in the same book so I’m sure you have come across that too.
The statement that O’Rourke mentions from the Prophet can be found, of course, in Musnad Imam Ahmad, Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan at-Tirmidhi, and Sunan Ibn Majah.
Comment by Amir — 11/7/2007 @ 3:42 pm
You see, Chris? God is punishing you for not giving me the cover. Not that it wasn’t a good cover …
Comment by Sinclair Davidson — 11/7/2007 @ 3:46 pm
Well, look at it this way, this is all for the good as for the first time in a long time, people are actually reading and talking about an article in the IPA Review. I don’t think this has happened in quite a while - if indeed ever.
I have expressed my own thoughts on this post in greater detail on my own blog.
Kind Regards
Strider
Comment by Strider — 11/7/2007 @ 5:21 pm
I read the IPA Review but as a card-carrying member of the “Muslim hordes” that probably just proves everyone’s point :)
Anyway, I think the idea that ‘Western’ economics has its intellectual pedigree with Ibn Khaldun is a fundamentally different proposition to the idea that there is, to be found within Islam, support for free market principles. Although one can perhaps argue that Ibn Khaldun ‘discovered’ or observed things that were later discovered by Western economists, such as the so-called Laffer Curve, my reading of Berg’s piece was that he was trying to make the second point.
It is, of course, true that most all contemporary Muslim societies are not ‘free’ or economically liberal and many Islamic rulers of the past, such as the Ottomans, engaged in economically illiberal practices such as tax farming, attempted central planning of industry, price fixing, and so forth. However, although these practices may not be particularly laissez faire, Islam is a laissez faire faith in the sense that the absolute and final ruling on an issue doesn’t exist with one scholar, one ruler, one group of men or indeed with one generation; but that Islamic law has evolved spontaneously over time; and there are, within it, often many different opinions and strands of thought on particular issues. All Chris seems to have done was point to one such strand with respect to economic thought.
Comment by Amir — 11/7/2007 @ 5:44 pm
Having heard Gerard Jackson’s podcast and attended the forum at Richmond at which he later spoke on the article on Islamic economics I had to agree with what he said. This will soon be on You Tube.
I then read “Mangled Thoughts†contribution and found myself in agreement with him.
The article needs very extensive revision at least and quite frankly I think it is “beyond repair†for want of better words. It’s a “lemon†to put it in the vernacular.
However it is part of a deeper malaise on the right as discussed by “Mangled Thoughtsâ€. I think that there is a need for a “new broom†to sweep out what is there and replace it with something more dynamic.
Let me add a few anecdotes of my own. Some years ago I contacted the IPA about the “West German economic miracleâ€. Nobody seemed to know much about it. It was as if it had never happened. That was the most perfect working example of the free market.
The Uranium Information Centre is part of the same group of people. I contacted it a few years ago to ask how things were going and was impatiently advised to “go to the websiteâ€. Naturally I haven’t contacted the UIC since. (“How dare you interrupt me you nuisanceâ€.)
Ray Evans and Des Moore were the main gurus on labour market issues but neither of them seemed to know what was going on. Gerard Jackson has a good article on his site about labour costs and unemployment in Queensland in the 1920s which illustrates what happens when labour costs are increased by official regulation. But Messrs Evans and Moore obviously didn’t think that it was worth pursuing.
Messrs Evans and Moore could have done much better had they liaised with Gerard Jackson and used his materials even if it meant sharing some of the glory. Now there will be no glory to share because it’s likely that the Liberals will be thrashed over “Work Choices†and we’ll have about six years of ALP government if we are lucky and twelve years if we are unlucky.
By any criteria the left should be whimpering and licking its wounds by now. Being a male and turning 50 makes one unemployable in Australia. Marriage on one income is a middle class luxury or almost. A large number of men in their prime find it hard to get a job that will support a family.
Then there is the disgrace of wind turbines and bushfires which have ravaged our countryside and ruined many good citizens not to mention the water crisis. Some Australian states might run out of water. What a fix we’d be in then!
Even Terry McCrann, who is no great intellect, has pointed out that taxation per person is over 10,000 dollars. Many people don’t believe him or else they don’t think it’s a problem. Where is the right on all of this? Every election Labour politicians promise to spend more even when taxation is quite onerous. Does anyone on the right lay a glove on Labour for this?
What does it take to stir these folks into action or at least get them to recognise how bad they are?
Comment by Greg Byrne — 12/7/2007 @ 9:55 am
I’ll do you a courtesy, Berg.
I have it from impeccable source, very senior figures in the Liberal Party, who are not at all amused by the antics of the IPA, that your chum, Andrew Berg is in hiding. he’s fled, he’s not standing up for the muck he co-authored.
You’re on your own, with no escape hatch as editor of IPA Rev.
Oh, my source told me, the Kemp family coloour as yellow.
Another thing, you are now entering Warby Syndrome, I relate it on my site.
Bye the bye, do you have the Insurance policy called , “influential friends”. You know what Nahan did to Warby, don’t you?
If you don’t, you best take a decko, because, the IPA bus is heading your way.
It’s a fair warning I’ve given you, and you really don’t grasp what you and kemp wrote is atrociously bad.
Comment by Douglas — 12/7/2007 @ 5:40 pm
Chris, it’s not you fault entirely - though I’m not letting you and your pal of for putting up that atrocious fabrication purveyed as history.
Oh, your pal, Andy Pandy, has abandoned you, run away and is in hiding, under the full protection of his influential family ( you do have influential friends?)
Bye the bye, some pal you have, a coward who flees to leave his “mate” enjoy be roasted, but:
There you are, as I wrote on my site, cowardice is genetic in the Kemp family, their banner is glorious yellow.
However, it’s your employers, the Directors of the IPA who are culpable.After all, they decide what is published.
So, you see, that can’t, after all, sack you, because everyone will thus know that they are the culprits, they can’t now, do to you what Nhan did to Warby, because as I wrote on my site: They had to have read both Warby’s fictional plaigairised paper, and, as the publisher of the book Warby’s job on Ellis. They, not simply Warby, were responsible for those scandals. They threw Warby onto the human sacrifice pyre to protect their own backsides and their fat purses.
So, right now: they are torn between sacking you and keeping you on as editor. Either way, this time they cannot, that lot of lazy, ignroant nincompoops cannot evade the full attention they thoroughly deserve.
So, I don’t wish to see a boy burned and sacked. And you can’t help it that you are not equipped to write on very serious matters. You are the sort they have writing all the other drivel they churn out on mix master machines.
But, there it is, you might have a bit of time, get in cotnact with, you have any, influential friends and get out of the whore house you are employed in and get a real job that are capable of doing. So, there it is, I’m going for the slobs who are very much responsble for the fraud puryveyed as history.
Oh, examining your apologia, I suspect you were told to what to write and told to put it up on your site. One reason is clear, you don’t have a clue as to what you are talking about. Neither do they who told you, but, they beleive they are geniuses.
So, you can see what they have done. Theya re prepping to sacrifice you, and you fall for that?
You are in trouble, it’s fair warning Chris, you have a pack of cowards on top of you called Directors of the IPA.
Comment by Douglas — 13/7/2007 @ 8:55 am
Douglas,
Do you actually consider yourself more qualified to comment on economic history in the Muslim world and different strands of Islamic thought? I’m just curious because there are some things you have written in your various responses that I would like to discuss here.
Thanks
Amir
Comment by Amir — 13/7/2007 @ 11:23 am
Amir, I am aware of that quote, and did come across it when I was browsing through my Koran the other night over a glass of decent red. I also note the following quote from the Koran, from the chapter, ‘The ‘Imrans’:
‘It is He (ie Allah) who has revealed to you the Book. Some of its verses are precise in meaning - they are the founding of the Book - and others ambiguous. Those whose hearts are infected with disbelief observe the ambiguous part, so as to create dissension by seeking to explain it.’
Taking the message as a whole, rather than just P.J. Rourke’s quotation, is what is important, and as I made clear in the concerns I raised in my own blog in early June, the whole issue is not whether Islam has a free market heritage (I am very very skeptical of the claims raised by Chris and Andrew), but whether it has a free market future.
I believe that there are several key facets of Islam which are sufficiently inherent and repressive as to prevent a free market from either emerging or surviving, and that either Islam will be mitigated by existing free markets (as happened to the more religiously motivated repressive aspects of Christian Europe during the emergence of Capitalism) to the point where it loses much of Islam’s more pointed and inherent aspects (eg the holding of political power in the hands of an Islamic State - be it a republic, emirate or Caliphate), or alternatively Islam will wind up stifling the preconditions necessary for Free Market Capitalism to exist.
But hey, why repeat myself? http://www.stubbyholder.blogspot.com is my blog, read my various ideas there and judge for yourself. The relevant posting is from early June.
Comment by Strider — 13/7/2007 @ 12:22 pm
Douglas, I notice that you believe that what the IPA is publishing is actually read by anyone. I have done a bit of an analysis, given what limited information publically exists about the IPA’s support base in the community, and I believe that it’s impact is usually pretty limited.
My analysis is on my blog at:
http://stubbyholder.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-anyone-read-ipa-review.html
I do think that this debate various of us are having with Chris and the IPA is fantastic, because not only is this probably the first time that anyone has actually bothered to read and comment on an IPA Review article in history, but it does enable us to have a free and unfettered discussion.
And I don’t think that Chris is at risk of being the sacrificial lamb for the IPA in this matter, as it is after all just a rather silly and naive article (to us) which might indeed really increase their funding from new sources, much as Eddie Maguire has been able to rejuvenate Collingwood Football Club by getting Emirates Airlines on board, and I really believe the IPA is stapped for cash compared to when Western Mining used to bankroll them.
Comment by Strider — 13/7/2007 @ 12:28 pm
Greg
I found your post very interesting. Particularly as there are various points which resonate with me. I believe that there are many pro-free market and pro-liberty people out there in Australia who feel disenfranchised by the ‘conservative Establishment’ of which the IPA is a part (although one former exec director once had the hyde (sic) to tell me that the IPA was not part of the Establishment).
As a result of that sense of disenfranchisement, many people are disengaged from and disillusioned with organisations such as the IPA and the others of that ilk.
Indeed, in my most recent commentary on the IPA on my blog, I did comment at length on what I see as a self congratulatory circle. Read it at:
http://stubbyholder.blogspot.com/2007/07/does-anyone-read-ipa-review.html
But the problem is not really that the IPA Review suddenly tackles (in a poor way) a serious issue such as Islam, but that it normally is so scared of rocking the boat that they NEVER tackle serious issues at all. I think Louise Staley’s piece about Bed & Breakfasts in the last issue of the IPA Review as a particularly lamentable illustration of what the IPA Review is all about, and why serious people do not read, and why those who do buy it do so to decorate their coffee tables.
Comment by Strider — 13/7/2007 @ 12:35 pm
Strider,
I am glad you are concerned about whether Islam has a free market future (whatever that means). I also assume you think the free market is a good thing for everyone (including Muslims). So why then isn’t it praiseworthy that someone is trying to demonstrate that there exists some justification for such a future in Muslim texts and sources? Would you prefer that people looked for evidence of socialism and central planning in early Muslim thought and promoted that in the pages of the IPA Review just because various experiments with socialism have featured heavily in more recent Muslim history?
Comment by Amir — 13/7/2007 @ 12:49 pm
Amir, this is about what Berg and Kemp co-authored. It is now worse than erroneous it is a complete seamless concoction of fictions. Published in March, IPA continues to back it, it is thus now a fraud. It is fraud because they are purveying it as truth.
Strider, yes, you might be right but, I refer back to the Warby plagiarism and attack on Ellis. Yes, IPA didn’t sack him in the 1st instance, but he was a marked man. When the next load of rubbish adequate to embroil them in public scandal, Warby’s attack on Ellis, Nahan, the then sole director of IPA sacked him – ‘ it wasn’t me, it is Warby who is solely responsible. What’s wrong in that picture?
Nahan was then the sole director of IPA, and IPA as publisher of Warby’s book, Nahan had to approve it and, obviously, allocate funds to that job. What does that also entaill but he had to have read it before publication. Though Warby wrote the book, Nahan and the IPA were as culpable for it as Warby was. Media Watch and ABC radio missed that entirely when they ran with the scandals.
So, while Berg might not be sacked, he certainly is, as was Warby, now a marked man. Next, they are doing the same to Berg as was done to Warby, making him carry the full burden of responsibilty, they are hiding behind Berg, and that is the point ot why they are not addressing the scandal in their IPA website and Review magazine.
Worse, Berg is totally isolated because Kemp is using his influential family to avoid answering for what he co-authored.
As for the IPA readership? O.K., it might not have many readers, but that misses entirely the real force of not simply what the IPA has done in committing the fraud.
Let’s use an example drawn from the same closed gene pool, the HR Nicholls Society. How many readers bother with their publications? I’d be surprised if their readership is more than the IPA’s. Look at the sheer damage that lot have done to a very important, sound and highly moral case, freeing up labour markets. That is why I’m going for the jugular of not simply the rubbish Kemp and Berg spewed out. It is why I’m goi9ng for the jugular of the IPA.
That lot in the IPA are ignorant, they are lazy, and they stuff trather important matters up all the time. Next, they also, as the HR Nicholls Society doe4s, have the sheer hide to – and get this, smear, attack, and knife in the back those who can do the work properly, and with it, attack the left from the front,, and demolish the left and advance in public debate truths which can be ignored only at peril, and economic laws are ignored only at peril, as history so well demonstrates.
Oh, Berg might not be sacked, but he is marked. And another thing, another Berg and Kemp can shake this off. Kemp is a lucky one, he has an influential family to rescue him. Does Berg? If he doesn’t, does he have influential friends? If he does, are they willing to rescue his backside. You see, any other young man without influential connections would be finished as far as seeking employment with other firms. Strider, I’d say right now, maybe not Berg but, Andy Pandy is counting his lucky stars he has influential family connections.
Does anyone seriously entertain the notion, anyone else would not face unemployment and starvation? For if you are, I only say, surely you jest. Which, it is why I advised Berg on MT to get out of the “ whore-house†and find a real job, even it is rather more modest than “editor†of a mag, he is out of his dpeth, and he is under types who quite frankly are not the types I’d entrust to look after a pet poodle.
Comment by Douglas — 13/7/2007 @ 3:14 pm
Amir
The problem with the article is that it was naive and wrong, and ignores several very important issues which need to be addressed intellectually if one is to make such bland and broadreaching assertions.
If I were to assert, on the various of selective quotations from Mao’s Red Book, that Mao believed in a subjective theory of value (instead of the labour theory of value which Marxists adhere to), and that Maoism is therefore supportive of the free market, I would be jumped on, and rightly so. What Chris and Andrew has done is just as silly as that sort of argument, but what is ironic is that they have done it in a publication which has a long history of NOT ROCKING THE BOAT, exposing not only the shallowness of their own journalism, but also that of the rest of the magazine.
Comment by Strider — 14/7/2007 @ 10:04 am
Douglas
Are you suggesting:
DELENDA EST IPA?
If so, we must meet, and talk, and drink much beer. Prodos can set up a meeting - after all, it was he who brought the offending article to my attention.
There are various people currently in the IPA who have been described to me in less than flattering terms, but I steer clear of people whose presence will not add to my net happiness.
I’m a little worried about Chris - he has been silent since early in the week. I hope he does not take this personally. We hate the message, but not the messenger. And that we have started such a long discussion thread in this blog is a gift to him - I wish such things would happen in my blog (ie http://www.stubbyholder.blogspot.com in case anyone is interested in visiting). Now Chris has a dscussion thread almost as long as those which occur daily in his fellow thinktank editor Andrew Norton’s blog.
Comment by Strider — 14/7/2007 @ 10:09 am
I have worked it out!
RIO TINTO (ie successor to Western Mining and North Ltd) is probably bank rolling the IPA?
Is anyone a RIO shareholder? If so, you might raise this as a question at their AGM.
Comment by Strider — 14/7/2007 @ 10:12 am
Well, I promised you quotations from Mao in support of the free market, and I deliver.
Follow this link to the promised land:
http://stubbyholder.blogspot.com/2007/07/maos-theory-of-value-parody-of-recent.html
Comment by Strider — 14/7/2007 @ 10:41 am
Right.
So the arguments against the piece can be summarised thusly: Michael Warby gets sacked from the IPA for writing something untrue about Bob Ellis’ girlfriend and abortion; ergo, an article written six years later about Islamic finance must be a ‘fraud’.
Comment by Amir — 14/7/2007 @ 12:59 pm
Strider, I’ll take you up on that jooly good idea, much beer
Amir, that’s an appallingly bad syllogism.
Look Amir, no-one who has attacked the article for what it is has to defend, Kemp and Berg, but not just them , the IPA too has to defend or retract. They haven’t yet defended, they haven’t yet retracted. It is an entire fabrication.
You ask Berg, Kemp and IPA to deliver on Islam and economics. They haven’t yet.
It is, Amir, bad, very bad stuff. Mind, looking at their other material, that’s bad too. but in the ‘article’, the IPA has published a complete fabrication and it is an applallingly bad one.
Comment by Douglas — 16/7/2007 @ 8:26 am
Douglas
I’ve just added your blog onto the blogroll at my page, having just discovered how to create a blogroll.
I’ll talk to Prodos about setting up a meeting in some pub. I am amazed at the number of people who seem to share similar views to mine about the worthiness and relevance (or lack thereof) of organisations such as the the IPA.
I am skeptical about the IPA’s (and HR Nicholls Society) ability to influence industrial relations. After all, I have met and not been impressed by Ken Phillips - he is no ‘man of pull’ as Ayn Rand might say. But I suggest you write a critique on your blog about the IR policy and why it is a disaster - or we can discuss it at the pub.
Comment by Strider — 16/7/2007 @ 1:25 pm
It is all very nice that you two could use my blog to organise an evening at the pub for people who resent the IPA, but unless anyone wants to discuss the content of the article or the issues raised by Amir in a nonabusive manner, then I’m closing this comment thread.
I will briefly say however that, while all the article’s critics have spat vitriol and abuse at the article and demanded its retraction or rebuttal, absolutely no one has done the civilised thing and approached me - as the editor of the magazine - to submit a letter critiquing it for potential publication.
Comment by Chris Berg — 16/7/2007 @ 2:00 pm