Islamic Socialism

The blogosphere is teeming with discussions of Islamic Socialism in relation to the civil unrest in Egypt.

See the photo gallery of the Egyptian violence.

A few bloggers are holding up the Pakistani People’s Party as a true Islamic Socialist government that could be a viable solution to Egypt’s problems.
Some bloggers are pointing to a contemporary of Muhammad, Abu Dharr al-Ghifari, as the source of Islamic Socialism, although they do not say that Muhammad supported redistribution of wealth at all.
Still others refer to Libya as another example of government that could save Egypt.
The majority of blogs however are supporting a democracy as the way to free the people from a bad government.
The Muslim Brotherhood is suggesting that they can step in and transform the Egyptian government into a stable country under a form of Islamic Socialism and they are providing support to the student protestors and youths that are filling the streets.
Hardcherry of Blogoncherry points out a link between this system and communism: A number of Orientalists alsobelieve that there is a relationship between Islamic economics and communism, such as the idea of riba and zakat.
The emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood to establish a government run not by democracy but by Islamic control has taken a couple of twists.
First, the Islamic Brotherhood is interlinked with the terrorist group Hamas, since Hamas actually grew out of the Islamic Brotherhood.
Second, socialist supporters are providing world-wide support in terms of protests (i.e. the recent pro-Egyptian-people, not pro-Egyptian-government, protests in the United States), socialist web sites and signs with socialist URLs being carried by some Egyptian protestors.
Professor Bjim Singh believes the people’s uprising in Egypt can only be satisfied by a democratic government where the people select their representatives of choice.
He projects the same thing will happen throughout the Muslim countries and says all “authoritarian and undemocratic systems shall have to go today or tomorrow.”
He has quite an exhaustive history leading up to his conclusion in an article he published today, February 3, 2011.
So the Islamic Socialism that Muslim socialists practice, particularly in the redistribution of wealth, will not be a stable government.
It will just transfer the wealth from the well-to-do to the ruling class with a token amount given to the people.
At this point it appears no one appears to be ahead in implementing their solution for the Egyptian people.
It seems to be a wait-and-see-what-happens moment with even the world’s top powers waiting by the sidelines, at least openly.