It’s worthwhile examining the relationship between war and wealth. After all, most wars seem to have economic roots. At least until very recent times, conquest was the key to wealth and success. Losing a war was a step to poverty (simply because the enemy stole everything you owned) and probably slavery. Largely because of the unity and fervor generated by their religion, the Arabs were extraordinarily militarily successful. I would hold, therefore, that the wealth Islam displayed early on, during its Golden Age, wasn’t so much a direct product of Allah’s will, smiling on the piety of his believers, as the result of conquest.
Conquest is what you call simple theft when it’s perpetrated by a large, well-organized group. So the Arabs became wealthy just like every other successful pre-industrial empire. In pre-industrial, pre-technological times conquest was a formula for success. Nobody had qualms about it. The thought of war crimes tribunals, had it even existed, would have been laughable in times when the standard recompense for soldiers of a conquering army was three days of unrestricted looting, raping and general mayhem in a fallen city.
Historically, when you conquered an enemy, and confiscated (another nice word for “steal”) his possessions, you became wealthier. This was, however, much, much more true in pre-industrial times, when wealth was static (land, gold, livestock, etc.). As the Soviets found, it’s less true in industrial economies, because they are based on continuing massive production, and because the means of production depreciate and obsolesce. In today’s hi-tech economy, simple theft is much, much less productive than used to be the case. In the old days, if you were able to steal some land or gold successfully, you were ahead of the game – land and gold defined wealth. Today, if you steal a computer, you have nothing but a depreciating asset. You can’t effectively steal know-how, because it’s a process, not a concrete object. The higher the technological level of a society, the less sense theft makes.
The whole story of civilization is one of the replacement of theft by production as a means to live. It’s why, for instance, I never believed the Soviets would ever attack Western Europe – the very fact of conquering it would have destroyed the wealth they wanted. In a hi-tech world, theft is actually counterproductive, much like stealing the answers to a test really gains one nothing. That’s not the way it was in the ancient world, however.
But if theft – er … conquest – allowed the Muslims, tent dwellers riding out of the desert, to become wealthy, then hypocrisy allowed them to stay wealthy – at least for a while. A good Muslim, even more than a good Christian, makes his religion not just the centerpiece of his life, he makes it his life. If the Koran is the exact and indisputable word of Allah, then it’s almost a blasphemy to read anything else, or learn about anything else, or do anything that doesn’t relate directly to what Allah expressly tells you to do, unmistakably, in black and white. Unfortunately, this presents a conflict with about a thousand other things a human may need or want. So compromises are inevitably made, rationalized and justified. Hypocrisy is necessary, even admirable, if you believe and say things that make no sense to do.
Don’t get me wrong. Islam does not endorse either theft or hypocrisy – and these faults are in no way unique to it. The Roman Empire, whatever its numerous other virtues, gained most of its wealth by stealing it from the peoples it conquered and taxed. When it stopped expanding (with the reign of Hadrian) it almost necessarily went into decline. The same was true of the Spanish, Portuguese, British and French Empires, among others. I attribute their glories not to their righteousness, but to their temporary military prowess. The same is true of Islam. It’s just that the unifying aspects of the religion aided mightily in their conquests. Muslims are no more hypocritical than followers of any other faith. And theft (unless it’s called conquest) is much more rare in Muslim than Christian societies.
Just as stock investors often confuse a bull market with genius, religionists often confuse happy accidents of history with the fruits of righteousness.
