Globalization of poverty and underdevelopment in the Muslim world!

The dream of achieving a world free of slavery -a world rejects exploitation in order to reach a high status in the world of "globalization", knowledge, and progress- is the dream of every poor and every human being who has a high vigor, but it is noticeable in the words of the President of South Africa, "Mbeki" The world today has become an island of rich people surrounded by seas of the poor."

In fact, poverty and underdevelopment are the other images of social differentiation and inequality between Northern and Southern countries and connecting them is not acceptable because we find that the developed countries have some figures about poverty in the Muslim world which is a crime and an indication for backwardness.

However, that can not be understood is the huge wealthes of the Muslim world which that are spent in trivial things that do not accrue to the benefit of the nation that year, while the myriads of people are idle, paralyzed, and poor.

The question arises is: What do we mean by poverty? What are the causes of the globalizational poverty and economic underdevelopment in the Muslim world? Are we moving towards a poorer world?

Poverty and its cultural and historical context:

Poverty[1]: A negative and manipulating concept that is difficult to understand independent and isolated from other concepts associated with it such as the concept of wealth and welfare, standard of living, quality of life, and the sense of humiliation and exploitation.

At the historical reality, there is no standard definition of poverty in all cultures, however some cultures do not consider it a defect.

If poverty in Islamic thought is like cancer that should be limited -as in the saying of Ali ibn Abu Talib (may Allah be pleased with him): "If poverty were a man, I would have killed it."- it means that its consequences which hit societies should reduced or eliminated.

He mentions the history of poverty in the Arab World, however some people prefer the optional poverty i.e., those people who refused the decoration of the world and went to mention Allah in His Kingdom and that was the monkhood which Islam prohibited.

Those people loved poverty with their own choice and considered it a degree of faith such as the Sufis in the medieval age, but in the modern time, they enjoyed various kinds of welfare because they took it as a means to collect money.

With the expansion of the globalizational world and urbanization process, poverty has gained its economic significance, and has become the lack of money and properties, then it turns into a defect then to a disease humiliates its owner.

Before the dominance of economy, the poor was the person who used to earn his daily living with difficulty or the one who chose the minimum amount of sustenance, although he is a member of the society, but later he became isolated and marginalized in real life.

The causes of poverty and underdevelopment in the Muslim world:

Here, I refer to the words of "T. W Schults" in his lecture when he won the Nobel Award in economics in 1979: "A large part of the world contain poor people, therefore if we know the causes of economic poverty, then we will know an important part of economy that should be studied."[2]

There are many reasons that lead to poverty which cannot be counted and need many books to speak about, such as: Bad management of available resources to accelerated spending, the decline of development process, the futility of development plans and programs for many decades, in addition to poor investment of labors, and the relationship between poverty and unemployment, especially the unemployment of graduates and not benefiting from them in the development process, hence the loss was doubled.

Despite the existence of a set of rational and objective causes that stand as a major obstacle for eradicating all forms of poverty in the Southern countries, experts and researchers of this phenomenon emphasize on the direct responsibility of rich countries in deepening this difficult problems in the developing countries, and all International solutions remain limited and pragmatic.

In this context, we mention the most important of these drawbacks:

First wars: The Muslim World was a battlefield for the Western Countries and the prominent example is the American arrogance which attacked weak countries like Afghanistan, Iraq which was in the developing stage, Somalia which was destroyed by national war, and Sudan which was the global food basket, but the West led it to that destiny, and the list goes on.

Second, the growing problem of foreign indebtedness, which is a big stick in the face of every country seeking to be free away from dependency by all its means.

Third, the marginalization of economic reforms supervised by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank for the social dimension in many countries, which contributed in the spread of corruption, poverty, hunger, unemployment, etc.

In this field, experts emphasize that there is no notion in reforming market economy, its paradigm, and theories relates to the social affairs and repercussions of liberalizing economy, but all they concern to is collecting funds to serve the foreign debts since the reforms were focused on saving money for the balance of payments to be able to serve the loans provided by the IMF and the World Bank.

Therefore, the reform processes did not achieve the expected results in the developing countries, which was confirmed by the Heritage Foundation, which is a major critic of the IMF, which said: The precedents of IMF in saving the ailing economies speak for itself.

Fourth, corruption: The phenomenon of corruption in underdeveloped countries represent the cancer which has paralyzed the body of communities and left them disabled and draining the financial resources in a hellish way without supervision as evidenced by its continuation and inability to eradicate it in spite of their disastrous impacts.

For example. one the World Bank experts said: More than 100 billion dollars representing the fifth of the total loans granted by the World Bank in its history was lost because of the corruption of the governments which got it.

Fifth, the destruction of the agricultural sector in developing countries as being the basic economic sector and preventing them from exporting their products because of protectionist policies applied by the developed countries.

For example, direct support for farmers in the European Union under the so-called policy of PAC; which exposes the products of Southern countries for bankruptcy and the difficulty of marketing and thus reflects negatively on the country's economy as a whole, and this is the tip of the iceberg.

Thereafter, the globalization came to pour its scourges on those people to end the matter completely and plant the roots of Darwinism stronger than ever before to cover today's world and include its different regions and territories, and in turn, elect and choose the rich who enjoy life to smash the middle class which rebelled against injustice and tyranny long time ago.

Moreover, many foundations warned against the combination of globalization and a dangerous phenomenon which is poverty and development together, or what was called "the poor growth," according to the Human Development Report in 1996, which said that there are several types of relentless growth, from which only rich people benefit, and the dumb growth in which the wealthes and political repression increase[3].

Globalization of poverty: Towards a poorer world:

In 1995 in Copenhagen, a special session of the United Nations was held on poverty, in 1997 the United Nations Decade was established to fight poverty, and in 2000 another special session was held in Geneva to assess the outcome of the five-years programs.

Few months later, a summit was held at the United Nations Headquarter in New York which indicated that the number of poor should be reduced by the coming of 2015, but the rich in the eight the countries known as the rich countries have not heard these appeals so far.

At the top of these rich powers, which are trying to dominate the world, is the U.S. which turned the war on poverty to the war on terrorism.

It should be noted that 6.5 billion people live in today's world, only 3.8 billion of them live on less than two dollars a day, while 1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day.

In the time where the Western countries raised the slogan of globalization, promising of a new era that alleviates the suffering of the poor, opposite to what the developing countries were hoping, they could not benefit from globalization in increasing their development and the living conditions of their citizens, but the marginalization of these developing countries has increased, especially causing the collapse of social cohesion.

This reality led to expansion of the differences between the poor and the rich countries and to the decline of living standards, the growth of people's number in the world, and spread of poverty in all over the world which led to the emergence of global anti-globalization bodies, as in Seattle and Prague.

This fact is highlighted by the international reports and the movements of the major countries which started to realize the seriousness of this situation.

In contrast, the Western statistics show that industrial countries own 97% of global franchises and the intercontinental companies own 90% of the privileges of technology, production, and marketing, and more than 80% of the total profits of the direct foreign investment in the developing countries goes to 20 rich countries.

In the developing countries, 33.3% do not have safe or fresh drinking water, and 25% do not have adequate houses, 20% lack the basic health services, 20% of children do not reach more than primary five, and 20% of students suffer poor and malnutrition.

In contrast, the total wealth of three of the world's richest people is equivalent to the GDP (gross domestic product) of the poorest 48 countries in the world, and the fortune of 200 of the world's richest people exceed the income rate of 41% of the whole world population.

Studies show that if they have contributed with 1% of these wealthes, it will cover the cost of primary education for all children in the developing world.

On the other side, 35 thousand children die daily due to hunger and disease and one fifth of the developing countries' peoples are starving.

The aid offered by UN to poor countries is less than the money which nine developed countries offer to feed cats and dogs in just six days.

These figures highlight the imbalance of the concentration of the global capital in the rich countries and the negative consequences of that defect cannot be ignored, as it describes what happened to humanity which overlooked this moral scandal which threatens the world social peace.

In this context, voices increased to warn people against this phenomenon which led to the spread of poverty and the destruction of the developing countries' economy; this was the view of experts and specialists.

George Cyrus, one of the new global economy, said: "Globalization has resulted in the transfer of capital funds from the underdeveloped countries to the center; i.e., the Western countries. This means in short that globalization has transformed the crumbs which used to feed the poor to the tables of the rich.

John Stgeltaz, the former economic expert of the World Bank, said: "The few Asian countries that have benefited from globalization are those which managed globalization in its own way, but major countries were harmed because they subjected themselves to the provisions of the major companies and international economic institutions which support globalization."

The financial crisis that occurred in East Asia in (97 and 98) was the first tangible result of globalization that led to devastating social consequences.

In Indonesia, the number of poor has decreased from 58 million to 22 million between 1970 to 1995.

Financial crises resulted in huge increase in population who live in poverty, where they reached about 36 million, but China, which has been conservative of globalization, has managed to remain insulated from the crisis and could maintain its economic growth which helped in the decrease of rural population from 280 million in 1990 to 75 million in 1999.

Conclusion:

The one who studies the organizations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as important mechanisms and tools for the globalization process realizes that injustice overcomes justice and their stance toward the superpowers and multinational corporations is at the expense of the weak and the marginalized.