January 05, 2007
At midnight on December 31, 2006, the world entered a new year according to an inaccurate reckoning of time called the Gregorian calendar. It was proposed by Aloysius Lilius and decreed by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it is named, on 24 February 1582 via a Papal Bull. This turning of the leaf of one of the calendars used today marks the end of 2,006th years since the estimated time of the birth of Jesus, the son of Mary, may Allah’s peace be upon both of them.
At the beginning of 2007, about 6.5 billion human beings are living on Earth which had only 2.5 billion inhabitants in 1950. Out of this population today, every fifth person subsists on less than one dollar a per day, every third on less than $2 a day. These are World Bank figures. The same source tells us that the G7 countries account for 67% of the world GDP. Another way to understand the state of the world today is to say that out of 267 nations, 43 account for 20% of world population, but 84% of world’s GDP; this amounts to saying that 70% of world population receives only 10% of the total world income.
The disparity between human beings now living on Earth is stark: Switzerland has a per capita income of $ 26,716 (7.56 times the weighted world average); Mozambique of $ 95 (0.027 times the world average). The ratio between these extremes is 275 times. If the world economy continued to grow in the same fashion—and there is no reason to believe that it will not—the sheer force of this maldistribution would become unsustainable.
Within each country, the gap between the rich and the poor is also increasing. This means that available global resources and services—such as education, science, technology, health care, and clean water which determine overall GDP—would continued to be denied to the world’s poor. The present concentration of wealth confers self-arrogated political policy-making power to the so-called rich nations, allowing them to dictate to governments in the poor countries policies which further undermine their capabilities. This economic disparity has also produced such lifestyles in rich countries which cannot be sustained through their own resources therefore they attack and pillage resources of other nations. These self-serving needs are fulfilled through invasions, sales of arms, and corporate monopolies on goods and services.
The international calendar of events for 2007 is already full: the usual UN poverty eradication day on October 17, the G-7 summit on such and such date, the next gathering of the world leaders in New York on such and such day and so on. Likewise, global pundits have also forecasted that during 2007 one third of deaths—some 18 million human beings—will be due to poverty-related causes; this is 50,000 men, women, and children per day! They also tell us that during the twelve month period which started on January 1, 2007, some 11 million children will die before their fifth birthday and 800 million persons will go to bed hungry every day. The World Bank’s “Voices of the Poor”, based on research with over 20,000 poor people in 23 countries, tells us that people who do not have material resources will continue to be in the same position throughout this new year, for eradication of poverty is not on any government’s real agenda.
Within this large economic picture of the world in 2007 are mini portraits of suffering of individuals whose names are not being recorded anywhere; they are merely anonymous men, women and children whose places of residence have become unbearable due to foreign invasions and internal strife: Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Somalia, Chechneya. And the list goes on.
This new economic order of the world has come into existence since World War II which reshaped the geo-political map of the world for the good of nations which until then had been plundering the resources of other nations through direct occupation. In the wake of World War II, they physically departed from the colonies, but before leaving, they had already devised other ways of ruling their colonies. Those colonies of the pre-World War II era have now become the home of the world’s poor.
These countries have vast material resources, favorable climates, and fertile soil, yet their residents are being driven to a perpetual state of poverty because of mismanagement, outright aggressions, and misrule. The case of Iraq is an exception, but the situation is not very different in other parts of the former colonies of the world where lackeys of the rich nations now rule, often as “democratically elected” presidents, generals, and prime ministers. This unjust order of the world cries out for a total reconfiguration of the world. Such a reconfiguration cannot take place until a new vision of life stirs masses in these countries. This new vision of life cannot come into existence without a belief system. Man-made belief systems and ideologies of the twentieth century have already been proven bankrupt. The only hope left for humanity now is to return to a belief system which is not constrained by the limited reach of human reason—a guidance which comes from beyond.
Those who cannot grasp this need to have a closer look at the state of the world at the beginning of 2007 and the direction in which events are taking humanity. Those who still hope to find solutions without the aid of supra-human Wisdom may comfort themselves with illusions but if the direction in which events of the past fifty years have taken humanity is our guide, they will surely find no comfort in these delusions.
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