Buried Wealth

A question arises about oil — buried wealth — and whether it is causing problems in the economies of the Muslim world. That is a really good point. There are a lot of problems: there is a lot of resentment, there is a lot of envy, things like that. Technically, on buried wealth there are different opinions. Most of the scholars say that it goes to the Muslim collective bank, what is called the bayt al-māl, and that it should be used to develop the Muslim communities, to help the poor, to build schools, to do these things; it should not be personal wealth. Some say no, it should be taxed twenty per cent, and then the people on whose land it was found are the ones who benefit from it. So there are some differences of opinion. But definitely, in many of the countries where natural resources have been discovered — and the Muslims do have a lot of natural resources in the Muslim communities — there has just been a gross expropriation of the wealth and exploitation of it, which was very unfortunate. There have also been a lot of outside influences. It is known that when Mossadegh, who was the prime minister of Iran, wanted to nationalise the oil, there was a CIA coup that ousted him. So there are hands outside that are also impacting very seriously on how the wealth is being used.

Anyone who knows about petrodollars knows the fact that the vast majority of petro-wealth is literally being supplanted and invested in Western banks, and the Western banks in turn are using that to finance a lot of the projects in the so-called Third World, which end up causing major problems because of interest payments and things like that. So these are very complicated world conditions, but they are really worthwhile matters to bring up with students, because as communities we just have to start thinking about this stuff. We are so marginalised from these dialogues, and normal people should be participating in trying to understand what is going on: why countries like Mexico are paying these massive amounts of interest. There is more interest now coming out of the Third World than there is aid going into it. So there are a lot of very serious contradictions going on, and then there are a lot of the massive projects that are being developed, the World Bank and the IMF encouraging these gross projects — the dam now in China, and in Brazil, and these types of things. Somebody like Susan George is really worth reading: A Fate Worse Than Debt, Ill Fares the Land, How the Other Side Dies.^*** She worked for the World Bank and then reneged, having realised that she felt they were doing a lot more harm than good, and she has written some really worthwhile critiques — not of a conspiratorial type, just really analysing the thing. Susan George now works, it seems, supported by the Catholic Church, by one of their organisations.