On October 15, in almost thousand cities in 82 countries and six continents, millions were on the street with one voice: GLOBAL CHANGE
A manifesto for regime change on behalf of all humanity was produced.
It proclaimed: united in diversity, united for global change.
It demanded global democracy: global governance by the people, for the people.
It also proclaimed that inspired by brothers and sisters in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, New York, Palestine-Israel, Greece and Spain, they call for a regime change: a global regime change, demanding a replacement of the G8 with the whole humanity-the G7,000,000,000
It further declared:
“We are all born equal, rich or poor, woman or man. Every African and Asian is equal to every European and American. Our global institutions must reflect this, or be overturned.
Today, more than ever before, global forces shape people’s lives. Our jobs, health, housing, education and pensions are controlled by global banks, markets, tax-havens, corporations and financial crises. Our environment is being destroyed by pollution in other continents. Our safety is determined by international wars and international trade in arms, drugs and natural resources. We are losing control over our lives. This must stop. This will stop. The citizens of the world must get control over the decisions that influence them in all levels – from global to local. That is global democracy. That is what we demand today “
How does it all began.
On June 9, Canadian anti-consumerist magazine- Adbusters registered the domain name – OccupyWallStreet.org.
On July 13, Adbusters calls for Sept 17 protest, where 20,000 people flood into lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades, and occupy Wall Street for a few months, “Demanding Democracy not corporatocracy”
Supporters of Occupy Wall Street started posting their photos and stories to a new “We are the 99 per cent Tumbler page, bemoaning that the beleaguered majority gets “nothing while the other 1 per cent is getting everything”.
Protest began from September 17, when about 80 people were arrested during a permit-less march and its video of the event, particularly of the use of pepper spray on a group of women, earn Occupy Wall street, its first media coverage.
On October 15, it was a worldwide phenomena – about a thousand cities across six continents, the protest spread. A manifesto for regime change on behalf of all humanity was presented inspired by demonstrations from Tunisia to New York, activists and people’s assemblies collaborated on a vision for a new global governance ahead of worldwide protests .
What kind of disobedience it is.
“Occupy Wall Street is best understood, as a new form of what could be called “political disobedience,” as opposed to civil disobedience, that fundamentally rejects the political and ideological landscape that we inherited from the Cold War.
With the Cold War decades behind, a new paradigm of political resistance has emerged.
Civil disobedience accepted the legitimacy of political institutions, but resisted the moral authority of resulting laws. Political disobedience, by contrast, resists the very way in which we are governed: it resists the structure of partisan politics, the demand for policy reforms, the call for party identification, and the very ideologies that dominated the post-war period and that quietly redistributed massive amounts of wealth to the richest 1 percent. Many of the voices at Occupy Wall Street accuse political ideology on both sides, on the side of free markets but also on the side of big government, for serving the few at the expense of the other 99 percent — for paving the way to an entrenched permissive regulatory system that “privatizes gains and socializes losses.” writes New York Times
The message that the Occupy Wall Street and their supporters world over present is –
despite the difference in language, landscape and scale , protesters were united in frustration with the widening gap between the rich and the poor as they proclaimed: “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known,” protesters explained.
The world is eager to seek an alternative system – protesters of Occupy Wall Street included – which stands on ethics and real growth instead of the financial engineering based on interest and usury, speculation, gambling, derivatives and investments on environment degradation and weapon of mass destruction that has produced ”Oceans of poverty” and “Islands of Prosperity” resulting in the rich becoming richer and poor poorer.
The Qur’ān warned this 1400 years ago: ”It (wealth) may not merely circulate between the rich among you.” ( 59-6 )
Syed Maudoodi comments: This is one of the major guiding principles expounded by the Qur’ān. This verse spells out a basic principle of the Islamic state’s economic policy viz., that wealth should circulate in the whole community rather than only among the rich, this is in order to prevent the rich from getting richer and the poor poorer. (Towards Understanding the Qur’ān – P. 1147)
No wonder one of the banners carried by a protester , the slogan is:
Let’s Bank The Muslim Way?
Are we ready to present a practical model of Islamic Financial System based on ”Equity & Justice” to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators world over?
[The writer is Convenor, National Committee on Islamic Banking, and General Secretary, Indian Centre for Islamic Finance (ICIF)]