Research Advisor Islamic Research and Training Institute (IRTI), Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Jeddah Dr Umar Chapra has said that Islam will once again become a blessing for mankind and will be a source of intellectual, moral and spiritual inspiration for all. He also said that Muslims will be once again in the power in the next 50 years.
He was delivering a keynote address at Khurram Murad Memorial Lecture 2010 organised by University of Management and Technology (UMT) Lahore. He said that he sees Muslims in power because the economic system of the imperial world is collapsing and the recent economic crunch is the example of the failure of this system.
He also said that recent banking system is based on lending and the solution on which they were working for coming out of this economic crunch was that they were enabling the banks to increase their lending capacity. He said that the cause of world economic crunch is lending and they were increasing the lending capacity of the banks.
Another reason which he gave is the increasing rate of divorce. He said that according to the psychologists the children of broken houses do not show good progress in studies. He said that these were the reasons that he said that Muslims will regain their lost power in the next 50 years.
Dr Chapra spoke at length on Decline of the Muslim World and Agenda for Reform. He said that with 22 percent of the world population and only 8 percent of the real GNP of the world, it seemed preposterous to assume that Muslims could once again lead the world but the truth of the matter was that the world had developed materially, but had declined in terms of morality and justice.
This material progress had led to corporate scandals, family disintegration, juvenile delinquency and rise in crime etc. He said that the globalisation has not been able to make much headway because it had not ensured justice for all. He said that while one could dwell at length on the cause of decline of the decline of the Muslim World, it was important to decide what needed to be done to remedy the situation.
He said one start from where the Prophet (PBUH) himself started: reform the human beings themselves because they were the architects of their rise and fall, and they are the end as well as the means of development. He concluded by saying that if we wished to be a blessing for mankind, we must improve in all directions particularly in the moral field.