Islam

In quest of the lost soul

We have lost our purpose, our souls in the marketplace. Now we are slaves of the market economy.

By Ahmad Raza




MAULANA Rumi tells the story of an Friday Feature old man holding a lantern in his hand and walking around the city square in broad daylight. Another man, thus seeing the old man, thought he had gone mad and lost his way home.
The man asked the old man, “Can’t you see its daylight and you are holding a lantern? What is the purpose of this insane behaviour?” The old man replied, “Can’t you see it’s really dark outside and I am holding this lantern in my hand so that I can find a man?” The lantern of the old man is a metaphor for the human soul (or morality). This soul has lost its light in the glare of purposeless materialism and aimless consumerism. There is hardly a humane society left which can sail through the litmus test of decay and decadence. The desire to dominate springs from the misleading glitter of brute materialism and naïve techno-consumerism. The unstoppable cries of ‘we want more’ emanate from all corners of the globe.

There is no end to the possession, control and domination of human beings by material objects today. Everything good has been engulfed by the market philosophy. The driving principle of the market is simple. Make money, seek power, dominate others or else you perish under the ‘burden of conscience’. You have the Darwinian test of the ‘survival of the fittest’ and if you fail, you perish. As long as you dominate, you need no logic to justify your domination.

Everything is labelled and sold in the market, be it religion or politics, culture or the arts, science or civilisation. You have no value as a person if you lack a marketable label. You have no relevance if you are not saleable. Wisdom is ridiculed. Your knowledge is useless if it is not marketable. Socrates is banned in this kingdom of markets. Only Dale Carnegie is sought after here. Ideas are...