Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 207
Economic Peace 207 Humanity at large is responsible and human beings as such are answerable to God. Whenever famine, malnutrition or sufferings from any other natural disaster strikes any community, it must be treated as a human problem. All societies and states of the world must participate to help mitigate the sufferings. It is a shame that despite all the advancement in science and technology, the elimination of thirst and hunger has not received the attention it needs. There must be a system whereby the sum total of human wealth can be quickly and efficiently channelled to those areas where hunger strikes or famine plays havoc with humanity or wherever people have been rendered destitute and homeless. Governments have both national and international responsibilities. These responsibilities on the national level are to fulfil the basic needs of each member of society by ensuring that all are fed adequately, clothed, and provided with water and shelter. The international duty, to which further reference will be made later, is to fully participate in pooling resources to meet the challenges of wide scale natural disasters or man-made calamities and to help such countries as are by themselves incapable of appropriately handling the crisis. As such, it is the duty of the state to set the matters aright by transferring back to the beggars and poor people what truly belongs to them. So the four fundamental requirements of food, clothing, water, and shelter, will have preference over all other considerations. In other words, in a truly Islamic state there can neither be a beggar nor a destitute without food, clothing, water and shelter. These overall requirements being guaranteed, the minimum responsibility of the state is discharged. But the society as a whole is supposed to do much more than this.