The Secularization of Money

Paper money was created by the Devil. At least, according to Goethe.

The famous German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) wrote the two part epic of Faust, considered one of the finest works of German literature. In Faust, readers are told the story of a young scholar Faust who wagers his own soul in a deal with Mephistopheles (Shaytan) for the ability to allow him to fulfill his desires on the Earth.

In the second part of the epic, Faust and Mephistopheles attend the court of a ruler whose empire is in financial doldrums and stagnancy due to deflation. Noticing that the medium of currency is gold, the Devil convinces the ruler to adopt the use of paper money (issued as promissory notes in exchange for gold yet to be unearthed from the ground). While at first seeming to restore the kingdom to financial health, in time a paper-printing bonanza leads to excessive spending and further problems.

The scene here in Goethe's Faust was seen to be a commentary on paper money usage during the French Revolution. However, the link between money and the sacred implied during the story hints at something far more profound. What made precious metals like gold and silver so revered, so special that they functioned as money for so long, and why was a shift from them considered such a perversion?

Secular and Sacred

The term 'secular' seems to be vastly misunderstood today. Secularization is a process of demystification and desacralisation, to render something as ordinary and exclusively worldly. It is a process that can take place in politics, economics, and even in normal everyday life. Secularization is not anti-religious but irreligious. It is framed not in opposition to religion and Revelation but in complete ignorance of it altogether.

The sacred is the opposite, it is a worldview that entails that processes and items of this world are suffused with a extra-dimensional aspect of blessedness beyond the mere appearance. The spiritual and the transcendent are aspects of reality that cannot be measured or quantified but nevertheless are vitally important.

From the secular perspective, what we see is what we get, and that is that. Sacredness is sucked out of reality as if through a vacuum cleaner, and whatever is left behind is to be valued in terms of its mere utility and human convenience.

It is erroneous to assume that money has somehow escaped the secularizing process. In my previous article, I briefly explained the transition from commodity-based money to their modern paper and digital counterparts. This transition didn't take place in a vacuum, but as part of a larger secularizing change undergoing mankind where religion ceased to be an active force in public life, and in the larger political and economic spheres, including the monetary. Any analysis on monetary history that doesn't recognize the spiritual value of both gold and silver, and how they were stripped of this quality, is incomplete.

Special Metal

The natural world has always been averse to the presence of metals. A stroll through a forest or woodlands will never reveal metal objects, which tend to remain hidden in mines or underground (the 'womb of the Earth'). Exceptions to this rule were both gold and silver, which on the riverbeds and in sandy deposits would reveal themselves openly to the World, and were hence viewed as "an extra-natural state of metallic existence" in the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Until modern times, gold and silver were seen as hallowed objects with a connection to the spiritual realm. The ancient Egyptians were renowned for their decorative use of gold on their holy sarcophagus's. According to the Jewish tradition, when God gave Musa (pbuh) the Ten Commandments, He also instructed him to construct a Sanctuary and tabernacle for His worship, saying, "thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold around about" (The Power of Gold, 2000) Silver was also used as a traditional healing element, even to this day.

It is well known that the gold Dinar and silver Dirham were the standard means of currency for most Muslim history. Allah (sbt) in the Quran mentions gold and silver as items of natural value for mankind. "Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire - of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return." (Surah Al-Imran, 14) Beyond this, gold and silver possess Paradisiacal qualities given the numerous references to the presence of the metals in the Afterlife in the Quran and Hadith. Yet modern Muslims conveniently overlook these references and their deeper implications.

The ancients recognized the coming of an Iron Age when civilization will adopt a ubiquitous use of metal (think bridges, cars, skyscrapers, etc). This was considered as the last age of human history and a time of untold misery and immorality. Yet the predominance of this metallic state of life has led paradoxically to a devaluing of gold and silver as only anachronisms to the modern man.

Current Debate

In the Muslim world, there is a burgeoning movement to bring back the use of Dinar and Dirhams to ensure that the economy conforms to the Shari'ah, and this faces stiff resistance from Muslim defenders of paper money. Much of this debate focuses on whether money should have intrinsic value and how money should be free from the effects of inflation.

These are no doubt important points that should be brought up, but the spiritual element of money is also a dimension that needs to be emphasized to ensure that the dialogue regarding money in Islam it itself not expressed in solely secular terms. The value of gold and silver is not just gained due to scarcity and shininess, but the value is itself a gift from the Divine. To acknowledge this requires us to remove the modernist blinkers put on us by centuries of economic indoctrination.

We must come to accept that using gold and silver in the market is not just a economic transaction, but an act of worship, and paper can no longer be considered an adequate substitute.

Highly Ethical, Deeply Immoral

Do you consider yourself a good person? Is it because you pay your bills on time, don't lie on your tax forms, and avoid crossing a red light? Or do you think there is more to being a good person?

Part of the myth of progress is the assumption that we as moderns have reached the apex of ethical judgement, that we have crossed the path from barbarism to civilization. In other words, we have evolved from a state of crude moral attitudes to one of advanced cultured sensibility. This prejudice towards the past is not as pronounced as it used to be, with the slow-moving collapse of much of modern society giving many a reality check. What lies at the root of this collapse I feel is the confusion over two key concepts of ethics and morality. They are not the same, and a conflation of the two is only a symptom of a larger problem.

What is the difference?

Who is considered 'good' used to be objectively understood. 'Goodness' was a quality that was recognizable based on an individual's character and conduct. Yet today, the universality of goodness no longer seems to be there. Whether you acknowledge someone as good depends heavily on whether you come from a ethical-based mindset or a moral-based mindset.

Ethics (from the Greek 'ethos' meaning custom or habit) relates to the rightness and wrongness regarding the rules of conduct for a person as determined by their society, group or culture. The thrust behind it is that certain types of conduct are either approved or disapproved based on society's understanding of them. Ethics are externally defined by others, and as such are more flexible in the application depending on social, legal and professional perimeters.

Morals relate to the belief of the inherent goodness/badness of our actions and intentions based on higher principles. Morality transcends typical social and cultural boundaries and usually remains less subject to changes or alterations. Morals usually connect to deeply held beliefs of a higher order of existence and the denial of a morally neutral universe.

From the above, it is clear that the most highly ethical person may not necessarily be following any moral code whatsoever, whereas for a deeply moral person choosing to follow an ethical code depends on the degree to which that code corresponds with his or her belief system. Ethics in essence is an externally manifested code while morality is internally driven.

A Bit of History

Ethical theory from Aristotle onwards and throughout the ancient and medieval periods had a strong teleological emphasis, focusing on discovering the best path for life so as to reach a final goal for mankind. Religion provided a deep source of guidance in this effort. The Abrahamic traditions in particular sought their ethical inspiration from the Revealed Texts. Ethical obligations were derived from the moral precepts of Divine Inspiration, and in many cases from their legalistic frameworks as well. Indeed, until the 18th century, "this conviction that there is a divine source of absolute ethical obligation remained almost unchallenged in the history of ethics." (A Brief History of Ethics, 1968)

With the agreed foundation of the Divine as the source of all moral authority and ethics, there was still a wide spectrum of thoughts on how ethics should be formulated, for what intentions and what are the best ways of fulfilling ethical obligations.The range of opinions of philosophers, theologians and scholars from Plato to Al-Ghazzali to Aviccena to Thomas Aquinas is too vast to be covered here in sufficient detail though.

Things began to change with the onset of the secular age. Beginning with William Ockham in the 13th and 14th centuries, the idea was expounded that "moral good or and evil have nothing to do with the internal character of man or his action but rests on the external attribution of a moral quality." (A Brief History of Ethics, 1968) This marked a radical departure from previous theories, in a way externalising the judgement of moral actions rather than looking at morality from what is within.

Gradually, with the emergence of the Deist philosophy in England, ethics was detached from religion as a subject of study, implying that religion may not be the sole source of guidance. Instead of God, "the general will" (or la volonte generale as stated by Rosseau in The Social Contract), which is the collective judgement of the people on moral and social issues, became the criterion for ethical standards. From here emerged a major strand of ethical thought that persists today: utilitarianism (doing something with the intention of the maximizing of social benefit at the least social cost).

The bottom line was that ethical norms were ceasing to be conditioned by moral upbringing, and more by social conventions and pure reasoning.

Where Does that Leave Us?

The modern world concentrates on ethical guidelines with an almost tacit acceptance that long-standing moral norms are no longer publicly relevant. Ethics itself has been reduced to manual of best practices for organized social behaviour rather than a means of moral elevation. There is a difference between being a good worker or a good citizen and being essentially a good human being. You can have individuals who follow all the rules that society puts before them meticulously, but in the end have a vacuum where a soul should be.

The British columnist Peter Hitchen, wrong though he may be on many issues, was correct is stating in his book The Rage Against God that, "to be effectively absolute, a moral code needs to be beyond human power to alter." The idea that we are in a morally neutral universe with no objective standard of good or bad is an anathema; yet in much of our day to day functioning, that in practice is how we live our lives. At the very least, knowing the distinction between ethics and morals is important for realising that when it comes to human behaviour, all that glitters is not gold bullion.