This post is based on a presentation delivered by Prof. as part of MINE’s biweekly presentation series, and examines the shape of the emerging world amid ongoing geopolitical developments.

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In political discourse, “order” is a subjective term; what one nation considers a stable arrangement may be viewed by another as chaos. For instance, the Soviet Union long perceived the Western liberal market economy as a source of instability, while the West viewed its own system as the pinnacle of order. This lack of an agreed-upon definition highlights that global politics is a competitive space where different actors constantly seek to redefine the rules. We are witnessing a radical and transformative shift in human society that mirrors the magnitude of the invention of the wheel, the steam engine, or electricity. These historical milestones did not just change technology; they fundamentally altered how humans lived, traveled, and interacted. Similarly, the current global crises—from the tensions between Iran and Israel to the shifting role of the United States in the Middle East—are not isolated political events but links in a chain leading toward a completely different political economy and global structure over the next 50 years.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and Economic Realignment

The primary driver of this systematic change is the transition from an agricultural and mass-production economy to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This new era is defined by the dominance of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and the service sector. The power in this economy is concentrated in “Global Unicorns”—highly valued technology-driven companies. Currently, the United States leads with over 550 unicorns, followed by China with 180 and India with 64, illustrating a shift in where economic innovation is centered. This revolution is dramatically altering the nature of labor, leading to massive layoffs in traditional sectors while requiring entirely new ways of learning, recruitment, and official arrangements.

While the era of globalization promised a decline in “nationalist fundamentalism” and the rise of the “global citizen,” we are now witnessing a counter-trend: the securitization of the nation-state, in which the state’s existence, sovereignty, identity, or territorial integrity is framed as a security issue, making its protection a priority and justifying exceptional measures. Globalization successfully integrated supply chains—where a single laptop might contain components from 40 different countries—but it failed to integrate political systems. As a result, states remain economically interconnected but are becoming more politically isolated and focused on national security.

Furthermore, the traditional “core and periphery” model of capitalism—where Western countries retained high-tech sectors and outsourced “dirty work” to developing nations—is being challenged. The technological gap is bridging as the “rest” of the world, particularly China and India, acquires advanced research and development capabilities. This suggests that global power may shift from the West to Asia within the next century.

The Energy Revolution and the Security Vacuum

A fundamental shift in global energy trade is a primary cause of recent geopolitical instability, especially in the Middle East. Three decades ago, the United States was a net importer of energy, making it heavily dependent on Gulf oil and necessitating a “security-for-oil” arrangement, particularly with Saudi Arabia. However, with the rise of shale gas and improved storage, the U.S. has become a net exporter of energy. This has fundamentally changed the security dependency of the region.

Today, China, India, and Japan have become the main consumers of Saudi energy, yet the U.S. remains the primary security provider. This mismatch has created a vacuum. The U.S. is now pressuring regional allies to diversify their security arrangements and normalize relations with Israel, often at the expense of traditional goals like a Palestinian state. Because many Gulf states historically relied on purchasing Western arms rather than investing in their own research and development (R&D), they now feel isolated and disregarded by their long-term allies.

Hegemony, Warfare, and Regional Autonomy

The conflict surrounding Iran is more than just a dispute over nuclear ambitions; it is a struggle over the “Western grammar of power”. The West seeks a global order where its dominance is unchallenged, supported by regional hegemons. Currently, there is a “vacancy” for a regional hegemon in the Middle East, and candidates include Israel, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. While Israel seeks this role alone, its demographic and political limitations make this ambition difficult to sustain without massive external support. To maintain dominance, some strategists favor creating disruptions through prolonged conflicts to prevent any single regional power from rising too high.

However, the nature of warfare itself is being revolutionized by cheap, AI-supported technologies. The dominance of expensive assets like aircraft carriers and F-35 fighter jets is being challenged by low-priced drones. These drones, used effectively by Iran and Turkey, have disrupted traditional defense doctrines, forcing global powers to consider diplomatic solutions because total aerial or naval superiority can no longer be guaranteed. This technological bridging allows middle powers greater autonomy in their regional security arrangements.

The STEP Model and the Future of Diplomacy

In response to this instability, a new model is emerging: the STEP model (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan). This is envisioned as a subsystem within the Western security architecture. These four nations would take primary responsibility for regional affairs while maintaining cooperation with both the West and emerging powers like Russia and China. The goal is to decrease the centrality of Israel as the sole regional partner and create a more independent security framework.

Current trends suggest a shift toward pragmatism over idealism. Even traditional rivals are recognizing that prolonged conflict destroys their human development and economic prospects. For example, while the U.S. or Israel might consider regime change in Iran, regional neighbors like Saudi Arabia are increasingly opposed to such a war, fearing the catastrophic impact on their own economies.

The world is not returning to an era of isolated nationalism, as the global economy is now irreversible. Multiculturalism and pluralism are becoming functional necessities for any nation wishing to thrive in the new technological era. The current “disorder” is the painful birth of a multi-polar world where the monopoly of Western power is gradually being replaced by a complex network of regional middle powers.

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Reference: STEP and the Possibility of a New Regional Bloc in the Middle East

The Renaissance was a major cultural and intellectual revival in European history that began in Italy (14th century) and spread to the rest of Europe (16th century). It was marked by a renewed interest in art and literature, and by “looking back” to the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome, which humanists considered the gold standard. Renaissance laid the foundation for reformation, scientific revolution, rise of nation, industrialization, and capitalism.

The city of Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, illustrates how broader regional issues reshaped its social, economic, spiritual, and political life. The familiar worldview, that the world was an orderly and fair place, and that “knowing the good” was enough to “do the good,” came to sound hollow when the righteous and the wicked died alike, when spiritual institutions meant to protect people faltered, and when survival felt arbitrary.

In this post, Florence’s transformation is discussed, showing how crisis and reinvention helped give rise to the Renaissance. Reeling from plague, bankruptcy, and war, the city reshaped itself through civic-engagement ideology, a transformed educational system, and a strategic shift in how capital was deployed. The Renaissance was not a spontaneous artistic awakening, but a necessary and deliberate response to a crisis. It took root in a broad civic awakening and in people’s contributions to an emerging social and intellectual order, and over time it grew into a coherent movement.

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Civic Humanism & The Educational Revolution

The immediate catalyst for Florence’s intellectual shift was a near-conquest by the dictator of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, between 1380 and 1402. The city was nearly captured, and Florentine leaders, particularly Chancellors Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, realized that their survival was a sheer luck, due to Visconti’s death from plague. This realization exposed a deep political weakness.

They concluded that Florence needed a new system to train responsible, capable citizens who could withstand future crises. They believed their military, economic, and political weaknesses were symptoms of a deeper moral and civic failure: the threat was external, but the failure was internal, marked by fragmented leadership and citizens disengaged from public life. They concluded that no amount of money or fortifications would matter if citizens and leaders lacked civic virtue.

They developed an ideology called civic humanism, designed to unite the city, recapture the patriotic glory of the Roman Republic, and emphasize the duty of citizen participation in public life. Florence embraced a “New Rome” ideal, emphasizing civic duty, liberty, and self-governance. A city was envisioned in which citizens were politically empowered, and their contributions drove the day-to-day life of the republic.

This transformation, and what followed from it, can be viewed through three lenses.

1. The Spiritual & Intellectual Lens: The Educational Revolution

To support this new society, the intellectual and spiritual foundations had to change. The influence of the Church and traditional nobility had weakened.

The medieval “Scholastic” model was designed for vocational training, producing isolated specialists like monks, lawyers, or doctors. The Humanists revived and expanded the ancient Roman Liberal Arts to create the Studia Humanitatis. This curriculum aimed to produce broadly educated, ethical individuals prepared for active citizenship.

This curriculum was built on a major psychological shift regarding the human soul from the Medieval view to Humanist view:

• The Medieval View (Optimistic): Believed humans were primarily rational; therefore, simply “knowing the good” automatically led to “doing the good” (Intellect → Action).

• The Humanist View (Pessimistic): Shaped by the horrors of the plague and other catastrophic effects on the society, Humanists realized the human will was flawed and easily corrupted (Intellect → Will → Action).

Because public will had to be mobilized, the humanist toolkit rested on two pillars:

1. Moral Philosophy (Sapientia - Wisdom) to understand how to make ethical decisions, and

2. Rhetoric (Eloquentia - Eloquence) to persuasively communicate that wisdom and inspire a flawed public to act.

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They believed one without the other was useless (Sapientia et Eloquentia). To support this, they added History (to provide examples of great actions) and Poetry/Literature (to inspire the will through beauty) to their curriculum.

2. Political Lens:

Politically, society transformed from a feudal order toward a more merit-based system. The nobility, which had long held sway over political decisions, was no longer as dominant as it once had been. The rigid feudal hierarchy and the dominance of traditional elites gradually gave way to greater social mobility and the rise of a merchant middle class.

Power shifted from nobles to the powerful trade guilds (the Arti), promoting a system in which influence was tied more to skill and economic success than to noble birth.

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3. The Engine of Florence: The Power of the Guilds

In Renaissance Florence, the economy and society were fundamentally controlled by a strict hierarchy of trade guilds known as the Arti.

The guild system was strictly divided into two tiers:

• The Seven Great Guilds (Arti Maggiori): This tier represented the commercial and political elite. They held all political power and controlled the buying and selling of products. The most powerful of these included the Cambio (Bankers), Calimala (Raw Wool Merchants), and Lana (Wool and Cloth Merchants).

• The Fourteen Lesser Guilds (Arti Minori): This tier consisted of the industrial artisans and craftsmen who performed the manual labor. It included trades like dyers, shearers, and at the very bottom of the hierarchy, the Ciompi (wool combers).

Economic and Political Influence The influence of the guilds extended into every facet of Florentine life:

• Economic Monopolies: The immense wealth that ultimately funded the Renaissance, largely generated by the woolen cloth trade was entirely controlled by these guilds. They strictly regulated product quality, pricing, and membership to deliberately restrain competition. This ensured a stable domestic economy where guild masters could securely maintain their status and wealth.

• Political Meritocracy: From the late 13th century into the 15th century, political power in Florence increasingly concentrated in guild-affiliated elites, with the Seven Great Guilds holding a strong influence. This guild-centered order reshaped how authority was distributed. Instead of relying on traditional noble birthrights, influence in Florence was based on economic success, skill and reputation within the civic community.

3. The Economic Lens:

The bank collapses of the 1330s made traditional commercial investments incredibly high-risk.

In response, Florence overhauled its economic foundations:

• The Birth of Modern Capitalism: Florence transitioned from land-based wealth and feudal obligations to a money-based economy and early forms of capitalism. Reliance on serfdom gave way to wage labor and contract-based employment.

• Financial Innovation: Gold Florin, first minted in 1252, the fiorino d’oro essentially became the “global reserve currency” of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance in Europe. Because the Florentine government maintained strict, uncompromising standards for the coin’s pure gold weight over centuries, it earned absolute trust across Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Islamic world. This ultra-stable currency was the engine that powered the massive Florentine banking empires from the Bardi and Peruzzi to the Medici.

  It allowed these bankers to invent the “Bill of Exchange” and safely move vast sums of capital across borders without transporting physical gold. Simply put, without the trust and stability of the Florin, the massive accumulation of wealth that ultimately funded the Renaissance would have been impossible. It became the highly stable “Global Reserve” currency of the 1400s. They expanded international trade networks on the back of this and created modern banking, with “Bill of Exchange” to safely transfer funds across Europe. This was unheard of at the time in the region and helped expand the trade network of the city across the borders. Money started flowing in with expanded trade network and eventually made the city’s economy strong.

• Capital Flight to Culture: Facing risky commercial markets, investors deliberately redirected their wealth into art, books, and architecture. These were seen as safe investments that consistently increased in value. The Medici utilized this as “Reputation Management,” converting their financial capital into “Cultural Capital” by heavily investing in geniuses like Michelangelo and Botticelli.

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The Medici Strategy

Florence was fundamentally built on two industries: the woolen cloth trade (controlled by a strict hierarchy of Guilds) and banking.

After the collapse of major banks and the ensuing depression, the city needed innovation, and it found it.

The survivors of plaque inherited consolidated family fortunes, making the remaining citizens incredibly wealthy per capita and eager to spend on luxury.

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The Medici family were the ultimate architects of this strategy. Florence was officially a republic, but in reality, the Medici family had made it an oligarchy controlled by the Seven Great Guilds.

The Medici ruled from behind the scenes, effectively managing a political machine where they ensured only their allies made the 750-person “Nominee” list out of 5,000 eligible citizens.

To justify their immense, monopolistic wealth and maintain favor with the public, they engaged in extreme Reputation Management. They converted their vast “Financial Capital” into “Cultural Capital” by heavily investing in genius.

Giovanni di Bicci established the financial foundation.

Cosimo the Elder funded Brunelleschi’s iconic Duomo dome and Donatello.

Lorenzo the Magnificent sponsored Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci.

These masterpieces weren’t just art; they were the “cultural dividends” of banking wealth, buying the Medici dynastic loyalty and political armor.

To Sum Up

Florence’s darkest hour became the crucible in which the modern Western world was forged. The economic crisis forced a redirection of wealth into enduring cultural investments, now revered as Renaissance art. The military threat necessitated the creation of civic humanism to cultivate resilient leaders. Finally, the spiritual and intellectual void led to the studia humanitatis, a curriculum designed to equip citizens with both the wisdom to know what is good and the eloquence to inspire others to build it.

History offers lessons that continue to hold value in the contemporary world. Communities facing crisis can imagine their own renaissance, shaped by their own context, variations, and character. The Florentine Renaissance offers four distinct lessons for our present era of disruption:

Crisis as an Opportunity:
The collapse of an existing order can create an opening for transformation, provided it is recognized as a moment for change rather than insisting on old patterns.

Economic Leverage:
Wealth should be directed into productive activities that may not yield immediate results, but that build enduring long-term strength. This includes, above all, investing in human capital by strengthening moral, cultural, and intellectual foundations that pay dividends for generations.

Establishing Alternative Power Centers:
The rise of medieval guilds and merchant families, which challenged the old feudal and aristocratic order, demonstrates that entrenched institutions can be challenged when new networks build real capacity. In today’s world, this takes the form of entrepreneurs, professional communities, philanthropies, independent media, and tech-enabled civic organizations creating parallel centers of influence, funding, and expertise, gradually reshaping norms and policy by delivering results where legacy systems fall short.

Developing Critical Thinking Platforms:
A resilient society requires both a commitment to critical thinking, including counter-narratives that help discern what is right, and the rhetorical ability to inspire others to act on it. In the modern age, this also means building platforms that cultivate, amplify, and transmit ideas at scale.

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In many ways, that spirit of renewal, stepping back, reassessing, and starting fresh is not only personal, it can be civilizational. History has its own moments of “new beginnings,” periods when societies reawaken, recover confidence, and rediscover knowledge. This post, derived from the Biweekly MINE presentation by covers one such pivotal episode in European history: the Renaissance. This post is divided into two parts: the first deals with the factors that led to the Renaissance, while the second looks into developments during the Renaissance and the lessons that can be learned from it.

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We often look back at history as a slow, linear march of progress. But the birth of the Renaissance, although gradual (14th-16th centuries), laid much of the foundation of the modern Western world as we know it today.

The Renaissance was a major cultural and intellectual revival that began in Italy (14th century) and spread to the rest of Europe (16th century). It was marked by a renewed interest in art and literature, and by “looking back” to the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome, which humanists considered the gold standard. Humanism is an intellectual outlook that emphasizes human dignity, reason, education, and the study of classical texts, with a focus on human potential and life in this world rather than solely on the afterlife.

The Renaissance helped weaken ecclesiastical (Church) authority by reviving humanism and “back to the sources” reading, which encouraged critical scrutiny of inherited Church texts and traditions. Combined with the printing press and rising literacy, these ideas spread quickly and laid the groundwork for the Reformation. The Reformation, in turn, reshaped European religious and political life and contributed to later developments such as the rise of Nation-states, the Scientific Revolution, Colonialism, rise of Capitalism and Industrialization, all of which profoundly shaped the world we live in today.

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The Dark Ages is a popular label that usually refers to the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe, roughly c. 500–1000 CE, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Following the stagnation of the Dark Ages, Europe entered a relatively prosperous and stable period in the High Middle Ages

Although cultural and intellectual improvements accompanied rising prosperity, much of it remained ecclesiastical in nature, shaped within a Christian theological framework. After this relatively stable period, Europe entered a tumultuous era in the 14th century.

Although its roots reach back to the 13th century (the Proto-Renaissance), the Renaissance began to gain real traction in the 14th century, in the aftermath of these disruptions. To understand the origins of the Renaissance, we first have to appreciate the scale of the crises that preceded it.

The Four Pillars of Collapse:

The stability of the medieval world rested on four pillars: demographics, economics, politics, and spiritual authority.

In the span of a single century, all four crumbled one after the other.

1. Demographic Disaster:

By the 1300s, prosperous Europe had an overpopulation problem. This forced farming onto marginal land, poor soil that couldn’t sustain crops during bad weather.

When the weather turned in 1315, it triggered a cycle of famine. Starving populations ate their seed grain, guaranteeing future starvation and leaving the population immunocompromised. The vulnerable population was awaiting a biological blow.

In 1347, the Black Death arrived in Messina. It is estimated that it killed between one-third and one-half of Europe’s population in its first wave. The Black Death brought both bubonic and the even deadlier pneumonic plagues. It disproportionately targeted people of childbearing age (20–45), crippling recovery efforts, and completely wiped out towns and villages, with an estimated 40,000 deaths in Germany alone.

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Europe had witnessed and experienced peak prosperity in the 13th century. With the famine and then the Black Death, this changed quickly. Europe moved from overpopulation to a catastrophic decline.

2. Economic Depression:

Prosperity turned to bankruptcy, leading to violent class revolts.

The massive population drop meant a drastically lower demand for food, collapsing agricultural profits and bankrupting noble estate owners.

Meanwhile, the severe labor shortage allowed surviving peasants to demand much higher wages.

Aristocracy was common throughout Europe, where nobles held sway over a swathe of kingdoms.

Bankrupt nobles meant a direct impact on political patronage.

Nobles across various cities pressured governments to freeze wages. In response, governments froze wages at pre-plague levels, and nobles, in a bid to extract additional income, resurrected old feudal fees.

This economic vice ignited widespread class conflict, leading to events such as the Ciompi revolt in Florence in 1378 and the Peasants’ Revolt in England in 1381.

3. Political Chaos:

With the waning influence of the nobility and widespread revolts, stability gave way.

Endless wars, such as the Hundred Years’ War, and civil strife did not help the already burdened coffers of nobles and kingdoms.

Bankrupt nobles fought brutal civil wars, such as the Wars of the Roses, to control government offices for bribes and tax revenue.

Simultaneously, the incredibly costly Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) drained national treasuries.

The nature of power itself shifted as the medieval knight became obsolete; English longbows could pierce chain mail, and new, expensive firearms and artillery meant kings now needed cash for mercenaries rather than relying on feudal loyalty.

This was a fundamental change in the political power of the time.

4. Spiritual Crisis:

The universal authority of the Church was shattered by the Great Schism and the corruption of the Avignon Papacy.

During the Babylonian Captivity (1305–1378), the papacy was pressured by the French monarchy to move from Rome to Avignon, France.

The Italian clergy and Roman elites refused to accept the Avignon papacy, and for a time there were two popes with two papal centers.

Initially, the Avignon papacy, and later both the Roman and Avignon papal courts during the Western Schism, faced reduced and divided revenues compared with earlier periods. They tried to make up the shortfall through “papal fiscalism” by charging massive fees and selling indulgences. This made the Church appear greedy and fueled anti-clericalism.

At the Council of Pisa in 1409, an attempt to end the crisis deposed both rival popes and elected a new pope to heal the schism. The council declared Gregory XII (in Rome) and Benedict XIII (in Avignon) deposed and elected Alexander V. However, Gregory and Benedict refused to accept the council’s decision, so instead of ending the schism it created a third pope. This left Europe deeply divided, as each pope excommunicated the followers of the others.

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In summary, along with the breakdown of demographic, economic, and political pillars, the spiritual pillar gave way.

The public mood at the time was gloomy. No wonder the “Dance of Death,” an art form depicting a metaphorical encounter between Death and representatives of a stratified human society, was popular.

A reasoning mind can find many parallels to the world we live in today. From costly foreign wars to food shortages, and from global pandemics to economic crises, similar patterns are visible in one form or another today.

A Microcosm of the Tumultuous Time

Nowhere was this perfect storm more acute than in Florence. The city was hit by a devastating trio of interconnected crises:

1. Biological Catastrophe (1348):

The plague killed approximately 40,000 people, nearly half the city’s population, decimating the labor force and shattering markets.

2. Economic Collapse (1338):

The Bardi and Peruzzi banks, the pillars of the Florentine economy, failed after the King of England defaulted on massive war loans.

This triggered a severe, long-lasting depression.

3. Existential Threat (1380-1402):

The city was besieged by the army of bordering city Milan, led by the dictator Gian Galeazzo Visconti. Florence’s survival came down to pure luck when Visconti suddenly died of the plague.

A Realization in Florence

Europe in general, and Florence in particular, felt like a place staring into the abyss. Plague, famine, and political chaos did more than empty streets and bankrupt estates, they shattered confidence in the old medieval assumption that moral instruction alone could secure a stable world. The familiar worldview, that “knowing the good” was enough to “do the good,” sounded hollow when the righteous and the wicked died alike, when spiritual institutions meant to protect people faltered, and when survival felt arbitrary. For many Florentines, this was the most disturbing realization of all: they had survived not because the world was orderly or fair, but because fortune had spared them. That recognition was painful, but it also stripped away illusions and forced a new kind of seriousness about reality.

When the world you know has completely failed, do you surrender to despair, or do you build something new?

Next week, in Part 2: We explore this facet of history.

How Florence used Civic Humanism, the Medici strategy, and a new educational curriculum to engineer a rebirth from the ashes?

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🚀Alhamdulillah, this is our 100th Substack post.
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The Bosnia War (1992–1995) stands out as one of the greatest moral failures of the post–World War II era. It exposed how quickly ethnic nationalism can turn into mass violence, and how the international order can be unreliable, delayed, feeble, and sometimes unresponsive when it matters the most. This post, derived from Ihjaz Mohamed’s presentation, examines the history and geopolitical dynamics that led to one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century (Video link here).

The Historical Roots of the South Slavs

To understand the Bosnian conflict, one must look back to the 13th century. At that time, the people of the Balkans (the “South Slavs”) shared a common ancestry, language, and culture. The primary distinctions were not ethnic, but religious. The population was divided among the local Bosnian Church (often labeled heretical by outsiders), the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Roman Catholic Church.

During the 400 years of Ottoman rule (15th–19th centuries), many Bosnians who followed the persecuted Bosnian Church converted to Islam, finding it a more favorable option that offered tax benefits and freedom from persecution. It is important to note that no “new” people arrived and the ethnic makeup remained the same, yet these religious shifts laid the groundwork for future divisions.

The Invention of Ethnicity and the Rise of Yugoslavia

In the 19th century, national movements began to redefine these religious communities as distinct ethnicities. Many Orthodox Christians began identifying as “Serbs,” while many Catholics identified as “Croats,” often encouraged by religious and educational institutions to look to Serbia or Croatia for national leadership. This created an “artificial ethnicity” that would later be weaponized for political purposes.

Following World War II, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed under the communist rule of Josip Broz Tito. Tito ruled with an “iron fist,” suppressing both religious and ethnic identities in favor of a centralized state. It was during this era that Islamic thinkers like Alija Izetbegović were imprisoned for their religious activism and writings. While Tito’s regime maintained order and a neutral military, the underlying ethnic tensions were merely suppressed, not resolved.

The Collapse of Order and the Power of Propaganda

The death of Tito, followed by the global collapse of communism in the early 1990s, contributed to the disintegration of Yugoslavia. As republics such as Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, Serbian leaders who dominated the federal government and the military sought to preserve a Serb-led Yugoslav center. They also tried to prevent the breakup from reducing Belgrade’s (Serbian) authority, territory, and leverage, especially in Serb-majority areas of Croatia and Bosnia.

In Bosnia, a 1992 referendum saw 95% of voters choose independence, though many Bosnian-Serbs boycotted the vote. In the weeks before the referendum, European Community mediators proposed the Lisbon Accord (the Cutileiro Plan), which would have kept Bosnia as a single state but reorganized it into highly autonomous units reflecting the country’s three main national communities (i.e. Bosniaks (Bosnian-Muslims), Bosnian-Serbs and Bosnian-Croats). Bosnian President Alija Izetbegović initially accepted the framework but soon pulled back from it, arguing that Bosnia should not be reorganized along ethnic lines. His political vision emphasized a sovereign, multiethnic Bosnia, with a central state capable of protecting equal citizenship. Serb and Croat nationalists cited his earlier Islamic-oriented writings, such as the Islamic Declaration, to portray him as seeking an Islamic state. The plan collapsed, and the political crisis accelerated into open war.

(Note: Bosnian-Serb refers to Serbians living in Bosnia, Bosnian-Government and Bosnian-Muslims/Bosniaks are used interchangeably)

To justify aggression, Serbian media launched a massive propaganda campaign of bad-faith historical revisionism by portraying Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) as “Ottoman occupiers” and “Turks” rather than fellow Slavs, claiming that a Muslim-majority state would lead to “genocide against Serbs.” This tactic, riling up a community by insisting that “the majority is in danger,” is a hallmark of far-right nationalist movements worldwide.

When Bosnia declared independence, Bosnian-Serb leaders proclaimed a separate entity called Republika Srpska and rejected the authority of the Bosnian government . This declaration was not internationally recognized, and subsequent armed clashes and confrontations quickly escalated into war. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) army’s resources and heavy weapons increasingly benefited Bosnian Serb forces. Similarly, Bosnian Croat forces were heavily supported by, and closely connected to, the Croatian state and the Croatian Army. This left the Bosnian government in an extremely disadvantaged position, with no comparable external source of military support to rely on.

The war subsequently went through four main phases:

1. Rapid territorial seizures and “ethnic cleansing” (spring–end of 1992):

   Bosnian-Serb forces moved quickly to seize large swaths of territory in eastern and northern Bosnia, establishing control through military superiority and local takeovers. In many areas, non-Serb civilians were forcibly expelled, and a pattern of detention camps, mass violence, and terror emerged as a method of consolidating territorial gains. Bosnia’s government forces were initially outgunned and fragmented, struggling to coordinate their defense and maintain supply lines. Bosnian Serb forces began with a major advantage, having inherited substantial Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) weaponry and trained cadres, and they were further supported by links to Belgrade (the Serbian state) and to FRY military and security structures.

   Arms embargo and no-fly zone: The UN September 1991 arms embargo was imposed across the territory of the former Yugoslavia, formally bound all sides but in practice punished the besieged Bosnian government far more than the Bosnian-Serb forces, who already inherited much of the Yugoslav army’s heavy weapon advantage. The UN also established a no-fly regime over Bosnia, which restricted the airspace and required outside enforcement rather than giving Bosnia any meaningful ability to protect civilians on the ground. Western governments defended these policies as conflict containment and risk management, even as atrocities mounted and the military imbalance remained overwhelmingly in the aggressor’s favor.

   

   As a matter of policy, President Bill Clinton initially promoted “lift and strike,” meaning lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia while using NATO air power to deter Bosnian Serb forces, but the UK and France resisted escalation because their UN peacekeepers were exposed on the ground and vulnerable to retaliation by Bosnian-Serbs. Russia, driven by Slavic and Eastern Orthodox church solidarity and an anti-NATO stance, sought to maintain the air restrictions, support the Serbs, and limit NATO’s role.

   

2. Siege warfare and humanitarian catastrophe (1992–1995):

   The war settled into prolonged siege warfare, most notoriously in Sarajevo, where shelling and sniper fire became daily instruments of punishing Bosnians. As conditions deteriorated, international involvement expanded through humanitarian aid, UN peacekeepers, and the creation of “safe areas,” but these measures often lacked the mandate and capability to stop major Serbian offensives. The conflict became a grinding mix of localized attacks, shifting corridors, and siege-induced deprivation.

3. Croat–Bosniak split, then realignment (1993–1994):

   The war fractured further in 1993 when Bosniak and Croat forces, who had previously been aligned against Bosnian-Serb units, began fighting each other in parts of the country. This opened a new front that brought additional violence, expulsions, and civilian suffering. As some Croatian leaders pursued plans to carve out Croat-controlled territory inside Bosnia, the alliance with their former Bosniak partners broke down. Bosniak forces were pushed into a two-front struggle against both Serb and Croat forces, while the international arms embargo left them at a serious disadvantage in obtaining weapons for self-defense.

   This Croat–Bosniak conflict also weakened the broader anti-Serb front and made diplomacy harder, since the war became a three-sided contest in several regions. The Washington Agreement in 1994 ended the Croat–Bosniak fighting and created the Bosniak–Croat Federation, which helped restore coordination against Bosnian Serb forces and reshaped the military and political balance of the war.

   

4. Turning point and intensified international pressure (1994–1995):

   International pressure grew as repeated UN crises and high-profile attacks prompted NATO to conduct air strikes, initially limited but gradually more consequential. In 1995, the Srebrenica massacre became a decisive moral and political shock that shifted the international posture toward stronger action. Regional military changes, including Croatia’s Operation Storm and coordinated ground offensives, combined with NATO’s larger air campaign to push the parties toward negotiations.

The Horrors of the War

The war that followed was characterized by a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing led by Slobodan Milošević and the Serbian military, which was then the fourth largest in the world at that time. Milosevic, in control of the Yugoslavian army and weapons, supported the Bosnian-Serbs to fight Bosniaks and Croats who were defending Bosnia from being cut in half. Because the goal was to create a “Greater Serbia,” non-Serb populations had to be removed through mass executions, forced expulsions, and systematic rape.

The destruction was not merely physical but cultural. Approximately 610 mosques were destroyed during the war in an attempt to erase any evidence of Muslim history or religious presence. In the siege of Sarajevo, the capital became a symbol of the conflict; civilians faced snipers and the cutting off of water and electricity, similar to the humanitarian crises in Gaza.

The war was marked by extreme brutality, including the systematic use of rape as a weapon of terror and ethnic cleansing, particularly against Bosniak women. Sexual violence was employed to humiliate communities, force displacement, and break social bonds, and was later recognized by international courts as a crime against humanity. The violence culminated in July 1995 with the Srebrenica massacre, when Bosnian-Serb forces killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in a UN-declared “safe area,” an atrocity that international tribunals have formally classified as genocide.

The Failure of the International Community

The international response was largely defined by apathy and legal avoidance. Major powers like the US, UK, and France initially framed the genocide as a “civil war” based on “ancient ethnic hatreds” to avoid their obligations to intervene. Russia, viewing the Serbs as Slavic and Orthodox allies, used its power to block forceful UN action.

The failure of the “UN Safe Zones” remains the war’s most haunting legacy. In Srebrenica, Bosnian Muslims were required to surrender their weapons to enter the safe zone. In July 1995, Serbian forces led by Ratko Mladić overran the area while UN peacekeepers stood by. Over 8,000 men and boys were executed in a matter of days—the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The Dayton Peace Accords: An “Unjust Peace”

The Srebrenica genocide finally forced NATO to intervene with airstrikes against Serbian infrastructure. In late 1995, the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. The agreement kept Bosnia as a single country but divided it into two self-governing entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (for Bosniaks and Croats) and the Republika Srpska (for Serbs).

Alija Izetbegović, then the leader of Bosnia, famously remarked that while the treaty was an “unjust peace,” it was “better than a just war” because it ended the immediate bloodshed. However, this peace effectively “rewarded” ethnic cleansing by granting self-governance to the areas Serbs had captured.

Slobodan Milošević was indicted in May 1999 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) while he was still in power, initially for crimes committed in Kosovo. Additional indictments later expanded the charges to include his role in Bosnia and Croatia. He died in ICTY custody in 2006 before a verdict was reached.

Bosnia Today and Lessons for the Future

Today, Bosnian Muslims have focused on rebuilding their culture and faith. Of the 28 mosques destroyed in Srebrenica, 24 have been rebuilt. There is a renewed sense of Islamic identity and a flourishing of religious education, inspired by the resilience of leaders like Izetbegović. However, political tensions remain high, and the country remains ethnically clustered.

Bosnia’s genocide remains a deeply painful episode in the world’s collective memory, and especially in the collective memory of the Muslim Ummah. The primary lesson for Muslims, as highlighted in the presentation, is the necessity of political and economic power. The Bosnia war shows that international organizations like the UN, and appeals to “Western values,” often fail to protect marginalized groups when no strategic interest is involved, such as oil or major trade routes. To prevent future genocides and fulfill their sacred duty as advocates for peace and the oppressed, the Muslim ummah must strengthen its influence, assert control over its narratives, and ensure it has the means to defend its existence.

Unfortunately, much of Muslim public discourse has still not absorbed this lesson. The emphasis often remains on normative discourse and system critique rather than on building power and capability. As a result, the underlying power dynamics have remain largely unchanged. Three decades after Bosnia, we face another catastrophe in Gaza, which has left both the wider world and the Muslim Ummah in shock once again.

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MINE biweekly presentation video:

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One might love it or hate it, but capitalist realism, which states that “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”, reflects the reality of our times. The concept of capitalist realism was proposed not by pro-capitalists, but by radical left-wing (Marxist) thinkers such as Mark Fisher, Fredric Jameson, and Slavoj Žižek , as a deep alarm over the overwhelming, all-encompassing power of contemporary capitalism, and its powerful ideological grip. Communism was the only serious modern attempt to build a completely different system at scale, but it failed. For better or worse, capitalism feels like the only game in town. This means people of conscience cannot stay at the level of slogans and blindly oppose it. This post, derived from the biweekly MINE presentation by Salman Syed, examines the backdrop of capitalism, where it came from, what it has achieved, and where it is failing. For the complete presentation, check the video link here.

From capital to capitalism

Capital is the lifeblood of capitalism. But capital is not just dollars and gold. There are six main types of capital:

• Natural capital: oil, minerals

• Physical capital: machines, factories, computers, datacenters

• Human capital: workers’ skills

• Financial capital: money that funds production

• Intellectual capital: patents, trade secrets

• Social capital: the level of trust in a society. Markets only function smoothly when there is enough honesty and reliability so that every small transaction does not require govt. enforcement.

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There are multiple definitions of capitalism depending on the lens used. However, a few aspects are universal across most definitions:

• Private ownership of productive assets

• Production of goods and services with the intention of seeking profit

• Presence of markets and (voluntary) exchange of goods

• Capital accumulation and reinvestment

Examination Lenses🔍

Capitalism can look very different depending on the lens you use. Sticking to only one lens is like a blind person describing an elephant by touching a single part.

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• A liberal lens highlights freedom, markets, specialization, and efficiency.

• A Marxist lens centers exploitation, class relations, and unequal ownership of productive assets.

• A financial lens focuses on the role of capital markets, credit, and the growing influence of finance over the real economy.

• Institutional and political economy perspectives emphasize laws, power, and the rules that shape who wins and loses.

• Developmental lens focuses on how capitalism nurtures or blocks industrialization and national capacity.

• Sociological, moral, and cultural lenses examine how market logic reshapes identity, community, meaning, and values.

• Finally, a welfare lens evaluates how capitalism can be tempered by social protections to preserve dignity, stability, and social cohesion.

Stages of Capitalism Also Matters

Capitalism is not a single, frozen model, which is how it is sometimes treated by both critics and proponents. It has evolved through stages.

• Humans have traded for thousands of years, and medieval merchants already used early banking and bills of exchange.

• With oceanic exploration and European empires, colonial capitalism emerged, built on chartered companies, conquest, resource extraction, and slave routes.

• The real break comes with industrial capitalism. From the eighteenth century onward, mechanization, steam engines, coal, and later electricity created a sustained rise in productivity. For most of human history, average living standards were almost flat. After industrialization, output per person began to climb steadily, and societies were reshaped by factories, urbanization, and new transport networks.

• Industrial capitalism gave way to corporate capitalism, marked by huge firms and professional managers. This was followed by welfare, or Keynesian, capitalism after the Great Depression, as states stepped in to stabilize demand and build safety nets.

• From the 1970s onward, many countries moved toward neoliberalism, with deregulation, privatization, weaker unions, and global capital flows.

• Today, we live in digital /AI/ platform capitalism, where data, algorithms, and network effects create “winner-takes-most” markets in areas such as social media, search, and e-commerce.

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Context Matters

With this history in mind, sweeping statements about capitalism start to look suspicious. The capitalism of 1825 is not the capitalism of 2025, and the United States is not Nepal, nor is Malaysia like Saudi Arabia. Some free-market advocates point to rich countries and tell poor countries to copy them, ignoring the fact that many of those rich countries used protectionism, colonial extraction, and heavy state involvement when they were developing. Both defense and critique often ignore context and historical stage, which is a recipe for confusion.

Major critiques

Some critiques of capitalism are timeless, and they continue to shape debates today. These include:

• Exploitation of labor: Profits often come from paying workers less than the value they create, especially when jobs are scarce and bargaining power is weak (“Take it or leave it condition”). Global supply chains can intensify this dynamic through paying very low wages in poorer countries, and the rise of “super managers (CEOs),” earning hundreds of times more than typical workers making the gap more visible and ethically unsettling.

• Inequality: Returns on capital often outpace wages, allowing wealth to compound and deepen class divisions over time. Thomas Piketty’s R > G provides a good reference to understand this. This wealth advantage can translate into better education, health care, and political access, weakening social mobility, while more dimensions of life are pulled into market logic, including time, relationships, and even attention, leaving many workers feeling alienated from meaning in what they produce (Refer to MINE post “Understanding Inequality: Its Forms, Causes, Measurement, and Harms”).

• Commodification and Alienation: Capitalism turns too many aspects of life into commodities, leaving people feeling disconnected. Activities once rooted in meaning or community, such as care, friendship, art, and religion, can be pulled into market logic and given a price. Even within the production process, workers may experience alienation, not only from what they produce and how they work, but also from their coworkers and from their own deeper potential.

• Instability and environmental damage: Capitalist economies are frequently criticized for boom-and-bust cycles, arising from overinvestment and underinvestment, that generate crises, unemployment, and wasted resources. The push for continuous growth on a finite planet also raises concerns about pollution, climate change, and broader ecological loss.

• Global extraction: From a global perspective, critics argue that capitalism has historically relied on extracting resources and wealth from poorer regions, creating lasting patterns of dependency and uneven development that continue to this day.

• Political capture: Another enduring critique is that concentrated wealth can shape laws, media, and foreign policy, allowing economic power to convert into political power and protecting elite interests.

• Islamic ethical concerns: From an Islamic viewpoint, additional objections include interest-based finance, excessive materialism, and debt structures that can trap poor individuals and poorer nations, undermining justice and social balance.

Main defenses

The main defense of capitalism is that it is a tool, not a religion or moral framework. Like a knife, it can heal or harm depending on the hand that wields it. Additional arguments in favor of capitalism are:

• There is no clearly better alternative that has worked at scale. Feudalism and centrally planned economies have often produced stagnation and repression. Other options, such as a theorized Islamic economy, do not by themselves produce new production and market mechanisms, but instead guide the process through ethical and moral principles.

• There has been a significant rise in average living standards since capitalism gained traction. Many people who would once have faced famine and early death now have access to food, medicine, and education.

• Capitalism is dynamic and innovative. It creates new sectors, jobs, and technologies, and the boom-and-bust cycles that remain even after regulations are the price of the freedom to experiment and fail.

• Some argue that capitalism can be civilized and tamed through strong institutions. Examples from parts of Europe show models where unions are strong, company boards include labor and environmental voices, and regulation forces firms to internalize social and ecological costs.

Capitalism and markets, in this view, can coexist with fairness and ethics if framed by the right rules.

Uproot or Reform

For Muslims and other ethical critics, the central question is whether to direct the discourse toward reforming capitalism or toward uprooting and rejecting it completely.

• Reform means regulation, moral constraints, parallel institutions where possible, and persistent effort to bend the system toward justice.

• Uprooting means rejecting the framework entirely and attempting to build a different one, which requires a workable blueprint and an account of human realities.

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A pragmatic way forward

The difficulty in the discourse surrounding the total rejection of capitalism is that proponents of this path often do not have enough practical experience of how the system works. In addition, capitalism has two distinct features that make it hard to replace.

1. Massive scale: Capitalism operates at an enormous scale, with deeply integrated global supply chains, capital markets, and institutions. Replacing it requires alternatives that can coordinate production, prices, incentives, and distribution across societies and across borders.

2. Flexible adaptation: Capitalism absorbs criticism, monetizes opposition, and constantly reinvents itself when the criticism gets stronger. Even movies that condemn capitalism are financed and distributed through capitalist pipelines.

Capitalist realism tells us that capitalism is deeply entrenched. Islamic pragmatism tells us that we are responsible for engaging with the world as it exists, without surrendering our principles. The task, then, is to learn how the system works, to distinguish what is structural from what is contingent.

With this balanced view of critique and defense, one can truly think about solutions that build strong communities and institutions that neither hamper human creativity and innovation nor allow the system to become a mechanism of injustice and exploitation.

Original presentation:

As technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, its spread becomes inevitable (proliferation). Containment of technology, therefore, is not about suppressing innovation but about establishing meaningful control over technology by denying capacity to harmful actors and stopping its dangerous misuse.

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Incentives and Containment Principles

The momentum of innovation is propelled by three “unstoppable incentives”:

1. State Rivalry (nations seeking technological dominance),

2. Profit Motive (corporations chasing market share and efficiency), and

3. Prestige (researchers seeking recognition).

These incentives create a self-reinforcing cycle: governments fund research, companies scale the technology for profit, and scientists publish it, often open-sourcing it for prestige. This relentless velocity lowers containment barriers, making traditional regulation insufficient to match the pace. The solution, therefore, lies not in attempting to stop the wave, but in learning to ride it responsibly by reshaping incentives and managing strategic choke-points.

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To steer this technological tide responsibly requires a leadership framework grounded in three principles:

1. Stewardship: Stewardship acts as the conscience, defining the legacy by ensuring technology serves humanity and ethics.

2. Strategy: Strategy determines the intentional direction, aligning innovation with ethical missions and values.

3. Governance: Governance provides the necessary guardrails, accountability, and risk awareness, balancing speed with safeguards.

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Realigning Incentives with Governance

The strategic lever of reshaping incentives is paramount to achieving containment. This shift involves making responsibility profitable, linking business success directly to ethical design and transparency, and ensuring that market rewards are tied to accountability, rather than solely to financial metrics. When incentives and governance are successfully aligned, they point the organization in the same, safe direction.

For instance, traditional Performance Metrics typically reward speed, output, and short-term delivery. A governance-aligned approach, however, mandates rewarding compliance, transparency, and ethical adherence alongside delivery. Similarly, Budgeting and Funding traditionally prioritize projects with the highest financial Return on Investment (ROI). Under governance alignment, funding must be directed toward projects that meet both ROI targets and essential criteria for security readiness, compliance, safety, and sustainability. This ensures that innovation is built on high integrity and high value, allowing risk and value to move together.

In Leadership Evaluation, promotions must move beyond mere expansion and output. Instead, leaders should be promoted based on responsible growth, demonstrated accountability, stakeholder trust, and long-term impact. In the sphere of Innovation Programs, the prevailing mindset of “Move fast and break things” must be replaced with the mandate to “Move fast and prove safety,” embedding mandatory risk review gates into the innovation pipeline. This discipline adds safeguards without necessarily killing speed. Finally, in AI and Data Governance, the focus must expand beyond performance and accuracy metrics. Evaluation should now include critical aspects such as explainability, fairness, privacy, and auditability, providing the transparency needed to understand a model’s reasoning.

Another strategic lever for better governance is managing choke-points, which involves identifying and controlling critical dependencies such as cloud access, GPUs, compute power, and Gene synthesis facilities. The goal of oversight is to slow down risky proliferation just enough to create breathing room for governance and security technologies to catch up. However, currently, corporations are exploiting these chokepoints—signing massive deals for chip capacity and compute access—to lock in market dominance and competitive advantage rather than enforcing restraint.

Ten Steps Toward Containment

To navigate this complex wave, a structured roadmap outlining ten steps toward containment has been suggested. These steps provide a comprehensive strategy covering technical, corporate, governmental, and societal action:

1. Technical Safety R&D: Programs must be funded to invest in AI and biosafety research before these systems reach mass adoption.

2. Audits: Implementing independent technical and ethical audits is crucial; knowledge is power, and power is control, providing leaders the visibility needed to identify gaps.

3. ChokePoints: Buy Time: Govern access to critical resources like compute, chip, and cloud access to delay risky acceleration and allow safety frameworks to mature.

4. Makers: CRITICS should build it: Ethicists, risk experts, and policy voices must be embedded directly into R&D teams to influence the innovation process from within.

5. Business: Profit + Purpose: This step reinforces the alignment of incentives, linking financial performance with mandatory ethical and safety metrics. When companies adopt this, good governance becomes a competitive advantage.

6. Government: Adapt, Reform, Regulate: Public institutions must build the capacity to govern emerging technologies, setting rules that define how far and how fast technology can scale, despite the challenge that public institutions often move slower than the technology they oversee.

7. Global Alliances – Time for Treaties: Containment demands shared international standards, safeguards, and cooperation frameworks rather than unilateral silos created by export controls.

8. Culture of Disclosure: Transparency over secrecy must be normalized, promoting honest failure reporting within the research and development community.

9. Civil Movements – People Power: Governments and corporations cannot be the only watchdogs. Empowering NGOs, advocacy groups, and research communities is necessary to raise awareness, spur risk assessment, and hold powerful actors accountable.

10. The Narrow Path: This final step emphasizes that there are no shortcuts. Containment is not a one-time policy to “set and forget,” but rather a continuous discipline that must be practiced consistently as technology advances.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the key takeaway is clear: while incentives are the engine driving proliferation forward, governance must seize control of the steering wheel to determine direction. Innovation is unstoppable, pushed by the pursuit of power and profit, but leaders must ensure this momentum aligns with long-term purpose and ethical values. Ultimately, this challenge is not born of fear, but requires decisive leadership to ride the wave with clarity, conscience, and control.

References

• Suleyman, M., & Bhaskar, M. (2023). The coming wave: Technology, power, and the twenty-first century’s greatest dilemma. Crown.

• Original Biweekly MINE presentation:

Defining Intelligence and Its Artificial Counterpart

At its core, Artificial Intelligence represents the mimicry of human intelligence by machines. But what exactly is intelligence? It encompasses a wide range of cognitive abilities, including pattern recognition, abstract reasoning, problem-solving, language comprehension, memory, and the capacity to learn and unlearn. Beyond these analytical capabilities, intelligence also involves creativity, imagination, planning, self-awareness, adaptability, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence.

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This multifaceted nature of intelligence raises a key question about LLMs: do they think, or just simulate thinking? The concept of “levels of mimicry” suggests that AI exists on a spectrum, with different systems achieving varying degrees of human-like behavior without necessarily possessing genuine understanding or consciousness.

AI, ML, Deep Learning, and Generative AI

Understanding the relationships between overlapping terms is essential for clarity.

• AI represents the broadest category i.e. any system exhibiting intelligent behavior.

• Machine Learning is a subset of AI focused on learning from data (this will be the focus of this post)

• Deep Learning is a subset of ML using neural networks with multiple layers.

• Generative AI refers to systems capable of creating new content, whether text, images, audio, or other media types.

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Data Science intersects with, but is distinct from AI/ML. Data Science encompasses the broader practice of extracting insights from data, including statistics, data visualization, data engineering, and domain expertise, with ML serving as one tool among many in the data scientist’s toolkit.

Machine Learning: Learning Without Explicit Programming

Machine Learning is defined through several complementary perspectives. Tom M. Mitchell’s 1997 definition of machine learning says that a computer program is considered to learn if:

• E (Experience): It gets more data or exposure to something,

• T (Task): It is trying to perform a specific task, and

• P (Performance Measure): Its success on that task can be measured,

Historically, ML has been understood as the practice of finding patterns in data.

• In traditional programming, explicit rules are coded to produce outputs from inputs (for example, take two numbers as input and add them).

• In machine learning, however, the system learns the rules by examining input-output pairs and discovering patterns that allow it to generalize to new, unseen data. For example, if you show a machine many pictures of cats labeled “cat” and many pictures of dogs labeled “dog,” it learns the distinguishing patterns and later uses them to identify new images as cats or dogs.

• Generative AI goes one step further. Instead of just learning to classify or predict, it learns the underlying patterns, structures, and relationships in the data well enough to create entirely new outputs.

This paradigm shift enables solutions to problems that are too complex or nuanced for human programmers to explicitly codify. Generative AI refers to systems capable of creating new content, whether text, images, audio, or other media types.

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The Spectrum of Machine Learning Paradigms

Machine learning encompasses diverse learning paradigms, each suited to different types of problems and data availability. The four core types of learning include:

1. Supervised Learning: Learning from labeled data where the correct answers are provided during training

2. Unsupervised Learning: Discovering patterns in unlabeled data without predetermined outcomes

3. Reinforcement Learning: Learning through interaction with an environment via rewards and penalties

4. Self-Supervised Learning: Learning representations by creating pretext tasks from the data itself

Beyond these foundational approaches, the field has developed advanced learning methodologies including semi-supervised learning, weakly supervised learning, active learning, meta-learning, transfer learning, zero-shot/one-shot/few-shot learning, continual learning, online learning, multi-task learning, federated learning, and representation learning. Each addresses specific challenges related to data scarcity, computational efficiency, domain adaptation, or privacy concerns.

These learning paradigms enable machines to tackle fundamental tasks such as:

• Classification: categorizing inputs into discrete classes (for example, identifying whether an image contains a human, cat, or dog).

• Regression: predicting continuous numeric values (for example, forecasting stock prices or estimating house prices based on features like size and location).

• Clustering or Density Estimation: grouping similar items without predefined labels (for example, segmenting customers into purchasing groups or grouping news articles by topic).

• Dimensionality Reduction: compressing high-dimensional data while preserving essential information (for example, simplifying image data for visualization and faster processing).

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Foundations for Future Learning

Successful engagement with the deepest level of AI/ML requires:

• Solid foundations in mathematics (particularly linear algebra, calculus, and probability theory)

• Computer science (algorithms, data structures, and programming), and

• Domain knowledge specific to the application area.

This multidisciplinary nature explains why AI/ML represents not just a technical skill, but a comprehensive field of study drawing from diverse intellectual traditions

The Ubiquity of AI and the Imperative of AI Literacy

AI has permeated almost every part of modern life. From the ordinary to the critical, it shapes daily experiences: search engines, personal assistants, face unlock features, recommendation systems that drive “doom scrolling,” streaming platforms, e-commerce suggestions, warehouse robotics, manufacturing cameras, logistics optimization, credit scoring, robotaxis, drone delivery, facial recognition in government services, medical diagnosis tools, HR screening systems, and even robotic surgery.

This deep integration of AI creates a pressing need for AI literacy. Similar to digital and legal literacy, AI literacy is becoming essential for personal competence and resilience. With millions of LLM users and AI systems influencing decisions about loans, employment, healthcare, and public services, understanding how these technologies operate and knowing their capabilities, limitations, and biases has become a civic responsibility.

Research consistently highlights the importance of digital and legal literacy in an AI-driven world. Citizens must understand not only how to use AI tools but also their rights, the ethical stakes of AI deployment, and the risks of algorithmic bias and discrimination.

The Cyclical Nature of AI Hype

A historical perspective shows that AI hype is not new. The field has long swung between high expectations and disappointment. Pioneers like Herbert Simon, Allen Newell, and Marvin Minsky made bold predictions in the 1950s and 1960s—machines that think and create (1957), computers proving theorems within a decade (1958), machines surpassing human intelligence within a generation (1961, 1967), and systems able to perform any human job within twenty years (1965).

When these predictions failed to meet their timelines, the field entered periods known as “AI Winters,” marked by declining funding, reduced public interest, and growing skepticism. This cycle repeated several times, and today’s era is considered the third major hype wave.

This history offers an essential corrective to current enthusiasm. Although today’s AI systems, especially deep learning and generative models, are undeniably powerful, recalling earlier hype cycles encourages a more measured perspective. The idea of “AI psychosis” serves as a warning that excessive excitement can distort expectations and lead to poor decisions by individuals, organizations, and policymakers.

By systematically addressing terminology, learning mechanisms, practical importance, and historical context, this overview provides a robust conceptual framework for deeper study of AI/ML technologies, their applications, limitations, and societal implications. For a detailed discussion, please check out the YouTube link below. You can find more work of our speaker on: https://hzubair.com/

The Evolution of AI: From Predictors to Planners

AI’s story spans more than 75 years of research, millions of published papers, and trillions of data points used for training. Early AI systems could only follow rules, while modern ones learn, infer, and adapt. Machine learning models like neural networks gave computers the ability to recognize speech and images. Deep learning accelerated this progress, allowing machines to “see” and “hear” better than ever. Now, Agentic AI represents a new phase, with systems that can act on their own by booking meetings, updating databases, and even designing code or creating marketing plans without constant human prompts. Yet even as we marvel at its capabilities, we are still far from human-level intelligence. Machines can imitate reasoning but lack the depth of human understanding, emotion, and creativity.

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AI’s Double Edge: Higher Productivity, Greater Pressure

AI has evolved from handling single tasks to transforming entire workflows and its impact is uneven across professions. Routine and rule-based tasks face the highest Automation risk, including data entry, bookkeeping, customer support, and basic coding. AI thrives where outcomes are predictable and measurable.

Jobs based on pattern recognition and information processing, such as document review or report summarization, are being folded into AI-augmented workflows, where fewer people manage more work.

By contrast, roles built on judgment, empathy, and creativity remain harder to automate. Teaching, design, strategy, counseling, and leadership rely on context and trust, areas where machines still lag.

Every Fortune 500 company now uses AI, whether in logistics, retail, manufacturing, or education. Microsoft’s Copilot is embedded across business suites; AI-powered supply chains forecast demand; and virtual tutors personalize learning for millions of students.

The wave is not just hype but something measurable. Software developers using GitHub Copilot complete tasks over 55 % faster. Call centers resolve issues in half the time. Legal analysts review contracts in minutes. Doctors analyze scans with unprecedented accuracy. These productivity gains not only cut costs but also amplify human output, allowing professionals to focus on higher-value, creative, and strategic work.

However, these same gains create pressure. Routine roles, whether in coding, accounting, or claims processing, are the first to face Automation risk. AI does not get tired, and it is improving every month. The real divide ahead is not between humans and machines, but between those who use AI effectively and those who do not.

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The Reality for Engineers: From Average to Augmented

Engineers sit at the heart of this transformation. AI now writes boilerplate software code, generates documentation, tests software, and runs simulations. For average engineers who rely on repetitive tasks, this means competition from tools that never sleep. Yet for skilled engineers who harness these tools, the effect is empowering. AI becomes a super-fast junior engineer that boosts productivity without replacing talent.

A Stanford study found that early-career engineers in AI-exposed fields experienced a 13 to 20 percent decline in traditional opportunities, while experienced engineers who adapted saw rising demand. The baseline has shifted. Even average software engineer can now produce decent output with AI, but the hiring question has changed: if everyone can generate average code, why hire someone who cannot go beyond that?

The answer lies in the human edge, the ability to design systems, debug complexity, and understand business needs. Engineers who combine deep fundamentals with AI fluency will lead the next wave.

Top 5 Declining Technologies and Roles

As automation spreads, several technologies and roles are losing ground:

1. Rule-based Natural Language Processing (NLP) – Replaced by flexible, context-aware Large Language Models (LLMs).

2. Keyword search – Yielding to neural and semantic retrieval.

3. Optical Character Recognition (OCR)-based Question Answering (QA) – Superseded by multimodal vision-language models.

4. Entry-level legal work – Automated by contract-review Artificial Intelligences (AIs).

5. Insurance claim assessment – Taken over by AI-driven image and drone analysis.

These declines show a pattern: AI eliminates repetitive, structured work, especially at entry levels.

Top 5 Growing Fields in AI

Yet growth areas abound for those willing to learn and adapt:

1. Precision agriculture – Drones, sensors, and models optimize farming.

2. Healthcare and life sciences – AI supports imaging, drug discovery, and clinical workflows.

3. Education and lifelong learning – Personalized tutoring and adaptive assessment.

4. Energy, manufacturing, and climate solutions – AI reduces emissions and optimizes systems.

5. Logistics and supply chains – Smart forecasting and robotic automation.

On the technology side, five trends define the future: On-device AI, privacy-preserving learning, AI in cybersecurity, embodied robotics, and AI for chip design—a self-reinforcing cycle where AI designs better chips for more AI.

Survival Plan for Engineers

To thrive, engineers must treat AI as a teammate. A practical five-step roadmap:

1. Accept & Adapt – Use AI tools as assistants, not adversaries.

2. Strengthen Fundamentals – Refresh algorithms, data structures, and systems design.

3. Specialize – Master one AI-relevant domain (e.g., MLOps, edge AI, robotics).

4. Build a Portfolio – Demonstrate your AI-augmented work publicly.

5. Add the Human Edge – Communication, judgment, and creativity remain irreplaceable.

Survival Plan for Non-Software Careers

AI is not just for software professionals. In fact, the future of programming is “human language.” Anyone can now design workflows and apps through natural dialogue with AI. Non-technical professionals can pivot through roles such as:

• AI-Augmented Problem Solver – Use low-code tools to automate workflows.

• Domain + AI Bridge – Combine sector expertise with AI insight.

• AI Tool Operator or Trainer – Shape models through feedback and prompt design.

• Human-in-the-Loop Supervisor – Audit AI for fairness and accuracy.

• AI Product or Business Lead – Guide projects from concept to launch.

In short, AI literacy is the new digital literacy. Every industry—finance, education, healthcare, agriculture, logistics—needs people who understand both their field and the AI shaping it.

To Sum Up

Despite the noise, the core differentiators remain profoundly human: critical thinking, ethics, empathy, and creative synthesis. Machines can analyze and predict, but only humans can contextualize and care. The challenge is not survival but elevation—using AI to offload the mechanical so we can focus on meaning, relationships, and innovation.

As Fei-Fei Li, a leading figure in AI from Stanford puts it, “AI will become not just a tool but a teammate, amplifying human creativity, judgment, and capability.”

AI is not coming for everyone’s job, but it is coming for everyone’s routine. Those who invest in AI literacy, strengthen their fundamentals, and build cross-domain expertise will thrive in roles that did not exist five years ago. The rest risk being outpaced not by smarter people but by smarter workflows. Whether you code, teach, design, or manage, the path forward is the same: learn, adapt, and stay curious. Continuous reskilling will define professional survival in the age of intelligent machines. The future belongs to those who combine technical fluency with human insight, using AI as a partner rather than a replacement.

We highly encourage readers to go over the video presentation:

This aversion to Sharia often stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of its role, where many erroneously view it as “a rigid unchanging list of non-negotiable legislations through and through”. However, this is a shallow understanding that completely lacks the essential nuance of Islamic thought.

In this biweekly MINE presentation (video link here), Br. Joshua Obi explains how to engage modern challenges while remaining rooted in the Islamic normative framework. He argues that Muslims should adopt an understanding of Sharia that recognizes its inherent legal dynamism; the key to this reconciliation lies in the theory of Maqasid al-Sharia (the objectives of divine law).

Distinguishing the Immutable Source from the Fallible Understanding

To begin this discussion, we must clarify the classification of divine law, starting with linguistic roots: Sharia literally translates to “a path or road”. In the legal context, Sharia denotes the immutable, unchanging, revealed sources of the law, i.e. the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet.

These revealed sources form a strong foundation of divine legislation that touches every aspect of human life, denoting the ultimate good God desires for human beings. God Himself declares: “…Indeed today I have perfected your dean for you completed my favor upon you and chosen Islam as your way…” (Quran, 5:3). This indicates that the epistemological foundation to guide mankind has been revealed and ordained.

Crucially, Sharia cannot be relegated to simply a strict legal code from top to bottom. As Professor Mashood Bederin writes, out of the Quran’s 6,666 verses, Muslim jurists estimate that only between 350 and 500 verses contain legal elements. Alongside these verses, the Prophet’s actions, statements, and tacit approvals serve as a living commentary and authoritative exposition.

The immutability of Sharia (the source) is often confused and conflated with the rulings and understandings derived by scholars when they engage in application. This scholarly engagement is known as Fiqh, which literally translates to “understanding”. Fiqh refers to the methods of the law and is the understanding derived from Sharia, which may change according to time and space or circumstance.

Professor Abdul Fadl argues that Fiqh is the fallible and imperfect attempt by Muslims over centuries to understand and implement the divine norms. Historically, the dynamism and development characterizing the enterprise of Fiqh slowly stagnated following the closing of the door of Ijtihad (independent legal reasoning), resulting in the law being reduced to a state of immobility. Consequently, Fiqh was erroneously portrayed as the immutable Sharia.

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The Essential Divide: Ibadat vs. Mu’amalat

A full understanding of the divine law’s potential requires recognizing that the domain of Fiqh can be split into two essential spheres: Ibadat (worship) and Mu’amalat (actions/transactions).

1. Ibadat (Worship): This sphere encompasses actions of worship such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, or purification. These actions are, by their nature, constant, rigid, and non-negotiable. This sphere also includes prohibitions like the consumption of alcohol and pork, extramarital relationships, and riba (usury).

2. Mu’amalat (Interpersonal/Socio-political): This sphere is temporal and covers interpersonal, social, economic, and political aspects. Unlike Ibadat, Mu’amalat is based upon more general rules of application.

It is the sphere of Mu’amalat that demands flexibility. Anna Birawi notes that laws in flexible spheres are vital to change and grow and are required to develop within specified boundaries in accordance with the varying demands of the Muslim community, especially where the Quran and Sunnah lack explicit reform. Dr. Muhammad Asad further argues that Mu’amalat is the sphere of temporal laws where the arrest of the dynamism in Islamic jurisprudence is most acutely felt.

If we are to reconcile with the continually changing regulations in modern society, leaders, policymakers, and theorists alike must focus on the space of Mu’amalat, as this is where the most change in society occurs. The Sharia doctrine concerning Mu’amalat matters makes the discipline dynamic, adaptable, accommodating, and flexible, according to Jalil and Rami.

The Scaffold of Justice: Maqasid al-Sharia

How exactly can the flexible space of Mu’amalat engage with the vast and complex changes brought on by modernity—in minds, actions, and organization? The answer lies in the pragmatic, ethical, and moral scaffold of the Maqasid al-Sharia (objectives of the divine law).

Abu Ishaq al-Shatibi, who penned Al-Muwafaqat and his Maqasid theory, intended to offer a theoretical framework that could broaden consensus and diminish long-standing divisions—including political, economic, social, legal, and religious—that reflect our own realities in the modern world today.

A reconciliation between modern challenges and divine law rests in understanding and applying these overarching principles, which are: the preservation of life, intellect, lineage, religion, and property.

These Maqasid provide a crucial set of guideline and filter. God tells us He made the believers a community of the middle way, which necessitates a mode of action attainable in modern society through Maqasid-guided policymaking. This approach, combined with ideals such as Maslaha (public interest), grants a creative license to legal scholars and decision-makers on both large and small scales.

Indeed, the ultimate purpose of Sharia is to promote the welfare of the people, a principle widely accepted in Islamic jurisprudence. Furthermore, because the rules extrapolated directly from scripture cannot cover all the day-to-day public needs of civil society, Fiqh scholars recognized that another type of law was necessary to fully serve the public good, as Asifa claims.

The Middle Path Between Extremes

This dynamic approach faces critics, such as Dr. Riyad Assist, who argue that proposing immutability only in the sources while allowing flexible engagement in Mu’amalat undermines the legitimacy of Sharia. Critics suggest this approach turns all administrative, judicial, political, and military acts into man-made legislation, potentially leading to the adoption of the entire political and economic methodology of Western models like democracy and capitalism.

However, this critique is a miscalculation. If the lens through which the lawmaker judges is in critical conversation with the divine law, one cannot simply relegate the resulting decision to being purely rationalist, man-made, or derived wholesale from secular western forms of arrangement. Furthermore, the approach explicitly retains the non-negotiable nusus, which are the essential bones that hold up the entire skeleton of divine law.

This middle path rejects the extremes found in the modern Muslim world. It avoids the violent, suppressive approach of movements like Wahhabism and the concentration of political and clerical power seen in Iran’s wilayat al-faqih system. Conversely, it also avoids the complete abandonment of religion in the public sphere attempted by secular Kemalist Turkey.

The challenge of modern governance has led to negative outcomes in secular modernity, including Western hegemony, militarization, exploitative economic practices, and a Eurocentric monopolization of knowledge. While we cannot turn back time, our intersection with the sphere of human existence can shift from the man-centered to the God-centered.

We must avoid the two extremes: clinging to an idealized past (preservationism) or seeking the complete abandonment of traditions in the hope of full integration into modern societal structures. Our stance must entail seizing the moment and creating engagement based upon the higher goals of Sharia, for a society whose application is rooted firmly in the ethical framework of revelation.

Video of this presentation 🔽:

References:

• Abderrazzaq, Mohammed A. (2017) “The Revival and Evolution of Maqasid Thought: From al-Shatibi to Ibn Ashur and the Contemporary Maqasid Movements.”

• Abou El Fadl, Khaled. (2014) Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Sharia in the Modern Age. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Asad, Muhammad. (1961) Principles of State and Government in Islam.

• Aswat, Riyad. (2014) “Muhammad as the Way Forward.” (2014)

• Baderin, Mashood Adebayo. (2001) Modern Muslim States: Between Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law. (2001)

• Birawi, Anna. (2013) “Can Islamic Law Evolve?” (2013)

• Jalil, Abdullah, and Ashraf Mohd Ramli (2014). The Four Introductory Theories of Fiqh Mu‘amalat. Wisdom Publications.

• Quraishi-Landes, Asifa. “The Sharia Problem with Sharia Legislation.” Ohio Northern University Law Review, Vol. 41, Iss. 3, Article 1.

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It is against this backdrop that Bitcoin emerged in 2009, introduced by the mysterious figure (or group) known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin was not just a new form of digital money; it was a radical experiment. Could money exist without governments, central banks, or trusted intermediaries? Could code, mathematics, and incentives replace the fragile trust we place in institutions?

In the first part of this two-part series, derived from a biweekly MINE presentation by Br. Harris, we explored the history and concept of money. In this second part, we turn to Bitcoin and examine its role as an alternative to fiat money.

Bitcoin’s purpose is twofold:

1. To enable trustless digital payments, allowing people to transact directly without banks.

2. To serve as a digital gold, a scarce store of value that resists inflation and censorship.

What makes Bitcoin revolutionary is not only that it is digital, but that it is designed to be decentralized, scarce, and secured by cryptography rather than political promises.

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Decentralization: Peer-to-Peer Money

Traditional money flows through intermediaries: banks, clearinghouses, payment processors. This centralized structure creates both power and vulnerability. Governments can censor transactions, banks can fail, and payment systems can collapse.

Bitcoin operates differently. It is peer-to-peer: transactions occur directly between users across a network. No bank approves them; no government can reverse them. Instead, transactions are validated by the distributed network itself.

This decentralization is not just a technical curiosity—it is a political and economic breakthrough. For the first time, people anywhere in the world can send money to each other without relying on an intermediary.

Scarcity: Digital Gold with a Hard Cap

One of the defining weaknesses of fiat money is its unlimited supply. Governments can print more at will, and history shows they often do. This leads to inflation, sometimes mild, sometimes catastrophic (think Weimar Germany, Zimbabwe, or more recently, Venezuela).

Bitcoin solved this by introducing digital scarcity. Its protocol guarantees that there will only ever be 21 million BTC in existence. No central authority can change this rule—it is embedded in the code and enforced by every participant in the network.

Scarcity is what made gold valuable for thousands of years. But unlike gold, Bitcoin is infinitely divisible, easily portable across borders, and verifiable by anyone with a computer. This makes Bitcoin arguably the soundest form of money humanity has ever created.

Security Without Trust: Cryptography and Ownership

Trust is the Achilles’ heel of traditional finance. We trust banks to keep our deposits, governments not to inflate the currency, and clearinghouses to settle trades. When that trust breaks, crises erupt.

An important element in this context is nodes, which are computers running the Bitcoin program. They keep a copy of the ledger (blockchain), check every new transaction and block against the rules, and share valid ones with other nodes. If something breaks the rules (like double-spending a BTC, bad signature etc.), the nodes reject it and keeps the network honest without a boss.

Bitcoin reduces the need for trust by relying on public-key cryptography, which ensures that no one can take your Bitcoin without your permission, making it direct, secure, and not dependent on an intermediary. Ownership of Bitcoin is controlled by private keys—long, secret numbers that only the owner possesses and which sits in the user’s cryptocurrency wallet. To send Bitcoin, you sign a transaction with your private key, which proves ownership without revealing the secret itself. This private key then generates a public key which is like a signature to verify a transaction. A Bitcoin address is a shorter, more user-friendly version of the public key. This address is what you share to receive funds. When someone sends you Bitcoin, the funds get locked to your public key, ensuring only you can spend them.

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Blockchain and Proof of Work: Solving Consensus

The real genius of Bitcoin lies in how it keeps the whole network honest. Every transaction is recorded on a blockchain—a public ledger that anyone can verify. But how do thousands of computers agree on which transactions are valid, without trusting each other?

This is where Proof of Work (PoW) comes in. Miners, which are the specialized computers, compete to solve cryptographic puzzles to add a new block which contains new transaction. The winner earns the right to propose the next block of transactions and is rewarded with newly minted Bitcoin. This process:

• Prevents double-spending, ensuring no one can spend the same Bitcoin twice.

• Makes fraud nearly impossible, since rewriting the blockchain would require controlling more computing power than the rest of the network combined.

• Secures the system by tying security directly to the economic cost of electricity and hardware.

In doing so, Bitcoin solved the famous Byzantine Generals Problem: how to achieve consensus in a system where participants don’t trust each other.

Sound Money: Bitcoin vs. Fiat vs. Gold

Economists have long described the qualities of sound money: it should be durable, divisible, portable, fungible, verifiable, and scarce. Let’s compare:

• Gold: Durable and scarce, but heavy, hard to divide, and difficult to transport.

• Fiat money: Portable and divisible, but not scarce or durable (inflation erodes its value).

• Bitcoin: Digital, infinitely divisible, instantly portable, perfectly verifiable, and capped at 21 million.

One of Bitcoin’s most striking features is its stock-to-flow ratio (the measure of existing supply relative to new supply). As halving events reduce the issuance of new Bitcoin, its ratio is set to exceed 100—greater than gold’s, making it the scarcest asset ever created.

Bitcoin’s Revolutionary Implications

Bitcoin is not just a new technology; it represents a shift in how we think about money and power.

1. Freedom from Inflation: With its fixed supply, Bitcoin resists the silent tax of inflation that eats away at fiat currencies.

2. Censorship Resistance: No government or corporation can block a Bitcoin transaction. For people under authoritarian regimes, this is not an abstraction but a lifeline.

3. Global Accessibility: Anyone with an internet connection can participate. Billions of people worldwide remain unbanked, and Bitcoin provides them with access to financial tools.

4. Challenge to Centralized Power: By existing outside the control of states and banks, Bitcoin questions the very foundation of the current monetary order.

Challenges and Criticisms

Of course, Bitcoin is not without its challenges. Critics point to:

• Energy Consumption: Proof of Work requires vast amounts of electricity, though defenders argue this secures the network and incentivizes renewable energy use.

• Volatility: Bitcoin’s price swings are extreme, making it unstable as a short-term currency. This is expected to settle down as Bitcoins get more acceptance.

• Scalability: The base layer processes only a limited number of transactions per second, though second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network aim to fix this.

Despite these issues, Bitcoin has persisted for over 15 years, surviving bubbles, crashes, government bans, and countless declarations of its “death.” Each time, it has emerged stronger.

Conclusion: Bitcoin as a Revolutionary Choice

When Satoshi Nakamoto released Bitcoin in 2009, few could have imagined how far it would go. Today, it is owned by millions, integrated into financial markets, and debated by policymakers around the world.

Bitcoin is not perfect. It is still evolving, still finding its role. But what makes it revolutionary is that it has already proven the possibility of non-state money—something that had been thought impossible.

By combining decentralization, scarcity, cryptographic security, and economic incentives, Bitcoin fulfills the timeless criteria of sound money better than any predecessor. Whether it ultimately replaces fiat currencies, coexists with them, or simply reshapes our financial imagination remains to be seen. But so far, Bitcoin has proven that it is here to stay.

Reference:

• Part 1/2 of the post: The History of Money: From Clay Tablets to Bitcoin

• Original MINE biweekly Video presentation:

This two-part post, of which this is the first, is derived from the Biweekly MINE presentation series by Br. Haris. The first part covers the historical evolution of money, while the next will introduce Bitcoin as an alternative monetary system.

The concept and historical development of money, along with the trajectory it has taken, helps us understand the strengths and weaknesses of the systems we live under today.

From Ledgers to Commodities

The earliest money was essentially a ledger. Around 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, clay tablets tracked commodities, debts, and obligations within communities. These records reduced disputes and created trust at scale. The tablets recorded transactions in the form of inventories, debts, and distributions, often expressed in tangible goods such as grains and livestock.

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Ledger-based systems also had limits. Within small groups, relying on social credit was manageable and often strengthened social bonds. However, as trade extended beyond close-knit communities, maintaining trust and records became increasingly cumbersome. Trade therefore had to be conducted through instant spot transactions with immediate settlement. Such transactions could be carried out either through barter or by using an accepted commodity money.

When the range of goods and services was limited, barter was an accepted means of exchange in Spot transactions. However, as the scope of trade expanded and the number of participants and commodities increased, barter became impractical because it required a “double coincidence of wants,” where each party had to desire exactly what the other was offering. For example, a farmer in need of a haircut might not find a barber who wanted grain, but rather one who needed shoes, while the shoemaker might not need a haircut.

These inefficiencies pushed societies toward standardized solutions in the form of commodity money. Commodity money enabled efficient trade with strangers and supported complex, growing economies by providing a standardized and credible medium of exchange as well as a reliable store of value. Commodities such as shells, tobacco, cocoa beans, salt, tea, alcohol, copper, silver and gold became widely accepted because they possessed key qualities:

• Divisibility: Can be broken into smaller units for both large and small transactions.

• Portability: Value can be carried and transferred easily across distances.

• Durability: Can resist decay, corrosion, or loss of value over time.

• Fungibility: Each unit is interchangeable and has the same value as any other.

• Verifiability: Authenticity and value can be quickly and reliably confirmed.

• Scarcity: Supply is naturally limited and cannot be expanded at will.

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Among these, gold eventually became the global standard because it fulfilled all criteria better than the alternatives. Its high stock-to-flow ratio, meaning a stable supply growth compared to the total stock already in existence, made it particularly resistant to inflationary shocks.

From Gold to Notes to Fractional Banking

As commerce expanded, carrying and securing physical gold or silver became inconvenient. People began depositing metals with trusted custodians and used paper receipts to represent claims on their holdings. Over time, these receipts became the first banknotes, circulating widely as bearer assets without requiring physical settlement.

Renaissance Italy saw the formalization of banking, where institutions issued paper money redeemable in full against metal reserves. This innovation boosted trade but also introduced risks once banks began practicing fractional reserves. They held only part of deposits while lending out the rest to earn interest. While this practice facilitated trade, it also introduced fragility into the system. A mere whisper of insolvency could spark a bank run and collapse confidence, as seen in the 1907 Knickerbocker Trust crisis. Fractional banking also opened the door to currency devaluation, inflation, and limited transparency about who was issuing notes and how much was backed. By the end of 2022, U.S. banks carried liabilities of about $18 trillion against only $3.3 trillion in cash assets.

Despite its fragility, fractional banking became the foundation of modern finance and credit systems.

The Move Away from Gold

Global conflict accelerated the departure from fully backed money. During World War I, many nations suspended gold convertibility to finance military spending. In the U.S., the Great Depression brought similar pressures, prompting government interventions and restrictions on gold ownership.

The post–World War II settlement at Bretton Woods in 1944 tried to restore discipline by pegging currencies to the U.S. dollar, which itself was tied to gold at $35 per ounce. But as the costs of war, reconstruction, and welfare programs mounted, even this system strained. By 1971, President Nixon ended dollar convertibility into gold—the “Nixon Shock”—making the dollar a fiat currency.

Since then, money has been backed not by commodities but by government decree and collective trust in central banks. The dollar’s role as the global reserve, reinforced by the petrodollar system, entrenched U.S. monetary leadership and tied the global economy to American policy decisions.

Centralization, Fiat, and Inflation

Today, monetary control in each country lies in the hands of central banks, such as the Federal Reserve in the United States. Global lenders like the World Bank and the IMF often influence the policies of struggling nations by placing conditions on what their central banks can and cannot do. These institutions aim to balance growth, employment, and stability, but they also hold the power to expand the money supply at will.

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Inflation, the gradual erosion of purchasing power, is the most visible outcome. A dollar that once bought a loaf of bread now buys only a fraction of one.

Inflation does not affect everyone equally. Those closest to the source of new money creation, such as banks and large corporations, benefit first, while ordinary savers bear the costs later. This dynamic, known as the Cantillon Effect, deepens inequality over time.

Charts of the past century vividly illustrate this story:

1. The decline of the dollar’s buying power: Steadily dropping since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, and accelerating after the end of the gold standard in 1971.

   

2. The rise of gold prices: In dollar terms, gold has surged, reflecting the loss of purchasing power of fiat.

   

3. The explosion of central bank balance sheets: From under $1 trillion before 2008 to several trillions today, reflecting unprecedented levels of money creation to stabilize crises.

   

Conclusion: A System of Trade-Offs

The history of money is a story of evolving trust. From Mesopotamian clay tablets to gold coins, from paper receipts to fiat currency, each step reflected humanity’s attempt to balance convenience, security, and fairness. Yet each system carried trade-offs. The fiat currency era we have entered is extremely flexible, but this very flexibility makes it dangerously fragile, inflationary, and opaque. It also poses systemic risks to the entire economy, as seen in the 2008 financial crisis.

The current era of centralized, fiat-based systems is only the latest chapter in a long, unfolding story. The question now is whether a new paradigm will emerge to address the shortcomings of the present order. In the second part of this series, we will introduce the broad concepts of Bitcoin—the first decentralized digital currency and an alternative monetary framework.

Without semiconductors, modern life and the advancements made by humanity would cease to continue. This dependency has elevated semiconductors from a mere technological component to a strategic asset at the heart of global geopolitics.

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The Foundation of Digital Power

The existence of chips is rooted in deep scientific fields, specifically quantum physics, which governs the behavior of electrons, and solid-state physics, which studies the properties of materials essential for chip functionality. This understanding allows scientists to guide and shape the materials that form semiconductors. A major turning point in human history for electronics came in 1947 with the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs. A transistor is a tiny switch that can turn electrical signals on or off or amplify them. Before the transistor, early electronics, such as the computer built for the U.S. army (ENIAC), to calculate projectile trajectories, relied on bulky vacuum tubes. This early computer occupied a room of 1,500 square feet, yet it was a million times slower than a single modern transistor. Today, a single chip in a pocket-sized device can hold 15 billion transistors, demonstrating an enormous leap in efficiency, area, and power consumption.

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The base material for nearly all modern chips is silicon, derived from sand. Silicon is used because of its abundance, its ability to be purified to 99.9999%, and its electrical behavior, which can be precisely adjusted as needed through doping. The manufacturing process involves slicing purified silicon ingots into round discs called wafers (ranging from 25 mm to 450 mm in diameter), upon which circuits are printed. A single circuit on the wafer is called a die. After cutting and testing the die, it is encapsulated and fitted with pins, pads, and connectors to make a chip.

Design, Scaling, and Complexity

The semiconductor design life cycle is complex, taking place in different locations across the globe. This cycle is broadly categorized into three steps:

1. Pre-Silicon: This stage takes the majority of the work (around 70%). Engineers decide what the chip should do, design its architecture (like CPU/GPU performance), write the digital wiring instructions, and carefully test the design through simulations.

2. Fabrication (The Foundry): Once the design is ready, it is sent to a specialized factory called a foundry to be built using a process called Lithography to print circuits on wafers. Companies like TSMC, Samsung, and Intel run these Foundries (often referred to as) fabs.

3. Post-Silicon: The finished silicon pieces (dies) are packaged into chips, tested under different conditions, and then mounted onto circuit boards (PCBs) so they can power real devices.

The actual transistor size is approximately 15 nm, meaning a human hair is roughly 6,000 times bigger than a modern transistor. The density has exploded; a 2019 chip at 7 nm holds 6.7 billion transistors, while a projected 2025 chip at 3 nm will hold 19 billion transistors. This extreme scaling leads to reduced power consumption, increased performance, and better area efficiency, enabling modern features and devices.

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Modern electronics often integrate multiple functionalities such as the CPU, GPU, modem, and camera modules into a single component known as a System on Chip (SoC), which powers devices like cell phones.

Market Dynamics and Global Geography

The semiconductor industry is immensely powerful, with a market valued at over $600 billion and forecasted to reach $1 trillion to $2 trillion by 2032. Within the S&P 500 (~$55T total worth), 13 semiconductor companies contribute to 12% of this value.

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Historically, the US dominated the early industry (Silicon Valley in the 1960s), followed by Japan’s memory boom in the 1980s. Today, Taiwan (TSMC) and South Korea (Samsung) dominate advanced manufacturing.

The semiconductor industry shows traces of a core–periphery structure (Wallerstein’s World-System Theory), where high-value design and final electronics are concentrated in developed countries, while mid-stream, lower-margin work is pushed to semi-peripheral regions such as Taiwan, and raw materials are generally extracted from underdeveloped countries. Many of these semi-peripheral countries are gradually moving closer to the core.

Geopolitics: The Chip Wars

Given the significance of semiconductor chips and the rising demand for low power, smaller size, and high-speed computing, global competition has intensified as countries proactively work to develop core competencies and secure raw material deals with mostly economically underdeveloped nations.

Technology

Chips are considered a matter of national security, critical for controlling AI, 5G networks, defense, and space technologies. The country that controls chips ultimately controls the future technologies.

The power play centers on controlling advanced manufacturing and the supply chain. The most critical bottleneck is Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) Lithography machines, necessary for manufacturing 7 nm and smaller nodes. The monopoly on these machines is held by the Netherlands-based company ASML. Developing EUV technology was an immense undertaking, requiring 17 years of dedicated research and investment starting in 1990. The machines themselves rely on ultra-smooth mirrors from suppliers like Zeiss and high-precision lasers, operating in a near-perfect vacuum chamber.

ASML sources thousands of parts from a global supply chain, but it holds the essential "recipe" for integration. Control over ASML sales and technology is exercised by a consortium of nations: the US, Netherlands, Japan, Taiwan (TSMC), and South Korea (Samsung). Furthermore, the design phase (pre-silicon) relies on Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools controlled largely by US-based companies like Synopsys and Cadence, adding another layer of strategic control.

China significantly lags in leading-edge chips, often by 5–10 years. While China's company SMEE is attempting domestic solutions, they have only reached 28 nm manufacturing, far behind the current 3 nm node. China’s reliance on imported chips is so profound that in recent years, the money China has spent on importing chips has exceeded the amount spent on importing oil, highlighting their view of chips as a strategic asset.

Raw Material: Rare Earth Elements

Another geopolitical pressure point is Rare Earth elements (17 elements like neodymium and dysprosium), which are essential for magnets, camera lenses, display screens, and lithography equipment. China currently controls 60–70% of global rare earth mining and 85–90% of global refining and processing capacity.

The New Race

In response to these supply chain pressures and competition, nations are forming chip alliances. The USA has implemented the CHIPS Act, which is projected to triple the nation’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity in the decade following its 2022 enactment. Private investments following 2020 have exceeded $600 billion, with companies like TSMC ($165B in Arizona), Intel ($100B across several states), and Micron ($200B) investing heavily in US fabrication, packaging, and R&D centers. Japan is also attempting to revive its manufacturing prowess through the Rapidus consortium.

The Future

The industry currently faces a demand and supply mismatch. Furthermore, researchers are questioning the limits of current scaling; reaching 2 nm or 1 nm nodes becomes increasingly difficult without sacrificing power and area efficiency.

Consequently, the future involves exploring alternative paths. These include:

1. Quantum computing: Moving beyond binary (zero or one) to qubits (multiple states), though this remains in the early stage.

2. Neuromorphic chips: Architectures designed to mimic the structure and function of the human brain.

The continuous innovation, driven by both deep science and practical engineering, is shaping the geopolitical landscape and is not easily replaceable by AI at the current moment.

Final words

Semiconductors, often called the “new oil,” are powering modern life and reshaping geopolitics. From the humble silicon wafer to visions of quantum futures, chips have become the backbone of technological progress, economic strength, and national security. Their central role means that the race for leadership in this field is only intensifying, with nations investing heavily to secure supply chains and mastery of advanced processes. This competition can inspire remarkable collaboration in science and innovation, but it also carries the risk of escalating rivalries and geopolitical tensions. How humanity navigates this delicate balance will determine not only the future of technology but also the stability of the global order in the digital age.

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Detail presentation:

This post is generated from the Bi-Weekly MINE presentation by Dr. Zahid Bukhari. Click here to access the full presentation. Dr. Zahid Bukhari is a leading U.S. Muslim scholar of civic engagement. His past roles have included President of ICNA; Director of Georgetown’s American Muslim Studies Program (AMSP); Executive Director of the ICNA Council for Social Justice (ICNA-CSJ); and Executive Director of the Center for Islam and Public Policy (CIPP). In an effort to rethink what progress means, Dr. Zahid Bukhari is exploring the idea of a Just and Balanced Society Index (JABSI)—a new framework rooted in the principles of Maqasid al-Sharia (the higher objectives of Islamic law).

Unlike conventional indexes, JABSI aims to evaluate societies not only by their wealth or technology, but by how just, balanced, and humane they are.

The Problem with Existing Indexes

Humans have always classified themselves—whether through Qur’anic categories like Sabaqoon ul Awwaloon (Surah Waq’iah) or modern ones like “First World” and “Third World.” After World War II, the West institutionalized this tendency by producing annual global reports: World Bank’s World Development Report, UN’s Human Development Report, Freedom House’s Freedom in the World, Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and many others.

These indexes present themselves as neutral, but a closer look reveals problems:

• Selective focus. Moving beyond GDP was a step forward, but even “human development” remains narrow, often highlighting gender or governance while sidelining family stability, social harmony, or spiritual well-being.

• Agenda setting. Many reports reflect the Cold War and post–Cold War priorities of the Western world, embedding moral and political values that are not universally agreed upon.

• Exclusion of the U.S. and allies. U.S. State Department reports on human rights or religious freedom never cover the U.S. itself, Israel, or other politically sensitive allies—robbing the exercise of credibility.

• Unanswered questions. These measures don’t grapple with deeper questions: Is inequality just? Does democracy actually empower citizens? Are communities flourishing, or simply producing more?

In short, the current system of measurement gives us fragmented snapshots, not a holistic picture.

Why Justice Must Be Central

Islamic tradition offers a different starting point. The Qur’an declares: “We sent our messengers with clear signs, and sent down with them the Book and the Balance so that men may conduct themselves with justice” (al-Hadid 57:25). Justice, not growth for its own sake, is the foundation of human flourishing.

Muslim scholars across history reinforced this. Ibn Taymiyyah insisted injustice is never permissible, even against an oppressor. Ibn Khaldun argued no society can develop without justice at its core. Western thinkers, too, from the American Founding Fathers onward, acknowledged that prosperity without fairness is hollow.

To ignore justice is to invite collapse. As the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) warned, injustice leads to darkness—a metaphor echoed in the downfall of societies across history.

Building JABSI: A Different Lens

The Just and Balanced Society Index (JABSI) seeks to capture what other indexes miss. In today’s pluralistic societies—where multiple races, religions, languages, and ethnic groups coexist—the true test of justice is not simply aggregate prosperity, but equitable distribution across various segments of the population. The uniqueness of JABSI is that it seeks to incorporate this information by measuring:

• Distribution of Benefits: Are all communities—across race, religion, language, and ethnicity—receiving a fair share of development gains, such as access to education, healthcare, employment, and political representation?

• Distribution of Burdens: Are the social costs—imprisonment, prosecution, poverty, and systemic discrimination—falling disproportionately on certain groups while sparing others?

• Equity and Dignity: Do minorities and marginalized populations enjoy the same protection, dignity, and opportunities as the majority, enabling them to participate fully in society?

In other words, JABSI is not just about measuring “growth” but about evaluating whether the fruits of progress are shared fairly and whether the harms of social dysfunction are justly distributed. For example, if a country’s GDP is rising but one ethnic community remains consistently excluded from universities, or if incarceration rates are heavily skewed toward one racial group, then human development is neither just nor balanced.

JABSI builds on the framework of Maqasid al-Sharia, which has evolved over centuries. Early scholars identified five essentials: protection of faith, life, intellect, lineage, and property. Later refinements added justice and liberty. Today, a seven-point model provides a comprehensive lens:

JABSI builds on the framework of Maqasid al-Sharia, which has evolved over centuries. Early scholars identified five essentials: protection of faith, life, intellect, lineage, and property. Later refinements added justice and liberty. Today, a seven-point model provides a comprehensive lens:

1. Preservation of Religion or Religiosity

2. Preservation of Life

3. Preservation of Family

4. Preservation of Intellect

5. Preservation of Wealth

6. Preservation of Justice

7. Preservation of Liberty and Freedom

These categories open up new kinds of questions:

• Are families supported or undermined?

• Do minorities have equal access to education and employment?

• Are wealth and power concentrated in a few hands, or broadly shared?

• Do citizens live in dignity, or in quiet desperation?

What Unjust Development Looks Like

To see why this matters, consider a few examples.

• Global inequality. Oxfam reported in 2014 that the richest 85 individuals owned as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion. Today, 20% of humanity controls 80% of resources.

• Racial disparities in the U.S. African Americans, 13% of the population, have shorter life expectancies, higher infant mortality, and consistently higher unemployment rates than Whites, along with much lower representation in elite professions.

• Muslims in India. Nearly 14% of the population, yet only 4% among university graduates, 3% among professionals, and 6% in bureaucracy. The Sachar Report concluded their living conditions lag behind even Dalits and Adivasis.

These cases reveal development that may look impressive on paper but is deeply unbalanced and unjust.

Next Steps for JABSI

The vision is ambitious but practical. A pilot project is planned for 2026, focusing on three diverse countries with sharp ethno-religious divides: the U.S., India, and Malaysia. This will involve:

• Assembling a multi-disciplinary team of scholars.

• Selecting variables rooted in Maqasid al-Sharia.

• Collecting and analyzing public and private data.

• Designing surveys to capture overlooked aspects like family well-being and dignity.

• Publishing the first JABSI reports for these countries as a test case.

The long-term aim is to create a credible, comprehensive, and justice-centered index that offers a truer reflection of human progress—one that challenges nations not just to grow, but to grow justly.

Final Thought

Indexes matter because what we measure shapes what we strive for. If GDP is the yardstick, nations will chase production. If freedom indexes dominate, nations will stage elections without empowering people. But if justice becomes the measure—justice across race, religion, class, and gender—then development itself may take on a more humane meaning.

The Just and Balanced Society Index is not just another report. It is a call to reimagine progress, to place human dignity at the center, and to remind us that prosperity without justice is not prosperity at all.

Full presentation:

The Foundation Years: Forging a Nation (1947–1970)

Freedom came at a devastating cost. The Partition displaced over 14 million people and unleashed communal violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet, under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership, India embraced a secular, democratic vision. One of the fledgling nation’s early successes was the largely peaceful integration of more than 500 princely states, masterfully negotiated by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

The Constitution of 1950, drafted under Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s supervision, granted fundamental rights to its citizens, abolished untouchability, and laid the framework for a federal, parliamentary democracy. Nehru’s economic vision was similar to Soviet-style Five-Year Plans and prioritized agriculture, industry, and infrastructure, while landmark institutions like the IITs and IIMs planted seeds for future technological and managerial excellence.

The 1956 linguistic reorganization of states defused domestic potential unrest by acknowledging India’s linguistic diversity, while internationally, the Non-Aligned Movement positioned India as a leader of the developing world during the Cold War. Yet, challenges persisted: the humiliating 1962 defeat to China prompted military reforms, and the 1965 war with Pakistan tested India’s resilience under Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who rallied the nation with “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan (Hail the soldier and hail the farmer).”

The late 1960s brought the Green Revolution, led by M.S. Swaminathan, which ended India’s dependence on food imports and laid the foundation for agricultural self-sufficiency. Parallel advancements in space and atomic energy began under visionaries Vikram Sarabhai and Homi Bhabha, foreshadowing India’s future as a technology power.

The Indira Gandhi Era: Power, Crisis, and Transformation (1971–1984)

Indira Gandhi’s premiership redefined India’s political landscape. Her most decisive moment came in 1971 during the Bangladesh Liberation War, when India’s military intervention led to the creation of Bangladesh, cementing its regional dominance.

However, her tenure is equally remembered for the 1975–77 Emergency, which threatened India’s democratic existence. Civil liberties were suspended, opposition leaders jailed, and the press censored. Yet, the people’s verdict in the 1977 elections, voting her out, proved the electorate’s intolerance for authoritarianism.

Economically, her policies leaned toward state control, including bank nationalization which extended credit to rural India, but the “License Raj” stifled private enterprise. By the early 1980s, unrest brewed in Punjab, culminating in Operation Blue Star, which fatally deepened Sikh discontent. Her assassination in 1984 triggered horrific anti-Sikh riots, leaving a deep scar on the national conscience.

Rajiv Gandhi: Modernization and Missteps (1984–1991)

Rajiv Gandhi, initially reluctant to enter politics, became Prime Minister after his mother’s assassination. Young and tech-savvy, he championed computers, telecommunications, and administrative reforms, setting the stage for India’s future IT revolution.

Yet his tenure was marred by political miscalculations. The Sri Lankan Peace Keeping mission backfired, insurgencies flared in multiple states, and controversial decisions like overturning the Shah Bano judgment and unlocking the Babri Masjid site, fueled long-term religious polarization. The 1987 Bofors scandal damaged his clean image, contributing to Congress’s electoral decline.

In 1991, while domestic politics was charged by debates over caste reservations and the Ram Temple movement, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) due to his intervention in Sri Lanka.

Economic Liberalization and Rising Polarization (1991–1998)

India’s economy was on the brink of collapse in 1991, with foreign reserves barely covering two weeks of imports. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh responded with sweeping liberalization by dismantling industrial licenses, slashing tariffs, and opening sectors to foreign investment.

Subsequently, growth surged, and the IT sector began its meteoric rise, transforming cities like Bangalore into global tech hubs. However, this economic optimism was shadowed by religious strife. The demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 triggered nationwide riots, catapulting the BJP into the political mainstream and reshaping electoral politics along sharper communal lines.

By the late ’90s, coalition politics became the norm, reflecting India’s increasing regional diversity in governance.

Political Maturation and the BJP’s Rise (1998–2004)

Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s leadership blended nationalism with pragmatism. In 1998, India conducted nuclear tests at Pokhran, asserting its strategic autonomy. The Kargil War in 1999 reaffirmed military resolve, while infrastructure projects like the Golden Quadrilateral modernized transport.

Despite ideological divides, Vajpayee extended peace overtures to Pakistan, though relations were marred by cross-border terrorism. The late ’90s and early 2000s also saw devastating terror attacks and the 2002 Gujarat riots, events that deeply polarized the public.

UPA Era: Growth and Governance, Then Scandal (2004–2014)

The United Progressive Alliance, led by Manmohan Singh, oversaw a decade of strong growth, anchored by landmark welfare laws for rural employment, the Right to Information Act for transparency, and the Right to Education for universal schooling. India’s economy expanded rapidly, and its global stature rose.

Yet, the second UPA term was consumed by corruption scandals—2G spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Coalgate—that eroded credibility. Economic slowdown, inflation, and a perception of weak leadership fueled public discontent.

Into this atmosphere stepped Narendra Modi, promising decisive governance, development, and a break from dynastic politics. His 2014 electoral victory—282 seats for the BJP—was a political earthquake, marking the decline of the Nehru-Gandhi era and the rise of a more centralized, personality-driven right-wing politics.

Conclusion: A Democratic Journey Still Unfolding

Between 1947 and 2014, India’s journey was anything but linear. It weathered wars, famines, insurgencies, and political crises, yet democracy endured. Economic reforms lifted millions, technological advances reshaped global perceptions, and the political center of gravity shifted from elite consensus to mass mobilization.

The story of India in these decades is one of resilience—a nation that refused to fracture despite deep divisions, continually reinventing itself to meet the challenges of each era. In 2014, as power shifted decisively to a new political order, one truth remained unchanged: India’s unity in diversity is both its greatest challenge and its enduring strength.

References:

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Indian History After Independence: A 2-Part Series

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What are Movements?

Social movements are collective efforts by groups of people to drive or resist a particular social change. This effort is organized around a shared value or goal. The scope of movements can be local, national, or even global. The usual means employed by movements are protests, advocacy, communication, and legal fights. The majority of movements fall into one of the four categories although there are many classifications that are possible:

• Reform movements: e.g. Civil rights movements

• Revolutionary movements: e.g. French revolution

• Resistance movements: e.g. Anti-colonial movements

• Religious movements: e.g. Salafi movement

These are pure archetypes, and many movements are a combination of the above. For example the Islamic movements around the world can be classified as religious-socio-political reform movements. Movements may seem spontaneous or driven by singular visionaries, but beneath the surface, movements often emerge from something deeper and less dramatic: habits.

The book The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, is a good beginner’s reference on how individual patterns of behavior scale up into collective actions that can transform societies. From this perspective, the key to understanding how movements grow lies in the social habits that bind people together.

The core idea of this analytical framework is that habits function in society much like they do in individuals. The same neurological loop that helps an individual form a routine (cue → routine → reward) also applies at the group level. When habits are shared among a network of people, they create a framework that movements can use to organize, communicate, and grow.

The Rosa Parks Example: From Individual Act to Social Movement

The story of Rosa Parks is iconic in the history of Civil rights movement. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a key event in the American civil rights movement. However, Parks wasn’t the first person to be arrested for such defiance. Others before her had challenged segregation laws, but their actions didn’t spark the same response.

So what made Rosa Parks different?

The answer lies in her social networks. Parks was deeply embedded in several communities: she was active in her church, volunteered with numerous organizations, and had friendships across economic and racial lines. When she was arrested, her wide-ranging connections ensured that people across various groups felt personally invested in her situation. Her action triggered a social chain reaction because it resonated within a web of strong and weak social ties.

Strong Ties vs. Weak Ties

Duhigg draws on sociological research to explain the difference between strong ties—the bonds between close friends or family—and weak ties—connections with acquaintances or people we don’t know well.

• Strong ties are essential for immediate support.

• But weak ties are crucial for scaling a movement.

When Rosa Parks was arrested, her strong ties ensured initial support. But it was her weak ties that allowed the message to spread beyond her immediate circle. People who barely knew her, or only knew someone who knew her, felt compelled to join the boycott because of the expectation that this was what people like them were doing. That social expectation is a habit, a behavioral rule reinforced by observation, reputation, and shared identity. This phenomenon was also confirmed by studying the profiles of those who stayed and those who left the Mississippi Summer Project (also known as Freedom Summer), a voter registration drive aimed at increasing Black voter turnout in Mississippians. But due to the dangers surrounding the project, more than 300 volunteers backed out. Upon closer analysis, it was observed that those who chose to stay did so because backing out would have led to shame or disapproval from their weak social ties, whereas those who left lacked such ties and thus felt less social pressure to remain.

This is how movements gain momentum. They move from personal conviction (strong ties)→ shared norms (weak ties)→ collective action.

The Role of Leadership and Identity

But habits and networks alone are not enough. For a movement to sustain itself, it must transform into something self-reinforcing, i.e., a source of identity. In the Montgomery boycott, this happened through the emergence of new leaders, particularly Martin Luther King Jr., who helped give the protest a voice and a moral framework. He offered a vision that turned participation into a declaration of personal and group identity.

When people began attending meetings, organizing carpools, or walking to work, they weren’t just acting on behalf of Rosa Parks. They were saying, This is who I am now. This transformation, from action to identity, is what converts a temporary protest into a lasting movement. This is the third stage of movement formation that Duhigg identifies.

To recap, the three stages of movement formation and endurance are:

1. A small group initiates change through strong ties.

2. The movement spreads through weak ties and shared expectations.

3. The movement endures by creating a new identity for its members.

These stages mirror the habit loop: a cue (injustice), a routine (boycott, protest), and a reward (dignity, identity, solidarity).

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Social Habits in Modern Movements

These insights aren’t limited to historical examples; digital platforms have made it easier to spread weak-tie connections. Online petitions, viral hashtags, and social media campaigns often depend on weak ties, with people sharing and acting not because they are deeply involved, but because their peers expect them to care. This can create powerful flashpoints of action, but Duhigg warns that without the third stage, involving identity and leadership, such movements risk fizzling out.

Lessons for Organizers and Leaders

So what does this tell us about creating change?

1. Don’t underestimate the power of existing networks. Movements rarely start from scratch; they grow through people who already trust and know one another.

2. Build bridges through weak ties. To scale beyond a small group, organizers need to reach people who are only loosely connected but open to influence.

3. Create rituals and norms. When expectations become shared habits, participation becomes automatic.

4. Provide a moral narrative. Sustained change requires more than routines; it requires people to see themselves differently.

In short, social habits make it easier for people to act in concert. Movements succeed when these habits are reinforced across a network, spread through broader society, and eventually internalized as identity.

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Conclusion

To wrap up, Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit offers a compelling introductory framework for understanding how social movements are not just about ideology or leadership but about habits. From the daily routines that build trust within small groups to the public behaviors that signal participation to wider audiences, habits shape the structure and strength of collective action. In a world hungry for change, recognizing and leveraging the power of social habits may be one of the most important tools at our disposal.

Reference:

• Duhigg, C. (2012), “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business"

• Bi-Weekly MINE presentation:

During Ali Shariati’s time, Iran was ruled by the ruthless monarch Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who maintained power through western government support and his repressive secret police, SAVAK. The Shah has been installed in power after the 1953 U.S.- and British-backed coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Shariati’s work, which was developed during this era, synthesized modern socialism with traditional Islamic thought, adapting revolutionary theories from thinkers like Marx and Fanon to fit the Iranian context. However, understanding Shariati is not straightforward. Over time, he became a symbol for competing political groups, leading to selective quoting and even the circulation of questionable works falsely attributed to him.

This post, based on a presentation titled "Ali Shariati: An Introduction to His Life, Times, and Sociopolitical Thought"(video link), attempts to objectively describe his work and his influence on the changes that were to follow in Iran. We highly recommend watching the video to get a complete understanding of his work. His work can be understood as three overlapping personas:

• The sociologist, concerned with the dialectic between theory and practice and the decline of revolutionary energy;

• The devout believer, convinced that revolutionary Shi’ism could resist bureaucratic stagnation;

• And the public speaker, who carefully navigated the surveillance of the secret police and the suspicion of the ‘ulama’.

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A Life Dedicated to Activism and Thought

Ali Shariati was born in 1933 near Mashhad and raised in a scholarly, reform-minded household led by his father, Mohammad Taqi Shari’ati, a cleric often labeled a Sunni, Baha’i, or Wahhabi by conservative ulama in Iran for his progressive views. Both joined the Movement of God-Worshiping Socialists, which first attempted to merge Shi’ism with European socialism in Iran. During his work as a teacher, Ali Shariati wrote Abu Zarr: The God-Worshiping Socialist, portraying Abu Zarr (R.Z) as the first Muslim socialist. Shariati earned a Ph.D. in history and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris (1960–1965) during an era that coincided with the Algerian and Cuban revolutions, exposing him to radical left ideas of thinkers like Sartre, Fanon, Guevara, Giap, and Garaudy. He became active in the Iranian Student associations, and translated and critiqued many of the work of leftist thinkers like Fanon, whose work he admired but critiqued some of his ideas like his dismissal of religion in anti-imperial struggles. Shariati argued that cultural and religious identity was essential for Third World resistance.

He was imprisoned after his return in 1965 and suffered many career setbacks. By 1972, the government shut down Tehran’s Husseinieh-e Ershad, where he was teaching, citing accusations of "Islamic Marxism" and connection with Mojahedin-e Khalq.

Reformist clerics also criticized him for prioritizing sociology over theology. Arrested again, he was imprisoned until 1975 and then kept under house arrest until May 1977. He fled to London and died a month later at age 43. While a British coroner ruled it a heart attack, many of his followers suspected foul play.

Iran's Context: A Neo-colonial Era and Shariati’s Ideology

Shariati's life unfolded in the 1950s-1970s, an era marked by the influence of the Anglo-Iranian oil company, and widespread national dissent. This volatile environment shaped his ideas, making them particularly relevant to the discontented masses and intelligentsia.

A central tenet of Shariati's thought was his vision of "Dynamic, Revolutionary Islam", which posited that faith was not merely a system of dogmas or rituals, an opiate against sufferings, but a powerful tool for critically engaging with society and provide solutions to concrete, material issues.

He advocated for two interconnected and concurrent revolutions in Third World countries like Iran: a national revolution to end imperial domination, and a social revolution to eliminate exploitation, eradicate poverty, and modernize the economy.

Shariati assigned the intelligentsia (rushanfekran) the crucial task of leading these two efforts. He believed they could grasp societal contradictions, raise public consciousness, learn from global experiences, and guide the masses towards the future. He stressed that the return to true Islam would be led by these progressive intellectuals, not the traditional ‘ulama’. He argued that the Islamic "Renaissance," "Reformation," and "Enlightenment" would be brought about by the intelligentsia, whom he considered the true interpreters and genuine exponents of dynamic Islam.

He emphasized that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) aimed to establish an umma (community) in constant motion towards progress and social justice, and a nezam-e tawhid (unitary society) based on public virtue, justice, equality, brotherhood, and public ownership, ultimately striving for a classless society.

Shariati's Stance on Marxism and Clericalism

Shariati's relationship with Marxism appeared complex and contradictory, as he both vehemently denounced and freely borrowed from it. He resolved this by distinguishing between three "Marxes" and three varieties of Marxism:

• The young Marx, predominantly an atheistic philosopher, whose atheistic aspects were overemphasized by European socialists.

• The mature Marx, primarily a social scientist who revealed how rulers exploited the ruled and how historical determinism (not economic) functioned within the socioeconomic base and political-ideological superstructure. Shariati largely accepted this scientific aspect of Marxism, agreeing that understanding history and society required Marxist knowledge, that human history is a history of class struggles, and that Marx was less "materialistic" than many "idealists".

• The elder Marx, mainly a politician whose predictions were often politically expedient but did not fully reflect his social science methodology. Shariati argued this "vulgar" Marxism, distorted by Engels and institutionalized into rigid dogma by Stalin, overshadowed "scientific" Marxism.

He particularly critiqued the Tudeh Party in Iran for mechanically applying Marxism without considering Iran's unique historical context and for offending religious sensibilities with atheistic titles. Consistent with his earlier discussions with Fanon, Shariati opposed classical Marxist views of nationalism as a ruling-class tool. He insisted that Third World peoples needed to rediscover their national heritage and popular culture, particularly Shi'ism in Iran, to effectively combat imperialism and overcome social alienation.

While advocating a return to Islam, Shariati was a fierce critic of the traditional ‘ulama’ for two reasons:

• He asserted that true Islam demanded fighting for justice, equality, and eradication of poverty, not mere "concern". He accused the ‘ulama’ of becoming part of the ruling class, and betraying the goals of Islam.

• He also criticized their opposition to progressive Western ideas, their demand for "blind obedience," their monopoly over religious texts, and their failure to embrace a dynamic, revolutionary world outlook from the scriptures. Shariati's arguments implicitly challenged the clergy's legitimacy, suggesting that revolutionaries, even uneducated ones, could be better Muslims than learned but conservative ‘ulama’, and that social science was key to understanding the national-social revolutions.

Enduring Legacy and Contemporary Relevance

Shariati's thoughts encourage a deeper analysis of the Qur’an and the Prophet’s traditions, understanding that prophets emerged from the masses to introduce new visions and foster collective energy. He emphasizes the necessity of a deep study of history to understand one's present position, which, in turn, reveals the path forward. An "enlightened soul" is self-conscious, understands its historical and social context, and assumes social responsibility. Finally, Shariati stressed that the acquisition of knowledge must lead to action; while a scientist discovers "facts," an enlightened person identifies "truth," and knowledge in Islam is seen as a divine light and source of social conscience that prompts action. Although his ideas had a profound influence on Iran and paved the way for the overthrow of Shah in 1979, Iran took a different path under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, who advocated and led the country to the idea of velayat-e faqih (rule by a supreme Islamic jurist) unlike Shariati’s idea of intelligentsia (rushanfekran) leading this effort.

Even today, the dominant Islamic Republican Party eulogizes him, selectively quoting his views on Shi’i roots, cultural revolution, and anti-imperialism, while censoring his anti-clerical stances and Western influences. His thoughts continue to resonate deeply within Iranian society.

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This post gives an overview of Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs represent a major leap in AI, capable of understanding and generating human-like text across a wide range of applications. Foundation Models (FMs) are large, general-purpose machine learning (ML) models trained on massive volumes of unlabeled, self-supervised data. LLMs are a type of Foundation Model that undergo specialized training on extensive text datasets, allowing them to learn linguistic patterns. They, in turn, produce output across various domains, including code, books, articles, videos and conversations. The term "large" refers to the vast amount of data on which the model is trained—on the order of petabytes (10 followed by 15 zeroes).

LLMs are built on three essential elements:
1. Data: Data is the lifeblood of any LLM. These models are trained on enormous corpora of text data sourced from a variety of domains—books, websites, articles, social media, software code repositories, and more.
2. Architecture (transformer): The architecture refers to the underlying neural network design used to process and generate language.
3. Training: Training is the process by which the model learns to understand and generate language.

The transformer architecture underpins their ability to process complex, context-rich sequences of text. The model learns relationships between words and concepts (e.g., “sky,” “blue,” “vast”) through iterative training. The quality and diversity of the data significantly impacts performance.

LLMs power applications such as Natural Language Understanding (NLU), enabling advanced chatbots, virtual assistants, and conversational agents. They excel in Content Generation, producing human-like text for articles, scripts, marketing, and even software code. In Software Development, LLMs assist in writing, debugging, and documenting code, making programming more accessible and efficient.

In language translation, LLMs can handle over 50 languages with remarkable accuracy and fluency. They also improve grammar and readability. Text Summarization and Sentiment Analysis further demonstrate their versatility—summarizing large documents and interpreting emotional tones from social media or reviews.

LLMs also shine in Question Answering, offering detailed, context-aware responses in natural language. Their prompt-based flexibility allows users to direct the model to perform diverse tasks creatively. This is enabled by zero-shot and one-shot learning, allowing them to generalize to new tasks with little or no prior examples—an ability that underpins the emerging field of Prompt Engineering. Prompt engineering is the practice of designing and refining inputs (prompts) given to AI models—especially LLMs like ChatGPT, GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini—to get accurate, reliable, and useful outputs.

The advantages of LLMs are profound:

• Zero-shot learning enables adaptability without retraining (one-shot learning is training the model with one example and multi-shot training is training the model with many examples)

• Scalability allows them to process and understand vast text collection

• Fine-tuning customizes models for specific domains or industries

• Automation enhances productivity by reducing manual work in writing, coding, and analysis

• Another major application of LLMs is their ability to generate videos from text prompts, enabling natural language to drive visual content creation.

In summary, Large Language Models (LLMs) are powerful AI systems built on transformer architecture, trained on enormous datasets to understand and generate human language. Their capabilities span from conversation and translation to coding and summarization. With prompt engineering and fine-tuning, LLMs continue to evolve, unlocking new possibilities across industries and reshaping how we interact with technology. We highly encourage you to go over the video presentation below to get complete explanation on this topic:

Allah encourages us to be close to those who are materially less fortunate (orphans, wayfarers, impoverished, etc.) and to empower and uplift them, regardless of race, ethnic origin, or religion. We are also encouraged as Muslims to ponder upon the dynamics of the world and develop alternative solutions to inadequate methods of societal function, just as the prophets successfully did before us. One of the methods in which we can gain a glimpse into the modern era and the current system that causes suffering in the global south and east will be discussed in this post. This post is drawn from our bi-weekly presentation in which our speaker Yusha Obi explores world system theory through the lens of thinkers like Ibn Khaldun and Immanuel Wallerstein. A detailed presentation can be found on Youtube.

World-Systems Theory (WST), formally developed by Immanuel Wallerstein in the 20th century, serves as a comprehensive framework for understanding the economic development of history in the modern age, spanning from the 16th century to the present. It offers a holistic view of the contemporary world and its origins by integrating insights from disciplines such as economics, history, sociology, and political science. A central tenet of World-Systems Theory (WST) is that global economic inequality and poverty are direct consequences of the international global economic market. This market is conceptualized as being structured into interconnected zones: the periphery, semi-periphery, and core countries. How does the Qur’anic narrative relate to this approach of engaging with history, society, and economics?

Qur'anic Description of World System

The Holy Qur'an articulates many of the dynamics found in World-Systems Theory (WST), offering not only a clear lens for understanding societal behavior but also guiding its readers toward self-reflection, justice, and the fulfillment of their moral responsibilities.

• Cycles of Power and the Rise & Fall of Civilizations: Verses like Surah Ar-Rum (30:42) and Surah Ghafir (40:82) encourage travel and observation of the fate of previous civilizations. These verses promote a historical and sociological perspective, similar to Wallerstein's long durée, urging reflection on the structural factors behind the rise and fall of societies.

• Global Inequality and Oppression (Zulm): Ayat such as Surah An-Nisa (4:75), which speaks of fighting for the oppressed, and Surah Al-Qasas (28:4), depicting Pharaoh as a symbol of systemic oppression, are directly relevant. These verses draw a parallel to how core powers in WST maintain dominance through political, economic, and often violent means.

• Materialism and Global Capitalist Logic: Passages critiquing the accumulation and counting of wealth (Surah Al-Humazah 104:1–3) and the desire for material possessions (Surah Al-Imran 3:14) offer a critique of the fetishization of wealth. This mirrors Wallerstein’s critique of capitalism’s tendency to commodify human and natural life for endless accumulation.

Intellectual Traditions Behind WST

WST is built on top of several significant intellectual traditions:

• "Long-duration view of history," which originated in France and was championed by Fernand Braudel. This perspective is closely associated with the Annales School of Social History, which emerged in France in the early 20th century. Scholars from this school challenged historical approaches that focused narrowly on political events, diplomacy, and prominent individuals, instead advocating for the study of longue durée (long duration) of events, historical structures, and underlying economic and social realities.

• "History from below," which is the methodology developed by Ibn Khaldun, who many in both Western and Eastern worlds regard as the father of social sciences. In this method, the focus is on the lived experiences of ordinary people and the underlying basis of political episodes. His seminal work, The Muqaddimah, is noted for challenging traditional historical analysis that centered solely on kings and their reigns, instead advocating for approaching history from different angles and perspectives. This emphasis on deep historical structures and the realities affecting populations resonates with WST's longue durée approach and its focus on the systemic forces shaping global conditions.

• Marxism: WST incorporates a Marxist critique of capitalism. The sources also point to Lenin's Theory of Imperialism as particularly relevant, explaining how competitive markets can lead to monopolies and an accumulation of surplus capital within nations. According to this theory, nations then seek to export this capital in pursuit of greater profits, resulting in imperialism and the extraction of resources from other regions.

• Structuralist International Relations Theory, which in the context of the international market, suggests that countries act in their self-interest to maintain their own sovereignty. Two main theories in this domain are (1) Modernization theory and (2) Dependency Theory. Modernization theory posits that poor nations are simply at an earlier stage of development compared to wealthy nations and require support to advance, and with time they will get into the league of prosperous nations. In contrast, Dependency Theory argues that wealthy countries extract resources and raw materials from poor countries, describing a sustained flow from the "periphery" into the "core". This is the origin of Wallerstein's use of these terms. Dependency Theory places a great emphasis on the class structures within an interconnected global political and economic system.

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The Core-Periphery Structure in WST

WST categorizes countries into three primary zones based on their role in the global economic system:

• Core Countries: These nations are positioned to exploit the periphery, primarily utilizing finance capital, multinational corporations, and hard power. They typically possess stronger, more complex state institutions capable of managing economic affairs effectively, and their central governments control sophisticated bureaucracies and powerful military forces.

• Semi-Periphery Countries: Occupying a midway position, these countries are subject to exploitation by the core while simultaneously exploiting peripheral countries. Semi-peripheral nations actively strive to transition into the core or, alternatively, to avoid descending into the periphery.

• Periphery Countries: These nations are exploited by the core and semi-periphery, serving as sources from which resources are extracted. They provide the essential resources needed by core countries to produce goods for the global market.

The historical narrative of the modern era, according to WST, is largely viewed through the evolution of this world economy. Over the past 500-600 years, various nations have risen to dominate this system, with the current dominant nation being the United States. Since the advent of capitalism, core nations have consistently competed for control over global resources and sought to establish their hegemony over the periphery. Replacing the era of decolonization and World War II, new forms of colonization and dominance have taken root referred to as Neo-Colonialism.

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Conclusion: An Integrated Understanding

By drawing together the threads from Ibn Khaldun and Immanuel Wallerstein's World-Systems Theory, we gain a rich, multi-layered approach to understanding global dynamics. Ibn Khaldun provides the foundational call for deep historical analysis focusing on underlying social and economic realities and the experiences of people, moving beyond mere political narratives. Wallerstein's WST offers a structural blueprint of the modern global economy, highlighting the mechanisms of inequality and exploitation inherent in the core-periphery structure that has developed over the past 500-600 years. The Islamic perspective infuses this analysis with profound ethical dimensions, viewing issues like oppression, inequality, and materialism through a divine lens. It provides both a critique of unjust systems and a spiritual imperative towards justice and strategic action, while maintaining the theological grounding in divine sovereignty.

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1. Cognitive limitations: Humans can only process a certain amount of information at once.

2. Incomplete information: People never have a complete picture of every possible scenario.

3. Time constraints: In real life, people have limited time to analyze every option.

4. Contextual decision making: People consider the context of their decisions, unlike a perfectly rational actor.

Due to these constraints, people settle for a "good enough" choice, a process Simon calls satisficing. Instead of evaluating every option, decision-makers often choose the first available option that seems appropriate.

Bounded rationality can be used to model more realistic economics, taking human limitations into account. It can also be used to design policies that recognize how people actually make decisions, rather than how they theoretically should make them. For instance, a consumer might choose a product based on brand recognition instead of researching every possible option. Similarly, when choosing a job, a person may consider work-life balance and alignment with their values, rather than solely focusing on salary.

The Rational Man (Homo Economicus)

The concept of a rational man or Homo Economicus emerged from the works of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith. It posits that humans are capable of making perfectly rational decisions to maximize their profit or utility. This model assumes that a rational man answers three key questions when making a decision:

1. What is possible?

2. What can be achieved?

3. Given the constraints, what are the best options to align with the desired outcome?

A rational man will pick the optimal option by applying a mathematical relation to every possible choice. This decision can be modeled as a choice problem, where the rational man chooses one element from a set of options. For example, when choosing food at a restaurant, the rational man picks one option from the menu that maximizes their utility.

Assumptions of the Rational Man Model:

• Complete knowledge: The rational man has absolute knowledge of the problem.

• Clear preferences: The rational man knows what they are supposed to choose.

• Complex calculations: The rational man can make complicated calculations.

• Independent choices: Choices and preferences are independent, meaning a rational man will make the same choice in different scenarios.

• Logically equivalent alternatives: Replacing a choice with another that is logically equivalent will not affect the rational man’s selection.

• Calculation of consequences: A rational man calculates the consequences of each decision.

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The rational man model, although based on perfect rationality, is not realistic. Traditional economics is often more interested in the behavior of the decision-maker than in the process leading to the decision. For example, consumer theory suggests that a rational consumer will maximize their utility given their budget and the prices of goods.

Critiques of the Rational Man Model

The rational man model faces several critiques, noting that real-world decision-making is not always rational:

• Framing effect: Choices are affected by how they are presented or framed. For example, people are more likely to undergo a needed surgery if chance of success is presented as 99.9% vs chance of failure is 0.1%.

• "As if" approach: Real-world decisions are affected by past experience. For example: Instead of properly evaluating price and features of new smart phones, we buy it because Samsung has a reliable product.

• Tendency to simplify problems: People simplify problems instead of analyzing every option. Example: A product will be repurchased even in the presence of better products in a market the last purchase was good enough .

• Search for reasons: People choose options based on factors like values instead of solely on rational factors. Example: People will buy product from their homeland instead of looking for the best combination of quality and price and people will reject products from countries which are involved in Genocide.

Assumption of Rationality in Game Theory

Game theory is a field to study strategies involving entities who interact with each other to maximize their gain and minimize their pain (we have discussed Game Theory at some details in our previous post). It demonstrates that people do not act perfectly rational in real life. Key components of game theory include:

• Players: Multiple decision-makers or participants.

• Strategies: Actions that players employ.

• Payoff: The outcome or result of the interactions.

Traditional Game Theory assumes that entities always act rationally when making decisions. However, this doesn't always align with real-world behavior. Consider the Ultimatum Game, an economic experiment involving two players who decide how to split a sum of money. The first player proposes a division, and the second player can either accept or reject it. If the second player accepts, both players receive the proposed amounts. If rejected, neither player gets anything.

If humans acted as Homo Economicus, the second player would accept any offer, no matter how unfair, since receiving something is better than nothing. However, in practice, unfair offers often lead to rejection. For instance, if the first player proposes keeping $85 out of $100 while giving the second player only $15, the second player is much more likely to reject the deal out of a sense of fairness, resulting in both players receiving nothing. In contrast, a more equitable division, such as $50-$50, is far more likely to be accepted. This experiment demonstrates that strict rationality isn’t always the most effective strategy, as emotional and social factors like fairness and reciprocity heavily influence real-world decision-making.

Liberalism and Boundary Rationality

Liberalism, like the rational man model, assumes that individuals act rationally in making decision which will both benefit themselves and the society at large. Liberalism can be traced back to the Enlightenment, where philosophers advocated for individual freedom over biblical laws. The basic tenets of Liberalism include:

• Freedom: Individuals have the right to choose from various options.

• Equality: Everyone should have equal opportunities.

• Personal liberty: The freedom to make individual choices.

• Free market and competition: Businesses and agents compete with each other to maximize profit.

Key thinkers in liberalism include John Locke, who advocated for individual rights and limited government, John Stuart Mill, who enhanced the philosophy by emphasizing Utilitarian side of human being, and John Rawls, who made major contributions to the concept of Justice. Locke's "Two Treatises of Government" criticized divine rights (especially associated with Monarchy) and advocated for individual rights, asserting that people are born equal and independent. The U.S. founding fathers, adopted this philosophy which is evident from the Declaration of Human Rights, which echoes this idea, stating that all men are created equal with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Challenges to Liberalism

Liberalism faces challenges because it relies on the idea of rational individuals with complete information. These challenges include:

• Incomplete information: Individuals often lack complete information to make rational decisions such as to elect the most eligible leader in an election.

• Lack of collective good: Liberalism emphasizes individual benefit, potentially overlooking the good of society as a whole.

• Self-interest: The emphasis on maximizing profit and utility may not lead to the best outcomes for the society.

• Irrationality: People cannot always maximize profit or utility due to their bounded rationality, as shown in Game Theory.

The Insufficiency of Rationality and Need for Divine Guidance

Human knowledge is based on five senses, and intellect. However, even when using both, people are still limited by bounded rationality. In Islamic framework, revelation, or wahy, provides guidance from God that completes the knowledge. Using the example of a gun, one can use senses and intellect to know how the gun works and how it came into being, but one cannot use them to know about the legal uses of the gun. This is where wahy (Divine revelation) comes in.

As stated earlier per Herbert Simon’s analysis, a perfect rational man is nothing but a fiction. But even if we assume that such a rational man exists, he will be unable to know what is the correct decision when faced with a moral question, like the proper punishment for a murderer.

The limitation of rationality, therefore, poses a serious challenge to the philosophy of Liberalism and underscores the importance of guidance from a higher authority in matters related to freedom, justice and good decision making.

The above post was derived from our Bi-Weekly MINE presentation by