I tell you that the reason why we attach significance to economic matters is that the economy plays a very important role in the Islamic government. If some people think that the Islamic government has ignored engendering wealth, expanding public welfare and creating important and wealth-generating production units, this is a grave mistake because it is not correct. One of the most important bases of the Islamic government is to enrich society and the country and to achieve national wealth. Of course, the outlook of the Islamic government is different from that of materialistic governments and systems – including the ones referred to as capitalist and liberal systems and the ones known as Marxist and socialist systems and other such systems.
In the Islamic government, creating national wealth is a value, but so is distributing it in a fairway. The kind of equality that used to be claimed by socialism – which was never attained of course – is rejected by Islam. In Islam, equality in its socialist sense of the word is completely meaningless, but public welfare has meaning. The public should have welfare. According to our knowledge of communist governments which is complete and thorough – whether the main and the mother governments such as the Soviet Union and the like or the governments which followed this model such as Latin American governments, African governments and some Asian ones - those who chanted the slogan of equality did not take heed of it in practice and as it happens, it was not attainable to begin with.
Islam does not believe in these models, rather it believes in creating national wealth and raising the level of public welfare in society. Of course, in society, some people have more resources and some less. There is nothing wrong with this. However, public resources should be distributed in a fairway. This is the outlook of Islam towards wealth. In the Islamic government, class fissures do not occur naturally, there should not be rifts and fissures. Of course, there are differences between individuals, but there should not be class fissures. Nov 19, 2019