Andersen KG et al. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, March 2020.

Cases of Covid-19 first emerged in December 2019, when a mysterious illness was reported in in the city of Wuhan, China. The cause of the disease was soon confirmed as a new kind of coronavirus, and the infection has since caused a large-scale epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are related to a broad spectrum of illnesses, the first of which was the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in China. A second outbreak of severe illnesses began in 2012 in Saudi Arabia with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). On December 31 of 2019, Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization of an outbreak of a novel strain of coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2 causing severe illness. As of February 20, 2020, nearly 167,500 Covid-19 cases have been reported, though many milder cases have likely gone undiagnosed. More than 6,600 people have already died as a result of contracting this virus – and the numbers will be much higher when you will be reading this article. Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of SARS-CoV-2 very shortly after the epidemic began and made the data available worldwide. The analyses of genomic sequence data have shown that Chinese authorities rapidly detected the epidemic and that the number of Covid-19 cases have been increasing because of human to human transmission after a single introduction into the human population.

Recently, a group of scientists used this sequencing data to explore the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and how it has become the version that it is now. The scientists specifically focused on the genetic codes for spike proteins, the mechanical framework on the outside of the virus that it uses to grab and penetrate the outer walls of human and animal cells. There are 2 major parts of the spike proteins: the receptor-binding domain (RBD), a molecular hook that grips onto host cells, and the cleavage site, a molecular can opener that allows the virus to crack open and enter host cells. The scientists found that the RBD portion of the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins mutated to effectively target a molecular feature on the outside of human cells called ACE2, a receptor normally involved in regulating blood pressure. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was exceptionally effective at binding to human cells, and the scientists concluded this could only be a product after a natural selection process and not the product of human-designed genetic engineering. This evidence was further strengthened by data on SARS-CoV-2’s backbone molecular structure. If someone were to engineer a new coronavirus as a pathogen, they would have constructed it from the backbone of a virus known to cause illness. But the scientists found that the SARS-CoV-2 backbone differed substantially from those of already known coronaviruses and mostly resembled related viruses found in bats and pangolins. These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, basically ruled out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2. Based on their genomic sequencing analysis, scientists came up with two possible scenarios as the most likely origins for SARS-CoV-2.

In the first scenario, the current pathogenic state of SARS-CoV-2 has emerged naturally in non-human hosts such as bats or pangolins and then jumped to humans. Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination. In fact, this is exactly how previous coronavirus outbreaks have emerged, with humans contracting the virus after direct exposure to civets (SARS) and camels (MERS). The researchers proposed horseshoe bats as the most likely reservoir for SARS-CoV-2 as it is very similar to a bat coronavirus. There are no documented cases of direct bat-human transmission so far, suggesting that an intermediate host was likely involved between bats and humans.

In this particular scenario, both of the distinctive features of SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein and the cleavage site would have mutated to their current pathogenic state prior to entering humans. In this case, the current epidemic would probably have emerged rapidly as soon as humans were infected, as the virus would have already equipped with the features that make it pathogenic and able to spread between people.

In the second proposed scenario, a non-pathogenic version of the virus jumped from an animal host into humans and after a mutation process it has acquired its current pathogenic state within the human population. For instance, some coronaviruses from pangolins, armadillo-like mammals found in Asia and Africa, have a spike protein very similar to that of SARS-CoV-2. A coronavirus from a pangolin could possibly have been transmitted to a human, either directly or through an intermediary host such as civets or ferrets.

In this scenario, only the cleavage site could have mutated within a human host, possibly via limited undetected circulation in the human population for months or maybe years prior to the beginning of the epidemic. The researchers found that the SARS-CoV-2 cleavage sites have similarities that resemble strains of bird flu that can transmit easily between people. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, such a virulent cleavage site could have been formed in human cells and soon the current epidemic got initiated, as the coronavirus would possibly have become far more capable of spreading between people.

At this point, it is almost impossible to know for sure which of the scenarios is most likely. If the SARS-CoV-2 entered humans in its current pathogenic form from an animal source, it raises the probability of future outbreaks, as the illness-causing strain of the virus could still be circulating in those animal populations and might come back to humans again. It is still noteworthy that a non-pathogenic coronavirus entering the human population and then acquiring properties similar to SARS-CoV-2, the second scenario, is less likely than the first scenario.

In conclusion, this study brings an evidence-based view to the baseless rumors and conspiracy theories that the SARS-CoV-2 was deliberately manufactured in a lab and concludes that the virus has emerged after a natural process that took place in multiple hosts over time. These genetic findings are also consistent with how SARS-CoV2 is currently behaving. The virus has a low fatality rate (1% to 3.4%) and does not seem to act like a bioweapon compared to pathogens such as anthrax or Ebola. Given the previous coronavirus epidemics and the persistence of the culture of eating exotic mammals in China and other parts of the world, the current COVID19 epidemic is unfortunately not a big surprise for scientists and experts. We have to take necessary measures to be more prepared for such outbreaks that may take place in future.

The rule of Muslims represents a particular period in Spanish history. It was at this time that a substantial part of Spain, known back then as Al-Andalus, came under the control of various Islamic groups. The entire period of Islamic rule lasted from the first conquest in 711 to 1492 when the Christian King Ferdinand reconquered Granada (La Reconquista), thereby extinguishing the rule of Muslims (Crow 1985, p.78).

The Umayyad prince, Abd-ar-Rahman I, established himself as Emir of Cordoba in 756, after the Abbasids supplanted Umayyad rule in Syria (Fletcher 2000, p.64). The Umayyad dynasty first ruled as emirs (756–929), then as caliphs (929–1031), but eventually fell to the invading Berber tribes of North Africa, the Almoravids (1090–1147) and then the Almohads (1147–1248) (Fletcher 2000, p.64). The Muslims of Spain ushered in a period of great creativity and scholarship, in which significant advances in poetry, art, music, calligraphy, botany, historiography, medicine, mathematics, and astronomy were made (Fletcher 2000, p. 65).

Maria Rosa Menocal argues that Al-Andalus was a peaceful society in which Jewish people were free to practice their religion without being subject to the threat of forced conversion or persecution. She further claims that the rulers of Al-Andalus not only gave the Jews the right to maintain their religious identity, they also offered them the opportunity to fully involve themselves in what was then a predominantly Muslim society. Al-Andalus is, therefore, a truly unique example of religious toleration and cultural interaction, one which stands above all others in Medieval Europe.

Menocal claims that the Jews of Spain, that is the Sephardic Jews, enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy as they were considered to be people of a particular status. They were members of the Dhimmi, or “pact,” whereby the Muslim rulers agree to protect and care for non-Muslims insofar as they accede to the laws and regulations of the state (Menocal 2002, p.29). Jews, like Christians, are particularly important to this contract as they are “People of the Book” (Ahl al-Kitâb), the book being the Torah or the Bible, both of which are considered to have been revealed by God in Islam (Lassner 1999, p.106). As monotheistic religions of the Abrahamic tradition, Islam, Judaism and Christianity share common ground.That Spanish Jews were treated with respect by their Islamic rulers is evidenced by the way in which they were permitted to be directly involved in the political process. Menocal refers to several Jewish people who rose to claim positions in the Umayyad dynasty, one such person being Hasdai Ibn Shaprut.

Shaprut served as vizier to Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III (911–961), while also acting as the “prince” or nasi of his own religious community (Menocal 2002, p.79). Shaprut, through his skill and intellect, was able to secure a position of considerable influence and prestige, while retaining his role as a representative of the Jewish community. He served the Umayyad rulers in a variety of ways, including several stints as a foreign ambassador and general secretary (Glick 1979, p.172). Menocal claims that this was not an unusual occurrence or isolated event as Al-Andalus was in fact a “world brightly lit for Jews,” in which they were free to participate in the politics of the state (Menocal 2002, p. 84).

Samuel Ibn Naghrela (Samuel the Nagid, or “prince”) also showed how a Jewish person was able to enjoy a position of power under Islamic rule. Born in 993, he pursued success in a number of fields including as a high-ranking official, poet, statesman and warrior. At thirty-four he was chosen as the first Nagid, or head of the Jewish community, and was later appointed as a vizier and prime minister of Granada (Menocal 2002, p. 104). Jewish people also served as viziers in Zaragoza, Seville, and Almeria during the Muslim rule (Perez 1993, p.10). They were also very active in the economy of Al-Andalus as they had “virtually unlimited opportunities in the booming commercial environment” (Menocal 2002, p. 85). Jewish people were allowed to pursue their vocational interests, and, in time, they came to dominate the financial and mercantile activity of the region (Glick 1979, p. 176).

Menocal attributes the success of the Jewish people in Islamic Spain to their willingness to assimilate, or be “Arabized.” Arabization is the process whereby the Jewish people of Spain sought to understand and to engage with Arabic culture-its language, art, tradition, and values- while still retaining their own sense of identity as a separate community. It is said that the potential for this style of acculturation was great because much of Islamic Spain was highly secular (Glick 1979, p.175). Therefore, the religious affiliation of the individual in Islamic Spain had far less importance, and thus far fewer consequences, than it did elsewhere.

The Jews of Spain excelled in many areas of their society, owing to the tolerance which they had been accorded by their Islamic rulers. They ensured a climate in which Muslims and Jews could live in a state of peaceful cooperation. This happened not by the imposition of one culture on that of another, but a cultural exchange wherein Jews were “able to openly observe and eventually enrich their Judaic and Hebrew heritage and at the same time fully participate in the general cultural and intellectual scene” (Menocal 2002, p. 87). Therefore it can be said that Spain, under the rule of Muslims, was quite tolerant of its Jewish population. The Jews, according to Menocal, did not have “to abandon their orthodoxy to be fully a part of the body politic and culture” (Menocal 2002, p. 86).

Maria Rosa Menocal offers a particular interpretation of this period, one that is certainly not shared by all. Bernard Lewis agrees that the Islamic rulers in Spain treated their Jewish counterparts with some degree of respect (Lewis 1984, p. 9). Lewis refers to the Qur’anic verse (11:62), “Those who believe [the Muslims], and those who profess Judaism, and the Christians and the Sabian, those who believe in God and the Last Day and act righteously, shall have their reward with their Lord,” as the injunction by which Muslims must treat Jews with tolerance (Lewis 1984, p. 13). But Lewis also sees the seeds of hostility and intolerance in the way Muslims treated Jews.

In reality, however, Jews, like Christians, were still defined by their supposed inferiority to that of the Muslim. They were possessors of a religion that was based on authentic revelation, but that incomplete or distorted. They had failed to realize God’s truth in its most perfect form, as it is in Islam.

Bernard Lewis does not limit his perspective to “religious inferiority.” He argues that Muslims restricted Jews’ movement into the wider community. According to him the poll tax, or jizya, a fixed tax that was to be paid by all non-Muslims to the Muslim rulers in return for certain immunities like not going to war, was a “symbolic expression of their (Jews) subordination” to the Muslims (Lewis 1984, p. 14). Restrictions, Lewis argues, were certainly not limited to fiscal servitude, but also applied to the way in which Jewish people conducted themselves in public and private life. A Jewish man could not enter into a marriage with a Muslim woman as that would make a Muslim subordinate to the will of a Dhimmi, though a Muslim man could marry a Jewish woman (Lewis 1984, p. 27).

Generally, the Jewish people were allowed to practice their religion and live according to the laws and scriptures of their community. Furthermore, the restrictions to which they were subject “were social and symbolic rather than tangible and practical in character” (Lewis 1984, p. 26). That is to say, these regulations served to define the relationship between the two communities, and not to oppress the Jewish population.

Norman Roth claims, much like Menocal, that the Jewish population was quite prominent in Spain during the Muslim rule. According to Roth, rarely did “Jews reach such prominent positions of power as they did in Al-Andalus” (Roth 1994, p. 79). This was due, in part, to the fact that they were perceived by the Muslims and Christians of Spain as being “neutral,” that is, without allegiance to either side (Roth 1994, p.79).

While Al-Andalus was a society in which Jews enjoyed a certain degree of freedom, particularly after the advent of the Almohads, Roth claims, some restrictions in clothing were strictly enforced (Roth 1994, p. 167). For instance, the Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf Yaqub (1184–99) made it compulsory for Jews to dress in certain colors (Roth 1994, p. 167), perhaps to distinguish non-Muslim citizens from the Muslims. According to Joseph Perez, the Almohads also instituted religious persecution and forced Jews to convert (Perez 1993, p. 12). In this way, Perez draws a parallel with this period and the one that was to follow, in which Jews were expelled from the newly reclaimed Christian Kingdom of Spain.

The rule of the Moors is a unique period of Spanish history, one that has received much attention from scholars and theologians alike. It was, according to Maria Rosa Menocal, a time in which Jews and Muslims lived a relatively peaceful existence. While the evidence suggests that Jews and Muslims did integrate to an extent, there are also some scholars who suggest that Jews were subject to persecution. Therefore, this period of history offers a lot to be learned for our modern times.

References

• Crow J, 1985, Spain: The Root and the Flower: an interpretation of Spain and the Spanish people, University of California Press, Berkley.
• Fletcher R, 2000, “Islamic Spain,” in Carr R, Spain: A History, Oxford University Press, New York.
• Glick T, 1979, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
• Lassner J, 1999, “Abraham Geiger: A Nineteenth-Century Jewish Reformer on the Origins of Islam,” in Martin Kramer, The Jewish Discovery of Islam, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv.
• Lewis B, 1984, The Jews of Islam, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
• Menocal MR, 2002, Ornament of the World, Little, Brown and Company, Boston.
• Perez, J, 1993, History of a Tragedy, University of Illinois Press, Chicago.
• Ray, J, 2006, The Sephardic Frontier: the Reconquista and the Jewish community in Medieval Iberia, Cornell University Press, New York.
• Roth N, 1994, Jews, Visigoths, and Muslims In Medieval Spain: Cooperation and Conflict, Leiden, New York.

But if you look at nature more carefully, you will find that it does not always seem that way. You may see animals that are strikingly unselfish, most of the time for their own species, such as giving a warning of approaching predators, sharing food, licking others to remove parasites, adopting orphans. And occasionally they are unselfish to other species as well. They fight without killing or even injuring their enemies. Such behavior poses a problem for the Darwinian view of nature; this behavior is known as altruism. But is there really a problem?

Yes, there is!

One of Darwin’s greatest challenges was explaining how altruism could have evolved. For example, consider how a single bird within a flock might act as an emergency alarm, giving a warning call when a predator approaches. By receiving advance warning, the other birds in the flock have a better chance of escaping from the predator. But this comes at a price to the bird that guards the flock. A warning call attracts a lot of attention, making the guard an easier target for the predator.

How could a character for such altruism be passed on from generation to generation if it is the altruists who are more easily eliminated, and should there not be some kind of reward or motivation for this self-sacrifice? At first glance, it seems that if altruistic birds are more likely to be preyed upon, then fewer altruists would survive to reproduce. Eventually, altruism should die out. In fact, it should have died out before we discovered it.

Altruistic behavior

How can we explain this behavior? It is not possible to do so from an organism-centered view. So, let’s imagine a gene that causes the organism containing that gene to behave in such a way that copies of it are made in other organisms. In other words, a bird is only helping the other birds if they have the same type of gene. A gene that makes its owner behave in this particular way, all other things being equal, is likely to survive. But then the natural question is that altruism is only directed to those with the altruistic gene. If the birds without the altruistic gene benefit from the help as much as those with it then how does the survival of the fittest theory favor this gene? It is not easy for a gene to recognize other such genes in other individuals. There must be another solution.

Sharing the same gene

One way of increasing the likelihood for altruism to reach its true target is to keep it within the “family.” If there is a gene for behaving altruistically, then the members of the family are more likely to inherit the same gene than a random member of the population. The closer the family member, the greater the possibility of sharing the gene.

If, for example, an individual had the choice of saving his own life or the lives of two sisters or eight cousins then the survival of the fittest theory should be indifferent about the choice as they will save the same number of genes. But on the other hand if I could save three sisters instead or nine of my cousins then the theory would favor the self-sacrificial act, “saving my kin rather than saving my skin!” Hmm, what do we know, maybe indeed there is a way to be both Darwinist and altruist.

The idea of the “fittest” in Darwin’s theory is the ability of an individual to survive and reproduce and therefore to pass on some of their genes. If a mother gives up her life for her offspring, the mother ceases to exist. But, from another point of view, the mother continues to live on in her child genetically. Although the mother as an individual has not benefited from her altruism, half of her genetic code survives.

This new definition of fitness shifts the focus from individual fitness to family fitness, which takes into account the survival of an individual’s relatives. Evolution is no longer seen simply to be a process of individual selection, but also one of family selection.

Although this selection based on family seems to be a good explanation for our puzzle, at least in theory, there are many immediate questions that spring to mind. Assisting one’s kin often goes in one direction, although one would expect it to be a two-way process as there is symmetry between the genes. And how practical is the process of selecting one’s relatives? How would you differentiate the members of the same flock as to whether they are family or not, the ones that are getting the help secretly “connected”!?

Mathematics and game theory

At this point at least we have arrived at the conclusion that it is quite difficult to explain altruistic behavior in all circumstances. Maybe there is a solution to be found in mathematics, which has solved so many abstract problems.

It would be useful to take a different point of view for the entire matter. Maybe what looks like altruism is indeed to the advantage of the altruist. Two parties could be exchanging altruistic favors and in the end they both are better off. Another question that comes to mind is “Even when everybody knows that cooperation is good for all, why shouldn’t one cheat as this is more beneficial from a selfish point of view?” If everyone were to cooperate, everyone would be better off; but the best for an individual is to pursue their own self-interest, in which case therefore everybody ends up worse off.

A similar change of understanding also happened in economic theory in the 1950’s when the game theory was first introduced into economics. Initially, this theory was intended to deal with the problem of providing a theory for economic and strategic behavior where people interact directly, rather than through the market. Here, games are only used as a metaphor for more serious interactions in a general ecosystem. But the game theory addresses the serious interactions using the metaphor of a game: in these serious interactions, as in games, the individual’s choice is essentially a choice of a strategy, and the outcome of the interaction depends on the strategies chosen by each of the participants. On this interpretation, a study of games may indeed tell us something about serious interactions.

In neoclassical economic theory, to choose rationally is to maximize the rewards for the individual. From one point of view, this is a problem in mathematics: choose the activity that maximizes rewards in any given circumstances. Thus, we may think of rational economic choices as the solution to a mathematical problem. But in the game theory, the case is more complex, since the outcome depends not only on one’s own strategies but also directly on the strategies that have been chosen by other individuals; we can still think of the rational choice of strategies as a mathematical problem – and maximize the rewards of a group of interacting decision makers (Nash equilibrium).

Now that we have realized that we have to move in a somewhat similar direction to the economists, maybe we should consult the experts of the game theory at this point. In the 1980’s Axelrod and Hamilton worked on a famous problem in the game theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma, exactly because it deals with this problem. The rational pursuit of individual self-interest drives everybody into an outcome that is not favored by anybody. Imagine two partners in a crime being interrogated at the same time. Each one has two options, cooperate with the other and keep quiet or betray the other and confess. Case C, we can say, is if both cooperate then the police cannot get much out of them and they will both get a light sentence (2 years); if one defects and the other keeps quiet then the traitor will get an even lighter sentence (1 year) – this is case B. If the one who cooperates gets the longest sentence (10 years), this is the worst end of the deal and we can call this case S. In a case when both betray one another they will both get a sentence (6 years) longer than if they had cooperated but lighter than if one had kept quiet and the other spoke, and this is case D.

Out of the four outcomes, B is the best and S is the worst from an individualistic point of view, while the order of preference is B, C, S, D. We should realize that this is a non-zero sum game. In a zero-sum game, my loss is your gain; for example, if we are trying to divide a certain amount of money in the bank into two, anything over fifty percent for me is a loss for you. On the other hand, in a non-zero sum game I can actually win without you losing. Each suspect has to make their decision without knowing what the other has done. What would a rational suspect do?

The answer is simple; he would betray his partner in crime! Regardless of what the other suspect does, betrayal always pays better than cooperating. Here is the simple reasoning one would follow. Suppose my partner in crime cooperates. I could do quite well by also cooperating, I would get 2 years, (C). But it is even better to betray him, since I would then get 1 year instead of 2, (B). What if he betrays me? If I keep quiet then the worst is going to happen and I will get 10 years, (S), therefore I should defect and get 6 years, (D). In summary, all we are saying is that the second row in the chart is always more favorable than the first row, hence no matter what, a rational prisoner would always betray his partner!

“And here comes the dilemma: it pays each of them to defect, whatever the other one does, yet if both defect, each does less well than if both had cooperated. What is best for each individual leads to a mutual defection, while everybody would be better off with mutual cooperation.”

Fortunately, the dilemma has a solution in our case. So far, we have only played the game once. What happens if the parties play the game repeatedly and for an indefinite number of times? After every single time they play they know that they are likely to meet again later. Under such conditions there is actually a cooperative strategy for the players that could be successful; this is a somewhat twisted version of the cooperation defined earlier in the prisoner’s dilemma case. First of all, we immediately realize that always defecting is clearly not the smartest strategy, knowing that you will meet the other individual again in the future. Instead, consider this natural strategy, called Tit for Tat, which is never to be the first to defect, always imitate the other from his previous move and retaliate only when you have been betrayed. It turns out that this highly cooperative strategy can survive, even though initially it withstands the challenges of readily defecting strategies. And it can be stable against diminishing altogether.

In order for this Tit for Tat strategy to have a chance to work, a critical proportion of the individuals have to cooperate. Otherwise the readily defective strategies would simply destroy the cooperative ones and dominate the whole system. But once the number of individuals who adopt a Tit for Tat strategy exceeds a critical ratio in the population then it survives and reaches a stable ratio able to withstand any other strategy.

Axelrod’s theory is nice and easy to understand, but once again it prompts all sorts of other issues. How frequently the population is able to reach that critical level in the first place? On the other hand, what kind of a memory do individuals need in order to be able to execute a Tit for Tat strategy?

What do we make of it?

We could keep working on expanding these explanations and models, or at least the biologists should. But in any case, in order for any of these models to apply in what we see in nature we have to be demanding of the individuals who form the population. Every single time we come up with a new approach or an extended model it is difficult to explain many of the characteristics of altruistic behavior, even in idealized cases. Either there must be altruistic genes that can recognize the other altruistic genes carried in other individuals, or we all individuals have a well-developed memory that actually remembers all the moves that have been made by other individuals in the population, or one starts from an idealistic state in order to maintain the stability of the system without knowing how we are able to get there in the first place.

It seems that the smarter we get, the better our theories are developed, and the more flawless our models become, the more we realize that all the individuals in the great ecosystem of nature that show some kind of altruistic behavior must have a great deal of knowledge and power over the rest, they must have eyes that see many things about the whole picture and they must have an authority that has a great impact on others, on and on and on.

There are many identified species of phytoplanktons. Phytoplanktons live for a day or two under normal conditions, and when they die they sink to the bottom. As a single-celled organism, phytoplankton is not only one of the main components of marine food chain, it is also assigned with an important role in carbon cycle which keeps atmospheric temperature in balance and the level of oxygen under control. Because of their significance, scientists have always showed considerable attention to phytoplanktons.

Photosynthesis in phytoplanktons

All living things need energy and organic building blocks in order to grow and maintain their lives. Plants transform sunlight into chemical energy and inorganic materials to organic materials. This process is called photosynthesis. Other living organisms consume plants to meet their food and energy needs. Like terrestrial plants, phytoplanktons also have chlorophyll pigments to process photosynthesis. This is how fish and other animals in the oceans obtain their food.

Global effects

The larger the world’s phytoplankton population, the more carbon dioxide gets pulled from the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is responsible for as much as 50% of the total greenhouse effect. There is a divine wisdom behind existence of phytoplanktons in big populations which help with the adjustment of carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere and thereby the greenhouse effect.

Phytoplanktons have an interactive relationship with their environment. This interactive relationship either increases or decreases the population of phytoplanktons in accordance with environmental changes. Scientists have found that a given population of phytoplankton can double once per day. Large populations of this organism, sustained over long periods of time, could significantly lower atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and, in turn, lower average temperatures. Populations of this marine plant will grow or diminish rapidly in response to changes in its environment. Changes in the trends for a given phytoplankton population-such as its density, spatial distribution, and rate of population growth or diminishment-will alert scientists that environmental conditions are changing there.

Phytoplanktons and sulfur cycle

Dimethylsulfide (DMS) is a sulfuric compound which is synthesized by phytoplanktons. This compound has an important role in softening climate and cloud formation. It has a peculiar odor and although it is frequently perceived as a harmfully polluting chemical, it fulfills a very important task within the bio-geo-chemical cycle on Earth. In order to better recognize climate changes on a global scale and to develop smarter environmental politics, we need to know more about this gas compound.

The production of DMS is dependent upon co-existence of various organisms. Some species of phytoplanktons synthesize the dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP) molecule, from which DMS is broken down. Bacteria and phytoplanktons participate in this break down which assimilates DMSP into DMS or other compounds. Some of the produced DMS vaporizes into the atmosphere from the salty sea water and become tropospheric sulfate gas after oxidization. Consequently, this gas plays a direct role in the global radiation balance by the upward scatter of solar radiation, and an indirect role as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Clouds affect the Earth’s radiation balance and thereby greatly influence its temperature and climate. DMS represents 95% of the natural marine flux of sulfur gases to the atmosphere, and scientists estimate that the flux of marine DMS supplies about 50% of the global biogenic source of sulfur to the atmosphere.

In order for the sulfuric cycle in nature to continue, it is necessary that sulfuric compounds are transferred from the ocean to land through the atmosphere. DMS, the source for 95% of natural sulfuric gas coming from the oceans, served as cloud condensation nuclei and helps carry sulfuric compounds move to the land with rain.

DMS emissions that originate from phytoplanktons play a significant role in climate formations. One third of the radiation coming from the sun reflects back into the space from the clouds, ice, and snow. The remaining two thirds is absorbed to some extent by the atmosphere, and to a greater extent by oceans and rocks. This energy is converted to heat some of which is later reflected by land and ocean as ultraviolet rays towards the space warming the atmosphere. If the Earth intakes more energy than it loses, the end result is global warming; the opposite is global cooling.

The size of clouds and water driblets indicate global climate changes. The more cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), the smaller the water droplets and the denser a cloud. This, in turn, influences the cloud’s radioactivity.

DMS containing chemical reactions from poles to tropical waters are important for us to estimate man-based and natural effects on the chemistry of atmosphere and the climate more accurately. It sounds somewhat weird for us that we first destroy the environmental balance God has established before we try to discover what we have done using the natural laws He has enjoined.

References

• Norris, K.B., 2003. “Dimethylsulfide emission: Climate control by marine algae?” ASFA: Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, http://www.csa. com/discoveryguides/dimethyl/overview.php
• http://www.oceansonline.com/phytoplankton.htm
• http://www.sciencephotolibrary.com
• http://www.cedareden.com/phyto.html

Qur’anic Perspective

At this point it would be interesting to look at what Ali Unal has to say as to why no past civilization could resist decadence and time’s corrosive power. His approach refers more to the individual and free will, rather than visible causes:1

. . . [C]ontrary to the fatalism of all other philosophies, including even Ibn Khaldun’s, the Qur’an stresses the individual’s free choice and moral conduct. Although the Divine Will, as emphasized in the Qur’an, could be regarded in some respects as the counterpart of Hegel’s Geist or as other philosophies’ absolute and irresistible laws of history, the Qur’an never denies human free will

. . . . Ibn Khaldun, Toynbee, Spengler, and other philosophers of history formed a mistaken conception of history because they did not try to discover the real dynamics of historical movements. Rather, they sought to explain the apparent causes behind a civilization’s establishment, flourishing, and decay. Whoever looks to the past will arrive at the same conclusions. But just because no community has remained at its peak this does not mean that this is an inevitable end or a determinist grip on the fate of each nation. Past civilizations collapsed because they did not heed the warnings of what had happened to earlier peoples. Accepting historical determinism causes us to nullify free will and consider the warnings and advice found in the Divine Scriptures and social sciences as useless and absurd.

This is strongly confirmed by the Qur’an in the following verses:

. . . surely God does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition. (Rad 13:11)

. . . God never changes the grace He has bestowed on any people until they first change that which is in their hearts. (Anfal 8:53)

Theories concerning the collapse of civilizations

There are many theories concerning the collapse of civilizations, but of course, if a theory does not conform to reality, it is worth nothing. In this article, I will first give a brief account of widely held beliefs about the collapse of civilizations, explain the weaknesses of these theories, and then give a rationale that I believe better explains the historical data we have. As for most social problems, we will perhaps never know the truth about why societies collapse. However, the stakes at hand are so high that we must make every effort to understand, and to an extent, solve this problem.

The most common explanation for such collapses is some insurmountable natural disaster, like an epidemic, hurricane, drought, or earthquake that leads to the demise of a civilization by killing the population and crippling the economy. Widely-cited examples are the eruption of the volcano in Thera that preceded the collapse of the Minoan civilization, the malaria epidemic in the Roman Empire or earthquakes in Mesoamerican societies. These arguments, which are very appealing to our human nature, that desires simple explanations for all questions, are in fact very unsound. Societies constantly experience such disasters, yet survive them. The potato blight in Ireland in 1845 halved the island’s population but there was no cease of sociopolitical complexity as a result of the disaster. It is strange to think that the Roman Empire, which survived many disasters before, including the eruption of Pompei in AD 79, fell to malaria. We should consider that complex civilizations are designed to absorb such disasters, and they do. Just recalling the constant earthquakes in Japan added to the loss of a world war with two nuclear bombs exploding in the heart of two large cities will sufficiently prove this notion. Japanese civilization did not collapse. On the contrary, it is one of the strongest economies in today’s international arena. It is peculiar then that some civilizations are no longer able to fight such disasters. However, an act of God can certainly collectively destroy any civilization, as it did in the past like Sodom and Gomorrah. This is clearly narrated in the divine scriptures.

The other common explanations for such collapses are intruders and competition with other civilizations. The barbarian tribes, which brought the end of Rome in the fifth century, and the Mongolians that invaded Baghdad in the thirteenth century are clear examples of the intruder argument. This argument suffers from the realization that civilizations are attacked by outsiders throughout their existence, yet for some reason they cannot defend themselves near the time of their collapse. Competition with other societies however, is in principle expected to lead to growth and expansion instead of collapse. There is no end to the examples from this category too, like the competition of the Ottoman Empire with Persia, which indirectly weakened its western front. But the competition argument is both intuitively confusing and it fails to account for major cases, like the fall of the Roman Empire.

Another widely held belief about such collapses is that at a certain point in the life of a civilization a resource is depleted and the civilization that depends on this resource is prone to collapse. The Romans and the Ottomans both depended on military expansion for their economy, and when the relatively weak nations around them were engulfed or when they were barred from further expansion by geographical limitations, such as seas or large mountains, they were no longer able to use this resource. There seems to be some truth and lessons in this argument. To the uninformed, it is a very curious fact that the cradle of civilization was Mesopotamia, where modern day Iraq is. How is it possible that the superpowers of that era, the Sumerians (~3000 BC) and the Babylonians (~1000 BC) chose to live in these deserts? How is it possible that they irrigated the land, raised armies, and built world wonders in these sand dunes? These questions actually are easily answered when we realize that Mesopotamia was not a dessert in that era after all. It is now a generally accepted theory that this place had a fragile ecosystem, which was destroyed after thousands of years of environmental pressure. The potential for these lands to accommodate great civilizations was lost after this fragile ecosystem was slowly destroyed by its inhabitants.

However, the argument of resource depletion inherently asserts that the elite of a civilization facing resource depletion passively waits for the predictable demise. I will argue below that this case, although strange, is true. Another difficulty of the resource depletion argument is that in some instances of collapse resources were never depleted. The fertile lands of Mesopotamia still remained green until later than 1000 AD, while many civilizations experienced collapses. The Romans, who used irrigation as a resource, kept farming till the very end. Finally, one may wonder why societies aim at possessing a higher amount of resources all the time. Population increase is only a partial answer to this question. We can easily imagine a society whose population stays the same; it is not a far-fetched hypothesis that this society will naturally also try to increase its resources to fend off a variety of calamities it may experience, such as intruders and catastrophes. I believe herein lies an interesting rationale that brings together the mentioned theories that are flawed. To understand this, we first have to appreciate a law in economics, called the “law of diminishing returns.”

It is very rare in economics and in general social sciences that some series of observations can be identified as a “law.” However, the “law of diminishing returns,” first put forward in 1965 by Ester Boserup, is so comprehensive in its nature and explains such a variety of trends that it is now universally accepted. It goes: The return for an investment in a particular activity is great at the beginning, and then it gradually decreases. At a point, further investment brings no further benefits. At this point, the facility (a person, a group, a society, a factory) can no longer increase its returns, however much they would invest in that activity.

A simple example will clarify the law. Suppose we have a piece of land that we want to use for irrigation. In the beginning, we would just disperse seeds and wait for the crops to grow. Notice that our investment is minimal (say 1 unit of investment), and we get some food for our investment (again define this to be 1 unit of return). Then, if we want to increase the amount of crops we have, we may dig some canals for watering. It is straightforward to recognize that the canal digging is a lot harder than just dispersing seeds (say 5 times harder). However, it is again straightforward to recognize that although now we make 6 times more investment, we probably will not get 6 times the crop. Nevertheless, we want to maximize our return, so we still dig the canals. The next step would be to use motorized vehicles, which is maybe a 10 times increase in investment, but everybody will surely accept that it is not possible to get a crop that is 16 times greater than our original from the same plot of land. (Readers who may object that once the investments of canals and vehicles are made they will provide constant returns are reminded of the maintenance costs of these investments.) A further increase in returns may require genetically engineered crops that will require years of expensive research (more investment). The return per investment will always decrease for a certain type of activity, in this case irrigation.

This law is everywhere in life: If one week of studying suffices a result of 80 on one exam, in order to get 90, you need to study two more weeks. Most healthy people can run 100m in 20 seconds; to run it in 10 seconds you need years of exercising. Depending on one’s abilities (which determine an individual’s possible investment) these may even be impossible for many people. A vivid example is the heating problem in England during the nineteenth century. Heating, which was primarily carried out by burning wood from forests, with the increase in population had to be switched over to the burning of coal. The mining and distribution of coal, which is much more difficult than simply getting some wood from a nearby forest, was made even more difficult when the easily mined surface coal was rapidly depleted and deeper tunnels with lighting and airing problems had to be developed. It is intuitive why this law is in effect: Obviously, always, the easier solutions are adapted first, then the harder ones. Mining coal when you have easily available and plentiful wood is not reasonable. Consequently, we have a decline for our returns per investment.

The resources that civilizations use are no exception. A civilization that uses irrigation as a resource is bound to be limited by a certain level of return. Resource does not have to be depleted; it just cannot produce a return more than at a certain level. Another civilization that is dependent on taxation, mercenary or military expansion can achieve no more return after a certain level, no matter what adjustments it makes to its existing policy. Having said this, we can understand why a civilization that depends on a certain type of energy or resource cannot expand its influence beyond a certain level. Moreover, when energy becomes scarce, the civilization can become less agile in terms of trying new resources and new ways to produce returns, since agility and innovation mostly depend on using some of the surplus resources on strategies that will most probably yield no returns. Hence the rise of large architectural structures and many inefficient military operations are carried out during the ascent of a young civilization. These activities, which are easily buffered by the large returns that come from initial investment on the main resource of a civilization become impossibly costly later when the returns from the same investment is declining.

One last piece of the puzzle completes the rationale as to why civilizations collapse, and this piece is an easily accepted assumption: A civilization is like a dinosaur. It is large and strong, but it is adapted to the conditions into which it was born. The conditions change, however, the dinosaur cannot change its behavior. It helplessly tries to maximize the returns for the type of resource that it is adapted to use, and after a point, it simply cannot, thanks to the universal and unforgiving law of diminishing returns. At this point, another civilization, that primarily uses another superior resource, will have larger returns, build a larger army to invade the former civilization, build larger ships to cut off the trade routes, and produce goods to cripple its economy… This is just a matter of time, and it is unavoidable (see Figure 1b). The strength of the civilization in its golden age is now its weakness. In such a weakness, since there is no extra resource to fight new problems-all resource is either used up by the population, or goes toward defense costs-even a natural disaster can bring an end to a civilization that once seemed to be indestructible.

The Ottoman Empire’s strength in its rise was its perfect hierarchical organization which led to the accumulation of all power under the Sultan. Its main resource was military expansion and taxation of trade. These adaptations, which were ideal for the time between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, led to one of the most powerful empires that have ever reigned. However, by the sixteenth century, these strategies had become burdens: Due to the strong hierarchy, an intelligentsia that supported science and art as in the West could never develop. Military expansion had to stop. Taxation could no longer work since the Mediterranean Sea was no longer used for trade. The strategies were not abandoned though, instead, more investments were made in order to increase the returns, which as we saw above is a nonviable alternative. Eventually, other civilizations that used better resources brought about the end of the Empire. A similar order of events can be observed for other civilizations that collapsed. The great Arab historian Ibn Khaldun of the fourteenth century likens the lives of civilizations to the natural lifespan of individuals. They are born, they grow old, and they die. In my view, a civilization does not die because it gets old; it dies because it cannot compete with a stronger civilization.

The natural question to ask is if our current civilization will collapse. From the analysis above, we can conclude that there are two reasons for the collapse of a civilization: 1) Dependence on a certain type of investment and failing to adapt to the new conditions. 2) The invention by another competitor civilization of a new type of investment with higher returns. In today’s world, both of these reasons are in some ways different than those that existed in the past. First, with the advancement of science, the current civilizations are flexible in the resources they utilize, the options are constantly evaluated, the heating in United Kingdom does not collapse when wood is depleted; instead, coal, then gas, then nuclear power is used. The return for the investment made for some utility is similar to the curve shown in Figure 1c: whenever the return for a type of investment declines, we can shift to the next resource. Second, by the immense advancement in information processing and communication, the whole world is aware of the types of investments other societies are using, and a leading civilization that follows the developments in other countries is very unlikely to be threatened by a sudden development in a rival civilization. Third, because of progress in international trade, the old sense that any other civilization is an enemy has lost its significance.

Notwithstanding these reasons, only a few decades ago, at the height of the cold war, we witnessed the possibility of the immediate collapse of our civilization. Global warming and the depletion of petrol reserves were only two of the many alarming cues that we may have turned to declining returns for our investment curve. It is imperative to remember again that the stakes are very high. The next civilization to fall may bring about the fall of the human species.

Notes

1. Tainter, J. (1988). The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1988.
2. Grigg D. Ester Boserup’s theory of agrarian change: a critical review. Prog Hum Geogr. 1979; 3 (1): 64-84.
3. Unal, Ali, Islam Addresses Contemporary Issues, Kaynak, Izmir:1998, p. 142.

But what happens when an ideological regime dedicated to negating existing realities to build utopia takes over? A small clique of Cambodian French-educated intellectuals provides the answer by a term coined specifically to describe it: auto-genocide. How else can a regime whose vision caused an estimated 800,000 to 2.3 million “unnatural” deaths among an estimated 5.7 million people within 3.5 years be described?(1)

Before and after April 17, 1975

Building Trust: Independent Cambodia was led by Prince Sihanouk (1941-70), whom the vast majority of Cambodians regarded as semi-divine: “In general the majority of the Khmer people, particulary the peasants, loved the Prince … From the law of Kamma [karma] and reincarnation, Khner commoners believed that those who were born as kings, princes and princesses were beings descended from heaven [because of the good deeds they had] performed in previous existences … Prince Sihanouk was thus looked upon as a ‘super being’ who controlled the fate of all.”(2)

Rejecting the traditional “splendid isolation” of the Cambodian monarchy, Sihanouk travelled the country, met and talked with all types of people, donated farm equipment and other helpful things, and sought to solve their problems. In short, the people trusted him because he took the trouble to show he cared about them.

When General Lon Nol overthrew Sihanouk on March 18, 1970 (with presumed American help) and abolished the monarchy, many peasants sensed disaster ahead.(3) They were right. Lon Nol was corrupt, had little grasp of Cambodia’s military situation, and was mentally weakened by a stroke in 1971.(4) His military campaigns were disastrous, his dictatorial tendencies encouraged many to join the Khmer Rouge, and he gradually seemed to lose touch with reality. As a result, he rapidly lost whatever popular trust he had and was “asked” to leave Cambodia on April 1, 1975.

Upon assuming control on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge presented Angka Leou (the Organization) as their public face. Their names were announced on April 14, 1976, but their use of false names and lack of biographical information made exact identification impossible.(5) For 2 years, they did not mention that they were communists who envisaged a socialist future. Nor did they explain their new policies to the nation.(6) Their isolation from the people was complete.

Instead of building trust, the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy ever pillar of traditional society. The family structure was shattered by forced evacuations from cities and continual arbitrary population shifts, gender- and aged-based work brigades, and communal eating. Roles were reversed: children were encouraged to report on their parents, indoctrinated instead of educated, and literally given the power of life and death over adults. Religion was outlawed; temples, mosques, and churches were destroyed or converted into other uses; and monks, imams, and priests were murdered. No public manifestation of religion was allowed. In its Utopian zeal, the Khmer Rouge outlawed everything that made Cambodia what it was.

In return they gave illusion, terror, pain, and lies. An internal Khmer Rouge document states that: “There is a little friction with the people, but we can abandon the people, there is no problem.”(7) The Khmer Rouge was concerned only mobilizing its people through ideology and discipline to retake southern Vietnam and protect itself against Vietnam. Along with many other Utopians, the ends justified the means.

Rational Economic and Development Policies: The French colonialists kept the peasantry largely rural and subjected to high taxes and usurious interest rates of as much as 200%. Rubber, corn, and rice were the main products, and industry was minimal. Vietnamese were important in fishing, rubber workers, and clerical workers, fishermen, and small business. The Chinese continued to dominate commerce and banking.(8)

With independence, foreign aid projects were regarded as means of personal enrichment.(9) Sihanouk’s paternalistic doctrine of Royalist-Buddhist Socialism stated that the ruler would provide for the people. With the elite and others becoming richer and able to travel abroad, conspicuous consumption increased even though the nation’s economy could no longer expand, for there had not been enough time to construct the needed infrastructures.(10) The countryside remained largely the same, while the urban areas consumed and did not produce.

Under Lon Nol, agriculture was wiped out by relentless US bombing, peasant flight, forced induction into various armies, and the destruction of land and draft animals. Industry was ignored, and aid money was siphoned off into people’s pockets. When Phnom Penh finally fell in 1975, Cambodia had no economy, agricultural or industrial, to speak of.

The Khmer Rouge immediately emptied the cities.(11) This controversial policy forced everyone into the countryside where, divided into “old people” and “new people,” they were expected to revitalize agriculture. Ideology, instead of analysis or rational thought, determined who would do what. Production quotas were wildly unrealistic in many areas. Most of what was produced was confiscated or bartered for Chinese products and expertise. Payment was a subsistence diet, and not even that for anyone who failed to reach the quota.

After printing a new currency, the Khmer Rouge decided to scrap it and abolish money altogether, for whereas money created markets, wealth, and private property, abolishing it would solve these “problems.”(12) Trade with China, the Khmer Rouge’s only significant ally, was based on barter. But money never totally disappeared. Along with jewelry and gold, money was used in black market transactions, and Khmer Rouge cadres were not immune.(13)

In a land with no agricultural, industrial, or educational infrastructure to speak of, the Khmer Rouge dared to dream of achieving a “Super Great Leap Forward”: “We have leaped Over the semi-colonial, semi-feudal society of the American imperialists, the feudalists and capitalists of every nation, and have achieved a socialist state straight away.”(14) Chou En-lai, Chairman Mao’s right-hand man, urged them not to repeat China’s own Great Leap Forward, but they thought they knew better.

The Khmer Rouge stated that Cambodia as a whole would modernize its agriculture within 10 to 15 years, while other areas would do so in only 4 or 5 years.(15) Agriculture would make everything possible: “The basic key is agriculture. Self-reliance means capital from agriculture.”(16) Recognizing their limitations in industry, Party documents of 1976-77 stressed light industry that would move toward heavy industry. But how was this to be carried out? Cambodia had no money and China was changing: the chaos of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) had weakened China and Mao was dead (Sept. 9,1976). In addition the Gang of Four, a group of staunch Khmer Rouge patrons consisting of Mao’s wife and three of her allies, was under arrest (Oct. 6, 1976).

Control over the Nation’s Territory: On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge controlled all of Cambodia’s territory. But this was not good enough-Pol Pot dreamed of restoring the old Khmer Empire, which had ruled much of southern Vietnam and still had a large ethnically Khmer population (Khmer Rrom). By mixing this irredentist desire with Cambodians’ traditional fear of Vietnam, Pol Pot unleashed a conflict that only a Utopian divorced from reality could understand. During April 1977, the Khmer Rouge began attacking villages in Vietnam. On January 1, 1978, the Khmer Rouge publicly announced Vietnam’s “aggression,” and full-scale war erupted.

This war was launched for several reasons:

•They had defeated American alone and so were invincible. On July 22, 1975, Pol Pot stated:”We have won total, definitive, and clean victory, meaning that we have won it without any foreign connection or involvement.”(17) Such a deliberate ignoring of history led him to change the date of the Communist Party of Kampuchea’s founding 1951 (an outgrowth of Ho Chi Minh’s Indochina Communist Party) to 1960, when he became the party’s deputy secretary, and to begin purging Cambodian communists trained in Vietnam.

•Cambodia needed “only 2 million troops to crush the 50 million Vietnamese.”(18) This ignored the facts that Vietnam had militarily defeated both the French and Americans and had a battle-hardened army with decades of actual military experience and plenty of weaponry. Compared to them, the Khmer Rouge army was a murderous joke.

•The general population would support them, despite official policies of destroying everything held dear by them, execution as practically the only punishment, starvation, overwork, and a lack of military training and supplies.

This bellicosity led to Vietnam invading Cambodia on December 25, 1978, occupying it on January 7, 1979, and staying until September 1989.

An Educated Population: After decades of French colonial rule that had seen fit to keep Cambodians ignorant, Sihanouk embarked on a massive campaign to educate young Cambodians. However, apparently neither he nor the people understood that education should serve the nation. The students and their parents saw it as a means to acquire social status, an escape from village life, and a chance to make money. The liberal arts and a bureaucratic career were preferred over careers in agriculture, any technical field, or industry. Finally, the government and the educational sectors could no longer absorb the graduates. Neither could the economy, which was controlled by the Cambodian aristocracy and elite, and Chinese and Vietnamese merchants. Thus, the intellectuals were largely irrelevant to Cambodia’s development needs, unemployed, and frustrated.(19)

The Khmer Rouge did not trust intellectuals, regardless of how useful their expertise might be. There are many cases of Cambodian intellectuals returning from abroad only to be executed. Former teachers, professionals, and students soon learned to deny their past and merge into the broad uneducated masses.

In most areas, formal education was abolished in favor of learning by doing and ideological indoctrination. Khieu Samphan, Cambodia’s nominal head of state, displayed this attitude in 1977: “… whether the dams and reservoirs thai we have built last only 5 or 10 years does not matter,” for the people would learn by doing…; a year later he admitted that the state of pharmaceutical products was ‘still of handicraft quality’ in order that the country remain independent, sovereignty, self-reliant, and self-sufficient, and in order to learn technology through practice.”(20) Clearly, modern technical and other education was irrelevant-only ideological purity mattered.

Conclusion

The Khmer Rouge failed because they refused to understand Cambodia’s reality: a small nation devastated by war; a society consisting of a mainly poor, uneducated, and illiterate peasantry; a class of intellectuals whose education was largely irrelevant; and two neighbors with far better armies and historical territorial ambitions on Cambodia (Thailand and Vietnam).

They also failed to understand their own people. With their oft-repeated maxim of “If you die it is no loss; if you live it is no gain,” how could it be otherwise? The Khmer Rouge were notorious for their purges, which became ever more bloody as their Utopian dreams could not overcome reality. After replacing the old sociely with a new one based on terror, incompetence, an almost total lack of medical care, starvation, murder, and basically forcing its people to live in Hell before they died, the Khmer Rouge nevertheless expected popular support-because their ideology mandated it. But as the purges gathered steam, many Khmer Rouge began defecting to Vietnam to join nascent armed opposition groups being trained by Vietnam, and many ordinary Cambodians lost whatever revolutionary enthusiasm they might have had.(21)

And what was the end of Pol Pot, the mastermind behind this negative Utopia? Forced to rely for his very survival on America, France, and Thailand, he and his forces were confined to gradually smaller and smaller border areas. When he died in 1998, whether naturally or a suicide is not certain, be was “cremated under a pile of rubbish and rubber tires.”(22) His replacement was Ta Mok, a man whose name has become a synonym for brutality and violence. After arresting and trying his former leader, Ta Mok eulogized him as follows: “He (Pol Pot) is nothing more than cow dung. Actually, cow dung is more useful.”(23)

Footnotes  

1 The post-war population figure is based on the 1962 census, the last one before Cambodia was forced into the Vietnam war. Cambodia: A Country Study (United States Government: 1990), 51. In America, this would be the equivalent of approximately 38.7 million to 111.2 million deaths out of a total population of 275.6 million (July 2000 estimate).

2 Yang Sam, Khmer Buddhism and Politics from 1954 to 1984 (Khmer Studies Institutes 1987), 11.

3 Ibid., 49.

4 William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia (Pocket Books, 1979), 186-87.

5 Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-1979 (Yale University Press: 1996), 327.

6 David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War, and Revolution since 1945 (Yale University Press, 1991), 271-72.

7 Kiernan, Regime, 98.

8 Cambodia: A Country Study, 19-20.

9 Michael Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982 (South End Press 1984), 22.

10 Ibid., 23.

11 Many reasons for this have been given, such as fears of imminent American bombing, an inability to feed these people, the need for farmers to get back to growing crops, breaking up potential opposition, unearthing spies, or the rural people’s revenge upon the urbanites.

12 Kiernan, Regime, 55-57.

13 Vickery, Cambodia, 158.

14 David Chandler, Ben Kiernan, and Chanthou Boua (eds. and trans.), Pol Pot Plans the Future: Confidential Leadership Documents from Democratic Kampuchea, 1996-1997 (Yale University Southeast Asia Studies. 1988), 14, 36.

15 Ibid., 27. “Modern” was defined as high production, one hectare producing anywhere from 3 to 10 tons. Initially, there would be little modern fertilizer and no equipment. Before the war, Cambodia produced about 1 metric ton of rice per hectare (Hildebrand and Porter Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, 62). Cambodia: A Country Study claims an average hectare yield of 1.2 tons from 1952-69. Regardless, Cambodia’s rice production figures were among the lowest in Asia.

16 Ibid., 30.

17 Kiernan, Regime, 94.

18 Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy: The War after the War (Collier Books: 1988), 298.

19 Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (Verso: 1985), 1982.

20 Vickery, Cambodia: 1975-1982, 160.

21 Chandler, Tragedy, 236-37, 270-71.

22 Time 100 (23-30 Aug. 23-30, 1999). Online at www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/pol_pot1.html.

23 Don Pathan, The News-Times: International News (18 April 1998). Online at: www.newstimes.com/archive98/apr1998/inb.htm.

As mentioned above, a survey seeks to make inferences about a population based on information obtained from the sample. This objective is related to cost and time constraints, because, as in our example of American teenagers, it would be very costly to measure all of their IQs. Instead, a representative subset (a “random sample”) of teenagers is taken, and then their IQs are measured. In some situations, the entire population might be surveyed, as in a census or when dealing with small populations. Even if the population is small, the test to obtain particular information from an element might require that element’s destruction. For example, to determine one’s blood cholesterol level, a blood sample consisting of a few milliliters of blood, not all of it, should be taken. If we want to determine the average lifespan of light bulbs manufactured on an assembly line, we should take a reasonably sized sample, such as a few hundred, and test them to see how long they last. Otherwise the company would go bankrupt.

The basic problem of a survey is the validity and reliability of its results. The solution lies in the three segments of conducting a survey: planning, data collection, and analysis and reporting. Usually the public sees the reporting segment. However, since the public does not know how the survey was conducted, it is prone to be misled by the reported results. To determine a survey’s reliability, one must know the sources of bias affecting its outcome. These biases can be traced to the interviewer or the researcher, the format of the questionnaire or the experiment, the availability of information, and other causes.

From a researcher’s point of view, these source biases must be kept as small as possible. The most serious bias problems arise from the questionnaire type and the sampling methods used. For example, if the questionnaire refers to a socially desirable situation, respondents tend to answer in accordance with the social desirability. Say people are asked whether they read the front page or the sports page of the newspaper first. Many will answer that they read the front page first, even if they really read the sports page first, because reading the front page first makes one look more sophisticated. Hence it is a socially desirable attribute.

A more interesting example is provided by a survey done by the American Society of Microbiology. Its researchers wanted to determine the percentage of people who wash their hands after using public restrooms. When they surveyed a randomly selected sample in the Washington, DC, area over the phone, 94 percent said that they washed their hands afterwards. However, researchers who observed 6,333 people using public restrooms in five major American cities found that only 68 percent did so. Here, the socially desirable situation is, of course, washing one’s hands after using public restrooms.

A researcher also has to be very careful when interpreting the results of a question seeking potentially incriminating or embarrassing (i.e., socially undesirable) information. Suppose we distribute to the people of a particular town a questionnaire asking whether they have used marihuana during the past 12 months. The responses will give a very low estimate of the exact percentage of marihuana users, because drug usage is a serious crime in this country. Fortunately there is an interesting solution to this problem: Randomized Response Technique (RRT).

This is how it works. Suppose that the interviewer presents a 6-sided die to the respondents and gives them a paper that contains the following instructions: Roll the die first, but do not show the outcome to the interviewer. Then:

i) If it shows 1 or 2, answer YES regardless;

ii) If it shows 3 or 4, answer NO regardless;

iii) If it shows 5 or 6, answer truthfully.

Give your answer in the following boxes:

[]Yes []No

By using this clever method, one can estimate the exact percentage more accurately, because there is no way to match the answers to the respondents. Here’s how it can be done: Say we surveyed 1,500 people and received 700 “yes” answers. First, the probability of the die showing 1 or 2 is 2/6 (or 1/3). The odds for the die showing 3 or 4, as well as 5 or 6, are the same. Hence we expect that the die will show 1 or 2 in 500 respondents, 3 or 4 in 500 respondents, and 5 or 6 in 500 respondents. According to the directions, we expect 500 respondents to answer “yes” and another 500 respondents to answer “no” regardless of the truth. If the total “yes” responses is 700, then the number of “truthful yes” responses is 700-500=200. Now, we see that 200 out of 500 answered “yes” when the questionnaire asked for a truthful answer. This result gives 40 percent (=200*100/500) as the estimated percentage of actual marihuana users.

Another source of serious bias stems from the sampling plans and methods employed. In practice, various time, space, and cost constraints prevent us from dealing with actually random samples (samples that are representative of the population). Given this, let’s analyze the most common sampling methods.

Haphazard Sampling: Many biological studies use this method to select specimens to be examined from a cage or a tank. This technique involves catching the animals by hand or by a net “at random” in that particular cage or tank. However, those animals that are caught in such a manner are usually the ones that are more friendly, weaker, or less agile. This problem can be solved with more effort and money. Therefore, when the results of a biological research study are presented, one should check the randomness of the sample and then reach his or her own conclusion, because if the results are the based on haphazard sampling they will be quite biased.

Judgment Sampling: In this method, “a couple of experts” determine the “typical units” that represent the population. This method is also extremely poor, because “experts” tend to disagree on which items are typical. Yates (1981) presents a good example. He had 12 experts collect a total of 1,200 stones, and then asked them to select three distinct samples of 20 stones as typical of the population according to their weight. Surprisingly, 30 out of 36 samples selected overestimated the true average weight.

Volunteer Sampling: If respondents are chosen from volunteers (generally human beings), then the results have considerable bias. This method is widespread in medical studies, because usually it is the only way to get relevant results. Since the medical profession’s ethical code does not allow one to obtain random samples in medical experiments, various animals, such as guinea pigs, are used in labs. However, because drugs that are effective on animals are usually not all that effective on human beings, their relevance is not so clear. For example, we often hear that a particular “study shows that such and such an ingredient is harmful to your health, or cures such and such a disease.” These are very poor statements, and hence not so reliable. However, they were the only results we could obtain. This bias is somewhat removed by continual progress in medicine.

Restrictive Sampling: This method is particularly important, because it yields very strange results when applied to social science research. Here, one takes a sample that is easy to obtain for a couple of different reasons. For instance, in archeology and history, the possessions of a king or an aristocrat are more likely to survive than those of a serf or a vassal, for the belongings of the rich and powerful are more durable and of a much higher quality and therefore survive for a longer time. In the United States, for example, a great deal of furniture and many houses of slave owners have survived; only very little of their slaves’ possessions have survived. In Egypt, the artifacts discovered by archeologists belong mainly to the upper class (pharaohs, the noblility, etc). As a result, historians and archeologists produce very biased results, for their conclusions are based mainly on evidence belonging to members of the rich and/or aristocratic classes.

Is there a solution? Obviously, researchers only accept tangible items as evidence. Even though these artifacts are “hard” evidence, they cause the poor, and those who led modest and humble lives, to be under-represented in history. For example, many Prophets left virtually no personal items behind, except for ones like Muhammad, Jesus, and Moses (peace be upon them all), who were considerably recent.

Such an absence of personal items might be due to the fact that they led modest lives and shunned luxury. Hence, historians and archeologists should reconsider their position on this issue. In order to correct the bias engendered by restricting their conclusions only to tangible evidence, they should add the Holy Books and written religious texts to their category of “acceptable” evidence.

Another example is the media, whose usage of restrictive sampling produces very bigoted and biased results. The image of Islam presented in the Western media is a good example of this, for its depiction of Islam contains many misconceptions. First, Islam is presented as an exclusively Arab religion, despite the fact that Arabs account for only 15 to 20 percent of all Muslims. So either obtaining a representative sample of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims seems very hard to journalists, or else they deliberately restrict their samples to Arabs.

The most serious and severe misconception, however, is the media’s equating Islam and terrorism, although the word “Islam” literally means “peace.” On the other hand, the Western media somehow manages to mention Muslims and terrorism together many times. This is also quite odd, for only 1 percent or less of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims favor so-called “militant” groups. When news about such people is broadcast, this little percentage is strangely magnified, and the stereotype is generalized to include all Muslims.

It is also incorrect to label these militant groups as “Islamic.” This is definitely a sampling problem, which seems to be done either on purpose or in a cursory way. Are there no good Muslims among 1.2 billion Muslims of the world? Rationally, if we suppose the impossible (that all Muslims really are terrorists), they would have destroyed the entire world already. Similarly, but to a lesser extent, there are stereotypes for Jews and Christians (mostly Catholics).

There is an urgent need for collaboration and cooperation between different religious groups to get rid off such damaging misconceptions and stereotypes. Muslims, having the worst stereotype, should be in the forefront of this undertaking. According to my experience and knowledge, many religious beliefs and teachings, and their followers, bear no resemblance to these misconceptions.

Such restricted sampling results in many seriously flawed conclusions in social science disciplines. Consider the case of Sigmund Freud, who still has many advocates and fans, as well as opponents, of psychology. From a sampling perspective, his analysis of the ego (psychoanalysis) cannot be considered reliable, for he based his hypothesis on just two persons: himself (at 1897) and an 18-year old female hysteric (Dora). Even from the statistical point of view, two people (the first one probably obsessed with sexuality, and the second an obviously abnormal person) can in no way be considered representative of the 2 billion people living at that particular point in time. Here, of course, I consider the severe time and cost restraints, but still, the existence of such difficulties does not justify the validity of Freud’s conclusions.

CONCLUSION

In this article, we approached different issues in the social and physical sciences from a sampling (statistical) point of view. Surprisingly, this approach gave very interesting results in various sciences. The validity of any survey or research does not depend on its publicity (whether it is published, broadcast, or widely accepted); what is essential is that the whole picture be covered. Newly emerging interdisciplinary areas can help keep track of the whole picture. Also, the validity and reliability of results obtained through research, surveys, hypotheses, and theories depend upon the researcher’s morals and honesty and ability to see “the big picture.” Scientists and journalists should be very careful and responsible in their research, for most people are inclined to accept, without further exploration, whatever they hear or read.

REFERENCES

• Bill, James A. “Islam: Misunderstood throughout the World.”
• http://www.muslim.net/isla /intro8.html.
• Freud, Sigmund. “Chronology.” http://freud.t0.or.at/ freud/index-e.htm.
• “Misconceptions about Islam.”
• http://www.muslim.net! islam/miscons.html.
• Warde, William D. Sampling Methods. Oklahoma State University, 1990.

The extent of the problem

In the last two decades, there has been a tremendous increase in alcohol consumption in the world, an all-time high (WHO, 1980, pp7-13). The way to estimate the marked increase is probably to look at total or per capita consumption in different countries over a certain period of time (see Graphs 1, 2).

The WHO committee on alcohol-induced problems found that per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages has been increasing throughout most of the world in the last 20 years. Between 1960 and 1972, for example recorded world-wide production increased by 19% for wines, 68% for beer, and 61% for distilled spirits. Both industrialised and developing countries in various regions of the world showed that the annual consumption of alcoholic beverages, in terms of 100% ethanol (ethyl alcohol), was above 8 litres per capita in only two countries in 1950, but by 1976 this level was found in 22 countries (ibid.). A 1982 WHO report showed that by 1982 beer production had increased by 124% world-wide. In some countries in Asia, the increase was a horrifying 500%; in some African countries beer consumption increased by as much as 400%. Even remote villages, in many third world countries, were consuming alcoholic beverages while they lacked clean water and sewage disposal and other primary health amenities (Medicine Digest, 1982, p.S7).

In the UK, the per capita spending on alcohol increased by 76% over 1960-70. The adult population of the UK drank about twice as much alcohol in 1984 as it did in 1950. Spirit consumption increased by 135% while wine consumption increased by 250% (RCGP, l986).

The negative consequences of alcohol consumption are so great that it is impossible to list them. In 1979, members of the Executive Board at its 63rd session and delegates of numerous countries at the 32nd World Health Assembly confirmed that alcohol problems now rank among the world’s major public health concerns (resolution WHO 32.40; WHO, 1980); that in many parts of the world, they constitute a serious obstacle to socio-economic development and threaten to overwhelm the health services. A summary of the major losses due to alcohol consumption will be given here.

Socio-economic losses

Although the alcohol industry seems to benefit a few big international companies and provide jobs for many workers and even seems to increase state revenue from levying taxes on alcoholic beverages, the total socio-economic loss is so tremendous that these benefits become trivial. The deleterious effect on health, welfare and social consequences of alcohol consumption will more than tilt the balance towards the benefits of proscribing or at least limiting alcohol consumption.

The cost of alcohol abuse to a society is difficult to measure. In the USA, it was estimated that 30,000 million dollars were lost due to alcohol consumption in 1971 (Brunt, 1978). Table 3 gives some details. By 1979 these estimated costs were put at $43 billion dollars (WHO, 1980); and by 1986 at a staggering $120 billion dollars (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 1986, Nov.11).

The UK spent 3 billion on alcohol in 1971; the figure increased to 11.4 billion in 1984 (RCGP, 1986), while France, in 1971, was spending annually an equivalent of $7 billion (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 1980. July 1). West Germany in 1971 was spending 27.5 million DM on alcohol compared with 12.75 for smoking.

Alcohol features prominently in traffic accidents. WHO statistics suggest that it is involved in about 50% of all traffic accidents. Even in countries where alcohol and addictive drugs are prohibited, like Saudi Arabia, the Director of the Department of Alcohol and Drug Control claims that about 50% of long road accidents are due to alcohol and drug abuse (reported in personal conversation). In the USA, 25,000 deaths occur annually due to accidents caused by alcohol consumption. Another 15,000 deaths occur due to diseases caused by alcohol and another 15.000 deaths occur due to murder crimes and suicide committed under the influence of alcohol (Harris, 1971, pp.138-42).

The risk of accidents rises exponentially above 50 mg of alcohol percent, and at 200 mgs, the risk is a hundred times above that of the non-drinker (Brunt, 1978). It is estimated that 250,000 USA citizens die annually due to tobacco and alcohol consumption.

In crimes of violence, alcohol plays a prominent role. Nearly 70% of murders are committed under the influence of alcohol (ibid. ). WHO, after studying violent crimes in thirty countries including the USA and the UK, concluded that 86% of murders and 50% of rapes and other crimes of violence were committed under the influence of alcohol-reported in the Daily Mai l, June 26, 1980, which also quoted Lord Harris whose commission on the prison population in the UK reported that the majority of criminals were suffering from alcohol related problems.

Industrial losses are tremendous. In Scotland alone losses reached 100 million annually (SCA, 1977). In the USSR alcohol abuse is the most important cause of absenteeism and loss of production. (Gulf Times, 1983, Jan.12).

WHO (1980) cites the following consequences of alcohol abuse: absenteeism, illness, decreased production and quality of work, difficulties in work relationships, accidents and loss of trained personnel. Many countries, especially in the Third World, soffer badly from loss of management and trained staff due to alcohol abuse.

A lot of other social problems arise due to alcohol abuse. 74% of wife and child batterers are heavy drinkers. Incest, rape and other sexual crimes are usually committed under the influence of alcohol.

Divorce and separation are the ultimate result of indulgence in alcohol.

The price paid in human misery, poverty, broken homes and social degradation is beyond calculation.

Incidence of alcohol dependence

The term ‘alcohol dependence’ has replaced ‘alcoholism’ which is a denigratory unspecified term. Alcohol dependence is manifested by overt drinking behaviour, a continuation of drinking in a way not approved by one’s culture and in changed behavioural state. The dependent person’s control over his drinking becomes impaired, his craving for drink becomes relentless, and planning for drinking takes precedence over all other activities. Altered psychosomatic changes occur whereby the dependent person experiences the psychological and/or somatic signs of withdrawal during periods of abstinence. There is also increased tolerance whereby the effective dose of the intoxicant has to be increased in order to get the save pharmacological effect and satisfaction from the drug abused (Edwards et al.,1977, p.3; WHO, 1977, p.198).

It is estimated that at least one in ten of those who drink alcohol even occasionally will become alcohol dependent. In the USA the majority of the adult population drink. Some 100 million Americans drink alcoholic beverages at least occasionally (Miles, S., 1974, pp.10-14). The statistics show that practically every 17- or 18-year old will have experimented with at least one drink. As many as 50 to 85 percent of high school students drink at least occasionally. The average age at which youths begin to experiment is 13 to 14 (ibid.). In Scotland, 92% of boys and 85% of girls have experienced alcohol by age 14 (Jahoda & Crammond, 1972). In the age group 17-30 no less than 87% of men and 60% of women are regular drinkers (Dight, 1976).

Youngsters are more prone to heavy drinking when they are exposed to alcohol. In Scotland, 70% of boys and 61% of girls admitted to heavy drinking occasionally, while 40% of boys and 32% of girls (15-16 years) are regular heavy drinkers (Plant et al, 1980). 60% of Glasgow’s six-year-olds had tried alcohol (Jahoda & Crammond, 1972).

Increasing numbers of women are exposed to drinking. Heavy drinkers among women rose from 4% in 1972 to 11% in 1978 (Show, 1980). In the USA 93% of teenagers (12-17) have experienced alcohol; 1.2 million drink regularly (Strasburger, 1985).

In the USSR, the problem seems even worse. 90% of all cases of acute alcoholic intoxication being treated for the first time are under 15; one-third of them are under 10 (Al-Madina, 1984, Dec.13, quoting the Russian magazine Nash Supermenik ). 15% of the adult population are at present being treated for alcohol dependence.

There are hundreds of millions who suffer from alcohol abuse annually in the whole world. In the USA, it is estimated that 10 million are suffering from the deleterious effects of alcohol abuse (problem drinkers and alcohol dependents), with lens of millions being involved with alcohol dependent persons (Miles, 1974). In France and West Germany, there are 2.5 million alcohol dependents in the UK the figure is lower at 0.5 to 1 million, while those classed as ‘heavy’ drinkers (consuming more than 5I units weekly for males or 35 units for females), amounted to 3 million in England and Wales in 1981 (RCGP, 1986). In the USSR, its staggering figure of 25 million puts it at the top of the world as the first alcohol dependent country. In France, one-third of the electorate get some or all its income from the production and sale of alcoholic beverages (Badri, 1976, p.4l).

It is estimated that 40,000 deaths occur annually in the UK due to alcohol consumption. Though this figure is staggering, it is less than half those killed by smoking cigarettes (100,000). Heavy drinkers have a mortality rate over twice the normal population (RCGP, 1986).

WHO Technical Report on Alcohol, 1980, claims that in many countries the heavy drinkers and alcohol-dependents constitute 4-10 % of the whole population. The WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence concluded that in many parts of the world, problems associated with the use of alcohol far exceed those associated with non-medical use of less socially accepted dependence producing drugs such as those of amphetamine, cannabis and morphine types (WHO, 1980). The reason for this widespread alcohol dependence emerges from the fact that many cultures look upon alcohol drinking, at least in moderation, as normal behaviour. ‘Alcohol is such a permissible and trusted poison, so easy of access for those who wish to escape from their troubles that it is resorted to in excess by the maladjusted person,’ as Sir Aubrey Lewis said in Price’s Textbook of Medicine (Lewis, 1966, pp.1172-4).

Alcohol is completely forbidden by Islam. However, even in Muslim countries, alcohol dependence is becoming a problem that has to be tackled. In Khartoum province (Sudan), Dr. Al-Bager (1976) studied the incidence of alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence in 1975-76. He found the following important facts that: 1) females rarely drink alcohol; 2) most of those who drink alcohol started at the age of 16 or over; 3) the majority of alcohol drinkers do not drink at home as there is still strong refusal by the family; 4) the male adult population in Khartoum province in 1975 was 417,820-47% of them had tried intoxicating liquor at least once; 87% of those who drink are social drinkers while the remaining 13% are regular, daily drinkers who are starting to experience problems from their drink in habits; 5) divorce was high in those who drink compared with non-drinkers of alcohol, 20% and 4% respectively. 6) 22% of those who drink do so because of psychological problems while 9% do so because of problems at home; 7) 52% of all traffic accidents in 1975-76 were committed under the influence of alcohol; 8) the amount spent on alcoholic beverages (10 million Sudanese) was double the amount allocated to the Ministry of Health in 1975. In Bahrain, a small Gulf country, the consumption of alcohol is very high indeed. As much as 9 million kg of alcoholic beverages were consumed in 1981. The total annual cost was estimated at 3,195 million (Towajiri, 1985; Musaiger, 1985).

Medicine Digest (1982) summarised the 1982 WHO report on alcohol and its problems. Most Islamic countries had minor problems related to alcohol consumption:

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Libya and North Yemen were all prohibiting alcohol in 1982. By 1984, Pakistan and Sudan followed suit while Egypt and Bahrain allowed alcohol in tourist places, both for indigenous persons and foreigners.

,Unfortunately, many Muslim governments have sought to spread alcohol consumption against the will of the majority of their people. In Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia, South Yemen, Indonesia, Iraq, Syria and many others, the governments not only encourage private enterprise of the brewing industry, but the governments themselves own outright or share ownership in the breweries and alcohol factories. They help spread alcohol consumption in their nations on the assumption that they will get more income and provide more jobs for the unemployed. The ill effects that ensue from this policy are well manifested by the staggering debt hills to the international banking system.

Though the vast majority of the people in Muslim countries abstain from alcohol despite incitement by governments, the elite, unfortunately, are entangled in all the problems of alcohol consumption. This is owed to the contradictory effects of Westernization of the elites who remain hypnotized by Western civilisation and try to promulgate its values to their own, different culture.

REFERENCES

• AL-BAGER, O.S. (1979) Zahirat Taati al-Khamr, Military Press, Khartoum, pp.34-8.
• BADRI, M. (1976) Islam and Alcoholism, American Trust Publications, Muslim Student’s Association of USA and Canada.
• BRUNT, P. (1978) ‘Alcoholism as a medico social problem’ in Vere, D.W. (ed) 1978, pp.124-35.
• DIGHT, S. (1976) Scottish Drinking Habits, OPCS, HMSO, London.
• EDWARDS G. (1977) ‘alcohol-related disabilities’ WHO, WHO Offset Pub.32.
• HARRIS, I. (1971) ‘Alcohol problem and alcoholism’ in Beeson, P.B .& McDermott, W. (eds) Cecil Loeb Textbook of Medicine, Saunders, Philadelphia, pp.138-42.
• JAHODA, G. & CRAMMOND, J. (1972) Children and Alcohol, OPCS, HMSO, London.
• LEWIS, A. (1966) ‘Psychological Medicine’ in Scott, R.B. (ed) (1966) Price’s Textbook of Medicine, 10 th edn, Oxford University Press.
• Medicine Digest (1982) 8 (12).
• MILES, S. (1974) Learning About Alcohol, American Assoc, for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, Washington D.C.
• MUSAIGER, A. (1985) Youngsters and Drugs in Arab Gulf Countries (in Arabic), Al Rabian, Kuwait.
• PLANT, M.A. et.al. (1980) ‘Self Reporting drinking habits and alcohol related consequences among cohort Scottish teenagers’, British Journal of Addiction, 77, pp.75-90.
• RCGB (1986a) ‘Alcohol: a balanced view’, Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 24 pp.1-3.
• RCGB (1986b) ‘Alcohol: a balanced view’, Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners, 24 pp.5-53.
• SHOW, S. (1980) ‘Causes of increasing drink problems amongst women’ in Women and Alcohol, Camberwell Council on Alcoholism, London, pp. 1-40.
• STRASBURGER, V. (1985) ‘Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll: understanding teenager behaviour ‘, PaediatricA, 76 (4,2), pp. 659-63.
• TUWAIJIRI, A.M. (1985) ‘Ghadan sawfa yuqtaloon (Tomorrow they will be killed)’, Risalat al-Khalij , 16(5), pp. 9-29.
• VERE, D. W. (ed) (1978) Topics in Therapeutics, Royal College of Physicians, Pittman Medical, London.
• WHO (1977) Manual of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries and Causes of Death, vol.1, Genev a.
• WHO (1980) Problems Related to Alcohol, WHO Technical Report Series No: 650, Geneva, pp. 7-13.

The disintegration of communism led to the dawn of a new era in which Western values would predominate and the world re-organized on the basis of ‘global’ co-operation and international solidarity rather than confrontation and conflict, now looked upon as the remnants of the Old World Order.

After the collapse of the communist block with its ideology proven to be a failed experiment, the world’s attention turned to the establishment of a new and ‘just’ world order which would promote global peace and security and foster international solidarity. Today, few would dare claim that this has been achieved. The slogans have changed, as have some governments and a few flags, but for many, the new order has brought them nothing tangible.

The richest 20 per cent of the world’s population still earns 60 times more than the poorest 20 per cent. The disproportionate distribution of the world’s resources threatens the world with environmental and economic crises. In part, it was these crises that formed the motivation for a new order. Global problems can only be resolved through global co-operation and solidarity. The obvious answer was a new world order.

If the current level of population growth continues, over one billion people in Africa will be without the basic necessities of life, such as food and water by the year 2025. Poverty and political unrest due to disputes over resources have generated huge refugee flows. There are 75 million people displaced every year. Of the 75 million, 2 million migrate from the poor nations to the richer countries in search of a better life. Some may say they are the lucky ones, but often they face greater hardship in their adopted lands than at home.. They face a variety of new social problems and are forced to overcome different challenges. The terminology may have changed, but the reality has not.

The New World Order is said to be marked by three notions: democracy, market economy and peace and co-operation. As to the present world order, it was based on three citadels of positivism, namely, sovereignty, nation-statehood and the liberal notion of property, none of which can offer adequate solutions to the current crises of humankind. The new order is, in fact, not new, as its economic, military and philosophical underpinnings have much in common with those of the world order established alter the first and second World Wars. The present world order leads the way to a zero sum game of some sort; everyone wins everything or everyone loses everything.

Fortunately, not everyone subscribes to Fukayamis thesis concerning ‘the end of history’. They do not believe that history ends with liberalism’s victory over communism. The West may think that the end of communism is the total exhaustion of all viable systematic alternatives to Western ideology, and corollary, the universalization of Western liberal democracy, crafted with the norms set in the old world order, will be the ultimate point of humankind’s ideological evolution.

In a rapidly changing world order, those who do not accept this as the end of the story have a duty towards themselves and others not to remain marginalized. There is an alternative. We must strive to understand the contemporary world and apply the principle of trusteeship that is natural to all communities. The concept of the world being a trust in the hands of humankind is nothing new and it is not limited to any one community. Understanding that God gave us the world as a trust leads us to adopt a special world-view. It is this world-view that offers us alternatives for the future direction of humankind and the answer to our various problems. Surely the earth belongs to God and He bequeaths it to such of his servant as He pleases… (al-A’raf 7.129); and certainly, to Him belongs all that the heavens and the earth contain” (al- Hajj, 22.64).

A new world order should be built upon co-operation, solidarity and brotherhood among all the nations of the world. To this end, true understanding of trusteeship is a significant milestone one the way to universal brotherhood.

In a society be it domestic or global, where the world is seen as trust and concept of trusteeship is embedded in the hearts and minds of individuals and rulers, justice emerges in a natural divinely- ordained manner. Where the concept of amana, trusteeship, is forgotten, wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. Lack of effective motivation to reduce inequalities is bound to destroy, rather than foster the feelings of brotherhood that submission to God’s natural way ultimately creates. Submission is not restricted to worship. God has ordained a role for humankind.

The resources with which God has endowed this world are finite but sufficient to cater for the well-being of all, if used efficiently and equitably. The responsibility of khilafa, guardianship, should lead us to find ways of utilizing the God-given resources in so efficient and equitable a manner that the well-being of all is ensured. This can only come about if the resources are used with a sense of responsibility and a constraint determined by Divine Guidance.

Although the khilafa was the ultimate symbol of Muslim political aspiration, responsibility according to Divine Guidance has been lost in their lands and the imbalance of resources is even greater among its people than elsewhere. They present the best examples of unequal and unjust distribution.

There are great disparities among the fifty or so Muslim states. Natural resources are unequally distributed. Where water is abundant, oil is scarce; where oil flows like the sea, there is scarcity of water and arable land; in a country where the land is arable, there are no mineral resources; where there are tropical forests, there is insufficient supply of energy etc. The Muslim states clearly need each other. However, forgetting trusteeship has led them to disunity.

As well as unequal distribution of natural resources, wealth has also been distributed unevenly. For example, following the sharp rise in petroleum revenues in 1974, Saudi Arabia became one of the fastest growing nations in the world. Saudi foreign assets grew from about $4.3 billion in 1973 to nearly $150 billion in 1982. However, due to the steady decrease in the price of oil, that amount has fallen down by more than $60 billion since 1982. The same can be said for other petrol-rich Arab countries.

Accordingly, six Arab states-namely Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar and Oman-with a total population of approximately 16 million people have a combined GNP of about 150 billion dollars. The other Arab states, with a total population of about 205 million, have a combined GNP of 200 million dollars. As a result, GNP per capita in the ‘rich six’ is about 9,400 dollars as compared to only 975 dollars in the poor states, a ratio of almost 10 to 1. (Rabie, 1992. p.103). Consider the immense divide between Brunei and Bangladesh. Brunei’s GNP rate per capita is slightly more than 15,000 US dollars; in Bangladesh, it is only 179 dollars. The ratio is a staggering 84 to 1.

We recently witnessed how the uneven distribution of strategic energy resources was used to destroy Muslim brotherhood. Muslim countries spent billions of dollars on weapons to protect God’s resources and wealth from satisfying the needs of God’s servants. The military industry of the West is being fed at the expense of Muslim solidarity. Imagine what could happen if, instead, these billions of dollars were to used for the welfare of the Muslim peoples.

In the future, we may see regional wars fought for control of the most important resource in the Middle East, namely, fresh water. Scientists estimate that the total population of the region will be 423 million by the year 2000 and will have doubled in twenty-five years time and therefore many countries will have only about half as much water as they had in the 1970s (Bulloch & Dhrimsh, 1993). If water is exploited as a political weapon rather than shared among the people of the region, in accordance with the terms of amana. we may witness the coming to pass of one of the prophecies of God’s Messenger, upon him he peace, who said: There will emerge a mountain on the waters of the Euphrates. A treasure will be unearthed from beneath it. War will break out to possess this wealth. Ninety nine out of every hundred will be killed. Each will hope that he will be the only one to survive’ (Bukhari and Muslim). Elsewhere, he advised us not to participate in this war. There are interpretations among some scholars that the ‘mountain’ refers to a gigantic dam, and ‘treasure’ to the most precious of commodities, water.

As a result, to prevent such regional conflicts and wars. Muslims must rediscover the spirit of the concept of amana. That is to say, the problems of the Muslim states such as foreign debt, hunger, malnutrition, environmental degradation and resource scarcity can only be alleviated if we truly understand that we are obliged to share and care. When we start sharing our natural resources and technology with the poor and the needy; an important barrier in the way of solidarity will be brought down. This will replace enmity with gratitude and war with peace and security.

If we desire radical changes in the foreseeable future, it is our duty to change our own conceptions and to seek to influence the way our countries are ruled. A just world order can be realized only if we understand fully that we are only trustees of God. Denying our responsibilities will burden our shoulders with a great sin.

It is our duty to be ready to discharge fully our God- given trust on this earth. When this happens, God will grant us the keys of the universe. God has said: ‘My servants, the righteous shall inherit the earth’ (Al-Anbiya, 21.105). No one should doubt that one day this truth, guaranteed by God’s oaths, will come true. At that time, those who become the trustees and masters of the earth will also rule over the remotest parts of outer space.