[PEN-L:1222] Wah'habism: correction

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

     I made an error in my long post on Wah'habism.  The 
owner of Achnacarry Castle at which the Red Line Agreement 
of 1928 dividing up the world for the oil majors was owned 
by the Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell, but he was Sir Henri 
Deterding, not Walter Teagle.  Teagle was in attendance as 
the Chairman of New Jersey Standard (future Exxon).
     Two further notes:
     A major question regarding Islamic economics is the 
extent to which it favors socialism or capitalism.  The 
French Marxist economist, Maxime Rodinson, argued in _Islam 
and Capitalism_, 1973, New York: Pantheon (originally in 
French) that it is inherently pro-capitalist given the 
rules in the Qur'an about property inheritance and the open 
approval of profit, despite the forbidding of interest.  
Others have seen a socialist potential in certain passages 
declaring that only Allah is the owner of things, although 
as in Iran this has ended up being interpreted as 
justifying clerical ownership of the means of production.  
An advocate of Islamic socialism is Mohammed Abdul Mannon, 
_Islamic Economics: Theory and Practice_, 1970, Lahore: 
Muhammed Ashraf (a disproportionate number of Islamic 
economists have been of Pakistani origin, beginning with 
Sayyid Abdul A'la Mawdudi, _The Economic Problem of Man and 
Its Islamic Solution_, 1947, Lahore: Islamic Publications, 
translated to English from Urdu, 1975). These 
pro-socialist views were predominant in the early stages of 
the Iranian revolution prior to the removal of Abolhassan 
Bani-Sadr who was associated with the pro-socialist 
Ayatollah Taliqani.  However in 1982 the Khomeini-dominated 
Council of Guardians passed rulings that definitely tilted 
Iran towards a more capitalist position.
     In the Kingdom of Sa'udi Arabia (KSA) the 
pro-capitalist interpretation has always held, despite 
government ownership of the oil, of Petromin, and major 
government involvement in directing petrodollars to 
industrial development through SABIC.  The views of the 
ultra-strict Hanbali Sa'udis have also manifested 
themselves in their extreme opposition to "godless 
communism," to the point that KSA never has had diplomatic 
relations with any communist state, unless they have 
recently switched to recognizing the PRC rather than the 
ROC when I wasn't paying attention.
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University


-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]