Islam and the question of land reform
By Izzud-Din Pal
ABUL A’LA Maudoodi was an uncompromising advocate of unlimited ownership of land. In his view, any expropriation of property in the name of land reform was un-Islamic. Syed Qutb, the current icon of political Islam, argued that social justice required that the state should control the economy when necessary, and to dispossess its citizens, when they were unreasonable (Al-Adalaha al ijtimaiyyah fi al- Islam). For him, “unreasonable” included concentration of ownership.
The two well-known scholars of Islam obviously held diametrically opposite views concerning the ownership of land. The explanation for this divergence in their interpretation of the scriptural statements should be sought in the social and political conditions of the times faced by the two scholars themselves, not in the scriptures. There is nothing in Islam that is fundamentally opposed to modern-day needs for bringing about reorganisation of agriculture. My objective in this article is to expound this theme with reference to Pakistan.
During the early formative period of Pakistan, it became clear that the question of land reform was going to be dealt with differently in the two wings of the country.
In East Pakistan, the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act, 1950 was to bring radical change in land ownership and tenure system in that province. In West Pakistan, on the other hand, the mood was to defend the status quo of absentee landlordism and landed aristocracies. As Gunnar Myrdal says in his Asian Drama (1965) says that the political forces in the region consisted mainly of leaders related to hereditary landlords.
In addition, the religious factor emerged in West Pakistan, first in 1950 and then during the eighties which provided support to the landlord lobby in the region.
There was no such development in East Pakistan. The landlords in that province happened to be Hindus, and many ulema in Pakistan had supported the actions of the East Pakistan government on this matter.
The issue continued, nevertheless, to persist in West Pakistan. The First Five Year Plan 1955-60, for example, devoted a chapter on the subject and suggested that it was one of the most urgent national problems facing the country. The aims of land reform, it emphasised, were economic, but in a still greater and more pressing degree, they were social and political.
The spirit of the Plan’s message was echoed in the first draft bill of the 1956 Constitution. It was unacceptable to many members of the Constituent Assembly. An amendment was, therefore, successfully moved by Sir Feroze Khan Noon, supported by other members from the landed classes to defeat this recommendation in order to save Pakistan, as they claimed, from becoming a communist state.
It would be useful, therefore, to examine the question of property rights in Islam in order to throw some light on issues relating to land reform in the country.
Land ownership is a very complex issue, because it has been defined by Islamic scholars only indirectly, with an emphasis on the agricultural sector of the economy. Maulana Hifzur Rahman Sehwarvi, for example, in his Islam ka Iqdisadi Nizam (Delhi, 1939, rev. fourth ed. 1951) notes that ownership is a controversial issue: the Traditions of the Prophet are contradictory, some requiring possession in accordance with a person’s ability to cultivate himself, and others allowing unlimited ownership, with a right to rent or sharecropping excess land. After a lengthy discussion, he concludes by saying that during the era of the Prophet and of the four pious Caliphs both the above methods seemed to have been in use. But the fact remains that the Prophet regarded these practices unfavourably.
Property rights in Arabia, on the advent of Islam, were determined by tribal and customary rules. They were influenced by the pattern of life of the people. As is well-known, there were two main sources of wealth creation: trade (especially caravan trade) and agriculture.
It was in this milieu that the Prophetic Message from God was established — the Deen, the faith for the righteous path — being above everything else but providing the criteria for how human beings should conduct their political and economic affairs. It was not the Prophetic mission, however, to establish a detailed system.
The question about the size of one’s property did come up from time to time during the early period of Islam, especially with reference to ownership of agricultural land. This is where the role of the Traditions becomes important. The people depended on the circulation of oral narratives as compilations such as Al-Bukhari and Al-Muslim became available only in the next generation. And several narratives were in circulation on this subject, as noted above with reference to Hifzur Rahman Sehwarvi.
One such narration is ascribed to Raafi bin Khadij, and it has played an important part in the history of this issue.
Khadij, in this narrative, is reported to have said that giving one’s land for rent or for sharecropping had been forbidden by the Prophet. In other words, if a person has agricultural land in his possession, he should either cultivate it himself or give it to someone else to cultivate free of charge. This narrative had influenced the opinions of the jurists on this matter ranging from Imam Abu Hanifa to Shah Walli Ullah.
It is on the basis of this narrative that Hifzur Rahman suggests that in Islam private ownership is permitted to a limited extent and under defined conditions. These conditions would include self-cultivation or partnership according to the rules of Islamic finance.
Abul A’la Maudoodi rejected these conditions as un-Islamic in his Mas’ala-i-Milkiyat-i-Zamin, first published in 1950, with several reprints in later years. He examined the question about the size of ownership of land in this small booklet.
He was aware of the importance of the hadith narrated by Raafi bin Khadij, and he devoted a lot of space to it in his monograph, invoking opinions of relatives and some contemporaries of Khadij to analyse the focal point of the narrative. His objective was to emphasise that several other narratives, equally reliable, pointing out that in fact the use of rent and sharecropping were prevalent and acceptable during that period.
As Maudoodi notes in his book, this conclusion is out of tune with the opinions of the jurists who were close enough to the Prophetic era, and were unable to arrive at a categorical consensus. Imam Abu Hanifa considers use of rent and sharecropping as unacceptable, though not the other two well-known Hanafi jurists, Imam Abu Yusuf and Imam Muhammad. Imam Shafi’i does not accept cropsharing. Similarly, Imam Malik had his reservations. Imam Hanbal, however, would accept cropsharing under defined conditions. It is obvious that the issue remains open to interpretation.
Maudoodi, however, proceeds to establish what he considers are the clear limits to land reform according to Islam: 1) state ownership of land is contrary to Islam; 2) land distribution should be fair but not necessarily equal; 3) there is no “uncontrolled” philosophy [“bag-tut”] in Islam which can be imposed on the people; and 4) within the framework of Islam, neither any limits can be imposed on the size of ownership, nor any “capricious” [“man-mani”] restriction can be enforced in the name of social justice.
This is a summary of Maudoodi’s position which has left a strong impact on the question of land reform in Pakistan. He was a leader of an active political party in the country, and he must have been aware of the essential features of the plans for land reform which were floating around in the formative years of Pakistan. In Sindh, a Tenancy Laws Committee had reported on its findings in 1945 followed by the Hari Committee Report in 1948. And the Muslim League Agrarian Reform Committee had made several proposals in 1949.
The objectives of these reports were, inter alia, to put a ceiling on individual ownership and to distribute the land thus released among cultivators and tenants. The Agrarian Reform Committee had emphasized that landlordism in Pakistan was an historical accident. It nevertheless recommended a fairly heavy compensation for expropriation. The goal behind the objective was the same as in all other countries which had gone through stages of traditional agriculture, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. And it was to abolish illegal exactions from tenants and to provide them with a security of tenure, thus improving efficiency in the areas remaining under control of landlords as well as those assigned to the cultivators.
The land reform proposals did not directly address the issue of rent or sharecropping which might be available to the landlord in his newly defined ceiling of his land holdings. The main focus was on reducing a high degree of concentration of ownership which was considered undesirable from economic and social point of view. Maudoodi did not touch upon this question at all.
Also, the report of the Land Reform Commission for West Pakistan, 1959, which had been commissioned by Ayub Khan, provided him with an opportunity to review his four-point limits to land reform, which he had established in the first edition of his booklet. But the next reprint of the booklet completely ignored the issue. On the question of state-ownership, he would have found a good discussion in the report about the relation between the state and the individual owner of land which was established through land revenue system, being the portion of the produce of the land for which proprietary right had gradually taken a definite shape.
The ceilings on holdings were recommended only to reduce sharp inequalities which existed in concentration of ownership, giving first option to tenants to buy the land thus released.
Similar ceilings had also been implemented in other Muslim countries such as Egypt, Syria, Turkey an Iraq. There was no “uncontrolled” philosophy guiding the Commission, nor were the restrictions recommended “capriciously”. It was all part of a reasoned discussion explaining and justifying the recommendations.
It would have been useful if Maudoodi had taken the trouble to offer comments on the report and suggest why and how its recommendations were contrary to Islam. As many of these recommendations remain controversial, his views on them would have been useful. This is where he represents the same dilemma and paradox as all other traditional ulema and their followers face: a dialogue of the deaf on social and economic issues. No common language is spoken, nor is an effort made to understand and evaluate issues discussed in the economic reports, which are produced for attention of the general public with a view to avoiding the technical jargon.
The land commission established by Ayub Khan, however, was able to acquire about five per cent of the cultivated area only. Also many tenants did not or could not exercise the first option to purchase the property.
With the land reforms introduced by Mr Z.A. Bhutto, the atmosphere had completely changed. These were part of his plan to introduce a democratic Islamic socialist state in the country, which had invoked a strong reaction against it among the opposition groups. First a land reform regulation was introduced in 1972. In 1977, a land reforms act was passed by the National Assembly. It seems that the focus of land reforms was put on the NWFP and Balochistan, than Sindh and the Punjab which were friendlier to the Pakistan People’s Party. In July 1977, however, the Bhutto government was dismissed by a coup by General Ziaul Haq.
A new system of Islamic courts was introduced as part of Islamic Reform by Ziaul Haq. The landlords from the NWFP decided to take advantage of the new courts. A case was filed with the Shariat Bench of the Peshawar High Court on behalf of Haji Niamatullah, challenging various parts of the reforms, especially the tenants’ right of pre-emption on sale of the acquired land. The court decided in favour of the petitioner.
With this case began a new era of judicial activism of Islamic courts. The hadith narrated by Khadij about self-cultivation had been replaced by the view in favour of unlimited right of ownership. In 1981, the Council of Islamic Ideology prepared a draft incorporating, as it claimed the views of 1,500 judges, advocates, ulema and others in favour of the decision of Peshawar High Court. In the meantime, several other cases were filed with the courts seeking redress against the land reforms.
Two of these cases are worth mentioning. They reached the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court (SAB) for final judgment: Government of NWFP versus Said Kemal Shah in 1986; Qazalbash Waqf and others versus the Chief Land Commissioner in 1989. In the former appeal, the court upheld that the tenants’ right of pre-emption was un-Islamic, and in the latter case, the issue of ceiling on landholdings proposed by the land reform was also declared un-Islamic.
The discussion which I began with the narration of the hadith by Khadij thus ends up in a maze of judicial opinions which, as demonstrated by the SAB judgments, were based on split decisions (3 to 2 in each case). The issue remains open to interpretation, therefore, as a challenge from the point of view of reconstruction of Islamic thought in modern times. It is also worth noting that the National Assembly has never formally repudiated its Bhutto-era land reform legislation.
The sentiment for a meaningful land reform in the country continues to be strong.
The writer taught economics at Pakistani and Canadian universities before his retirement. He is author of several books.
E-mail:
izzud-din.pal@videotron.ca
