The Political Interpretation of Islam

of their economic conditions. The economy becomes the vortex of all conflicts and struggles. In other words, people’s minds and the world at large come to be determined by the economic factor. Of course, other aspects of life still continue to exist, but they come to be dominated by this one single factor. Detached from the economy, they are thought of as of no importance. Socialist thought emerged in Europe in the context of the enormous changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Witnessing the havoc wrought by new industrial technologies in the lives of the working classes, some sensitive souls were moved to undertake efforts to ameliorate the workers’ plight so that they, too, could gain some of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution. In other words, in the beginning, Socialism was based on the importance of the economic factor, but this factor was not taken to be the be-all and endall of life. The fact of the matter is that unless a certain point is singled out for particular attention, sometimes to the point of exaggeration, it does not receive much attention or popular appeal. Because of this, a certain revolutionary fervor began to characterize the writings and speeches of Socialist leaders, tending towards a certain exaggeration of the importance of the economic factor. Gradually, this tendency manifested itself in the form of an entire worldview based on the economic factor alone, in which every other aspect of life revolved around it and was dominated by it.