[Dr. Shon Thomson]

Walaykum Salaam

I will answer some of your questions later insha-Allah, when I have more time. If you read some of the books cited by Richard Maybury he gives the example of Switzerland. It is one of the richest countries in the world. It was neutral in WW2 and all its citizens are trained in warfare...they have weapons hidden in the mountains should they ever be invaded the people would fight, so the view that lack of state bureaucracy and standing armies makes one vulnerable is wrong. The taliban failed because they were beating people and trying to impliment shariah top down...had they simply established peace and security in the land and sent our good humble preachers and sufis to the people they would have changed.

The Ottomons did not have a state it functioned for 800 years. The kuffar had to destroy it for them to be able to create their riba based global system. We should refrain from calling it a state because it is not a state...anarchists use the phrase government without state...and this is what we want. Umar ( RA) did kind of increase the power of the government, but it was still very minimal when compared to the modern State. We never had central banks in out history. If you are interested try to do some research on central banks what they do and how they rule us, I am sure you will find it very enlightening. It will not take you long, go to the dailybell.com website to see how even non Muslims who are not 'intoxicated' by the idea of the state know how evil and destructive it is.

Brother as I said before I largely agree with what you are saying and I think I already hold most of the views that you are promoting, but I think we have to be careful in what we are promoting, because there are some useful things that exist within the structures complex modern societies that benefit people - and some that the existence of modern technology necessitates.

For example the Republic of Somaliland is officially a Democracy, but it is not recognized by the world and in fact it exists without a real state (i.e. the state is very minimal and politics are basically tribal) and people there moderate their behaviour according to Islam but within the limits of Somali traditional values they are relatively free. In many ways (apart from drought) it is a thriving place, but the country is moving towards ecological problems, because with a rising population the trees from around the capital city Hargeisa have already gone, water sources are under strain and there are some other problems like this that a more interventionist government would pro-actively deal with.

If these things happened in a complex modern state the department of the environment may do things to preserve the trees that prevent land erosion and flooding and help increase rainfall (like what has been done in parts of the UAE, not to prevent erosion, but to make the place more pleasant to live, with palm planting which old people say has changed the air temperature) and new large reservoirs would be dug etc. In Somaliland there is no such grand organization and as a result people are coming under increasing strain during hot summers.

Of course the Sahaba would have planted and protected trees and made reservoirs at the Prophet's (saws) bidding because of their love for him, but would modern Muslims do these things for an Amir with less charisma than the Prophet (saws) in a situation where he could not command the resources to pay people and control society?

also most historians use the term state for the Ottoman governmental system, it was certainly a complex society in which the government in fact owned most of the land and appointed beaurocrats to oversee it and agricultural production (for more info see http://www.allaboutturkey.com/ottoman2.htm and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_o...Ottoman_Empire), forgive me if I am missing something that you have said, but what term would you use for their governmental system other than a state?