Maulana Wahiduddin Khan | The Sunday Guardian | April 29, 2018

The aim of communism is to set man on an equal social and economic footing. The distinction between bourgeois and proletariat is one which communist philosophy and society, from Karl Marx onward, has always sought to eradicate.

Yet experience consistently shows that, no matter what efforts are taken by the state, social strata remain a part of human life.

The "equality of man" is a common and noble human ideal. Yet efforts to make this ideal a reality of human life are a consistent failure. This is because man seeks to base equality on a foundation in which there can be no equality. It is inevitable that there should be social and economic differences among men, just as there are differences of race and colour. Without these differences, the normal functions of life cannot be performed. This is a truth that has been expressed in the Quran in the following words: "God has given some of you more provision than others. Those who have been given more are unwilling to pass their provision to the servants they possess so that they become their equals. Will they then deny the favour of God?"(16:71)

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The only realistic and practical from that equality in the world of man can take, then, is through realisation that all men and women are equal before God; all are His creatures and will return to Him after death. If they are equal in God's sight, despite all their differences, then they should be equal in man's sight also; not in worldly terms, but in eternal terms. This equality will take on real form in the next world; it is present in abstract form in this world.

After death all worldly and material differences between people will be eradicated and what would remain of importance is only the character and personality they developed in the life of this world.