Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Some lines from Ibn Qutayba

A senior British officer serving in Afghanistan is reported to have quoted these lines from the ninth-century Muslim scholar Ibn Qutayba:

There can be no government without an army
No army without money
No money without prosperity
And no prosperity without justice and good administration.

This was in response to questions on how to tackle the insurgency. The enlightened may draw some lessons from this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

He should have added "and no justice and good administration without government".

Jack Point said...

Hee hee.

That apparently, it what they are trying to build.

You may find the article from which I picked up the quote interesting, have a look at it here

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11402695

If the link is not working log into Economist.com and get the story-its in this week's edition and called "A war of money as well as bullets"