Review of the Book “Post Economic Development Themes: Development as Freedom,

by Prof. David Vázquez-Guzmán

For a development economist, the illustrative book of Prof. Abdalla Elfakki Elbashir about the comparative perspectives of Mr. Taha and Prof. Sen is a refreshing reading that makes us think about the fundamentals of our science of economic development.

This a respectful tribute to both contributions of Mr. Mahmoud Mohamed Taha and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya K. Sen in the field of individual freedom and communitarian development. The story of Mr. Taha is a sad one because he ended up giving up his life for his ideals of progressive development, and this is a reminder that underdevelopment is usually accompanied by pure intolerance. Mr. Taha was executed by his captors in Sudan on January 18 of 1985, just because he intended to adapt the religious thinking of his society to the new challenges that his country was experiencing. Misery, inequality, and lack of opportunities were what Mr. Taha was able to see in his time, yet he wanted to do something about it. His insight into individual freedom and access to services and opportunities was something that he tried to communicate while he was attacked, persecuted and sometimes imprisoned. Here, the clear perspective of individual freedom that Mr. Taha had is masterly connected by Prof. Elbashir with the ideals of freedoms and capabilities that are much known in development studies by Prof. Amartya K. Sen.

For those that we have followed the work of Prof. Sen in the field of economic development, the work of Prof. Elbashir about Taha’s contributions is a refreshing link that makes us think about how fundamental ideologies in welfare literature might have common roots. Prof. Sen and his seminal contributions to the field of economics, where he changed the nature of development methodology from being usually on the side of the science, but to be part of the mainstream study within economics, is an established fact that all that we are related with economic development know and praised. Prof. Sen’s individual perspective, which is clear in his Development as Freedom (1999), among other of his literature, is a cornerstone of human development, because we learned that not only access to goods and services are enough to complete human progress, but also and perhaps most importantly, the way we construct communities, with freedom and participation in a multidimensional environment, is also important. It is here that Prof. Elbashir profoundly studies Sen’s literature and links some of his thinking with that of Mr. Taha, so he leaves an open agenda for what he calls an idea of “Intellectual Convergence”, which is a concept where there might be subjacent connections of human capital.

The book of Prof. Elbashir is an invitation to study the roots of economic development in Islamic thinking and invites the reader to think about the common roots of both Western culture and Islamic thought. For instance, I remember that one of the champions of the field, Mahbub ul Haq, a devoted Muslim who sadly passed away in 1998 and who was a beloved friend of Prof. Sen, might be underestimated. The multidimensional approach of measurement of development that Mr. Haq was passionate about it, as it is clear in the establishment of the Human Development Reports of the United Nations, where Mr. Haq was an essential contributor, might have as well an Islamic ideal of freedom. On the other hand, Prof. Elbashir’s book arouses us intellectually to study the philosophical connections between a Westernized (e.g. Catholic) theology and the Islamic religion, as that is clear in the work of philosopher Averroes.

Overall, the book of Prof. Taha is a stimulating intellectual exercise; is a comparative invitation that makes us think in a tolerant way that we perhaps are not that different after all, and that human development is a multifaceted task that deserves every effort, as big as the earth or as small as the size of two fishes and five loaves of bread so that every contribution will perhaps increase the level of development of every person in the underdeveloped world.

Brief Description of the Book
This book is a comparison between the work of the propounder of The New Understanding of Islam, the Sudanese humanist thinker Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, who was executed in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum on January 18, 1985, and the work of the Indian economist and philosopher Amartya Kumar Sen, the 1998 Nobel laureate in economics, and the professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University in the United States. The comparison centers on their mutual visions of development. Sen presented his vision in his book: Development as Freedom (1999), of which an Arabic version was published, entitled: Development as Freedom: Institutions that Assure Freedom for Individuals Free From Ignorance, Illness, and Poverty, (2004). For Sen, freedom is the essential means and the ultimate end of development, which he views as essentially a process of expanding true freedoms that should be enjoyed by the human being who is its center and goal. According to Sen, it is a development that can only be achieved by combining increased income and advanced capability. Advancing capabilities expand opportunities for freedom of choice and control of one’s own life, as poverty cannot be measured merely by using income as conventionally understood. Sen’s book has been widely praised as the first book in the history of human thought that combines development and freedom. Some people saw that Sen had added a new meaning to development, freeing it from the limitations of the prevailing concepts among politicians and economists who considered development to be merely economic growth within the scope of income and GDP. Sen’s ideas were also celebrated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where he was considered a pioneer of ethical economics by introducing the concept of development as human freedom to break out of the traditional concept of economic efficiency. Thus, the conceptual framework of the UNDP reports has been based on his ideas and work since the 1990s.

This book presents the findings that Sen’s ideas are in many respects nearly identical to those proposed earlier by Taha in many of his books and lectures during the period beginning in the early 1950s and continuing into the 1970s. For Taha, the ultimate goal and purpose of any development is the free human being. He states that it is necessary to put the individuals and their freedom at the forefront, otherwise economic development will be doomed, defeated, and is certain to suffer failure because people are the true wealth that deserves attention. He believes that “in order to ensure the success of development… it is necessary to have freedom,” and this is what Sen has expressed by saying: “Freedom is central to the process of development.” Sen’s saying “Responsibility requires freedom,” is similar to Taha’s statement “Freedom is responsibility.” Sen also argues that: “Individual freedom is quintessentially a social product,” which is exactly what Taha meant, when he said, “Society is an instrument for individual freedom.” Also, by comparing Sen’s goal on the cover of the Arabic version of his book, which states, “Development as Freedom: Institutions that Assure Freedom for Individuals Free from Ignorance, Illness, and Poverty”, we notice a similarity in agreement with Taha’s statement that, “The individual has a right over his government to free him from fear, poverty, ignorance, and illness.” The similarity is also evident in their vision of education and its role in increasing productivity and advancing capability. It is, according to Sen, capability enhancement, while Taha defined education as “the acquisition of capability by a living being”. The commonality is again reflected in both of them expressing the urgent need for freedom for humans today, where Sen states that “freedom is critically important right now”, a statement not much different from Taha’s saying: “Freedom is the issue of today’s human”. In comparing the thought of these two intellectuals, this book provides numerous examples of similarities and intersections between their ideas.