The Idea of Pakistan

Economic Rights and Liberties
Economic rights mean the freedom of earning decent and sufficient 
economic earnings and also freedom from fear of unemployment or loss of 
economic income. It also means security and the opportunity to find 
reasonable significance in the earning of one’s daily bread. Actually 
economic rights and liberties are pre-conditions of other rights and liberties.
None of them can really exist without them. An individual cannot be really 
free if hunger, starvation and destitution stare at him in the face at every 
step. People, especially minorities in a state cannot be expected to remain 
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loyal to the state if they do not have economic rights and liberties. Islam is 
not ignorant of this reality.
We have already mentioned the securities Islam provides for its 
non-Muslim minorities in this respect. It may be added here that Islam 
provides equal opportunities to its non-Muslim citizens in the economic field 
of their life. They are given the freedom to adopt any profession subject to 
the common law of the country. However, they cannot practice 
Riba’(usuary) which is prohibited for all and sundry in the Islamic state
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.
The most important point to be noted here is that if any of the non-
Muslims becomes destitute, crippled or sick, he has as much claims on the 
state treasury as any other Muslim
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. Muslim generals have not only given 
such undertakings to the dhimmis at the time of granting them citizenship of 
the Islamic state
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but the early rulers of the Islamic state are also reported 
to have sanctioned huge sums to the deserving persons from among the non-
Muslims from the public treasury (bayt al-mal) of the state. 
It must be mentioned here that there is no bar on the trade activities 
of the non-Muslims in an Islamic state save subject to certain legal 
restrictions referred to in the preceding section of the present study.