Fred Goodwin’s Knighthood is not enough
Fred Goodwin, the former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has just been stripped of his knighthood by the Queen. This is because of the risks he took that led to the largest annual loss in UK corporate history and the recession it helped to instigate. He was nicknamed ‘Fred the Shred’ for his cost-cutting. He has now been shredded himself.
Fred Goodwin is clearly a scapegoat and a distraction from wider issues and uninvestigated crimes. However, if Fred Goodwin is a scapegoat then who exactly is it that has escaped? Perhaps we need to look deeper…
In any case, don’t feel too sorry for him. Fred still has his pension to fall back on, despite his mistakes.
The real question though is whether this move against Goodwin actually changes anything or if it is in fact a meaningless, cosmetic, fig leaf of a gesture that is simply meant to appease those who doen’t really have any alternatives and just want to see some action.
For Muslims who are confident that Islam is the divine and perfect way of life that has all of the answers the challenge is in whether we can articulate the Islamic alternative to free-market capitalism in particular and secular liberal democracy in general. After all, the collapse of confidence in capitalism can only be achieved once an available alternative is regarded as credible by the public. This kind of da’wah is one of the primary roles of Muslims in the West.
So if you’re looking for a resource to help you make the case for Islam then here’s a link to a timely example of the kind of policy paper Muslims should be devouring hungrily:
