Why a Magazine for a Single Law?
Pushing back is not one subject among the subjects of human society; it is the law through which all of them move. This magazine is an attempt to read scattered fields through a single lens.
Dr. Tarek Abou Ghazala, Editor-in-chief
When the wolves were gone from Yellowstone
In 1926 rangers in America’s Yellowstone National Park killed the last two wolves officially recorded as killed there; they were two young pups. The aim was to protect the elk herds from the predator, and at the time the decision looked like mercy toward wildlife.
What happened was the opposite of what they intended. The elk multiplied unchecked and grazed the riverbanks until the willow shrubs and aspen trees were gone. Scientists who visited the park in the early 1930s wrote that the ranges were “in a deplorable condition” and deteriorating steadily. With the willows gone, the beavers left, and the riverbanks lay bare.
In January 1995 fourteen wolves brought from Canada were released into the park, followed by seventeen more the next year. The northern elk herd fell to about half within roughly a decade, willows began to grow back in many places, and beaver colonies in the study area rose from one in 2001 to nine by 2011.
Ecologists still disagree about the size of this effect; human hunting, drought and bears also played a part in the elk’s decline. But the first lesson is no longer in dispute: when the force that pushed back the elk was removed, peace did not follow. The land was spoiled.
Source: Yellowstone National Park records; Ripple and Beschta (2012) and the scientific debate that followed.
It may seem strange to devote an entire magazine to a single concept. Magazines are usually founded for a field of knowledge such as economics, politics or history; a magazine built on a single Quranic law needs a justification. Ours is simple: pushing back is not one field among others but the movement through which every field runs. The market is producers pushing against each other; politics is forces contending over power and its limits; technology is a contest between tools and those who own them; war is the most extreme and violent form of pushing back; and society itself is an arena in which ideas, customs and groups push against one another.
God says:
﴿وَلَوْلَا دَفْعُ اللَّهِ النَّاسَ بَعْضَهُمْ بِبَعْضٍ لَفَسَدَتِ الْأَرْضُ وَلَٰكِنَّ اللَّهَ ذُو فَضْلٍ عَلَى الْعَالَمِينَ﴾[البقرة: 251]
“And were it not for God repelling some people by means of others, the earth would have been corrupted; but God is full of bounty to all the worlds.” (Al-Baqarah 2:251)
The verse neither praises conflict nor condemns it; it describes its function: the absence of pushing back leads to corruption. It is this descriptive claim that we want to test in every field, with the tools of the historian, the economist and the strategist, not the tools of the preacher.
What we commit to
First, we commit to the distinction on which our whole project rests: pushing back is a descriptive, causal law that tells us what happens, while cooperation is a normative principle that tells us what ought to happen. Confusing the two produces one of two errors: either justifying every victory because it is “the law”, or denying conflict because it “ought not to be”. Both errors blind us to reality.
Second, we commit to positive evidence. We will not build an argument on the silence of a text alone, and we will not cite a verse as evidence for what it does not say. When we call on a historical episode or a contemporary study, we will state its limits and the objections raised against it, because an argument that hides its weak points does not deserve the reader’s trust.
Third, we commit to many fields. This first issue has seven articles: one foundational piece that defines the concept, then six that carry it into society, economics, technology, politics, elections and war. The aim is for the reader to see the one law working through different mechanisms in each field, and so to learn what in it is constant and what changes with the domain.
The Tadafuʿ card
At the head of every article you will find a short card that identifies four elements: the two sides of the contention, the instrument of pushing back, the normative check that governs it, and the key verse. The card is not decoration but a method of reading: if we cannot fill in its fields precisely, that is proof we have not yet understood the phenomenon.
This is a magazine for the educated reader who wants to understand why fortunes rotate among people, and when conflict is reform and when it is ruin. We hope to live up in it to what we ask of others: accuracy in reporting, fairness in presentation, and courage in asking questions.