66 SOCIAL SCIENTIST new social fabric and a new human material."8 Marxist philosophy itself according to Iqbal, must yield to religion. "Philosophy", he said, "must recognize the central position of religion.954 It is well known that this dichotomy, or rather the primacy of religion over socialism, led him to enunciate and espouse the cause of a separate Islamic nation. The architect of this disastrous religious nationalism, Muslim League, still sways the minds of Indian Muslim masses at decisive moments when it gives the call of "Islam in danger." Men are born in religion, they grow up and give up their ghosts in religion. Religious consciousness cannot be wished away by atheistic or Marxist denunciations. Marxist Muslim intellectuals and professional revolutionaries have fought shy of doing even that, while those hailing from other religions have stopped at that.® This is one of the main reasons why communist parties in Muslim countries have remained weak, and tailed behind their respective bourgeois classes, who have been shrewd enough to dangle the carrot of Islamic socialism before their masses and then unleash bloodbaths against the communist parties. Is Islam Primitive Communistic? Why is Islam formally egalitarian? The answer given, even by many Muslim Marxists, is that it is due to its being a tribal, primitive communistic religion.6 Engineer counters this formulation, but his exposition contradicts his contention. The Bedouin Arabs amongst whom Islam arose lived in pastoral and nomadic tribalism, and whatever agriculture they practised gave them bare subsistence and could not yield any surplus at all.7 Mecca, the cradle of Islam, itself "is arid and barren."8 Hence, like other Bedouin tribes, the tribe ofQuaraysh which controlled Mecca was a primitive communistic, classless tribe. In our study it is important to note that the city of Mecca did not have any traditional organ of government, bureaucracy or standing army. In fact, though the tribal structure was disintegrating, the nomadic influences were quite strong. The only organ of government in Mecca was the senate or mala'a. The senate mainly consisted of representatives of the various clans. Another important thing to note is that the council was only a deliberative body and had no executive of its own. Moreover each constituent clan was theoretically independent and therefore, was not bound by any of its decisions. The only effective decisions were the unanimous ones. No taxes were levied or collected.9 Thus, Engineer agrees with Morgan and Engels in thinking that a state is characterized by a bureaucracy which collects taxes from its subjects and a standing army which suppresses them, and that the institutions of state and kingship arise on the corpse of classless primitive tribal society. He is correct in pointing out that kingship arises only in an agricultural society, but reiterates the outdated concept of identifying kingship with feudalism.10 The pre-British Kerala monarchies were slave