The Oath to Gold: On How the Republic Was Born of Financial Compulsion

Terminological Note:
In this article—as in others written within this context—we do not employ certain modern political terms in accordance with their propagandistic connotations. Rather, we seek to return them to their historical proportions and practical contexts.

Thus, when we speak of “mob rule,” we refer to what democracy has, in reality, become: the rule of the rabble, not the governance of the people in any enlightened sense.
And when we speak of a “rule by the masses,” we are referring to the republic—where authority exists solely in their name, and legitimacy rests upon their illusory consent.
As for the “president,” he is neither a master nor a leader in our view, but a governor set over the multitude—shifting with their shifts, holding no real power over them save what they have lent him temporarily (as is the case with any governor who is appointed and then dismissed), only to reclaim it through the ballot-box charade or the outcry of the street.

The fall of kingdoms was not a passing whim of fate, nor was the rise of capitalism the dawn of enlightenment after a night of ignorance, as the apostles of modernity so deliriously claim when they compose odes to progress in places it does not belong. Rather—truth be told—it was a dislodging of the throne of history from its axis, a redirection of the course of civilisation from its natural path. For capitalism was not born but from the rubble of crowns, and it did not rise but upon the ruins of palaces. It was no inevitable fate; it was a quiet coup, conceived in the minds of men before it was declared by the mouths of rifles.

The monarchies—with all the grandeur of lineage, the nobility of blood, and the reverence of inheritance—were not governed by the scales of the marketplace, but by the measure of dignity. They did not structure their order upon profit, but upon inherited honour. They did not reserve high rank solely for those of noble birth, nor did they make toil the only ladder to ascendancy; rather, they wove together virtue and station, raising whosoever united piety with merit—even if he were of servile origin or of darker complexion. They knew not the contracts upon which companies are built, but bound loyalty between lord and liegeman. And in their domain, wealth flowed like a river in its course—neither bought nor sold, but granted and gifted.

In the chancelleries of Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and the Sublime Porte, in the gardens of Hindustan and the Ghaznavids, in the palaces of Alhambra, Aachen, and Bourbon, time was still—layered, ordered, and preserved like a jewelled coffer, opened only with the key of lineage, allegiance, or both. No motion stirred within save by leave; no ascent occurred save by custom. There was no place in it for the chaos now called the “free market.” It was a system that raised the roof above all—but shaded all beneath it.

Capitalism, by contrast, is of another creed altogether—a face unknown to the long centuries in which sovereignty was granted by God to whom He willed. It was not built upon noble bloodlines or ancestral honour, but upon a precise and pitiless measure: how much gold your hand may yield, not how much virtue you carry. Its foundation was a market without sanctity, a power changed as often as ministers change their garb, and classes bound by no covenant nor character—only by the fever of possession and the panting chase for profit.

Such a thing could never have been born under the shade of a turban before which necks bowed, nor within a sanctuary whose legitimacy traced itself to the heights of heaven. It required a land scrubbed clean of “inherited right,” a history stripped of its substance—where oaths of fealty and pledges of allegiance were erased, and in their place flowed the ink of contracts, shares, and speculation.

The fall of thrones—as some in this modern age would claim—is not merely a shift in the style of governance, but a reversal of social order and a transformation in the very essence of the state. When the ruler becomes a servant to stock market indices, he is no longer anchored by law nor guided by the consent of his people. And when the state severs itself from lineage and the sacred, it comes to value nothing but the hands that fill its coffers. Thus, the face of sovereignty was veiled, the breath of noble station stifled, to make way for a new throne—one unseen and untouched, its seat nestled in the heart of the bank, its dominion in the hands of those who pull the strings of the market.

In the East—where states were born from the womb of religion, and kingdoms branched from the tree of the Caliphate—authority was not a commodity to be sold, nor the seat of power a piece of real estate to be passed to the highest bidder. Rule was a trust hung upon the neck of the prince, not a share traded in the pit of commerce. The sovereign, even in tyranny, was held to account from pulpit and prayer niche alike—reminded that beyond this world lies the Hereafter, and that kingship bears a day of reckoning, severe and inescapable, for any flock abandoned or wronged.

But time turned, and hearts were released from the meanings of reverence, entering the marketplace through its grandest gates. Capitalism advanced like a caravan heedless of whom it casts aside or what meanings it tramples underfoot. It cared nothing for absolute rule or majestic sovereignty—save where such things hindered the flow of capital or the passage of contracts. What it sought was not the liberation of man, but the liberation of the market from man: from his conscience, his law, and his memory.

For if the king were not dethroned, his laws would endure. And if governance were rooted in lineage, it would remain loyal to its origins, not to the interests of corporations. If it answered to sacred law, it could not be reshaped by a stock exchange or revised by a financial statement. Capitalism, therefore, had no need for a mere revolt against monarchs—it required the very spirit of kingship to be extracted from the hearts of men and replaced with the mentality of the investor and the speculator.

And so there emerged the rule of the rabble in its representative guise—not as an adversary of despotism, but as its officially licensed administrator. It did not abolish the authority of the individual ruler; it merely distributed it across chairs and wrapped it in ballot paper. In such a system, the governor is not dismissed but rotated, not held to account but replaced—so that the essence remains unchanged: an executor, not a decision-maker.

And this rotation of power—though it deceives the masses into thinking authority lies in their hands—is in truth a perpetual deed of commission granted to the market. For with each electoral cycle, laws are reshaped to suit the financier, not the voter, and the gates are flung open to those with financial clout, not to those bearing the concerns of the public. Thus, the “citizen’s voice” has become a tool wheeled out every four years to legitimise decisions already sealed in the corridors of banks and the showrooms of economic forums.

The transformation was not confined to the political sphere; it extended into the very essence of man. For when sovereignty was vested in the hands of a just ruler, the people were his charge—surrounded by his care, spared the humiliation of asking, their livelihoods secured through his patronage. The ruler was accountable not by virtue of written contracts, but by the trust placed upon his shoulders, and the sacred duty of guardianship he was summoned to uphold. The hungry man’s hunger was held against the sovereign, the naked man’s bareness questioned in his court, and the ailing man never left to suffer alone—for the ruler was a shepherd, and the flock his solemn responsibility.

But when the order was overturned, and sovereignty was reflected through the rule of the masses, people were no longer known as subjects, but counted in state registries—tallied like goods in an inventory. The bonds of care were severed, and their affairs returned unto themselves. He who starved did so by his own fault; he who fell ill, by his own error. The state no longer asked, “Who fed you?”—it asked only, “Have you paid your dues?” Thus, the face of patronage vanished, replaced by accounting; and the governor of the rabble stood apart from them, managing them as a merchant manages his stall—concerned with nothing but what enters the treasury or departs from it.

Yet this transformation in public affairs did not unfold uniformly across all lands, nor did the cities of the world—East and West—receive it in equal measure. In the Eastern horizon, though states donned the garb of modernity and adopted the names of the republic, they never fully severed themselves from the legacy of ancient sovereignty, nor were they entirely cleansed of the traits of the patriarchal state. This was not due to some inherent virtue in their nature, but rather because the inherited religion, deeply rooted customs, and settled cultural instincts stood as barriers to a total rupture.

For the people there were reared upon the veneration of the sovereign, supplicating for him from the pulpits, and regarding him as a shepherd to his flock—not as a contractor dealing with his equal in the marketplace. The image of a state that abandons the poor to their fate never quite settled in their minds, nor could they stomach the illusion of equality when it came without patronage or justice. Thus, even where the rule of the masses has grown strong, and the state proclaims its modernity, its rhetoric remains preoccupied with unemployment, housing, and the guarantee of a basic livelihood.

This is not a relic of bygone socialism, but a testament to capitalism’s failure to erase from the soul the image of the maternal state—the state that gives and withholds, protects and reproaches, bestows favour and strikes with force—even as it claims neutrality or flies the banners of the market.

Among the most evident distinctions between monarchical governance in the various civilisations—particularly those shaped by the guidance of the Sacred Law—and the market-driven mechanisms introduced by the rabble in recent ages, is that kings in the Islamic world—who regarded their sovereignty as a trust bound to the Law, and whose banners were the banners of religion—forbade usury and actively suppressed it. They considered it not a technical matter of commercial jurisprudence to be widened by opinion and convenience, but rather a clear case of devouring people’s wealth unjustly.

This was the practice of caliphs and kings alike: ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, it is reported, was the most rigorous among them in this regard—prohibiting it altogether, enforcing the ban with severity, even striking the hands of the usurers and seizing their wealth. Similarly, the sultans of the House of Osman, though they may have permitted certain transactions through legal devices or expanded the scope of trade for the People of the Book, maintained in principle a policy of prohibition and prevention—not of permissibility and regulation.

As for the peoples of Europe, the Church—before it recoiled and turned upon itself—used to criminalise usury and count it among the gravest sins. The Second Council of Nicaea had declared it forbidden. This remained the case until the rise of the modern state, when power passed from kings and popes to the bourgeoisie, eager for the growth of their capital. Then, interest was legalised, names were changed, and usury was clothed in the garment of “credit.” In England, a law was passed under Elizabeth I in 1571 permitting interest, provided it did not exceed ten percent.

Later, the revolutionaries of France abolished what remained of ecclesiastical prohibition, declaring interest-based lending a right of “freedom,” rather than a moral outrage. Thus the ban was lifted—not because mankind had found greater wisdom, but because the market demanded it, and the state obeyed.

Among the most astonishing innovations of this age’s civilisation is that capital could not fully bend mankind to its will until it had stripped the human being of every bond and belonging—save for the bond of need and destitution. In times past, kingdoms connected a man to his land, or linked him to his tribe, or tied him by rank to his standing among his people. One could not be summoned except through his kin, nor dispossessed except by the custom of his place.

But this so-called “civilisation” sought to uproot man from all ties, leaving him nothing in this world but a body that toils and an effort that is sold. Thus, the human being became a commodity among other commodities—his breaths counted by the hour, his motion measured by the scale, his labour inscribed like wares in the merchants’ registers. No regard is paid to lineage or honour; he matters only if his hand or tongue proves profitable. If he falls idle, he is cast aside; if he fails to produce, he is forgotten.

And so man, in this “civilisation,” has become owned without ownership, consumed without perishing, and weighed without worth.

The intricate architecture of this new order of civilisation could never have stood upright while upon the earth there remained a king exalted by noble lineage, or an emperor sheltered beneath a divine law, or a sovereign to whom allegiance was pledged and not withdrawn by the ballot. For the market knows no reverence, and capital cannot abide an authority that is absolute—for it can neither hope to mould it nor find means to resist it.

Power, when drawn from the ballot boxes of the multitude, leans instinctively toward wealth: it is justified by it, upheld by it, and made to tremble should it defy its command.

One might ask: why did modern monarchies fail to embody the rootedness and stability of their ancient counterparts? Why did they too fall captive to the laws of capital and the decrees of the market?

The answer is that what remains of monarchy today is but a shadow after the light—a form devoid of spirit, the ghost of bygone systems, stripped of the reins of sovereignty and severed from the cords of true authority. The king, in the age of capitalism—though his realm may still bear the name “kingdom”—rules not from a lofty balcony, nor establishes his reign by his own will. Rather, he is sustained by the market, permitted to exist by its favour, and judged by the degree to which he embellishes its image.

The monarchy is no longer the source of legitimacy nor the fountain of governance; it has become rather a decorative emblem adorning the forehead of modernity, a soothing balm for the souls of the masses, and a cosmetic flourish for regimes that possess neither heart nor memory.

As for those kings who still exercise authority and maintain a grip on the reins of power, they have found no alternative but to accommodate the marketplace and conduct their affairs according to its logic: either they hasten to privatize, fling open the gates to capital, and reorder their domains upon the scales of “profitability”; or they are cast away like a date pit, besieged and depleted in a cold war with neither ebb nor flow.

The rites of politics have changed, and the faces of governance have been overturned. The stability of a monarchy is no longer sought for its own sake, nor is the obedience of subjects desired for their piety or virtue. Instead, the entire affair revolves around what increases financial growth, dispels stagnation in the markets, and stirs movement in prices and transactions.

The aim today is not that the ruler of the masses be praised for his fatherliness, or exalted for his generosity, or recorded in the annals of the state as the originator of some noble deed—but rather that he be deemed by the lords of commerce as an able manager, skillful in market oversight, attentive to the voices of moneylenders, swift to sign treaties of exchange and privilege.

And it was not a revolt against kings, as claimed, nor a rise from tyranny to justice, as alleged—but rather a marketplace that could not tolerate a crown that could not be seized, a hand that would not bargain, or a throne inscribed with permanence.

Thus, the dethroning of monarchs was a matter of policy, not of virtue; a tactic, not a liberation.

And when the crown was lifted from the brow, man was not elevated in dignity—but cheapened in worth, blessed in his sale, and priced not by the balance of justice, but by what he produces and consumes, not by what he knows or understands.