Professor Umar Ibrahim Vadillo

Dr. Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, Pioneer of the Dinar’s reintroduction and director of E-Dinar Ltd, is known as the designer of these coins. He is also the author of books, written on Islamic finance and Economics. Among his books are "The Fatwa on Paper Money", "The Return of the Gold Dinar" and "The Esoteric Deviation in Islam", published by Medinah Press.

1 - The Judgment on Riba - 32 - Paper Money – Legal Judgment - 83 – The Future Of Islam - 104 - Priorities in the Fiqh and the Muamalat - 155 -The Return of the Guilds - 216 - The Fallacy of the ‘Islamic Bank - 28

BiographyUmar Ibrahim Vadillo was born in 1964. After attending the Augustinian College in Navarre he went to study agronomy at the University of Madrid. While still at university he embraced Islam. There followed a long period of study applying the commercial parameters defined in Islam’s founding legal document Imam Malik’s Al Muwatta, to modern financial practice. This led to his studies on Zakat, which implied the necessary use of the Islamic Gold Dinar and Silver Dirham. He has lectured extensively in various universities, notably in Morocco, Malaysia and Indonesia.

His promotion of an Islamic real wealth currency was adopted by Dr. Erbakan, Turkish Prime Minister until deposed, as well as the late King Hassan II of Morocco who undertook to restore Zakat to its correct legal position, just before his death. Umar Ibrahim Vadillo’s study of Dinar-based finance was used as a working paper by Dr. Mahathir, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia. He is currently engaged in promoting the issue in Indonesia . He resides in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Judgment on Riba

Introduction

This paper on Riba' is of primordial importance, a necessary step on the path to Islamic recovery in our time. It is by 'Umar Ibrahim Vadillo whose great near-thousand page study, 'The Esoteric Deviation in Islam', marks the historic turning-point which takes us beyond the two false and twin positions of terror and 'tolerance'. 'Umar Pasha's book can be purchased from:

Portobello Books328 Portobello RoadLondon W10 5RUTel./Fax: +44 (0)208 964 3166

The Judgment on Riba

It is generally assumed that from the point of view of material wealth, things have never been better than today. That, despite just crossing over the most murderous century in human history which saw the first-time use of weapons of mass destruction on civilian population, the colossal annihilation of the eco-system and fauna, and the largest numbers of starvation victims known in history. All past and present miseries are forgotten before the general assumption that the average person today enjoys a standard of living not equalled in any other time. Yet, it has not been the same for all people of the world. While a material improvement has been achieved for a relatively small portion of mankind, the bottom half still lives on an income inferior to the poverty line of 2 USD a day, and collectively inferior to the income of the 387 largest individual earners. This disequilibrium in wealth goes hand in hand with an equal in political and military imbalance that has turned one nation in particular into the police ruler of the world.

During this period of massive shift of wealth to a small corner of the world, Muslims have lost an immense part of their past economic and political status. The political unity represented by the Khalifate that granted Muslims a voice in world affairs was devastated, and instead a trail of tiny nations emerged under the auspices and new legal frame of the UN. Large parts of our population belong to the bottom half of world earners and our combined GDP does not reach 1/10 of the US. Politically divided, and losers in the economic sharing, Muslims only face the prospect of being underdogs in the present economic system. Under this regime a continuous erosion of our social and cultural life is inevitable which in turn results in the increased anger and frustration of our youth.

This present system of economic disequilibrium is self-preserved by diverting attention away from economic matters into political matters. The economic system which causes the imbalance is taken for granted and individual political tyrants become the focus of political struggle. Under these circumstances the economic system remains unquestionable and therefore its continuation is granted.

At its core this system of disequilibrium which we call capitalism is based on usury. Usury is in itself disequilibrium. Mechanised usury through the banking system has turned a criminal contract into a means of economic domination. For as long as we remain slaves of riba our Muslim nation will remain enslaved.

A society which misunderstands the dynamics of the world will find it difficult to focus in establishing its goals. These are swept away in the emotion of the moment. And so, acts which are intended ‘to do good’ are lost by the lack of direction. In these circumstances, no amount of effort will prove fruitful.

Understanding Riba is essential to understanding capitalism. The Islamic understanding of riba opens the path to restore our own mu’amalat and thus create the tools that can overcome the present system. Riba is not only negative. It opens the path to the positive construction of the halal. Only when we remain confused between the halal and the haram can our enemies find it easy to destroy our efforts. In this document we intend to cast some light on this matter of Riba.

Allah says in the Qur’an:

“Allah has permitted trade and forbidden usury”

Riba represents the opposite of trading, it is the corruption of trading. There cannot be trading with riba, nor riba with trading. Yet, riba has become the core of today’s face of kufr: capitalism. For this reason, riba is the most important political issue facing our Muslim nation today. Riba affects every aspect of our life and it is traceable to two main institutions: the Bank and the State. Despite its importance this understanding remains superficial for most Muslims. Most people simply think that riba is merely interest. The reality of riba is a much more complex affair. This misunderstanding is not just a miscalculation; it is the product of a mis-education and indoctrination which has resulted from two phenomena: one, the destruction of the political power of the Khalifate, and two, the process of the so-called

“Islamic reform” which followed. This misunderstanding opened the gates to the islamisation of the most important institution of capitalism: the bank. What the open market-place is to trading, the bank is to riba. A ‘reformed riba’ would allow the new promoters of the Islamic bank to justify their actions. It is for this reason essential to return to a correct understanding of this key term in the fiqh, that can allow us to discern what is haram and what is halal. This is crucial to overcome capitalism, and its illusion of power.

This brief introduction will try to outline as plainly as possible the issue of Riba in Islamic Law, and to undo the misunderstanding created by the ‘reformers’ and modernist scholars.

Riba literally means 'excess' in Arabic. Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi, in his “Ahkamul Qur’an” defines it as: any excess between the value of the goods given and their countervalue (the value of the goods received). This excess refers to two matters:

1] an extra benefit arising from unjustified increase in the weight or measure, and2] an extra benefit arising from unjustified delay.

These two aspects have led our scholars to define two types of riba. Ibn Rushd said:“The jurists unanimously agreed about riba in bay’ (trade) that it is of two kinds: delayed (nasi’ah) and stipulated excess (tafadul).”

That is to say, there are two types of riba:

1] Riba al-Fadl (excess of surplus)2] Riba al-Nasiah (excess of delay)

Riba al-fadl refers to quantities. Riba al-nasiah refers to time delay.

Riba al-fadl is very easy to understand. In a loan, riba al-fadl is the interest that is overcharged. But in general it represents when one party demands an additional increase to the counter-value. One party gives something worth 100 in exchange for something worth 110. This is also the forbidden case when two sales transactions are linked by a single contract (known as ‘two transactions in one’), in which one party is obliged to sell something at one price and to resell it after a time to the original seller for a decreased value. As a matter of fact, this is only a subterfuge to disguise the loan with interest under the pretence of a sale. Nobody needs these subterfuges today because you can get the loan directly in the bank. But the Islamic banks have resorted to this old trick to deceive their customers under the misinterpreted name of murabaha.

Understanding Riba al-nasiah is more subtle. It is an excess in time (a delay) artificially added to the transaction. It is an unjustified delay. This refers to the possession (‘ayn) and its non-possession (dayn) of the medium of payment (gold, silver and food-stuff -which was used as money). ‘Ayn is tangible merchandise, often referred to as cash. Dayn is a promise of payment or a debt or anything whose delivery or payment is delayed. To exchange (safr) dayn for ‘ayn of the same genus is Riba al-nasiah. To exchange dayn for dayn is also forbidden. In an exchange it is only allowed to exchange ‘ayn for ‘ayn.

This is supported by many hadith on the issue. Imam Malik related:

'Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that al-Qasim ibn Muhammad said, "'Umar ibn al-Khattab said, 'A dinar for a dinar, and a dirham for a dirham, and a sa' for a sa'. Something to be collected later is not to be sold for something at hand.'"

Yahya related to me from Malik that Abu'z-Zinad heard Sa'id al Musayyab say "There is usury only in gold or silver or what is weighed and measured of what is eaten and drunk."

The hanafi scholar Abu Bakr al-Kasani (d. 587H) wrote:

“As for riba al-nasa’ it is the difference (excess) between the termination of delay and the period of delay and the difference (excess) between the possession (‘ayn) and non-possession in things measured and weighed with different genera as well as in things measured and weighed with the uniformity of genera. This is according to al-Shafi’i (may Allah bless him), it is the difference between the termination of the period and the delay in foodstuff and precious metals (with currency-value) specifically.”'

Riba al-nasiah refers particularly to the use of dayn in the exchange (sarf) of the same genera. But the prohibition is extended to sales in general when the dayn representing money overpasses its private nature and replaces the ‘ayn as a medium of payment.

Imam Malik, may Allah be merciful to him, illustrates this point in his 'Al-Muwatta':

'Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that receipts (sukukun) were given to people in the time of Marwan ibn al-Hakam for the produce of the market of al-Jar. People bought and sold the receipts among themselves before they took delivery of the goods. Zayd ibn Thabit, one of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, went to Marwan ibn Hakam and said, “Marwan! Do you make usury halal?” He said, “I seek refuge with Allah! What is that?” He said, “These receipts which people buy and sell before they take delivery of the goods.” Marwan therefore sent guards to follow them and take them from people's hands and return them to their owners.'

Zayd ibn Thabit specifically calls riba those receipts (dayn) 'which people buy and sell before taking delivery of the goods'. It is allowed to use the gold and silver or food to make the payment, but you cannot USE the promise of payment. In it there is an excess that is not allowed. If you have dayn, you have to take possession of the ‘ayn it represents and then you can transact. You cannot used the dayn as money.

In general the rule is that you should not sell something which is there, for something which is not. This practice is called Rama’ and it is Riba. Malik continues:

'Yahya related to me from Malik from ‘Abdullah ibn Dinar from ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Umar that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab said: “Do not sell gold for gold except like for like. Do not increase part of it over another part. Do not sell silver for silver except for like, and do not increase part of it over another part. Do not sell some of it which is there for some of it which is not. If someone asks you to wait for payment until he has been to his house, do not leave him. I fear rama’ for you. Rama is usury.”'

Rama’ is today the common practice in all our markets. Dayn currency (paper money, receipts) has replaced the use of ‘ayn currency (Dinar, Dirham). This practice is what Umar ibn al-Khattab meant when he said 'I fear rama’ for you.'

Selling with delay is not restricted to metals, it also includes food. Malik said, 'The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade selling food before getting delivery of it.'

Therefore, what is prohibited in Riba al-nasiah, is the addition of an artificial delay that does not belong to the nature of the transaction. What does ‘artificial’ and ‘the nature of the transaction’ mean? It means that every transaction has its own natural conditions of timing and price.

A loan involves delay but not quantity excess. One person gives an amount of money, after a period of time (excess) the person returns the money without increase. The excess in time is justified and is halal, but adding an increase in the quantity to be repaid is unjustified and is haram. This is Riba al-fadl.

An exchange involves no delay and no quantity excess. One person gives an amount of money and without delay the equivalent is given. Delays are not justified in an exchange. If you want to delay the payment, you have to make a loan, you cannot obtain a loan disguised as a ‘delay exchange’. Delayed exchange is Riba al-nasiah.

A rental involves delay and excess and it is halal. When you rent a house, you take possession of the house for a time (excess) and you return it plus the payment of a rent (excess). These excesses both in time and quantity are justified and they are halal.But you can only rent merchandise that can be hired. You can hire a car, a house or a horse. But you cannot hire money or food stuff (fungible goods). To pretend to hire money is to corrupt the nature of the transaction and it becomes Riba.

Thus every transaction has its conditions relating to its nature. You cannot take the conditions of one type of transaction and try to apply them to the other without corrupting the transaction. To add unjustified conditions or excess to a transaction is Riba.

Since dayn is in itself a delay, the use of dayn is restricted to private transactions and it is prohibited as a general means of payment (money). While dayn per se is halal, it is not halal to use is as money. Dayn is a private contract between two individuals and must remain private. The transfer of dayn from one person to another can be done Islamically, but only by the elimination of the first dayn and the creation of a new one. The dayn cannot circulate independently of what it represents. The owner must take possession of the goods and liquidate the dayn. Dayn cannot be used in an exchange and it cannot be used as a means of payment. It is specifically forbidden to use dayn to pay zakat.

The misunderstanding of Riba by Islamic reformers

Islamic reformers and modernist scholars have made a deliberate effort to equate riba with riba al-fadl and ignore riba

al-nasiah. Saying ‘riba is interest’ is part of this misunderstanding.

Their misunderstanding starts with the early reformers, especially Rashid Reda. Rashid Reda presented a new classification of Riba. Reda made a distinction in the legal treatment of what he called the ‘riba of the Qur’an’ and the ‘riba of the Sunnah’. Reda maintained that the primary form of Riba was the one prohibited by the Qur’an, and this prohibition is to be maintained at all times. On the other hand, the texts of the Sunnah prohibit a lighter or secondary type of riba - according to him - which is generally prohibited but may be permitted in case of necessity (darurah).

He maintained that the riba prohibited in the Qur’an was the riba known as ‘riba al-jahiliyyah’ (when a person did not pay his due after the stipulated time, the seller would increase the price) which he wrongly equated with riba al-nasiah. And he wrongly said that riba al-nasiah (completely misunderstanding its meaning) was only haram when it involved compound interest, and therefore single interest was excluded from the prohibition. He therefore concluded that simple interest charged or paid by banks was not prohibited by the provisions of the Qur’an at all, nor by the Sunnah.

He also maintained that the remaining prohibition from the Sunnah referred to the specific event of the exchange. Thus for example if two persons were exchanging gold with each other, the amount of gold must be equal in weight on both sides and the two quantities must change hands on the spot, at once. He argued that unlike the riba al-jahiliyyah, this type was not known to the Arabs, since it was difficult to conceive of why two persons would exchange equal quantities of the same commodity at once. Riba al-fadl was seen as part of the abandoned practice of barter when people would exchange gold for gold (and similar), yet it is not practised any more.

The famous hadith of ‘hand to hand’ and ‘equal for equal’, referring to riba, has not been understood by the modernist scholars. They could not understand the relevance of the argument and the form in which it is described. Gold for gold, equal for equal and hand to hand, is a description of the balance of the transactions. One aspect refers to the equivalence in the quantities which refers by default to riba al-fadl; the other to the immediateness of the transaction which refers by default to riba al-nasiah. It discards the possibility of exchanging ‘gold which is not present’ (dayn) for ‘gold which is present’ - ‘ayn. It is very relevant because this is how Muslims got cheated away from their gold, by exchanging it for false promises of gold (the original form of paper money). It follows that in order to make paper money halal, the modernist scholars had to ignore the relevance of this hadith and this formulation.

The hadith refers in the positive to the specific event of exchange of dinars and dirhams of different denomination; in the negative to the impossibility to use promises of payment in the exchange. Both cases are relevant and important to us.

In conclusion, Reda’s views were that:

A] Riba al-nasiah was only riba al-jahiliyya. And only compound interest was forbidden by it.B] Riba al-fadl was relative to the exchange. It was secondary in nature and it could be accepted in case of necessity (darurah).

The followers of Reda basically adopted the same classification but differed with him on the issue of the compound interest. They agreed that single interest was also haram, but they agreed that darurah can be applied. And they saw riba al-fadl as being secondary, related to what they saw as barter.

The truth is that both riba al-nasiah and riba al-fadl are prohibited by the Qur’an. In fact the Riba of the Qur’an and the riba of the Sunna are exactly the same. The Sunna simply acts as a living commentary of the Qur’an.

The riba known as riba al-jahiliyyah contains both riba al-nasiah and riba al-fadl. In this transaction, the payment is delayed (nasiah) in exchange for an increase (fadl).But riba al-nasiah involves more than just the riba al-jahiliyyah.

Implications of the modernist position

By ignoring the true nature of riba al-nasiah, modernist scholars have avoided confronting the issue of paper money. Let us look at this issue which the modernists have missed. Paper money can be considered as ‘ayn or as dayn.

A] If we accept the fact that paper money is dayn, meaning that it is an obligation to pay a certain amount of ‘ayn, then paper money cannot be used in exchange and it is forbidden in two practices:

1. Dayn cannot be exchange for dayn. Paper money for paper money is a debt for a debt, which is prohibited. Malik said: '[The disapproved transaction of] delay for delay is to sell a debt against another man for a debt against another man.'

2. Dayn based on gold and silver cannot be exchange against gold or silver, because that is against the fundamental command: 'Yahya related to me from Malik from Nafi’ from Abu Sa’id al-Khudri that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Do not sell gold for gold except like for like and do not increase one part over another. Do not sell silver for silver, except like for like and do not increase one part over another part. Do not sell some of it which is not there for some of it which is.'

B] If we accept that paper money is ‘ayn, then its value is the weight of the paper, not what is written on it. If the value of the paper is increased by compulsion, the value is corrupted and the transaction is void according to Islamic Law. Paper money is used by the State as an (illegal) tax and it cannot be presented as an Islamic means of payment.

Understanding riba al-nasiah is fundamental to being able to understand our position regarding paper money. The reason why the modernist ulema took their twisted position on riba was clearly to validate the unthinkable: banking. This justification later turned into Islamic banking. The principle of darurah combined with the elimination of riba al-nasiah has allowed them to justify the use of paper money and in turn to justify fractional reserve banking which is the basis of the modern banking system.

A proper understanding of riba al-nasiah reveals paper money to be a form of riba in itself, because it is intended to be used in a way that is not permitted.

Paper Money: A Legal Judgment

The first aspect of arriving at a judgment is to understand the subject matter, in this case what paper money is. After that we can look at the Qur'an and the fiqh.

Paper money has evolved in nature through history. What we know today as paper money is not what it used to be. This evolution has passed through basically three stages:

1] A promissory note backed by gold or silver.

2] A process of unilateral devaluation leading to a complete revocation of the contractual agreement.

3] A piece of paper not backed by any specie, whose legal value is determined by the compulsion of the State Law.

Let us examine these three stages one by one.

1. Firstly, paper money was issued by banks and it represented a certain amount of gold or silver, known as the СspecieТ. Even though it never was 100% backed by the specie, the issuing bank was obliged to pay the amount on demand. In this sense it represented a kind of debt.

When paper money was a debt, was it acceptable? What issues concerning Islamic Law are relevant?

At this stage a certain amount of gold was held by typically a banking institution and it issued a paper certificate giving the owner the right to withdraw the specie on demand. (We will ignore the fact that this was a banking institution and it would have been dealing with Riba. We will pretend that they did not deal with interest in order to concentrate on the issue of paper money itself.)

A) The first issue that arises is the one of amana (trust): Your gold is in trust with a treasurer. What does Islamic Law have to say on this issue? Allah taТala says in the Qur'an in Surat al 'Imran (3, 74):

Among the People of the Book there are some who,if you trust them with a pile of gold,

will return it to you.But there are others among them who,if you trust them with a single dinar,

will not return it to you,unless you stay standing over them.

That is because they say,УWe are under no obligation

where the gentiles are concerned.ФThey tell a lie against Allah and they know it.

The hukum (legal judgment or command) of this ayat, according to Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi in his СAhkamul Qur'anТ, is as follows:

УIt is forbidden for Muslims to have amana with the kuffar outside Dar al-Islam,Ф

that is, Уwithout standing over themФ under the power of a Muslim authority. And the explanation for this is found in the ayat itself: УThat is because they say Сwe are under no obligation,Т that is to say, because they can/will repudiate the agreement. Since this has been proven to be historically the case, we may conclude that this is of vital importance.

What this means is that it is not acceptable for Muslims to have money deposited with kuffar anywhere since we do not have a Dar al-Islam in which to exercise Сstanding over themТ. A lighter interpretation would suggest that it would be acceptable to have amana with a kafir if the deposits are under the power of a Muslim authority. We accept the latter version. But what it categorically denies is the possibility of having amana with the kuffar when the wealth is stored under kafir authority.

We can conclude that when paper currenciesЧdollars, pounds, francs, etc.Чwere a debt, because the specie they represented was stored in trust away from our control, they could not be accepted by us, since we would fear that they would repudiate the agreementЧas in fact later happened.

B) Now, assuming that the amana is under a Muslim authority, the second issue that arises is whether the promissory note can in itself be treated as money. In other words, whether the note can be used as a medium of exchange according to Islamic Law.

In this case the law of Сtransfer of debtsТ becomes relevant. According to the School of the Amal of Madinah we find

the following judgment and explanation in the Muwatta of Imam Malik:

Malik said, УOne should not buy a debt owned by a man whether present or absent, without the confirmation of the one who owes the debt, nor should one buy a debt owed by a dead person even if one knows what the deceased man has left. That is because to buy it is an uncertain transaction and one does not know whether the transaction will be completed or not.Ф

He also said, УThe explanation of what is disapproved of in buying a debt owed by someone absent or dead is that it is not known which unknown debtors may have claims on the dead person. If the dead person is liable for another debt, the price which the buyer gives on strength of the debt may become worthless.Ф

Malik said, УThere is another fault in that as well. He is buying something which is not guaranteed for him, and so if the deal is not completed, what he has paid becomes worthless. This is an uncertain transaction and it is not good.Ф

The general idea is that in order to transfer a debt the original issuer of the debt (the person who has the obligation) must guarantee the value of the debt to the transferee (the person receiving the note). Thus, the first contract is liquidated and a new private contract is created. Debt is always kept as a private contract between the parties. It does not circulate without the creation of a new private guarantee (a new contract). The reason is that the person who has issued the debt may have more obligations than he can fulfil.

How would this injunction have applied when paper money was issued by the banks as a debt? Since every bankЧand this is the whole idea of credit moneyЧissued more obligations than the amount that they held in specie, it would not be acceptable to use any of its notes for trading. The reason is, that the person would be accepting a debt that is not guaranteed for him, especially when it is known that it cannot be guaranteed for him since the issuer (the bank) has more obligations than what it can fulfil. If every depositor in the bank were to demand the value of their notes, as is the case in a Сrun on the bankТ, the bank would be unable to fulfill its obligations.

Conclusion. When money was a debt, in Islamic Law you would not have been allowed to use it. You would not be allowed to use a dollar, or a pound, or any note, whether it came from a kafir bank or a Muslim-owned bank, whether the specie was stored in a kafir country or in a Muslim country. Banking notes are not permitted to circulate.

But if the note is issued not by a bank, but instead by a person, and that person is present and can privately guarantee the physical possession of the goods, can in this case the note be transferred, sold or circulate in general? What aspects of the Law are relevant to the analysis of this case?

Again we have to go to the transfer of debts. What is relevant here is: what is the specie that is held as guarantee for the obligation? In other words, what is the specie of the note? If the obligation is in gold (money) then another set of restrictions come into place. If it is food then, again, another set of restrictions come into place. This is because gold, silver and food have a particular significance to tradingЧthey are commonly used as a medium of exchange. The case is the following:

In the chapter called Money-Changing of the Muwatta of Imam Malik we read:

УYahya related to me from Malik from Ibn Shihab from Malik ibn Aws ibn al-Hadathan an-Nasri that he once asked to exchange 100 dinars. He said, СTalha ibn СUbaydullah called me over and we made a mutual agreement that he would make the exchange with me. He took the gold and turned it about in his hand and then said, УI cannot do it until my treasurer brings the money to me from al-Ghaba.Ф СUmar ibn al-Khattab was listening and СUmar said, УBy Allah! Do not leave him until you have taken it from him!Ф Then he said, УThe Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, СGold for silver is usury except hand to hand. Wheat for wheat is usury except hand to hand. Dates for dates is usury except hand to hand. Barley for barley is usury except hand to hand.ТФФ

The first restriction is that you cannot use the gold or food in an exchange (sarf) unless the specie is physically present there. You cannot use the claim of gold or food stored with a treasurer. The items exchanged have to be present.

This matter rules out any possibility of using paper notes representing gold or silver to buy physical gold or silver. In addition, the exchange of paper notes with other paper notes is prohibited because it is Debt-for-Debt.

This prohibition of using promissory notes in an exchange is further reinforced by the following words:

Yahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that al-Qasim ibn Muhammad said, УСUmar ibn al-Khattab said, СA dinar for a dinar, and a dirham for a dirham, and a sa' for a sa'. Something to be collected later is not to be sold for something at hand.ТФ

Yahya related to me from Malik that Abu'z-Zinad heard Sa'id al Musayyab say, УThere is usury only in gold or silver or what is weighed and measured of what is eaten and drunk.Ф

All this clearly indicates that not only gold and silver but also any food that could be used as payment is included in the prohibition, that is to say, the prohibition extends to any form of Сcommon moneyТ. Any note that represents any form of Сcommon moneyТ cannot be used in an exchange. With that restriction in mind, it means that a banking note cannot really be used as money, but only as a private contractЧwhich is the basis of our argument.

But what about a note held by a Muslim treasurer and guaranteed: can it be used in a transaction other than an exchange? Can it be used, for example, to buy other goods in the market?

УYahya related to me from Malik that he had heard that receipts (sukukun) were given to people in the time of Marwan ibn al-Hakam for the produce of the market of al-Jar. People bought and sold the receipts among themselves before they took delivery of the goods. Zayd ibn Thabit and one of the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, went to Marwan ibn Hakam and said, УMarwan! Do you make usury halal?Ф He said, УI seek refuge with Allah! What is that?Ф He said, УThese receipts which people buy and sell before they take delivery of the goods.Ф Marwan therefore sent guards to follow them and take them from peopleТs hands and return them to their owners.Ф

This means that you cannot use a promissory note and use it for trading as if it were money. The purpose of the promissory note is not to be money, but to be a private contract that must remain private and not public.

So, what is the use of the promissory note? What is the halal usage of it? It is halal to have a contract or a debt, and it is also halal to transfer that debt, provided that the person who issued it is accessible and can guarantee the payment of the debt by signing a new contract (promissory note) with the new recipient. If the guarantor is not a Muslim, then in addition to what we have said, he also has to have his amana within Muslim territory and under the overall supervision of an enforcing Muslim authority.

2. The second stage refers to the process of those years in which paper money was constantly devalued from its initial obligation (they paid less than they had promised), up until the debt was finally completely revoked (they withdrew their obligation). This final elimination of the obligation took place with the dollar in 1973, when Nixon unilaterally revoked the obligation of paying one ounce of gold for every 35 dollars.

What is the Islamic position regarding a promissory note when one of the parties unilaterally revokes its obligation, whether it is complete or partial? That is to say, what is the Islamic ruling when a debt is unilaterally revoked or devalued?

It is not acceptable. It is a violation of the contract. If this is done with premeditation and no responsibility is accepted, it amounts to pure theft. Theft is punishable in Islam.

To use the note to transfer it to other people, falls under all the restrictions that we have expressed before, with an added element. You are dealing with the promissory note of a known thief who does not admit his guilt or past obligations.

3. Finally we arrive at the money which we have today. There is no promise of payment in specie of any kind. It only has a legal value based on the obligation of the citizens of the country to accept the national currency as a means to redeem debts. This is the СLaw of Legal TenderТ. It gives the State the unique ability to confiscate anyoneТs wealth within the nation and to pay for it in compensation with its own legal note.

Is this an acceptable means of payment in Islam?

Imam Malik said money is Уany merchandise commonly accepted as a medium of exchange.Ф This implies two things:

A) Money has to be a merchandise. Therefore it could be paper. But paper only for the value of the paper itself, not for what is written on it. Money must be something tangible (Сayn). Money cannot be a liability of any kind.

B) Money must be commonly accepted. Therefore it cannot be imposed. No-one can say it is obligatory on you. No-one can even make the Gold Dinar obligatory on the people. The Gold Dinar and the Silver Dirham become a currency out of free choice, not as the result of decree. Paper money is imposed on people. This obligation is not accepted in Islam for two further reasons:

ЧThe fraudulent nature of the offer: they oblige you to accept something above its value (its real value is zero).

ЧThe obligation of the offer: you are obliged to accept it whether you like it or not.

This unlawful behaviour is further reinforced by the application of State laws that restrict the use of any other merchandise as a means of payment, thus enforcing the State monopoly on the currency, particularly in regard to gold and silver. Gold and silver are either taxed, or their use is regulated and sometimes disallowed. In some extreme cases we have seen gold confiscated by law from the private citizens, as has been the case in the USA.

Final conclusion

Paper money is not valid money in Islamic Law, whether in its present form or in any of the forms in which it has existed in the past. The ShariСah money is the Gold Dinar and the Silver Dirham. Any merchandise commonly accepted as a medium of exchange is also accepted as a valid money in Islam.

Umar Ibrahim Vadillo

The Future of Islam

Bismillahi rahmani rahim

Assalaamu Сalaykum wa rahmutullah

Shaykh Abdalqadir has asked me to give some words on the topic of the future of Islam. Of course, Islam is eternal, so therefore Islam is always the same. Islam was established finally at the death of Rasul, sallallahu Сalayhi wa salam, and the Deen of Islam will be the same up until the end of time.

We change. The Muslims change. How we live our Islam and how we interpret our Islam has changed through history and has made the history of Islam possible. What is important when we look at ourselves and want to project ourselves into the future, is first to understand what is at stake when we speak about Islam. What is this extraordinary thing that we share, that is eternal, that it was borrowed, that was taken from Rasul, sallallahu Сalayhi wa salam, up until our days? The first thing that we have to understand is that Islam is complete. You cannot take a bit of Islam, neither can you take it from what it was before its completion, nor from one of its sections. Some people you may have heard saying that we are living in times of difficulty, and therefore we have to go back to the times of Makka. But the time of Makka is not the full Deen of Islam. The Deen of Islam is Madinah at the end of the time of Rasul, sallallahu Сalayhi wa salam.

Islam is therefore complete, it is all there, it is all ready for us to use it. The command of Allah is also eternal and cannot changeЧexcept by His own Will, naturally. The command given to us, the ShariТat that we have, is forever. The promises that Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, has given us through the Deen of Islam are also eternal, and therefore are as present today as they were at the time of Rasul, sallallahu Сalayhi wa salam. The Tawhid of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, is eternal, is today as it was, as it will always be.

So the important matter is how we place ourselves before this extraordinary message. Islam does not need change, it does not need reforms: we need the reforms. During the greater part of the twentieth century, a group of individuals spoke about the necessity to reform Islam, while their own words were the very proof that they were wrong, because it was not Islam that needed reform, it was our way of life. Our destiny as Muslims does not depend on what the kuffar do. It does not depend on their strength, their mischievous behaviour, how they appear to control media communication, sometimes wanting to tell us what Islam is, their economyЧnone of this matters to the destiny of the Muslims. We do not depend on them. They do depend on us.

The key to understanding this destiny is therefore not in interpreting the events as they come around us or in the time that we are living in, but it is something much more subtle yet much more profound. The key to interpreting everything, ourselves and everything around us, is the relationship with Allah, subhanahu wa taСala. This is the secret, this is the very matter on the basis of which we will succeed in our task, or we will fail. Our task with Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, is very simple yet extraordinarily overwhelming in its outcome. We are here to worship Him. There is no other purpose. Our destiny, our life, the entire purpose of life is to obey Him, to submit to Him, to fear Him. And to fear Him is to have taqwa of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, this is the coding message, it is the very tool to interpret the nature of the complexity of the world around us. And therefore it is through this tool, through this basic tool, that we have a chance or we do not, to create a satisfying destiny for ourselves.

Shaykh Abdalqadir, just before I left on my journey about two months ago, delivered a number of lectures on this very topic, on the Tawhid in QurТan. One of the matters, one of the key conclusions of his study was that if you want to know, if you want to understand life, if you want to understand yourself, you need taqwa. The understanding of the world, what makes the Mumin different to the kafir is Taqwa. Without taqwa you may have the entire knowledge of the Deen, you can memorize the entire Sahih of Bukhari, but that will not make you a Muslim. You will still need something much more primal, much more profound, which is taqwa. Fear of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala. Now Fear of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, means also that you do not fear anything else. Rumi said, УYou worship what you fear. So watch where you place your fears.Ф

I have just come from Dubai, and there they will tell you Уthe Americans, the Americans, the AmericansФ, and you have to tell them, УYes! The Americans are amazing but I do not believe in La hawla wa la quwatta illa United StatesЧit is simply not true.Ф It does not matter how wonderful they appear, how great their voice is of lies, they are not the power, they are not the source of my life.

It is only in saying УLa hawla wa la quwatta illa billahФ that you have a chance of creating some clarity in your life. In your life as an individual and collectively as Muslims, the only chance is precisely to understand this, to understand taqwa. And this is the very element on the basis of which we can understand what I was saying before, which is that we do not depend on the kafir. Neither do we depend on their state of affairs, because none of this matters. This is other-than-Allah. We depend entirely on how much we become His slaves. And becoming His slaves is of the nature of

eliminating your attributes. This is what we are here for, to share this experience, to taste this matter, to go one step every time to be able to understand what it is to eliminate the nafs, as an individual and also as a collectivity.

The very matter that will create a successful destiny for the Muslims, is to be able to eliminate who we are, to eliminate ourselves from the picture in anything other than being slaves of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala. Especially in these times, because almost everything that identifies you as being other than a Muslim is working against you. Starting from the fact that you are South African, or Palestinian. Look at their misery, and there is no outcome to the Palestinian issue as long as they insist that they are Palestinians first and foremost, and they take onto the whole cultural element that was already written years before their time by the Irish and by the struggle of other nationalistic nations. They created the very concept of a nation and a flag and a national anthem, and what you still see on Arab television, every night, at the end of the whole session of this stuff they produce for you, is that there is this ceremony of standing before this flag, and this national anthem, that you know very well as Shaykh Abdalqadir has many times pointed out to us.

There was a time in London that there were people just making money in making flags and national anthems for these people. Now you find them standing up in a kind of ecstasy before this ridiculous nonsense. But this stands against them and against all of us individually and collectively.

You talk to them and they have a thesis, they have made a whole history, they have mapped out the world in terms of what makes money. But when you look into it, it is all riba, it is all haram, from the beginning to the end. And those people who have attempted to redeem themselves from a life of disaster, what have they done? They have islamised capitalism. So today, out of their own experience, with their PhDs from that third-rate university in America where they became economists, they come back to their land and they take a little bit of Bukhari here and there, and they started islamising banks and insurance, and the stock exchange. Now there is even an Islamic Dow Jones, just in case you do not know. So Microsoft has finally been islamised. You can invest in Bill Gates and it is halal (in their dollars naturally), in this gambling machine called the stock exchange. They have islamised credit cardsЧanything you can possibly think of has been islamised: constitutions, parliaments, human rights, everything.

Their knowledge works against us. Their expertise that makes this viable in this society works against us. The only thing that helps you is your identity as a MuslimЧthe very identity they want to erase from you. Let me tell you that if you want to speak about constitutions, the idea of an islamic constitution is as ridiculous as islamic banking, or islamic whiskey. Every time you speak about constitutions, remember that this is the very tool invented 200 years ago in the French Revolution to eliminate religious identity, it is the very essence of anti-religiousness. It is the very essence of saying, УNo, no! Your identity is as a tax-payer. What matters is who do you pay the taxes to? And what matters is what currency you use, and in which environment you are going to be taxed.Ф Religion is secondary to that, secondary to the extent that tolerance, for example, the whole fantasy of tolerance, is the very essence of saying Уreligion does not mean anything any more.Ф There are Сhindu muslimsТЧthis, that and the other, and the first idiotic sect that you can possibly imagine coming up with another theory, and all are seen in the same light or weight as you are. It is all the same. Therefore it is nothing. Which means the only religion that exists is capitalism. This is another issue which is very important to understand.

So what is left when you abandon these attributes, these false attributes? What is left is the Deen of Islam. This is for very few, and yet only a handful is necessary to be the leadership. To open the path. To undo what has been done wrong in 300 years. To restore it in our generation. This is possible. The person who does not understand that this is possible, he has already lost the Deen, or lost part of the Deen. Remember what Rumi said: УThe munafiq is the person who says, СThat which is halal is not possible.ТФ Indeed it is totally impossible in itself, because as Rumi argues, how can it be that Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, has given us the order and not the means? Of course He has given us the means. It is in fact the easiest to do what is halal. His famous recipe was, УIf you do still not understand, hit your head against the wall. And if you still do not understand, then hit harder!Ф Because your head does not work.

So Islam is possible. All the means that we require, and which you require as an individual, are available to you, are within your reach. This may be a hard thing to see, but you have to force yourself to understand that all the means that you need to the success in your life and to lead other people to success in Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, are within your reach. If you do not see, open your eyes. When you wake up every morning you must force yourself to see it, and you are forced to see it even farther, and you move on and you move on.

You will know when you are moving on when you can look in retrospect and say, УO my God! This is where I was and this is where I am now,Ф in the understanding that you can go farther and farther and farther, that the request of means goes at the same speed as you eliminate your self. And therefore what are we saying? All the obstacles that you as an individual and we as a collective will encounter, from here to the success, to the final success, the ultimate success, to the full establishment of the Deen in our time, all the obstacles that we will encounter are created by ourselves. The nature of those obstacles is nothing else but our own false fears. What you will be watching every time you encounter that obstacle is your self, magnified in Сcine-imaxТ! It is completely in front of you. What is hidden comes before you, it manifests, and you become overwhelmed. For the Mumin, instead of getting stopped in that event, he realizes and he moves on, because he knows what to do with his obstacle, which is to turn to Allah, subhanahu wa taСala. When you turn to Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, that door which was closed becomes twenty doors opened. And then you realize that УI am moving forward.Ф This is the very tool, the very essence of the matter which is what we celebrate here in

this gatheringЧthe elimination of everything that is ourselves, everything we call ourselves, that false identity made of historicity and culture, and false images, other than being Muslim. The elimination of all that is what will make us succeed.

What do we expect to see every time we go deeper into ourselves, every time that our relationship with Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, is turned one bit farther, every time we come closer to Allah, subhanahu wa taСalaЧwhat do we expect to see? Clarity. Clarity. Shaykh Darqawi many times in his letters, explains what it is to become close to Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, in abandoning the nafs, in the countless ways in which he analyses this matter, to the extent of science. Those who want to go deeper into this matter, go to Shaykh Darqawi. I do not think it could be made more clear for the people of today. You can see, he goes and says, УStrip it out! Take it out! Go away! Disappear! Do not put your self before your obligations!Ф in this extraordinary way. But rather eliminate it. And what he says is, УWhat you will see is certainty. Certainty. Certainty which becomes like light. Certainty in УLa hawla wa la quwatta illa billahФ. That certainty, which is reality itself, is like starting to see the whole world in a completely different way. Everything that was before a prison, is turned around. Everything that before became an obstacle, becomes a solution, a door. Because remember, it does not matter how difficult it becomesЧagain we see ourselvesЧwe should realize that the more difficult the situation is, and I must agree these are extraordinary events in the history of Islam. We never lived without Khalifate. The task may sound big, but the Mumin must realize that with this big task comes big means. In other words it is for an extraordinary generation that this gift comes that Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, has given us to bring forward the Deen in these times. It is for extraordinary people.

УInna maa al-СUsri, YusraФ Чwith the difficulty there is the ease. And in this particular difficulty there is easiness to it. There is a path and there is benefit for the people of this time like there has never been. For the people who had it all done, there has been benefit, naturally. But what is to come are extraordinary matters for extraordinary people. This is how we need to see these events. Events that will turned with the ease with which we turn a page in a book. The difficulty is not going to be in turning the page, it is going to be in ourselves, in turning ourselves and opening our hearts in order to see that the book is there, and that all we have to do is turn the page. The difficulty is in turning ourselves, not in the things before, what the hand will have to do is much, much less than what the heart has to do. That is why Shaykh Darqawi in this very matter says, УThe affairs of the heart make the affairs of the limbs irrelevant. What you turn with your heart, whatever you can do with your heart makes whatever you can do with your hands irrelevant.Ф

So therefore, do not be of those who see themselves and say, УWhat do I have? What do I know? Who am I?Ф to determine what you can do. Because let me tell you, you should not waste your time. You can do nothing. Zero. Your hands will not lead you to anything, anywhere. But you have one tool that can turn everything aroundЧeverything! Things that you could not turn with your hands, even collectively, all of us put together, you can turn with one thing, with this, your heart.

Your heart has the extraordinary quality of making something big, huge and enormous into something tiny. Something tiny and unimportant, great and big. Something distant, to bring it close to you. Something close to you that is imprisoning, to throw it back, throw it away. You can do that with the heart, you cannot do it with the limbs. This is what we have. This is our tool. It is with this that we can move forward. And see clarity, see what to do. The thing will open before you like the very essence of everyday-ness unfoldsЧlike you breath, then the things will come and they will open before you in a way in which there is no doubt. You will know exactly where to go. The things will come with clarity.

Doubt is the very means of the mess we find ourselves in. Success is in identifying what are the things worth changing, in recognising the problems before us, the very big monsters that we have self-generated, which seem to stop everything to do with the Deen of IslamЧin understanding that each one of those enemies that we have created, they are the very tools to our success. We must understand that we can turn things that look like a big problem, just like that, into the big solution. That we can turn around every bit of our incapacity in our means to move forward.

It is not difficult to imagine that part of this struggle of the Muslims in moving forward has got to do with the economic system that we are living in. An economic system is nothing. What is an economic system? Riba! Riba. What is Riba? Riba is nothing, but it has become a religion, it has become the way of living of everybody else. What I said about the constitution is the very essence of this false deen, that enforces everybody to follow it without any tolerance. Because tolerance is only applicable to all the other religions, not to capitalism. Capitalism can be ruthless, non-negotiable. You cannot go and say to your bank manager, УYou know something, this month I am not going to pay you the interest because I do not believe in it. I am actually agnostic. This interest, you keep it. I am not going to pay anymore.Ф They will not look at the matter with a great degree of tolerance. But they will put you in jail. And if you refuse to go to jail, they will kill you. This is the full extent of their deen. Their commitment is total.

This method as a whole is capitalism. So it is not strange if we say that a great part of the things to be moved in our future will be how Islam appears to be the end of capitalism, and that we will be fighting capitalism, not christianity. Christianity is finished. There is nothing left. There is a trickle of romance and a little bit of emotion left. They do not have ShariТat, they do not have anything. All you have to see is one of these programmes of the evangelists, and in five minutes you see what the whole thing is about. It has become just emotions. Hands up, and doing this horrible stuff they do. It is the same for the jews. The great majority, as Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, tells us in the QurТan, are atheists.

And we do not need to speak about the hindus or the buddhists, or whatever this new lot is that appear, because they are absolutely nothing.

We will have to do it. We will have to change. And this will happen, because Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, in QurТan already speaks about this matter of Riba, with great clarity and with great power. He first of all informs us: УWa ahall allahu-l-bayСa wa harama ribaТФЧ УAllah has permitted trade and forbidden riba.Ф And here he tells us what to do. There is the halal and the haram. Therefore the task of the Muslims is to establish what is halal.

He also informs us that Allah and His Messenger have declared war on riba and the people who practice riba, which means that even if we do nothing, still riba will not survive, riba will collapse. This is the very nature of the thing we are fighting. It is a fantasy whose only destiny is to collapse. Therefore, you do not want to build your house on such an illusory fantasy, you want to move out of it. This will be done by those people who capable of leaving this matter for what will be the successful affair, and they will the people who will lead the way for others.

In the events to come in our lifetime, we will see the most important crisis capitalism has ever had, the biggest one. It will make the events of the previous century, in 1929, look like a little hiccup. Those events which brought about a total transformation of the world and the political realities of the current world, which brought about fascism and Hitler in Germany, which completely changed the political picture of people, will be repeated again but on a much larger scale. The crisis that will come will be associated with the dollar and the financial systems, the fantasy systems of the United StatesЧironically, according to some, now islamised: the stock exchange and all these fantastic gambling machines. All these things will be wiped out. It will be in those events and the years to come that Islam will be the force, but stronger. Because fascism was not an answer to all these disasters, and it was still part of kufr.

Islam will be the voice that will come out of this event. And we are the people preparing the path, preparing ourselves for these events to come, building the lifeboat that you will desperately need in those events, because all this cosmetic economy that we are living in today will be wiped out. The more dependent you are on the technical machine, the more you will suffer. So those closer to the centre of gravity in Europe and in America will suffer more than people in, for example, Albania. It is more probable to say that when this event happens, the people in Tirana will tell you, УA crisis in which stock exchange, did you say? New York?Ф But this will not be an affordable commentary for those people living in London, for instance. Or those who have made their living out of this cosmetic economy. A handful will be prepared. A handful of people will be ahead of their time and they will be building up the tools that will drive us through.

At that time you will need community. Today it is easy for people to say, УNo, No. I do not need to belong to any sect. Or any group. Because I am just fine on my own.Ф Which is absolute nonsense if you are a Muslim. If you are a Muslim you need an Amir, you need Amr, to belong to a community. There is no personal morality like the christians have, we have a social reality. As individuals we can do nothing. These events will tear us apart, and throw us left, right and centre, like everyone else. But as a collectivity, we will be able to answer. To be able to come together will be not just a matter of choice, it will be a necessity. And I welcome this necessity, because although it is actually as necessary today as it will be then, it will force the Muslims to wake upЧsome of those who are just hanging in the periphery, playing the game of УI am a Muslim on my own,Ф and making their own rules of how they determine their own destinies and that type of personal morality which you find today among people.

To have a community will be necessary. Murabitun is one of the few that is looking at this matter, people that are coming together. One of the few who have forged Amr in this time. We have also forged in this time an understanding of ourselves and our community, and the celebration of this science of tasawwuf, bringing it forward from the past and making a path through these dark ages into a new day on which we can celebrate once more the Khalifate, and we can see again one nationЧnot 27Чwith one flag, and one Shahada. One nation gathered for the sake of Allah, subhanahu wa taСala, for the fulfilment of His ShariТat. A nation that will reform the world, because it does not need to reform the ShariТat. The ShariТat will be the very tool, the very essence of our existence. And the abandonment of our affairs will have been fulfilled, in as much as we have eliminated all the traces of this false culture that we carry forward, collectively and as individuals. We will have created the one identity that will make us human beings, which is being slaves of Allah, to submit to Him, which is to be a Muslim.

Assalaamu Сalaykum wa rahmutallah.

Conference Papers - Priorities in the Fiqh and the Muamalat

From the 8th International Fiqh Conference held in Pretoria, South Africa on the 18-20 October 2003

All Praise is due to Allah, the most Compassionate, the most Merciful, the Lord of all the worlds, the King of the Day of Judgment, Who has gathered all knowledge in His Essence and Who is the Creator of all knowledge for eternity. All peace and blessings be upon His beloved Prophet, Muhammad, who was not taught by man but by Him. He was the last and most honoured Prophet, the last in the chain of prophethood that was brought to this world and who has guided us to the right path. May abundant peace and blessings be upon his Family and his Companions, who were chosen among the good and benevolent.

Allah says in Surat al-Fath:

It is He who sent His Messengerwith the Guidance and the Deen of Truth

to exalt it over every other deenand Allah suffices as a witness.

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,and those who are with him

are fierce to the kafirun,merciful to one another.

(Qur’an, 48: 28-29)

Allah has chosen for us Islam as our Deen. Allah has filled this Deen with immense rewards and secrets for the Muslims, while He has cursed the kafirun. The Muslim is the one that submits to Allah, and this includes obeying His Commands. The kafir has negated submission to Allah, and for that reason lives a life of ignorance. Kufr is a lower form of existence, and for this reason there is no way in which kufr can stand supreme over Islam: this is an impossibility. On the contrary, Islam in all circumstances reigns above kufr and determines its nature, possibility and existence.

Throughout history the Muslims have enjoyed times of great splendour followed by times of decadence, yet our Deen has never been compromised, and the promises of Allah have remained intact. Only the Muslims, in their test of life, are the ones questioned. This is the difference between Uhud and Badr. Our test consists of trusting and obeying Allah and the result is our failure or success. But Islam always remains above the test. Islam is not in question, we are in question. Our failure as Muslims is not a failure of Islam, but our own failure: we are the source of our own tribulations. For the kafir, on the other hand, success is impossible. It does not matter what the circumstances are. His only chance of being successful is to enter Islam. Given these premises, the measure of our success is our trusting and obeying Allah, independent of what the kafirun might or might not do. The kafirun, on the other hand, no matter what they do, depend on the behaviour of the Muslims to find their place in the world. Our behaviour as Muslims is not dictated by reaction to the kafirun, but only by our obligations to Allah. We follow and fear Allah, but not the kafirun. The kafirun are there as a mercy to us, so that we can come nearer to Him. Our task is therefore simple: trust and obey Allah and be merciful to the muminun. And then the result is inevitable: victory over kufr.

Victory as an aim

Our Deen is so immense that if you look in it for victory you will find victory. If you look for victory, the Shari‘ah will reveal to you the path to victory. The key issue, therefore, is how we approach the Shari‘ah. The question is on us, on our approach. This means that if we want the full establishment of the Deen of Islam, with the restoration of a Dar al-Islam and the Khalifate, the possibility of success is there before us and attainable, independent of the circumstances. Here Rumi, rahimahullah, spoke with great clarity when he said: “What is halal is possible. The hypocrite is the one that says ‘that which is halal is not possible’. But how could it be impossible? Allah has given us an obligation, how could He have not given us the means? If you do not understand that ‘what is halal is possible’ then you should hit your head against the wall. And if you still do not understand then hit harder.” The hypocrite cannot guide us. Allah says in Surat an-Nisa’:

The munafiqun are in the lowest level of the Fire.You will not find any one to help them.

(Qur’an, 4: 144)

When we look at the fiqh as the great body of jurisprudence by the greatest jurists of Islam, we may at first be overwhelmed by the immensity and detail of the affair. Everything is there. Also, the fiqh has remained essentially the same for hundreds of years, during which great periods have been followed by lower periods. It is how the Muslims have approached the fiqh that has changed.

At the beginning of the last century, during the last days of the Osmanli Khalifate, some reformers from Egypt and Syria started to question the fiqh and consider it to be outdated. They embarked on a programme of reform in order to create a new fiqh based on a new pragmatic methodology, using — as the protestants also say — direct access to the sources: the Qur’an and the texts of hadith. But the fiqh was not outdated, they were outdated. These reformers, in questioning the fiqh, started to change the approach to the fiqh. Instead of victory they were looking for a way to accommodate the Muslims to the world of the kuffar. In doing so, the reformers became an instrument of the kuffar. These reformers failed to understand the fiqh. They were not looking at the fiqh with the right eyes. Yet we live in a world still dominated by the work initiated by these reformers. The fiqh, in its vastness, requires a direction, an aim, otherwise the most insignificant point may carry the same weight as the most fundamental and essential issues — or even more weight. This aim which orientates our approach to the fiqh can only be the present, full establishment of all the aspects of the Shari‘ah, including those political and economic matters that are now presented as non-religious matters. That is in itself our definition of victory. The aim is victory and aim requires leadership.

Leadership is not a title, but vision: to be able to see. That is the unique ability for understanding and implementing victory. If one does not have a road-map to victory one cannot lead; that is why it is impossible to fake leadership. The leader comes with a visible sign: victory itself. The unification of the Muslims will come from victory, its carrier will be our leader. It is important to know that all the attempts to create leadership among the Muslims during the twentieth century have failed since they were founded on a false basic premise: that leadership can be elected or brought out of consensus. The idea is that unity will originate from a kind of parliamentarian mechanism where all the ideas are represented and a consensus between all the different positions will be commonly reached. But that which is common among all the most disparate ideas is by definition baseless and therefore irrelevant. That baseless commonality is then placed on top of everybody as a tool of control that paralyses any real initiative. This consensus approach is therefore essentially anti-leader, lacking the uniqueness and direction that leadership provides. Therefore consensus is the means of defeat.

This parliamentarian philosophy so alien to us has been sold to us under the Arabic name of ‘shura’ and has become the present means of interacting among Muslim groups and nations. It has produced organisations such as the Organisation of Islamic Conference and the Islamic Development Bank, which guarantee the preservation of the present status quo.

Puritanism

Another aspect of the religious reform is its personal morality: puritanism. This morality places the isolated individual deprived of leadership at the centre of the decision-making or moral judgement. This way of thinking implies a fundamental shift in the approach to the fiqh. When the individual has to decide in isolation, automatically it puts all social issues out of reach. For example, the issue of the restoration of the Dinar and the Dirham, seen from the perspective of the individual, is a non-issue since it requires a whole community for it to be applied. Thus personal morality means that most social issues are abandoned, especially those that carry the highest political or economic weight (equal to their importance). Only the individual belonging to the jama’a can act in these matters and for that, once more the figure of the leader, the Amir becomes necessary. To illustrate this point a bit further I will relate to you a recent case I experienced in South Africa. A well known car dealer approached me with great concern. He had realised that the sale of his cars involving finance through the banks was riba’. He was distressed by it and had approached most of the leading ‘ulema in the country. He had received three answers but none of them could satisfy his concern. One group said: “Everything is alright. This is the way of the country and we cannot change it.” But he thought that that solution cannot be right, something must be done. Another group had said: “Abandon your car sales and open a shop where you do not have to sell with finance.” Hearing this he thought that the answer could not be to become another Indian shopkeeper, many of whom are in any case closing down due to the fierce competition of the big supermarkets. And the third group said: “Refer your clients to an Islamic bank for the finance of the cars, instead of an ordinary bank.” He was not happy with that either because he had already discovered that the interest charged by the Islamic bank is in fact similar to or higher than the ordinary banks. So he then asked me, “What is your opinion?” I put it to him simply: “Do you have an Amir? If you do not have an Amir and a community under him, you are not equipped to deal with this matter. I cannot advise you on your own, but I can advise you with your Amir. And by the way, what you do with your car business, which is part of capitalism, is irrelevant to what needs to be done in the restoration of the halal. The first step will have nothing to do with your garage. The first step will have to be the minting of the Dinar and the Dirham.”

I was amazed that none of the other ‘ulema had understood that the question cannot be solved within the boundaries of personal morality, but that the matter which not only affects him but all of us — including all the ‘ulema who answered

the question — needs ‘Amr.

When it comes to the use of the fiqh, this alien personal morality imposes a particular view that forces a reduced interpretation within the parameters of a code of personal practice which implies that key issues are simply not seen. The Dinar and the Dirham, for example, are not seen by them, no matter how many times they appear in the fiqh. The fiqh must be approached from the frame of the community led by an Amir; only then are all the matters given the understanding in which they were formulated in the first place. Without ‘Amr there is no understanding of the fiqh. Puritanism must be rejected. Secondly, the reading of the fiqh must entail a sense of purpose: an aim that only the Amir can provide. In conclusion, Islam requires ‘Amr/leadership, and without it our approach to the fiqh will be necessarily deficient.

The Role of the Leader

First, the leader is obligatory. There is no alternative to it. Then the leader must be allowed to lead his community. The leader may have his own Council but he is not dictated by it. The Amir dictates his Council and everyone else.Ultimately the ummah also needs a leader. That leader cannot be faked with a mere title or a throne, for he will be able to show his genuineness by a single and irrefutable act: the achievement of victory. This necessary quality cannot be hidden. His sign will be clearly manifested. Unity of all the Muslims will necessarily follow. He will be the only path to unity. This outward manifestation of his leadership is the reflection of an inner state that allows him to see what others cannot. His unique ability will be to make easy what others find difficult and to be able to find the weakness of the enemy when others only see overwhelming strength.

Our leader will carry a different mentality to what is common today. He will not be of those who suffer from what the French call ressentiment (resentment), those are the people who justify their goodness by the badness of their oppressors, a mentality that has become an essential part of the iconography of the reformist Islam of the twentieth century. Think of all those magazines with pictures of people bleeding, killed or about to be killed, where the Muslims are always placed in the role of the victim. The leader will be able to bring a new mentality which is not reactionary but self-confident and self-dynamic, best represented by that famous expression of Nietzsche, “the laughing lion”. The leader does not try to please mankind or the world, but to please Allah, and thus he will not be a populist, but a man of contemplation with an ‘ibada pure and complete above the rest. Allah says in Surat al-An’am:

If you obeyed most of those on earth,they would misguide you from Allah’s Way.

They follow nothing but conjecture.They are only guessing.

(Qur’an, 6: 117)

Dunya will be at his service, not the other way round. Dunya must serve him because he is not part of it. He will be more likely seen in the wildness of the hadra in a night of sama’a than in the conference rooms of the OIC, because the dhikr is where he finds the comfort of the abandonment of himself, once more to return more ready to lead the Muslims. The leader will discover the fiqh by his own ability to lead, because he will be able to reveal the missing means that everyone was looking for. This reading of his will allow us to reveal insights not only about ourselves but also about the enemy in a way that up until now has escaped us. He will show us an easiness that we have not encountered before. That easiness will be the very path that will lead us to victory.

Forging the Leader

We are not waiting on the leader, like we are not waiting on the Mahdi or the Messiah. Our task is to create the environment in which this leader will emerge. After all, we have the leader — or the lack of it — that we deserve. We must deserve a good leader. We should stop worshipping those political and economic institutions that have made their way through the reform of the twentieth century. We should abandon the illusion that they will bring unity; they are the very instruments of failure. We should encourage leadership among ourselves by accepting the authority of those among us with the ability to rally the community and establish the fard of Islam on the basis of Allah’s command, particularly when it relates to the zakat and the salat. The Jumu‘a must be the voice of the leader, not the preaching of morality by newly created priests. The leader must run the mosque and all mosque committees must be abolished.

Then we must go one step further. We must redraw the map of our world. We must force ourselves to see that Allah has given us all the means to succeed. And anyone who does not, must be politely invited to hit their heads against the wall. It is not a rational battle before us, but a more primary battle in which the meanings of every rationale are in question. Pragmatism at hand must be erased as a formula for decision-making, and must be substituted by a higher vision of strategy that has an aim that reaches beyond us. In this battle of the meanings the tools of tasawwuf are absolutely necessary. The elimination of the nafs in the hadra must translate as the elimination of our worldly concerns when we face the world: a worldless world in which the presence of Allah is our guidance. The people with this quality will not fear the world, which does not matter to them, they will fear Allah, and it will be among them that the leader will arise.

They will be the ones who will be able to turn the rules of the game in their favour and recognise what others have been blind to: that the entire creation, the good and the bad, is in our favour. Yes, the entire world is in our favour. Not only the fervent ‘ibada of the Muslims, but also capitalism. Capitalism can be seen as a problem, but for the leader it will be seen as a blessing. How? Because capitalism is false. When you see your opponent playing a bad strategy in chess, you will not oppose his moves, but rather encourage them. You, on the other hand, will not follow his strategy, but define your own. That is why it is as foolish to oppose capitalism as it is to defend it. We must play our own game. When they say that paper is valuable, and gold is worthless, we should say to them, “Yes. Wonderful, all the paper is for you, but we, primitive and ancient people, we will keep the gold.” It has never been easier in the history of the Muslims to take the wealth from the kuffar, because they believe in fantasies. They believe their own lies.

Capitalism as an Opportunity

It is fundamental to understand capitalism because it has become the dominant religion in kufr. It does not matter what religion you follow, capitalism is the muamalat of all us: the same banking system, the same money system, the same credit cards, interest, mortgages and protocols. What this means is that what we understand traditionally by religion has become a form of personal choice and morality that has nothing to do with the social and economic process (these processes belong totally to capitalism). Furthermore, the attempt to bring religion into politics or economics is seen as a sign of intolerance (tolerance here playing the role of a new capitalist moral.) Thus, you are allowed to question God, but you are not allowed to question VAT, interest or taxation. Imagine the situation: you walk into your bank and when the banker asks you for the payment of the interest on your mortgage, you say to him: “I am sorry but I am not going to pay you, I have become an agnostic of interest.” No, they do not tolerate your argument, because their system is an orthodoxy and cannot be questioned. Religion, on the other hand, can be questioned because it is a matter of personal choice according to them. This is when you realise that capitalism has become the muamalat of today; the saying of “Ad-Deen al-muamalat” means that capitalism is the religion of today.

The Dollar Crisis

And yet, capitalism is false. Capitalism is facing what will undoubtedly amount to the biggest crisis in its history. This crisis, already named as ‘the dollar crisis’, will be of critical importance to the reshaping of the world around the plan of a world state (this plan is already set in place).

This crisis will be so important that we are obliged to understand it. The cause will be riba’ itself. Its being haram will manifest once more in the form of a crisis the nature of which we know from previous cases, except this one will be the biggest one. Essentially, this crisis is based on the existence of far too many dollars. In derivatives alone (a prolific type of financial instrument), there is a bubble of 160 trillion US dollars, which represents 40 times more than world trade (4 trillion US dollars in value), that is, 40 times more than everything tangible that the people of the world trade with each other over a year. The problem is that this dollar bubble multiplies by two every two and a half years. So it will continue an unsustainable progression reaching 40, 80, 160 times the volume of world trade, up until naturally, mathematically, it will have to explode. The second problem is that this bubble cannot be stopped from growing. Therefore the crisis is inevitable. The timing is unknown. We only know that every day that passes will make the crisis worse.

What can we do before this important event? The logical conclusion is to take a position before the crisis comes using the only asset that withholds its value in crisis: gold. Getting hold of the commodity, that is of the mineral production, at this stage will give us a tremendous tool in the after-crisis period. This position will involve acquiring gold in exchange for the present paper money, or even better, exchanging a borrowed dollar for future gold. What is future gold? Gold mines, or buying at the present low prices the future production of the mine for 20 or 25 years. This position will benefit us in two ways at the time of the crisis: one, from the sliding value of the dollar, and two, from the rising price of gold. A strong position in gold mining will not only allow us to survive the crisis, but will give us a solid position to mint the new gold and silver currency: whatever the price of gold might be, we will have our own supply.

The second element in this crisis strategy is obviously ‘to make gold function as money’. This objective entails: first the minting of the currency and the establishment of payment systems based on the metals, such as for example, the present e-dinar payment system; secondly, the setting up of the architecture of a gold economy, which implies what we call the ‘infrastructure of Islamic Trading’. The key to this infrastructure is the setting up of a network of Islamic/Open Markets that will enable us to create new wealth based on trading. We must remember the hadith of Rasulullah, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam:

“Nine-tenths of risq (provision) comes from trading.”

We cannot afford to live without trading, as we are today. What the World Trade Organisation calls trading is not trading but monopolistic distribution. Trading can only exist with Islamic/Open Markets. This affair has been elaborated in detail, and most of it can be obtained in written form through the Murabitun media. The network of Open Markets will

allow us to recreate caravans, guilds and our halal forms of finance (qirad). The result is the formulation of a real alternative to capitalism, based on the ayat:

Allah has permitted trade and He has forbidden usury.

(Qur’an, 2: 274)

Trading is the alternative to capitalism. The steps to create the trading infrastructure have already started and programmes under my directive have been put in place with regard to the currency and the establishment of the infrastructure. This initiative of ours is the only one I am aware of in which Muslims are planning to deal with the crisis. Our strategy aims at the revival of the muamalat of the Muslims which has been ignored and buried under capitalist practices for the last 100 years. The restoration of the muamalat of the Muslims will be in itself the opening of new doors and horizons toward the ultimate aim: the restoration of the Khalifate. This Murabitun initiative represents the end of the reformism of the last one hundred years, and the birth of a new force towards the return of the Islam of Madinah, based on the Madinan model and the Madinan values. This is what we refer to when we speak about the ‘Amal of the Ahl al-Madinah, one of the key elements of the Murabitun agenda.

The problem that we face today is not a problem of the fiqh, but a problem of the reformist values that have forced us to compulsively imitate the kuffar. These reformist values are behind this trend in which, if the kuffar have banks, these modernist reformers tell us that the fiqh actually allows Islamic banks; if the kuffar have stock exchanges, these misguided reformers busy themselves trying to formulate with their fiqh a new Islamic stock exchange. And the same goes for Islamic constitutions, Islamic credit cards, Islamic parliaments, Islamic human rights, and so on and so forth. All these people and ideas are part of the past. To those who make the haram halal, we warn them by reminding them what Allah says in Surat al-Nahl:

Do not say about what your lying tongues describe:

‘This is halal and this is haram,’inventing lies against Allah.

Those who invent lies against Allah are not successful —a brief enjoyment,

then they will have a painful punishment.(Qur’an, 16: 116)

These people have mislead the Muslims for over a hundred years since Muhammad Abduh. Their time is over. Now is the time to forge the leader who will read the fiqh with the eyes of victory and who will unveil for us what is clear, yet hidden to many: the real Islamic model, not based on a copy of the kuffar but on its own intrinsic order. Dinar, Dirham, Suqs, Caravans, Qirad, Waqf, Guilds, ‘Amr, Khalifate. These are the new/old instruments of conquest with which we will create the space for the leader to emerge. These are the elements which constitute our muamalat. This spirit of construction and growth based on our muamalat will do away with all the false leaders who have been the curse of the twentieth century and who still linger on in our present day. These are the false leaders who have been telling us to wait for the Saviour, the Mahdi or whatever they want to call it. These people have been telling us that the time has not yet come, that we are not ready, that our Iman is weak, when in fact it was their Iman that was weak. They have forgotten that Allah says in Surat al-Nisa’:

Do not say, ‘You are not a mumin’,to someone who greets you as a Muslim,

simply out of desire for the goods of this world.(Qur’an, 4: 93)

Our muamalat will also do away with those blind leaders who, because of their incapacity to see victory, have launched the Muslims into helpless and irrelevant battles pre-designed to fail. These are the people who from the comfort of their home have sent their followers in their thousands to a suicidal death, yet they disguise the failure in their suicidal tactics as a success of martyrdom, intended to lure the next lot.

Another group are those false leaders who are blind and cannot see the victory. They apparently invoke secret powers. These people give to themselves special powers from the Unseen and say: go and fight and the angels will help you, and if you question them about their strategy then they reply, “Do you not believe in angels?” We should say to them, “If you have an army of angels why do you need us? Go and fight your battle yourself.” They should seek wisdom, but instead they shortcut it by bluffing their trusting followers with false pretences. Allah says in Surat al-An’am:

Say: ‘I do not say to you that I possess the treasuries of Allah,nor do I know the Unseen,

nor do I say to you that I am an angel.I only follow what has been revealed to me.’

Say: ‘Are the blind the same as those who can see?

So will you not reflect?’(Qur’an, 6: 51)

Finally, a last word. The key to our success will not come from looking at the world. It does not matter what great enterprise Allah puts before us, our centre must remain in our ‘ibada. Our ‘ibada is our strength and our guidance. There we can withdraw endlessly and deeper and deeper for the meanings that we require. Our ‘ibada is essential to us, and it is everything to the leader. Allah says in Surat al-Fath:

Truly We have granted you a clear victory,so that Allah may forgive you your earlier errors

and any later onesand complete His blessing upon you,

and guide you on a Straight Path.and so that Allah may help you with a mighty help.

(Qur’an, 48: 1-3)

The Return of the Guilds

The guild is the natural professional organization of free societies. For hundreds of years civilized societies organized their trade through guilds. Throughout history the guild system represented the natural impulse of society to govern itself against the cyclical eruptions of central power. However, the guilds themselves suffer from their own illnesses which combine to give them an inner dynamic of prosperity and decline. They reached maximum perfection and prosperity in Islamic societies, where they were harmonized and disciplined by the framework of the shariah. The resolute transformation of central states into banks during the 18th and 19th centuries gave birth to the modern fiscal state and produced the extraordinary rise of capitalism. They could not allow the existence of the guilds as a force (of the people) competing with their own ambitions for absolute power.

Today that idea of the modern state is in deep crisis. Disguised under the hollow term "privatization", the now "old" model of state is being systematically and rapidly dismantled. "Everything is for sale" resounds like the long anticipated defeat of this form of organization. This phenomenon of self-abdication could lead towards a harmonizing of society through the devolution of powers, or else these powers could be reabsorbed by an even mightier world state. What is very clear is that in this historical threshold the re-establishment of the guilds and their success will play a fundamental role in shaping the new society. Leading corporations calling for efficiency are rediscovering the superiority which autonomous workteams have over employees. Political trends have made newly fashionable the idea of the "privatization" of welfare responsibilities, and have transferred them back to society. Intellectuals are now rediscovering the guilds as an alternative to both the old welfare state and the old corporate structure. However, as in the past, Islam will be the guilds' most powerful supporter.

The guilds did not survive the fatal pressure put on them in the 19th century. Their spirit, however, never disappeared completely. The modern university system has its origins in the guilds. The professional colleges are also reminiscent of the guilds. In Germany, the guilds maintained their predominance and expansion well into the middle of the 19th century. In the rest of Europe, however, the evolving centralist state system had already diminished their influence. The death of the guilds in Europe and the Muslim world is often misrepresented as "death by natural causes". A more appropriate analogy would be "death by assassination". The totalitarian ambitions of statism combined with the capitalist abuse of society through the effects of banking emerged as the natural and most ferocious enemy of the guilds. Their disappearance was the condition sine qua non for the further expansion of the fiscal state and the capitalist system.

Another way in which the importance of guilds has reached our time is through architecture, of which Brussels is a beautiful example. The importance of the guilds in Belgium is most evident in the Grand Place in Brussels, where the scale of the guild houses belonging to the boatmen, archers, tallow merchants and hosiery makers leaves little doubt as to their wealth. From the thirteen century onwards the guilds were far more than just organizations of tradesmen. It is still remembered in Belgium how the guild militias played a decisive role in the Battle of Golden Supur in 1302. Their guilds also created almshouses

and other charity institutions, created their own courts of justice, levied fines on the members who breached their statutes, and regulated the quality of products in the market and conditions of work. Their heritage is fundamental for understanding the development of industry in Europe.

The importance of the guilds as an instrument of social transformation has been a constant factor in European political literature right up to the Second World War. The political supporters of the guilds saw the French Revolution as a phenomenon that was designed to act against the guilds. It was seen as the key drive behind their abolition. The results of the French Revolution made possible the abolishment of those laws that forbade usury thereby encouraging monopoly; the introduction of a national and artificial inflationary currency; and the systematic expropriation of all guild properties and their welfare institutions. On this was based both the model and the method for the emergence of the new capitalist or modern fiscal state. The Scotsman Thomas Carlyle, the Frenchman J.P. Proudhon and the Russian M. Bakunin are some of the famous political writers who wrote to some extent against the concept of the modern state, insisting on "government without state". They saw that the alternative to central authority was the devolution of sovereignty to the workplace. The Russian Kropotkin made a most profound analysis of the medieval guilds as the ideal model for a society without a working class. In the beginning of this century, a movement emerged called 'guild socialism', intellectually inspired by Carlyle, Ruskin and Morris, the aim of which was to transfer the powers of capital and government to self-governing associations of workers through the tactics of direct actions.

The end of this Christian millennium is marked by numerous indications which anticipate the resurgence of the guilds. The two principal ones are the downfall of the American capitalist cycle, and the shrinking budgetary and welfare activity of the state. The four capitalist cycles (Genoa, Holland, Great Britain and now the United States) expanded through free trade but they ended in the grip of monopoly and were suffocated by usury. In America, as well as in its European satellite, the sign of social and economic decline has already manifested itself- "they make more money out of money (usury) than out of legitimate productive activities". The debtor state on the other hand is crippled by its fiscal responsibility, alienating the people through heavy taxation and the inability to meet the welfare needs of its constituency.

The end of the American cycle is bringing about a mutation in social values. In the beginning of this century, to be a salaried worker was considered as "alienation or slavery". Now, chronic unemployment has presented another feature which is that "a person may not be worth exploiting". Therefore, "to be worth exploiting" is considered a personal triumph, i.e. to be considered a wage-slave is considered a triumph. In this climate of absolute resignation in the face of rising unemployment, and at a time when entire nations are being auctioned off to the highest bidder it becomes apparent why the re-emergence of the guilds resonates as a powerful and necessary alternative. This will become possible when, firstly, the worker recognizes that nobody is capable of saving him from his state of servitude other than himself (in this respect politicians have lost all competency). Secondly, when he finds no resources available to him other than his own companions or co-workers who are faced with the same reality. It is under these extreme conditions that the essential character of the guild becomes apparent. The need for co-operation and mutual group-centred reliance in a hostile environment will eventually lead to a strengthening of enterprise and brotherhood.

THE GUILDS IN ISLAM

In Islam the guilds reached a level of perfection and balance thanks to the Shari'ah. As an example, in Europe, in Al-Andalus, the guilds enjoyed a great splendour for several centuries. The manufacturers of this region achieved a degree of fame higher than their scientific and literary counterparts. The ceramic work, with its mosaics of vivid metallic colours and their golden glazes; crystal work, that was invented in the 19th century by Ibn Firmas from Cordoba; the metalwork, with its glorious lamps; the jewellery; the arms produced in famous centres such as Toledo, Seville, Cordoba, Granada, Almeria and Murcia; textile work, which produced magnificent tapestries and rich material from wool and silk; and the leather work, plain and printed, especially from Cordoba with its renowned cordovan leather were the most appreciated products as specialized items in the West. A desire to know and to improve led the guilds to technical advancement in most areas of production, including agriculture, where they developed the most efficient systems of irrigation in the West during that epoch. The Sufi tariqas were integrated into the guilds, and this added a spiritual dimension fundamental to their development which in turn contributed to the birth and growth of new guilds. Each guild had its own internal statutes which incorporated four basic categories: masters, officials, apprentices and a chief, sometimes called the amin, who had no salary but whose job was to regulate the fulfillment of the statutes by the members and to resolve disputes among them.

Brotherhood. The guilds were essentially a brotherhood in the workplace. In this arena the guildsmen sought to emulate that highest existential expression of brotherhood found among soldiers on the battlefield in jihad, where men are ready to share in the ultimate sacrifice for Islam in the name of Allah. This parallel between the guild and the army was not only an ideal but was realized every year, as each guild constituted a military brigade inside the Muslim army. They fought together for one month in the year and they worked together for another eleven months. This was the unifying of common cause and purpose. This was the profundity of their understanding of brotherhood. It is said that all the money in the world cannot gather the hearts of the people, but Allah gathers the hearts of the people.

In many ways the guild resembles the tariqa, in that the aims of the guild and those of the tariqa were mutually tied by common elements such as brotherhood, the presence of a shaykh (head of the tariqa and the guild), and the zawiya. All this was aimed at achieving closeness to Allah. By sharing with and showing generosity to his brothers, the guildsman makes possible the cleansing of his nafs and abandons his reliance on the perishable dunya. In so doing he is able to direct his efforts exclusively towards his duties to Allah. The ultimate generosity that encompasses all other forms of generosity such as giving ones time or giving ones wealth, is to give ones life itself in the name of Allah for the benefit of others. Thus, jihad, which is an obligation on the Muslims once a year under the command of an amir (according to Ibn Rushd it is a sixth pillar of Islam), encompasses all other forms of sacrifice for the community. This became the symbol of the guild.

The arena of the guild is like the physical battlefield where the common goal supersedes individual interests. Clearly the person that gives his life in jihad for the sake of Allah has abandoned any individual interest. This is one of the reasons why a person who dies in jihad is called shahid. The shahid who lives and dies in this way has achieved the ultimate goal as a Muslim. Naturally, the people who have fought together in jihad and know that they are going to fight together again do not relate to each other in the same way as ordinary people do. Brotherhood in this sense does not resemble an ordinary association of people. In this context it is interesting to note that even a kafir writer like Junger, who was the hero of two world wars, recognized that the only place where he experienced

brotherhood was in the trenches. For that reason he loved war. The expression of this kind of brotherhood in peacetime was the guilds.

In this regard, therefore, jihad is fundamental to the guilds because it is the most powerful means by which the hearts of men can be brought together. The Sufi gathering of brotherhood is the best means of getting close to jihad, not to replace it however, because it encourages total commitment- hasbuna'llahu wa ni'ma'l-wakil. On the other hand, without jihad the guilds soon degenerate into rigid and closed organizations that eventually allow privileges which then turn the apprentice into an employee. This is the precursor to the creation of monopolies which eventually transform the master into an employer, and in many instances an employee as well.

The workplace today has been secularized, deprived of any religious meaning, and has been removed from the zone of the Shariah. The Deen of Islam has now assumed the status of a religion confined to the daily rituals of ibadah, whereas the mu'amalah _the zone of the Shariah that deals with human transactions and especially those transactions that deal with trading_ has been abdicated in favour of the laws of kufr. Hundreds of years of Islamic civilization established the workplace at the centre of religious commitment and the result was the birth and development of the guilds. Our task is to bring the acts of work and trading under the light of the Shariah, and to redevelop them accordingly.

A Service To The Community. Work is essentially a "service". Work is not merely, as imagined today, the occasion and the means to gain a salary or to produce some goods. Rather, work is the name we give to the things done as a service to the people. That is why work is not considered an activity of the muscle or the brain, but of the spirit. For this reason, access to work and the workplace has a spiritual dimension, and it cannot be restricted to a class nor can it be measured according to category of income. Since only free men can serve, we distinguish the worker who serves the people from the wage-slave who fulfills some prescribed automaton-like task for a salary. Replacing the worker by a machine merely implies replacing one type of overhead for another. In this sense the machine and the wage-slave whom it replaces share a common nature. However, the machine cannot own or decide for itself and, therefore, cannot replace the owner or the worker. Those who say that the machine has created unemployment are veiling the fact that unemployment is a result of modern economic principles which foster monopoly in trade and industry; which epitomize the idea of a working class or class of employees (hence mass employment itself breeds unemployment); and, finally, which necessitate the need for huge capital input for trade and production (capitalism rewards those who possess money for the mere possession of it whereas guilds allow for mutual benefit through co-operation and partnership). Consequently, politicians who promise full employment to their people are in fact promising full enslavement to society. Employment can hardly be the solution to unemployment when employment itself is the lowest form of economic activity, meaning that because the wage-slave is deprived of any real personal initiative and is confined to a life of predetermined procedures, the work process is reduced as well to mechanically given procedures.

Work understood as a service means that 'work as an activity' is a benefit to society. Thus, it cannot act to the detriment of society. The worker does not take something from society, he contributes to society. In this way society also serves and takes care of the worker. This symbiotic relationship of service and being served is expressed in the knowledge that Allah is the Provider. Allah provides for us. We are not capable of providing for ourselves. When we serve Allah by serving His creation we in turn are served.

Just as work is a service, knowledge too is part of that service to society. Knowledge cannot be the privilege of a class and used to exploit other people. On the contrary, knowledge needs to be shared in order to free people, to help them decide on right action, and to enable them to be masters of their own situation. Knowledge and the possession of knowledge do not separate classes but unify them. Conversely, the current view embraces the monopolization of knowledge through patents and copyrights. The guilds offer the antidote to this sickness. Patent privileges will be abolished and copyright turned into "copy-lefts" as the Turkish publishers Ihlas Waqf have shown. Only then, without coercion, can the inventors be truly rewarded and honoured by society. On the other hand, the guild is based on shared knowledge. How could the masters be masters with patents? Impossible. The master shares his knowledge with the apprentice who himself becomes a bearer and transmitter of knowledge and skills. Today the employer keeps his employee ignorant so that the employee cannot emancipate himself and become the equal of his employer.

THE GUILDS AND THE OLD WELFARE STATE

Privatization has put the old welfare state in crisis. The guild system allows for the devolution of responsibilities to the individual. It reinforces horizontal co-operation between equals (between workers, between guilds, between regions). It implies the gradual dissolution of old state institutions in favour of social institutions much nearer to the individual. The political dynamic of the guild system implies that the self-empowerment of the individual will be accompanied by a gradual, parallel disempowerment of the old state system which was based on territorial centralism and the concentration of the functions of society in the hands of a few. This dynamic is what the guild socialists of the early century called the politics of "encroachment". The raising of the guilds implies the raising of all the functional aspects of society. The guilds advocate the multiple and direct expression of people according to the function they play in society. This must be understood against the idea of the undifferentiated representation of people through political representatives which is dominant today. This is based on the belief that the general will of a person cannot be represented by another, only by himself. Only a particular function or a particular will can be represented, and this is a part of the social model that the guilds recall. The guild represents the direct expression of the individual through his own contribution to society. Thus functional expression replaces political expression. The guilds have a recognized position in society which is directly related to their activity and they can, therefore, influence society directly on the basis of their particular activity.

Waqfs. An essential part of the guild is the creation of the waqfs (or awqaf) that replace the old idea of centralized welfare with a system of autonomous direct-welfare institutions. The waqf of the guild, created by contributions of the members, was intended partly for the unreachable future, partly dedicated to the profession, and partly for social assistance and welfare for the members and their families. Contributions by members to the waqf were proportional to the operational needs and suitability to the guild. It varied from 1/5 to 1/3 to 1/2 of an individual's income. The nearer one gets to the origin of the guild, the higher is the individual contribution to the waqf. As the guild consolidates its position, the members increase their private income. It is not rare to see that in the beginning of a guild the initial group contributed 100% to the waqf- they mixed their needs and their incomes. Then, like a seed that germinates to create a full grown plant, the undifferentiated core of the guild "germinates" into the different elements that constitute it, i.e. waqf, master, apprentices, statutes, courts, markets, pensions etc. Note that since in Islam there is no taxation obligated for awqaf, it implies a nobility of character that guild members take on the gifting of awqaf funds, another Sufic dimension of the guilds. It is zuhd - doing without - to help those in

need.

A false approach to the establishment of the guilds is collectivism, that is believing that the guilds will be promoted by the collectivization of property. This would be an error, because property does not transform a salaried worker into a master. Jihad creates brotherhood, collectivization does not. Open markets, free currencies (dinar and dirham), caravans, amirate, and halal contracts- these are the instruments to recreate the guilds. The workers who come together and aspire to the highest purpose of establishing Islam will be able to call upon the owner of the factory to join them. But it is very unlikely that it will work the other way round. It would be better to keep the employee who is "happy" as an employee if this is his choice. This is also perfectly acceptable in Islam. Our programme to establish the guilds should be directed at those who have a genuine desire for Islam and want to work in brotherhood for their own liberation and the liberation of others.

THE GUILDS AND THE OLD CORPORATE STRUCTURE

Just as the old states diminished under the banner of privatization in relation to their traditional tasks, there is another, equally important movement which tacitly leads towards the return of the guilds. This movement is generally referred to in corporate terms as "re-engineering". In addition, a new industrial revolution called "the information revolution" is now in process, and is shaking the foundation of all productive processes. This amounts to a historic opportunity for the guilds to be re-established. They are the logical conclusion after re-engineering. The guilds can adapt more flexibly to the advantages offered by new technologies in all forms of production. This synergy between technology and traditional guild principles is the key to surpassing the crisis of obsolete organizational structures.

Under the impact of the globalization of trade, the factory system has shown itself to be anachronistic and unable to meet the socio-economic demands of the future. Mass production has crumbled under the impact of saturated markets and, most importantly, by "competition". Competition has destroyed mass production, and revealed it be an inefficient system. Under these conditions, corporations have been forced to re-engineer their production systems by adopting production methods that allow for better efficiency and profitability. This has been achieved by recreating those manufacturing methods found in the traditional guilds. This "cell production" consists of independent work teams competing against each other within the same corporate framework. This is devolution of responsibility to small process-based teams, but it is not independence. Independence is only achieved when these work teams no longer require the control and patronage of the corporation. Today, Toyota is made up of thousands of small semi-autonomous work teams who design, requisition, produce and package complete parts and utilities but do not enjoy the right to sell. Toyota, in fact, does not manufacture any more, it only sells. It is the supermarket for all the autonomous workshops. And what is the next step, therefore, "beyond re-engineering"? It is to transform those autonomous workshops into guilds and to eliminate the supermarket by transforming it into the Islamic market, which is the market place free from rent and ownership. There the guilds can thrive. Only then it will the dream of customized production be possible, when cars will be manufactured and assembled cheaper and in greater variety than factories did in the past.

A misconception is to associate the guilds exclusively with "manual crafts", which is not the case. This is just another way of thinking of them as medieval. The guild as a production entity is simply more efficient. This is already demonstrated. But it needs to operate with the correct methods and technologies in order to improve performance in comparison with

the less efficient use of human resources in mass-production factories. If a chainsaw is given to a wage slave and an axe to the master woodcutter, the slave will produce more, yet it is wrong to conclude that slavery is better than mastery, it only proves that the chainsaw is much better than the axe. But if you give a chainsaw to both of them, the master will win. Employment is the lowest form of economic activity because, as Socrates pointed out, an army of free men can defeat an army of mercenaries, even if the mercenaries are twice as numerous, because they are free. Guilds manifest themselves in all vocations and professions. It is crucial for us at the point of implementation to be able to choose advanced methods and techniques of manufacturing. This is unavoidable when one considers that already large corporations are re-engineering production techniques that facilitate small processed based teams or cellular networks which assume greater responsibility, and make independent decisions. This is almost a cyclical return to the guild system with one fundamental difference - which highlights the superiority of the guild - which is that guilds are not corporations, they assume direct ownership of their functions. It is important to recognize that many guilds collapsed during the industrial revolution because of competition from employee-oriented mass production factories. They did not adapt to the new technologies the way the factories did. In this regard machine technology, as a basic process of systematization and thus acceleration, has accelerated the disaster inherent in capitalism while it could have accelerated the better qualities inherent in the guilds if it had been guided by the guilds themselves.

THE RETURN OF THE GUILDS

Ibn Khaldun said that a period of prosperity is followed by a period of decadence. The market, for example, flourished in an environment of openness and accessibility to all, and collapsed when it became the privilege of an elite. The fact that we are now full of supermarkets is the most clear indication that Islamic markets will come and will flourish again. It is the natural cycle. It is similar with the guilds. In the middle of a hostile environment the guilds emerge out of a strong spirit of brotherhood and they flourish. Then privileges are introduced which replace partnership, and soon apprentices are transformed into employees and unemployment becomes inevitable. We are now in that situation which is hostile to the individual. The individual is not necessary because it is possible to make more money out of money than out of genuine work. It is the end and the beginning. It is the time of the return of the guilds.

'Modernist' Islam has effectively removed guilds, open markets, and gold and silver currencies from the Islamic ethos. The dynamic of these institutions has been removed from the current political discourse, and in its place the modernists have brought "Islamic banking", the "Islamic Stock Exchange", "Islamic Insurance" and "Islamic capitalism" to the agenda. This old doctrine with Islamic labels is being revealed as a fraud, however. Modernist Islam has died alongside that obsolete model of society that they wanted to "islamise".

The time to restore the Islamic social nexus is upon us. It is within that wider framework of Islamic social life that we can fully appreciate the implications of the guilds. Thus, the return of the guilds entails the return of Islamic markets, caravans, the dinar and dirham, shirkat and qirad contracts, qadis, amirs etc. And the establishment of Islamic Amirate leads inevitably to the establishment of a Dar al-Islam and the restoration of the Khalifate. May Allah give us the right guidance to achieve it soon. Amin.

The Fallacy of the ‘Islamic Bank

The so-called “Islamic bank’ is a usurious institution contrary to Islam. The ‘Islamic bank” is an absurd attempt to resolve, as was done in the case of Christianity, the unswerving opposition of Islam to usury for fourteen centuries.

Since its origin, the ‘Islamic bank’ has been patronized and promoted by usurers. Their only intention was to incorporate the thousand million Muslims of the world–who in general would scornfully avoid using any banking or usurious institution–into the international financial and monetary system. The artificial creation by the colonial powers of the so called ‘Islamic states’, itself a contradiction in terms, whose character is markedly anti-lslamic, was the historical result of the end of territorial colonization and the beginning of the financial neo-colonialism.

The universal establishment of the western constitutional model (the model of the French revolution) brings with it the establishment of artificial and unnatural boundaries, the creation of a repressive ministerial bureaucracy, the exacting of taxes, the imposition of artificially legalized money and the legalization of usury (the banking system) – measures which are all profoundly contrary to Islam. The Islamic Bank is thus nothing more than a typically degenerate and belated product of the so-called ‘Islamic states’.

In order to speak on the “Islamic Bank”, the new science of so-called ‘Islamic economics’ has emerged from the American and European universities. However fallacious these two self-supporting concepts of economics are concepts regarded with scorn by the Muslims of traditional education they have served as a justification for the new class of state functionaries and bureaucrats who have come to constitute a kind of ‘Islamic modernism’. A few years of mediocre education in western universities will not allow many of the Islamic economists to discover that the foundations of economics have been shattered as a science and in practice in the very Europe which saw it come into existence.

The rationalistic framework of the positive sciences which has been called into question in Europe has been currently defended by those neo-bureaucrats who are still fascinated by their years of education in the West. Even though the sincere, albeit naive, faith of the majority of those who participate in these modernist movements cannot be denied, time and a greater maturity has shown them the bitter side of the ideological and scientific modernism in which they have placed their trust.

The return of the Islamic tradition has not only been the best antidote against this modernism in those Muslim countries but in the hand of a new generation of Muslims in the West it has also resulted in the transcending of modernism and brought about the culmination of our western civilization which today is of {universal character.}

In contrast to the modernist confusion, the position of the Shari’a of Islam clear and does not admit any controversy.Allah says in the Qur’an:

“Oh you who believe! Have fear of Allah and give up what remains of what is due (to you) of Usury. If you do not, then take notice of war (against you) from Allah and His Messenger.” {Qur’an 2,278}

From this it is clear that the Muslims must not only abandon Usury but that he is also obliged to

fight against usury. The ‘Islamic bank’ is a totally crypto-usurious institution and like all the other usurious constitutions must be rejected and fought. Besides the falsehood of its very name we can enumerate at least three reasons why its practice is considered usurious.

A. The creation and utilization of artificial paper-money whose use is a confined monopoly.

The Shari’a prohibits the forceful imposition of one single money on the market; what is explicitly stated is that money can be any kind of merchandise which is socially accepted as a means of exchange. If besides this we add to this the character of monopoly inherent in a (paper-)money — without any value as a commodity — whose value is imposed by the state, then it becomes clear the manipulation and acceptance of this system has nothing to do with the deen of Islam. Moreover given that there does not exist a single state in the world where the monetary system of paper money is not applied then this is sufficient reason for affirming that the Muslims live in a world where authentic Islamic governance is absent.

There exists no justification of a strategic or a political kind in the imposition of paper money as a prop for a possible Islamic government since this imposition is based on a deception of the people who support this government: moreover it is a contradiction that a just and equitable government finance itself by means of robbing from the very people whom it is governing.

The use of paper money by any institution is contrary to the nature of Islam. In the case of the bank however there is an added element to this contradiction — namely the capacity of the bank to freely create paper money by means of credit — which is independent of whether this paper-money is used for honest business or usurious loans. The use of credit to artificially expand the monetary resources is emphatically forbidden in the Shari’a.

“It is not permitted to pay a loan by asking the lender to receive payment from a third person who owes money to the lender….”Consequently it is not allowed to settle a debt with another debt.

“It is not permitted that you sell something that you do not possess on the understanding that you will buy it and will give it to the buyer.” (‘Al-Risala’ of Ibn Abi Zaid al-Qayrawani, chap. 34).

Imam Malik says, “A person should not buy a debt due to another person, be he present or absent, without the confirmation of the person who owes the debt. He is buying something which has not been guaranteed to him and so if the contract is not completed what he has paid loses its value. This is an uncertain transaction and is not good.” (‘Al Muwatta’ of Imam Malik, chap. 31).

The confirmation of a debt is an indispensable condition for its transfer; the confirmation occurs with the guaranteeing that the debt can be and will be paid. In other words notice will be given that someone with a debt which is unpayable will be able to transfer it to another person. Not even in debts of sale is the lack of confirmation of guarantee permitted.

Imam Malik distinguishes between someone who becomes indebted for something that he possesses and someone who becomes indebted for something which he does not have in his possession, this latter kind of debt is disapproved of since it leads to usury and fraud (‘Al-Muwatta’, chap. 31), like in the case of the banks.

The Shari’a prohibits the commercialization or multiplication of a debt without the means to guarantee it. Thus, the banking business as such cannot exist in Islam; the only function it could have would be to restrict itself to being an institution for transferring money but without the capacity to expand the amount of credit.

B) The usurping of part ownership

The second reason why the Islamic bank is a fallacy is the constitutive structure of its ownership. In Islam the constitution of any business must guarantee the identification of ownership and the respect of this ownership. There thus exist two forms of constitution for a business by two of more persons.

1. The loan (or qirad ) by which the investor transfers the property of their investment to an agent who manages the business.2. Co-ownership in which all the investors have made a prior agreement as to the execution of a specific business (by means of a contract) and in which ownership is based on equality of conditions between all the co-owners.The structure of the ‘Islamic banks’ is based not on the strictness and exactness of the Shari’a but rather on the model of the corporation in the West in which the exercise of property is not carried out by those who –nominally –are the owners but is carried out by means of a system of usurpation which we can call by the majorities’.

This means that the innocent investor who takes part in this type of business contract has no protection of his investment since neither establishes a business loan (qirad ), in accordance with the way this type of contract is defined, nor is he able to make decisions with respect to the very business in which he is a co-own.owner (unless this same person is the majority) since this is not decided beforehand in the contract.

Thus this type of contract is not a business contract but a sophisticated and unprotected surrender of one’s right of ownership. Whoever is the majority at any one time, then that person (or group of persons) and only that person is the authentic owner of the business. That is to say, in accordance with our understanding only the person who can decide is the owner in fact. For this reason the system of majority is neither co-ownership, Or, as we shall see, a loan.

The business loan (qirad ) is not a loan of money for a specific period made without knowing what is going to be invested in, but rather it is made for the establishment of a specific business:

Imam Malik says, “It is not permitted for the agent to stipulate that the use of the money of the qirad is his for a certain number of years and that it cannot be withdrawn from him during this period of time.” He says, “It is not correct that the investor stipulates that the money of the qirad should not be returned for a certain number of years which are specified since the qirad is not for a specific time.” (‘Al-Muwatta’ of Imam Malik, chap. 31).

The contract of the business loan on qirad implies the specifying of the person who is the agent or new owner and on whom the total responsibility of the investment rests. Thus the loan cannot be established by an indeterminate majority or with the persons who represent it if they, between them, form a single co-ownership) without jeopardizing the exercise of co-ownership of the minority co-owners, who are bound by the decisions (of the majority) despite disapproving of them.

This means that firstly before someone invests in a business it has to be known what that business is, prior to investment (according to basic conditions which arc made known in a reasonable way beforehand, and which are complete,with w condition wanting in any way); secondly it means that the person (or persons) who is the decision maker in such a business is the owner (or co-owners) and that reciprocally only the owner (or the owners) decides with respect to the business;Thirdly, that in every co-ownership the owners enjoy the same status (the fulfillment of the contract which they have and agreed to) even though they participate to different degrees (such that the profits are distributed proportionally); and fourthly it means that those contracts in which, without there occurring any loan, the owner is deprived of the right of ownership to exercise control, then in these contracts there is a usurpation of ownership.

In short, the structure of co-ownership of the ‘Islamic banks’ in which the shareholders are invited to participate is not acceptable ; in Islam since it consists of an unjustified usurpation of the ownership of the minority shareholders in favor of the executive council or administrator which represents the majority.

C. The payment of the usurious interest

Due to the very structures and the arena in which the ‘Islamic banks’ deals in a contract , fluctuation in value is generated which affect the individual transactions the bank makes. As a result an

contracts made by the ‘ Islamic bank’ are usurious. Short of removing ourselves completely from the monetary system then we are of necessity justified in affirming that every commercial contract made with in this system is already usurious since the values makes of one of the commodities which is interchanged, namely completely the paper money is being increased by pressure , force and the state monopoly. The usurious nature of these institutions is much deeper however.

Every loan of a commodity open to devaluation and whose value was superior when it was received, is usurious. In general a loan cannot be made of a commodity whose value is changeable. If however a devaluation happens unexpectedly the payment of a compensation equal to the devaluation of the lent merchandise will have to be established (and this cannot be confused with the interest). This fact denies the validity of the principle of ‘interest-free’ on which ‘Islamic banks’ are based, since paper money cannot be taken as a authentic money with a stable value. Every time this bank borrows paper money for a time, it gains the devaluation suffered by this money during the time of the loan. It is like the typical usurious trick which consisted of the loaning of wheat when it has limited value (during harvest) and stipulating that it be given back when wheat has attained a better price on the market (several months after the harvest).

This however does not mean that the taking of an interest which is equal to inflation makes the operation of loans in paper-money permissible since this commodity can never become the object of a free and fluctuating evaluation.The payment of dividends, except when considered as the sharing out of the profits of the business and when accepted unanimously by ad the co-owners is payment of usurious interest The Shari’a contains no doubt in this respect: the only possible justification for the increase or decrease at the time of the return of the loan is the resulting profit or loss of the business, connected with that loan. None of the parties can reserve the use of a pan of the profits without them having been previously distributed:

“The person who makes an investment cannot stipulated that he retain part of the profit without sharing it with the agent; likewise the agent cannot stipulate that he retain a pan of the profit without sharing .” (‘Al-Muwatta’ of Imam Malik, chap. 31)

This however is what happens when the agent does not distribute all the profits but rather an estimation of them. The profits are simply the difference between the value (or market price) of the invested goods and the value of the goods and the value of the goods obtained by the business. Then the results or profits are not an ‘objective’ estimation but rather a demonstrable reality.

It may be however that the parties to the business contract want to extend the contract and continue the profit already made by establishing a ‘mutually acceptable’ payment as if it were the same as partial payments of the total profit. But this ‘mutually acceptable’ payment means that if even one of the parties was not in agreement with the proposition to continue the business or not in agreement with the calculation of the profit which has been ‘objectively’ estimated by someone — or even a majority of the co-owners — then he can, by exercising his right of ownerships dissolve the business and verify– by the sales of the business goods–if the estimate was correct or not.

This will not violate the right of ownership of the rest of the co-owners since the contract will have been completed; besides this can be continued by buying it again from the sale of liquidation of the person who does not want to continue or who does not accept the profits which have been estimated. The calculation of the resulting profits is logically identical for all types of business whether they be established by way of a business loan (or qirad ) or as co-ownership. The qirad in general is established for a particular business with a particular person, where the results are clearly defined but it is not to be thrown to a basket of other business that the investor cannot clearly identify in full, that is not only the nature of the business and the identity of the agent but specially the exact results of the business.

In short the system of calculation or estimation of the dividends of the modem corporations adopted by the ‘Islamic banks’, are not the actual resulting profits of the business and as such, by their

excessive estimation or underestimation, they represent a usurious interest. Even besides the fact that this estimation cannot possibly always be correct, there is the fact that the very contract itself is unacceptable, since in the type of contract that the corporation make with the shareholders the fact that the latter have to renounce their right of co-ownership without even being able to refuse what they consider to be an incorrect estimation represents an illegitimate usurpation of ownership.

Usury has corrupted the market, transforming it into a usurious system. There is no way of establishing an (equitable) market without going outside of the modem monetary and financial systems. All attempts to recuperate an (equitable) Islamic market with (equitable) Islamic business and transactions must be based on the Qur’anic principle of Equity (al-’Adl){Qur’an 2, 282} which is also defined in the Shari’a. Islam, besides being the situation of the Muslims themselves, a situation based on the Qur’an and our tradition of fiqh, is and has been for centuries an impregnable fortress Of guidance and source of unparalleled knowledge for the Muslims. The ‘Islamic bank’ is a Trojan horse which has been infiltrated into Dar al-lslam.