gurey25 wrote:
Lamagodle whats with all the anger
seriously bro i was just too curious about your strange idea that xawala involves interest.
wel if they charge too much it would be price gouging but since they did not lend any credit and charge interest on it i dont think this is the case.
but you are correct in that essentially none of us can escape interest in this world.
The stranglehold of capitalism is supreme in that it permeates nearly all economic activity in the world and nearly all regions even in the depths of the congo jungle to the nomads of somalia.
The entire worlds economic system is based on interest and you cannot it escape this entirely , what you can and should do is to strive towards resisting this
domination. Why should you be doing this? It is because it is clearly defined as xaraam by allah, his prophet muhammed scw the khulafa al rashidun and the founders of the schools of fiqh especially imam malik, shafici and even abu hanaifa that spent the majority of their time and effort on this subject.
for example if you measure it by the content of his writing Imam Malik spent most of his work on highlighting all the dozens of different forms of interest and all the different methods people use to attempt to using riba.
The difference between you and me is that you have a narrow understanding of this subject, this is because you think you and I are debating about the definition of interest and economics as defined by economic text books.
You do not understand where i am coming from and i hope you at least try to understand this .
I am looking at the history of economic thought and its practice from recorded history to the evolution of the current capitalist system
you on the other hand are looking at how this all encompasing economic system works and assume that this is how things have always worked,
this is how it will always be. You seem to think that economics is a science when it is not !!.
There is micro economics which comes closest to a science and with which there is little debate and there is macro economics.
This is where the different economic theories and schools come in.
From the Liberals, neo-liberals, the austrians, the marxists, the keynsians, etc etc.
The first step is to free yourself from this intellectual domination, which i suspect you have and frankly the majority of muslims have as well.
Then you need to take a wider view.
another misconception you may have about me is that i am one the typical muslims you discuss this topic with,
you do not realize that the Salafi movement started in Al azhar of all places, and the founders were modernists just like you who were in awe of the west,
the pedigree goes back to jamal al din al afghani, and his student Muhammed abdu, and his student rashid ridda.
Muhamed abdu was made grand mufti of egypt by his close friend Lord cromer the real ruler of egypt, and his first action was to issue a fatwa that insterst was not riba.
The salafi movement and the wahabis and even the muslim brotherhood ( hassan banna was a student of Rashid ridda) do not and will not discuss this issue with you.When confronted they will resort to saying that it is daruura. a necessity because of the total domination of the capitalist west.
In fiqh daruurah is a legal instrument in cases of extreme necessity, for example lets say you are stuck on a desert and all you have to eat is are some pigs on the island.
In this case it is fard to eat that pig. but lets say a ship gets wrecked on the shore with no survivors but a pair or goats?
Do you continue to eat the pigs?
Do you start breeding them and say it is daruura.
This is what they are doing with Islamic banks, which are identical to regular banks.
They have twisted the instrument of qirad, or Mudaraba to correspond to regular interest banking, making them exactly the same,
whats worse most islamic banks charge a "profit rate"
Gurey, I don't know much about Salafism other than the fact that its offshot e.g. al-shabaab are butchering innocent people and that their ideology is stained with arab culture and theoretical islam. I have read alot about Sayid Qutb (specially during his tenure in the USA).
You mentioned economic thought; it is surprising that you feel the Austrian school (a recent approach; Schumpeter gave perhaps the philosophical undertones (1911,1943), ISrael Kirzner (1970) Hayek (1945) are behind economic thought: These are new comers in the history of economic thought. The key issue of the Austrian school is disequilibirium approach (see, e.g Schumpeter's creative destruction) and the role of entrepreneurship. Hayek was a litte bit different; he was more of a political philosopher. The notion of "interest" was not a key thesis persued by them. In fact, Schumpeter was against the notion of economic flow. John Maynard Keynes is a also a relatively new entrant. Interest rates and rents (what you got from land) were key issues he persued (evident of the title of his book); The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1933). He was influenced by Russel and Ludwig von Mises who he dedicated a book to. The other guy, you mentioned is Karl Marx. Now, it is getting interesting because he is the only one of your examples who could be thought as providing "thought". His main theory was labour value but he has also discussed interest rates which he wrote "The difference is that in a loan the money-capitalist is the only one in the transaction who gives away value; but he preserves it through the prospective return." and
this is what he said about interest rates in Das Kapital;
" "Interest, signifying the price of capital, is from the outset quite an irrational expression. The commodity in question has a double value, first a value and then a price different from this value, while price represents the expression of value in money. - - - How, then, can a sum of value have a price besides its own price, besides the price expressed in its own money-form? Price, after all, is the value of a commodity - - - as distinct from its use-value. A price which [as a normal matter] differs from value - - - is an absurd contradiction."
Notice, how he defines interest " price of capital" and how i defined it.
If you want to learn the history of economic thought you need to study more saaxib. You need to study Thorstein Veblen, Adam Smith, Humes, Hegel (who inspired Marx), and even go back to the Greeks.
I am not a modernist. I am pragmatic guy who cannot be fooled by ” seef la bood wadaads” and uncritical masses fed with effortless messages which they do not question.
We have an islam based entrepreneurship today which is empty talk and void of common sense and the true tenents of our faith.
P.s. if you are studying the subject, I am willing to provide you with references and guidance. Your assertion that I have a narrow view is wrong. Learn saaxib instead of guessing someone's knowledge capital.
P.s.s. if you believe that so called muslim banks (and financial insititutions e.g insurance firms) are "xalaal" you need to visit a shrink saaxib. Banks borrow from each other, insurance policies are reassured elesewhere.
Abdikarim nacam
Mr. Sinister True indeed.
