I’ve been requested to write a second part about the basic principles and benefits of an Islamic economy and answer some questions. The first part The Global Casino Economy has been published on https://orientalreview.org/2020/03/11/the-global-casino-economy/
The principles of the Islamic economy are based on 5 basic essentials viz
- Fixed Zakat- collection and distribution- for the needy, destitute and the poor Muslim men and women
- Fixed Jaziyaa – collection and distribution- for the needy, destitute and poor Non-Muslim men and women
- Donations from Muslims for operations of Islamic facilities or from non-Muslims for operations of their religious facilities
- Karz Hassana (debt grant) which must be paid back over a fixed period to the donor without interest or forgiven by the donor and,
- Waqf (foundation) which operates as a humanist foundation to promote jobs and businesses among humanity which includes health, education and public services.
While zakat and jaziyaa are compulsory, donations, karz hassana and waqf are discretionary. It is not my intention to get into the specific details about the principles, leaving it to the intelligent readers to research those.
One thing most highly condemned in the Islamic economy is usury. It is the system condemned by prophet Mohammed who declared it as a war by God against the practice of usury and of usurers. It was also condemned both in the times of prophets Moses and Jesus.
I’d read a book by Reza Aslan titled “The Zealot: Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth”. It was a bit controversial but nonetheless very interesting. Aslan has captured some interesting historical reasons of economic nature that Jesus so condemned the profiteers, who in the Temple (of Solomon) used it for their gains, predominantly through usury (ribaa). It has been a practice among Jews of Egypt, Jerusalem and Mecca/ Medina – an abhorring practise among Jews as it raises the debt level among the poor while enriching the wealthy. To best understand usury one has to understand the concept of fractional reserve banking wherein banks accept deposits from customers and make loans to borrowers, while holding in reserve an amount equal to only a fraction of the bank’s deposit liabilities. Countercurrents had published an article by Tim Bucholz titled 700 billion times 10. https://www.countercurrents.org/buchholz041208.htm . It best explains usury in the modern system by exemplifying the great financial crisis of 2008.
When Jesus entered the second Temple of Solomon, the crowds, accepting Jesus, chanted, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Then Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers (usurers), the tax collectors (from visitors) and the seats of those selling sacrificial animals at huge profits to fill their coffers. And he declared to them, “It is written: ‘My (God’s) house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”…This passage comes from the interlinear Bible that aligns the original Greek and Hebrew texts with a word by word translation. Jesus called the profiteers “vipers”.
In an article titled Money and the Evolution of Banking by Martin Armstrong, banking and money changing appear to have been closely centered around temples. “Often great temples served as treasuries holding vast sums of wealth donated by its followers. At times, various rulers would borrow from these treasuries at a prescribed rate of interest. Thus, temples provided a center around which civilization grew through its interactions. The Vatican is a prime example as had been the Temple of Solomon. Whereas the treasuries were to benefit the poor, the temple morphed into a business (like modern banking?). There is, however, one House of Worship where no public wealth is stored and that is a temple- Kaaba in Mecca – but those who call themselves the custodians collect a “type of tax” from pilgrims and use it for the illicit benefit of the rich rulers of the land. After income derived from energy, the pilgrimages are the second largest source of wealth for the rulers.
So exactly what is an usury and why it is condemned is discussed briefly in the opposite sense of the capital system which has been operating in a masked form over several centuries under a system of “banking” by Jews in Europe and subsequently in the United States and globally. Doing away with usury benefits society in general, allowing business to flourish under a system of profit and loss or partnership system in order to form capitals such as shares (which can result in either profit or loss) with the caveat that the capital is not generated by trading of items that harm society (such as from alcohol, gambling and illicit means). Similarly, the five basic principles of Islamic economy are also meant to benefit society.
The Islamic economy does away with usury, the printing press system of issuing fiat currencies (fixed interest notes and bonds) and is replaced with commodity based currencies (coins minted in gold, silver and copper), barter and profit/loss & partnerships instead of ribaa (usury in the simplest sense is compound interest, multiplied and re-multiplied to choke an economy).
A question that needs to be answered is how will the Islamic economy replace capitalist economy? A powerful and wealthy group of Zionist capitalists operating as financial bankers, insurers, politicians, arms manufacturers and market manipulators (including casinos) are going to resist the changeover to any other system, including Islamic economy which currently remains the only viable system to replace capitalism. Being flush with trillions of dollars at their disposal, the powerful capitalists are going to create a diversionary war- a global one.
Donald Trump and the Republican party have split the American nation along ethnic, racial, political, economic and cultural divisions. It is my opinion that the coronavirus may lead to riots in cities like Chicago, Miami, New York, Houston, Los Angles (comprising 15% of US population) where the divisions are far more prominent particularly if Trump administration is unable to provide health care and economic relief as per the Canadian model. Some people may remember the riots in the pre-dominantly black area of Watts, Los Angeles in August 1965 that covered a large swath of Los Angeles. 14,000 National Guard troops were dispatched to the city to control the riots. If riots become widespread, it’d lead to the US government creating diversion by waging a war against a foreign enemy.
In the wars over the past ten decades, Americans and European leaders have sought to control the Middle East energy wealth through the guise of democracy and by usurping Islamic khilafat in Turkey or exiling and assassinating leaders by pretexts. It still is and Iran remains the only Muslim Middle East country that has not succumbed. Following the American pullout from the nuclear accord in May 2015, Iran has increased its stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU) and brought out its sophisticated centrifuges to process the LEU into fissile grade High Enriched Uranium (HEU) under the watch of international nuclear agency IAEA. Reuters and Business Insider have published recent articles https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-explainer-idUSKBN1ZG22P about Iranian efforts to achieve the nuclear “break-out” goal. Iran has also embarked on it’s initiatives to discover a potential test site for the below ground examination chamber. It was recognized that Iran had actually considered 5 possible test sites, however new papers recommend that Iran’s researchers had actually decided on a most likely place– the Dasht- e Lut (Lut desert) in southeastern Iran, near the Afghan boundary.
It is not only Iran in the crosshairs but Pakistan as well (collateral damage). This war is not going to be without active participation of both China and Russia, initially as political support to both Iran and Pakistan but extending later on to direct military support. If America and it’s western allies are defeated in the war which may extend into several years, capitalism will yield to Islamic economy.
Gulam Asgar Mitha is currently retired in Calgary, Canada having worked as a project, process and technical safety engineer in Canada, USA, Libya, France, Pakistan and Kuwait. He was born in Mumbai soon after partition immigrated with family in 1951 to Karachi. After schooling proceeded to USA for further studies and obtained Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering and Masters in Economics.
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