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http://islamic-world.net/economics/prohibition_of_riba.htm
Riba is usury. Usury is commonly understood as
the lending of money at illegally high rates of interest. But
riba, or usury, in Islam is the lending of money on interest,
regardless of the rate of interest! When money is lent on
interest, then money by itself, independent of any labor or
effort, or the assumption of any risk, increases over time.
The increase is realized through the exploitation of labor,
goods or property since Allah, the Most High, has
unambiguously declared that nothing can be had without effort
or labor(6:85, 11:85, 26:183, etc.). Riba is also at work when
wealth is sucked from the masses through deception and other
forms of fraud. Such, for example, is the case of paper,
plastic and electronic money. There is also riba in
speculative transactions. More than 60% of all money transfers
in the world economy today represent speculative
transactions.
Not only must the true believer wage the
greatest possible struggle to keep himself and his family free
from riba but, also, he must exert himself to bring relief (ma
'oun) to suffering humanity. That requires that a
revolutionary struggle be first waged to extricate the world
of Islam from the venomous bloodstained clutches of riba. If a
believer does not struggle to guard himself from riba, and if
he does not respond appropriately to oppression in the world
(which includes the oppression caused by riba) then his faith
is hollow! The Qur 'an gives precisely that warning in Surah
al-Ma'oun.
To preserve faith in this age of riba, and to
respond appropriately to oppression in the world, the
believers must ensure that they belong to the jama'ah
(community of Muslims) which is struggling against riba. The
jama'ah must function under the leadership of a competent
Ameer (leader) who has an adequate knowledge of the subject.
The believers must pledge themselves to listen to, and obey
that Ameer. They must then conform to the discipline of the
jama'ah. There is no other way for Muslims to preserve faith
in this age of riba.
In a riba-based economy the possessors of
capital will not only remain permanently rich, since they
eliminate the possibility of suffering losses, but they will
grow constantly richer, since they will be sucking the wealth
which belongs to others. They will grow richer at the expense
of those who, if not already poor, will have to pay the price
of becoming impoverished through the system of 'risk free
investments'. Risk-free investments are legalized theft. The
number of poor will constantly increase. And the level of
poverty will descend lower and lower until it reaches
destitution. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said that people who live
in a state of destitution can lose their faith in Allah, the
Most High. Riba-based capitalism has today reduced the
overwhelming majority of mankind to poverty. It thus forms
part of the grand strategy through which today's dominant
godless civilization seeks to reduce all of mankind to
godlessness?
Thus, unless the believers respond appropriately
to the challenge of riba, the overwhelming majority of Muslims
around the world can lose their faith. When Islam assumes the
role of a liberating force to liberate those who are being
exploited and oppressed, it is subjected to relentless and
intense demonization. The reason for this should be clear. The
media is controlled by those who have established, and who
sustain a world economy based on riba, and who are themselves
oppressing mankind! It is they who demonize authentic Islam as
fundamentalism. A corrupted version of Islam, however, which
does not recognize bank interest, for example, as riba, and
which consequently does not challenge the predatory elite for
its economic oppression, is warmly recognized in the media as
the true version of the religion. If a truly evil people were
to engage in riba for the purposes of sucking the wealth of
mankind, they can achieve more than just the accumulation of
fabulous wealth. They can, in fact, succeed in enslaving all
of mankind. This would be riba as economic warfare. This book
will endeavor to demonstrate, using the Torah, that this is
the precise goal of those who corrupted the Torah in order to
make riba permissible for them in their dealings with the rest
of humanity. It is because riba is, in fact, warfare, that
Allah, the Most High, has declared war on those who consume
riba:
.... and if you do not do it . if you do
not give up your demand for the interest due to you) then
take notice of (a declaration of) war from Allah and His
Messenger .... (Qur'an:
al-Baqarah-.-2-.279)
If we do not heed the warnings from the Qur 'an
and hadith, then it will only be a matter of time before we
are enslaved by a world government controlled by the predatory
elite. We will be powerless to resist that slavery because
riba would have sucked us dry of our wealth. Our poverty and
helplessness will be exploited by our slave-masters to destroy
our faith in Islam. There are some who will argue that we have
already been enslaved.
Our purpose in writing this book is to alert the
believers to the fact that the predatory elite has already
achieved considerable success in its devilish grand design of
waging war on mankind. The prophecy of our Prophet (s)
concerning the universal consumption of riba has already been
fulfilled. The Prophet (s) made it abundantly clear that the
greatest danger to the integrity of the ummah and of the iman
(faith) of the believers would come from riba. This confirmed
the warning from Allah, the Most High, Himself which was
pronounced in the choice of riba as the subject of the last
revelation.
Not only has the prophecy of the Prophet (s)
concerning the prevalence of riba today been fulfilled, it has
been fulfilled in our own miserable lifetime! Specifically it
has been fulfilled during the seventy years which have now
elapsed since the Ottoman khilafat was abolished in 1924. Up
to 1924 riba-hased capitalist Europe could succeed in
penetrating only the regimes which presided over the affairs
of Muslims. The Ottoman khalifa, for example, had borrowed
money on interest from Europe to such an extent that he was
forced, in 1857, to succumb to European financial blackmail
and, as a consequence, to aljishjizyah and ahl adh-dhimmah in
all the territories of the Ottoman Empire as a quid-pro-quo
for debt and interest payments relief. This, incidentally, was
a classic example of the financial imperialism which is today
so commonplace. But it was also the beginning of the process
of the dismantling of the sacred model of a public order (or
State) in the world of Islam (dar al-Islam), and of replacing
it with the secular European model in which sovereignty was
taken away from Allah, the Most High, and given to the State.
And that was an act of shirk! Since 1924, however, riba has
penetrated the total economic life of Muslims all around the
world. The financial imperialism inherent in riba has
delivered the entire world of Islam by its very throat into
the hands of enemies with sharpened knives. Indeed all of
mankind is now trapped in the world of riba.
If we struggle to understand the truth in the
Qur 'an and Sunnah, particularly as it pertains to the
prohibition of riba, and to be faithful to it regardless of
the price we may have to pay, it may still be possible for us
to protect ourselves from that enemy who is waging economic
warfare on us through riba. After all, did our Prophet (s) not
warn us of seven great sins which we should avoid:
"Abu Huraira narrated that the Prophet said:
Avoid the seven great destructive sins. They (the people)
asked: 0 Allah's Apostle! What are they? He said: To join
partners in worship with Allah; to practice sorcery; to kill
the life which Allah has forbidden except for a just cause
(according to Islamic law); to consume riba, to consume the
property of an orphan; to give one's back to the enemy and
fleeing from the battlefield at the time of fighting, and to
accuse chaste women who never even think of anything which
violates chastity and are good believers.
"(Bukhari)
We live, today, in a world in which the practice
of riba has once again brought great economic oppression upon
an unsuspecting mankind. And the oppression grows worse every
day. The twenty-five years which have elapsed since 1971, when
the Bretton Woods Accord collapsed, have witnessed the virtual
enslavement by a predatory global elite of the periphery of
the usurious world economy. The warning of this book,
published in New York in 1997, and written from an essentially
Qur'anic perspective, is that the next twenty-five years are
likely to confirm the economic enslavement of all humanity by
that predatory global elite.
African-Americans who, of all people, should be
most interested in the subject of the prohibition of riba,
have expressed themselves, time and again, on the subject of
economic oppression. Yet the oppression of the
African-American people in North America persists, and it
grows worse. Racial, religious and political oppression of
people identified on the basis of their black color, persists.
But it is in economic oppression that the greatest danger
lies. Dr. Martin Luther King led his famous march of the
oppressed to Washington D.C. in 1963 and spoke eloquently of
his dream of a world free from oppression. He advocated
nonviolent resistance to oppression as his basic philosophy
for the liberation of the oppressed. That philosophy, of
course, was borrowed from the Hindu Indian leader, Gandhi.
Malcolm X went to Washington D.C. but did not participate in
that march of '63. He remained skeptical that a march, and the
basic philosophy of nonviolent resistance to oppression which
inspired it, would result in any positive change in the
condition of the oppressed. He was right! In fact, the night
obefore the march he made gentle fun of the whole occasion.
Scotch and bourbon splashed; Malcolm watched, smiled and
reminded everyone that the first result of the march was not
the delivery of the blacks but the closing of the saloons. No
firewater for the Indians tomorrow, he teased.' Dr. King's
dream has remained but a dream! The African-Americans are
economically worse off today than they were at the time of
that march. Dr. King was killed, and so was Malcolm. And
oppression has increased. The noose around the neck of the
oppressed masses is growing tighter! Not only has the economic
condition of the oppressed in North America further
deteriorated, but it has also weakened their capacity to
resist. And a universal collapse of morals and values in the
essentially decadent modem secular society indicates that the
oppressed lack even more, today, the capacity to perceive, and
the inner power, moral fiber and integrity with which to
resist oppression.
More than twenty-five years ago, in 1970,
non-European humanity dreamed of, and spoke of, the
establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO)
which would bring greater economic justice to mankind than
obtained at that time. But that hope, also, for a new (just)
international economic order (NIEO), has turned out to have
been but a dream. It has never emerged! The UN was used as a
forum within which a struggle could be waged. That effort has
failed. That forum has failed. It is now twenty-five years
later, and the rich have grown richer while the poor are
poorer. The poor masses and the poor countries are in such
debt today that they are, in effect, imprisoned by their
creditors.
The fact is that the condition of the oppressed
continues to deteriorate and their leaders, including Louis
Farrakhan, do not have a clue as to the way they should
proceed if the oppressed are to be liberated from economic
oppression. As this book is being written the first
anniversary of the million-man-march has come and gone, and
nothing really has changed for the oppressed.
It is our view that all efforts at achieving
economic justice will continue to fail until mankind turns for
guidance to the uncorrupted truth which is in the Qur 'an.
Only the Qur'an can restore for mankind a world of justice and
peace because it is only in the Qur'an that mankind can learn
the truth about riba. This book reveals the secret weapon used
by the oppressor to tighten the rope of oppression around the
necks of mankind as riba And the leaders of the oppressed have
little or no knowledge whatsoever of this subject. The
knowledge which they need to have is in Islam. The knowledge
about the subject of riba is to be found in the uncorrupted
Truth of the Qur'an and the Sunnah of Allah's last messenger,
Muhammad (pbuh).
It is a matter of supreme significance, for
example, that the Qur 'an has called on the Muslims to wage
war, when all peaceful efforts have failed, to liberate the
oppressed from that economic oppression called riba (Qur 'an.
--2:279). The Qur 'anic call for war has emerged in the
context of Allah's great anger against oppression. The very
substance and foundation of Islam, the way of life of Truth,
is opposition to oppression. Sincere Muslims who are
associated with such sectarian Islamic movements as the
tableeghi jamaat and the modern-day salafis need to take
careful note of the fact that the Qur'an itself (Ch. 107) has
declared non-participation in the struggle to bring relief to
weak, vulnerable suffering humanity, to be the negation and
repudiation of Islam (kazb al-Din).
The Qur 'an not only prohibits riba but also
declares that the Torah and the Gospel were altered to modify
the divine prohibition of riba. As a consequence riba has
survived, and because of riba, among other things, we live
today in an age in which values are Collapsing. Honesty,
integrity, truthfulness, character and faith are ...fast
disappearing from the world. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) has
spoken of the coming of such an age as a sign of the coming of
the last day. He said:
. . . A man would sleep and honesty (or
faith) would be taken from his heart and only its trace will
remain in his heart like the trace of a dark spot; then a
man will go to sleep during which honesty will decrease
further still, so that its trace will resemble the trace of
a blister as when an ember is dropped on one's foot which
would make it swell, and one would see it swollen but there
would be nothing inside. People would be carrying out their
trade but hardly will there be a trustworthy person. It will
be said: In such-and-such a tribe there is an honest man,
and later it would be said about some man: 'What a wise,
polite and strong man he is'; although he will not have
faith equal even to a mustard seed in his heart.
(Bukhari)
There are many today who would readily agree
that the conditions described in this hadith are now
fulfilled. And so, the prevalence of riba itself constitutes a
sign of the coming of the last day! Riba has destroyed values.
None can be trusted! A corrupted mankind, corrupted by
unquenchable greed, would steal even the wealth of orphans
today. Muhammad Asad saw amongst modem Europeans the greed
which the Qur 'an described in surah al-Kahf and elsewhere.
There is a powerful passage in 'Road to Mecca' in which he
recorded what he saw: At all times people have known greed:
but at no time before this had greed outgrown a mere eagerness
to acquire things and become an obsession that blurred the
sight of everything else: an irresistible craving to get, to
do, to contrive more and more - more today than yesterday, and
more tomorrow than today: a demon riding on the necks of men
and whipping their hearts forward toward goals that tauntingly
glitter in the distance but dissolve into contemptible
nothingness as soon as they are reached, always holding out
the premise of new goals ahead - goals still more brilliant,
more tempting as long as they lie on the horizon, and bound to
wither into further nothingness as soon as they come within
grasp: and that hunger, that insatiable hunger for ever new
goals gnawing at man's soul: Nay, if you but knew it you would
see the hell you are in....
This is the world created by riba. It corrupts
and destroys. And so, now, more than ever before, it is
important that mankind should seek guidance from the
uncorrupted revealed Truth, - Truth which had previously been
revealed in the Torah to Moses (s), in the Psalms to David
(s), and in the Gospel to Jesus (s), but which had been
corrupted, - Truth which was restored, and which is now
eternally preserved in the Qur 'an (revealed) to Muhammad
(pbuh). The most important function of knowledge of the divine
guidance in this age in which we live, - the last stage of
history, is to preserve faith in Allah, the Most High, and in
the Truth which has come from Him (iman). In order to preserve
faith in this age people have been advised to show endurance.
This was the advice of (he blessed Prophet (s). The most
destructive force in the world today, destroying the very
foundations of faith, is riba nowhere else is there greater
need for Muslims to show endurance than in resisting
riba.
Our view is that the subject of the prohibition
of riba constitutes a litmus test with which the true guides
of mankind can be recognized, guides who truly know the Truth,
and know how to guide and protect the sheep from the wolves of
this age. One learned believer, said Prophet Muhammad (pbuh),
is harder on Satan than a I thousand ignorant worshippers
(ignorant, that is, of the revealed Truth) - and so learned a
Muslim was the Prophet's companion, Umar (r), that the Prophet
said of him: When Umar walks on one side of the street, Satan
takes the other side.
There are those today who claim to be shepherds
and who cannot even recognize the wolves. Others, still,
receive their salaries from the wolves and fraternize with
them. As a consequence they lead the sheep directly into the
jaws of the wolves. Even the governments which today control
the world of Islam have callously betrayed the law and entered
into riba to such an extent that most Muslim countries now
have riba debts which literally render them slaves to their
creditors! Unless mankind turns to true guides with expert
knowledge of the subject of the prohibition of riba, guides
who faithfully present the guidance located in the Qur 'an and
Sunnah, mankind will not only remain in a state of loss but,
also, will descend into greater poverty, destitution,
oppression, suffering, violence and bloodshed! Indeed a new
slavery will descend upon mankind. It is the learned followers
of Muhammad, the Prophet (s) who must take the responsibility
to expose to mankind the great curse of riba which has been
brought upon the world today by those who corrupted the Torah,
Psalms and Gospel. It is they who must lead the struggle
against riba. (Lest there be any misunderstanding, this writer
is certainly not suggesting that he is one of those true
guides).
Moulana Imran Hosein |
