The West, Islam and Islamism: Is Ideological Islam Compatible with Liberal Democracy? by Caroline Cox & John Marks

Author:Caroline Cox & John Marks [Cox, Caroline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society
Published: 2012-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Waqf and Islamic finance

Jonathan Benthall and Jerome Bellion-Jourdan251 argue that Waqf and Islamic finance are grounded in Islamic tradition. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries they have become major sources of income for Islamic charitable organisations in both the United States and Britain.252

Islamic finance

...Islamic finance seeks to distinguish itself from the conventional banking system and... has now spread to involve some 150 institutions working in more than 70 countries.253

Islamic finance is characterised by the Koranic prohibition of riba or usury in contrast with the banking world of the West that depends on interest:

Those who devour usury will not stand except as stands one whom the Evil One by his touch hath driven to madness. That is because they say: ‘Trade is like usury’, but Allah hath permitted trade and forbidden usury... Allah will deprive usury of all blessing, but will give increase for deeds of charity... (Surah 2:275-6 [Medina])

Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan argue that in the second half of the twentieth century Islamists have combined a denunciation of inequalities with a call for an Islamic system founded on the principle of justice:

The practice of usury has come to be seen as a factor that aggravates inequalities. The thought of Sayyid Qutb, who was imprisoned and executed on the orders of Nasser, was particularly uncompromising. Apart from his major publication Social Justice in Islam, Qutb set out in a tract that was to become a handbook for several Islamist movements, In the Shade of the Quran, his fierce opposition to ‘the riba society’ and expressed his nostalgia for a society ruled by the ‘principle of zakat’.254

For Qutb zakat is the direct opposite of riba—a gift rather than a debt.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.