ISLAMIC bankers, caught among scholar and layman, dedicate an awful lot of their time to educating an frequently skeptical public approximately the authenticity of their merchandise. Time well spent. The purgative effects of ridding the Islamic economic sector of pretenders (and there are numerous) on the palms of an knowledgeable consumer are obvious. Too regularly, however, this educational process is long on theory and quick on sensible relevance.
Perhaps the easiest manner to decide whether or not Islamic banking is real to Qur’an, Sunna and client is to see how it without a doubt works in exercise. The Islamic banking mentioned right here is the equal one which earns consensual popularity from the sector’s main pupils of the traditional faculties of jurisprudence. And even as unscrupulous banks do exist, increasing marketplace regulation and patron sophistication make certain that the ones Islamic banks which might be absolutely Shari’ah-com-pliant lead the industry. By getting to know the fundamentals approximately those banks, individuals may be better capable of stand their floor whilst now not-so-Islamic bankers push non-compliant gadgets in the name of Islam.
At the outset, although, it’s far important to emphasise two HAMKA vital points. First, simply because an Islamic product and a conventional product are same does no longer render the Islamic pro- duct impermissible. As apparent as this appears, it’s far an argument detractors regularly use to discredit Islamic banking. The vast majority of Islamic financial contraptions endure a strong resemblance to their conventional counterparts, mainly equity-based totally ones (see “In Your Interest”, Islamica, iciness 2003). What distinguishes them from conventional contraptions is commonly nothing more than a set of processes, which ends up in the second factor.
In Islam, the distinction among whether or not something is forbidden, offensive, permissible, endorsed or compulsory typically depends on a validating system. Two couples, one married the other unmarried, might also appearance the identical, however the settlement of a easy marriage agreement makes the one Islamically valid and the alternative not. Two hamburgers, one the use of Islamically slaughtered meat the other no longer, can also appearance the identical, however a easy process makes one legitimate. So too, financial merchandise, one Islamic the opposite not, is differentiable by a fixed of steps: ostensibly beauty, Islamically defensible.
The following are a number of the maximum usually requested questions by way of clients new to Islamic banking (ordered in growing degree of complexity).
There become no Islamic bank all through the Prophet’s (Allah bless him and supply him peace) time, so how can there be Islamic banking now? Sounds like a bid’a (innovation)
Microchips, potato chips and Islamic banks are examples of permissible things for which the Prophet (Allah bless him and deliver him peace) gave us no precise guidance. Rather, he forbade us from conducting blameworthy improvements (bid’a) that could contravene the Islamic Sacred Law (Shari’ah), as opposed to from new things that possess no intrinsic blameworthiness. The bid’a is inside the blameworthiness, now not inside the newness.
Admittedly, a few Islamic banks do carry out impermissible transactions, but that implicates the entire area of Islamic banking no extra than the sins of a few Muslims incriminate the entire Islamic community.