The politics of usury or the politics of zakāt? Reflections on the future of Islam in Britain

摘要

In this article, we offer some observations on the possible future of Islam in Britain and, by extension, elsewhere. Basing our critique on the norms established in the Sharīʾa, we first highlight the need for amirate, or personal political leadership, in any Islamic community. We then contrast this with the present global system - illustrated by several examples from the British context in particular - where power can be seen to be exercised by a financial elite that owes little or no allegiance to any national government. This elite owes its power to its control and manipulation of world financial markets, particularly through the usurious technique of fractional reserve banking. We examine fractional reserve banking and demonstrates its overtly arām nature, and thus the arām nature of the global monetary system that it supports. The Islamic alternative to this system, as demonstrated by the sunna, is to use gold and silver currency as opposed to arām paper money. Such a currency, in tandem with strong personal leadership, will enable not only alāl trade, both locally and globally, but also the correct implementation of the critically important Third Pillar of Islam, zakāt, since, firstly, zakāt needs leadership for its collection and distribution, and, secondly, it cannot correctly be collected from paper money but only from gold and silver, crops and livestock.View full textDownload full textKeywordsleadership, usury, zakāt , dinarRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1528817X.2012.748465