RECEP Erdogan, president of Turkey, says his faith in Islam stops him from raising bank interest rates. His hard-line position sent the lira tumbling from one low to another; in the past three months it has lost half its value. In spite of a partial recovery, Turks are still saddled with an inflation rate so high that supermarket employees are barely able to keep up with changing labels. But Erdogan has not budged: “As a Muslim, I will continue doing what our religion tells us. This is the command.”
Command? Dear Mr President, surely as one who aspires to be a Muslim hero you have read the Quran. Therein stands the clear injunction: “Allah has permitted trade and has forbidden interest/usury” (2:275). “Forbidden” here does not mean negotiating what is low or middle or high — forbidden means zero, exactly zero. Haram is haram. This is why all early Muslim scholars rejected interest.
Many scholars still do today, particularly Arabs and Pakistanis. In 2014, the top ulema of Pakistan belonging to the Fiqhi Majlis said that even the so-called Sharia-compliant Islamic banking merely renames interest as profit and, as such, is deception. All banking, they concluded, is haram. Historically, banking was absent in Muslim countries until the 18th century because nothing except zero interest can be allowed.
Recep Erdogan and Imran Khan have given the driving seat to emotion and the back seat to reason.
The Ottoman rulers of Turkey were, however, not ideologues. As pragmatists who ran...
Read Full Story: https://www.dawn.com/news/1665658/the-pitfalls-of-ideology
Your content is great. However, if any of the content contained herein violates any rights of yours, including those of copyright, please contact us immediately by e-mail at media[@]kissrpr.com.