The Paper Dirhams, No Silver at All

Real 1000 Dirhams ?

The Paper Dinar of Failed Arab States

Ten Dinar of Bahrain

20 Dinar of Jordan

The real money of Islam.......

No Zakat, no Deen. No zakat, no economy. No zakat, no muslim community. Do you defend fiat money ?

Reprint from WWW.TumasikTradeNetwork (TTN) - 7 July 2012, Singapore.

Zakat is as important as the salat. Wherever Allah mentions salat in the Quran He almost always mentions zakat immediately thereafter. As the Muslim has to pray when the time for prayer sets in, so too does he have to pay zakat when the time for zakat sets in. Islam is simple. As much as one cannot change the number of rak’aat in the prayer, so much he also cannot change the nisab or the payment method of zakat.

Zakat on monetary wealth must be paid in money. Therefore the understanding of money is vital in fulfilling this pillar of submission to Allah. It is a pillar, not a supporting stone. If one does not understand the fiqh on money, or cares not to understand money in Islam, one will be unable to fulfill one’s obligation in paying zakat. No zakat, no Deen. No zakat, no economy. No zakat, no Muslim community.

Fiat currency is not money, it is illusory money, and paying zakat in fiat currency does not fulfill the obligation, it does not fulfill the third pillar of submission to Allah. Imam Malik stated very clearly that money is any ‘ayn that is commonly accepted as a medium of exchange. Any tangible commodity that is commonly accepted by the people as a means of payment may be used as money in the Muslim community. This cannot be a promise of payment. It cannot be a debt. It cannot be a promissory note. It cannot be an intangible medium the value of which is constantly falling and which is at the control of private hands that tax every transacition and charge interest and rent on the very use of that money. It must be dinar and dirham and in the absence of the dinar and dirham, it can be rice, barley, salt, wheat, dates, sugar, coffee, etc. 

The four madh-habs have all clearly illustrated this and Muslims all around the world have practised this without question until the last one hundred and fifty years. With the entry of banking and paper money into Muslim lands, the pillar of zakat started to gradually crumble because halal and shari’ah currency was slowly being pulled out of the hands of the Muslims. Until slowly it became halal to pay zakat in the very instrument of injustice. Does that make sense? Fulfilling an obligation with something that rips off people, something that is an illusion in itself and something that perpetuates the usurious crimes bankers? Does that really make sense? Will Allah make something unjust halal, and that too to fulfill an obligation that He has commanded upon the Muslims? So that while people pay their zakat, they are also being ripped off at the same time? Does that really make sense to those who defend fiat currency?

This is not to say that Allah does not accept the zakat of those who do not know this and who have been paying zakat in fiat currency unknowingly but sincerely. Allah is the judge of our actions. However, the law that Allah has decreed which His Messenger has shown us does not change just because our circumstances have changed. It is the duty of the ‘ulama, men of knowledge on matters of the Deen, to educate the Muslim community on such grave matters. If they do not, then they are answerable to Allah. They are also answerable to Allah and punishable if they change the practices of the Deen and thereby misguide the community.

When we witness the cancer of Riba spreading all around the economy and when we witness Allah’s wrath descending on this usurious technic global society we must all the more turn to Allah in repentance and strive to establish His shari’ah. As much as we express our love for the Rasul sallallahu alayhi wa sallam so much must we also live to defend and re-establish the shari’ah that he brought. If we do not, then it only means that we have no concern for the shari’ah. The meaning and practice of money is lost and what has replaced it has become the very instrument of injustice and oppression. We witness today that zakat too as a consequence is lost. Therefore re-establishing zakat is to kill three birds with one stone.

An Ameer’s organised collection of zakat in gold and silver coins which will be distributed free to the Muslims – the legal recipients according to the shari’ah – is not only submitting to Allah proper (re-establishing the third pillar of the Deen in its political and communal meanings), it is changing the disastrous circumstances and conditions that fiat currency and banking have created by changing the money supply of the economy from false and fraudulent modes of exchange into real, halal and shari’ah currencies, but is also responding to the cancerous economic situation that we face today by preparing for what is coming tomorrow when the ship sinks because Batil is bound to fail and die and when that happens the Muslims must not be lost and desperate. When Muslim Sultans entered new territory, they distributed gold and silver coins free to the people of the land. They established mosques and alongside the mosques, markets for the money supply to circulate. This is what we have to do. Zakat and markets alongside the prayer and mosques.

Muslim commuities around the world, especially in Non-Muslim lands, must organise themselves in micro-communities under an Ameer and make sure the organised collection of zakat is established together with the prayer as a pillar of the Deen in all its communal significance.

Last Wednesday night, 15th Sha’ban 1433, was a night of great spiritual strength and benefits. On that night we made dhikr of Allah, recited Quran and asked Allah to give us strength and protect us in establishing the shari’ah of the Rasul sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. Then something happened which must be recorded in the history of modern Singapore. For the first time in many many decades, a man, courageous and daring to submit to Allah after knowledge on the matters explained above had reached him some months ago, came forward to the man he had accepted as his leader and paid zakat to him amounting to 542 dirhams. 

He had known the matter and had waited for his financial year to end, declared his monetary wealth and paid zakat in dirhams. It was a simple act of submission to Allah, which did not require great knowledge and the necessity to go through study-courses on Islam. He had to pay zakat because the time had come and he knew he must pay in real, halal and shari’ah currency and he went to his leader, declared his wealth and paid in dirhams. Islam is as simple as that. But his action has now begun a new practice of throwing stones, the weight, gravity, accuracy and speed of every stone will kill three glass birds at every throw.

The dirhams will be distributed very soon with education on halal and shari’ah currency to people belonging to the eight categories of zakat recipients together with education on the imperative of establishing zakat as a communal pillar of the Deen. Keep your watch dear readers on the next Wariq Madinah program. Capitalism that is defending itself with glass shields is smashed once again. At the neighbouring Muslim lands – Malaysia and Indonesia – a few Sultans have pledged daringly and courageously to re-establish zakat in this way and have got their shari’ah currency readily minted to be thrown at the glass shields of Capitalism. But when Sultans throw their royal stones, the efficacy will be far more resounding for many many years to come.

Miuslims must start spending their dinars and dirhams. If they do not want to spend, of course they are permitted to save but then they must also give zakat on their monetary wealth in dinar and dirham, of course only if it reaches the nisab. This method of payment they are not permitted to change. When more Muslims give zakat in halal and shari’ah currency, they will throw strong stones at glass birds.

Laa Ghaliba illallah. We do not win. We do not have power. All victory and power belongs to Allah.

Hasbullah Shafi’iy
hasbullah.shafi@gmail.com

When Your Heart Is Empty, Nihilism Reign Supreme !

Giorgio Armani

Sans Soucis

Ralph Lauren

Dolce Gabbana

Calvin Klein

Shiseido

Clarins

Kenzo

YSL

Chloe

Ferrari

Marc Jacobs

Elizabeth Arden

Davidoff

Kanebo.....

wa ma arsalnaka illa

rahmata lil-alamin

rabbi habli hukman

wa ahiqni bis-salihin

Rabbi adkhilni mudhkhalan sidqin

wa akhrijni mukhrajan sidqin

waj-alni min ladunka

sultanan nasira...

Ya Hayyu ya Qayyum

ya Dzal Jalali wal Ikram

Ya Arhamar Rahim

irhamna

Lost Generation of China: Seeking Spiritual Meanings

For two days, Wang had been playing video games in the tiny apartment he shares with three other men in Shanghai, a city of 23mn. He left only once, to buy food. The games “help me relax,” he said. “It helps me escape. I feel so tired.”

In June, the 32 -year-old quit his job as a salesman with a traditional Chinese medicine company. His monthly wage was a meagre $400. Rocky has had nearly a dozen jobs since he graduated from college a decade ago. His mother, who lived in a poor village in Shandong, a province a few hours north of Shanghai by train, died in May.

“I feel so guilty. She worked so hard to try to give me everything, and I could never do anything for her,” said Wang, who requested that only his English name be used because he’s embarrassed by his poverty. “I feel so lost. I am such a loser. There is such a huge gap between my reality and my dreams. I feel so old.”

Wang is part of a generation in China known as the post-’80s. Born in the 1980s, they’ve seen rapid change as China moved from a Maoist state to a market-oriented economy characterised by rampant consumerism and unprecedented inequality. Because of the country’s one-child policy, many of them are only children. They’re the first generation to grow up with the Internet, and in turn, have had more access to information — and perhaps greater exposure to individual censorship.

They’ve also had more access to higher education, yet their schooling has been in a system infused with an ideological curriculum that the Chinese Communist Party strengthened after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where pro-democracy demonstrations were crushed. They’re vastly different from their parents.

Chinese society has long been worried about the post-’80s and what will become of them. They’ve been called spoiled, irresponsible, materialistic, lazy and confused. “They are described as China’s lost generation,” said Minna Jia, who researched the age group while obtaining her doctorate at the University of Southern California. “People say this generation only cares about money, about themselves.”

That sentiment was given voice in May, when the People’s Daily, the newspaper that’s considered the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial that had little good to say about the country’s young adults.

“Why has a generation that should be full of vigour and vitality become lethargic,” the newspaper asked. While it acknowledged that young people face overwhelming pressures, such as finding jobs, buying homes and taking care of their parents, it also blamed them for not having direction in their lives. “They stepped into a highly mobile society but meanwhile suffer spiritual confusion,” the editorial said.

Chinese in their 20s and 30s were outraged. On social media they denounced the editorial — and the government policies that they think have put them in this spot. Their malaise isn’t something they’ve generated themselves, they complained, but the byproduct of the communist party’s social and economic engineering initiatives gone awry.

“We have four elderly people to take care of and one child to raise. Our children have no access to safe milk or fair education. High real estate prices make us homeless,” said one comment on Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter. “We want to look up into the starry sky, but who has clouded it?”

The high real estate prices have made it impossible to buy, or even rent, a home. As a result, many 20- and 30-somethings are living together in cramped apartments in big cities. In Beijing, thousands of unemployed college graduates, mostly from the post-’80s generation, live in urban slums known as “ant villages”.

Owning a home is a virtual prerequisite for marriage here, especially for men. Yet skyrocketing prices make it hard to buy apartments in metropolises such as Beijing and Shanghai, so many young people are postponing getting married.

Meanwhile, the surge of educated young people entering the labour market has made competition fierce for jobs and has depressed salaries, which often are barely enough to cover basic necessities.

As only children, the post-’80s generation also must shoulder the burden of caring for ageing parents and grandparents, not just their own, but also their spouses’.

Endemic corruption and nepotism have meant that those in their generation whose families have powerful connections and wealth are privy to the best opportunities. The food that the post-’80s eat is unsafe, and the environment they live in is polluted.

“We have no house, no car, no money,” another Internet user said. “No rights of speaking. No chances. We don’t have anything we long for. Therefore, we have become silent and helpless.”

“If I want to buy a house, I can’t eat or drink for 30 years,” wrote Zuoyeben, a popular social critic. “I belong to the post-’80s generation. How is it possible for me not to be dispirited? It’s enough ... accomplishment that I’m somehow still alive!”

Interviews with 20-somethings confirm their unhappiness. Xia Tianyi, 25, works at a university in Shanghai. She said most of her friends “admit they have some sort of psychological problems.” She also said that many of them would like to leave China.

“Our childhood was very pure and simple,” Xia said. “When we grow up, the changes that took place happened overnight. Everybody feels so anxious and doesn’t know what to do. We can’t escape an environment where everyone talks about money.”

Wang Wei, 27, who works for a local government in Nantong, a coastal city near Shanghai, had a similar downcast view.

“I don’t think the situation will get better,” she said. At night, she works a shift at a Kentucky Fried Chicken to help make ends meet. She said she couldn’t get a promotion in her government work because “it is very clear that those who get promotions all have family connections. Opportunities are not really fair for capable people.”. “All we can do is accept the way things are,” she said.

Despite the widespread unhappiness, few expect the post-’80s to demand political change.

Zhu Dake, an outspoken cultural critic and professor at Shanghai’s Tongji University, said the Tiananmen crackdown had crushed hopes for democracy, freedom and justice while stricter ideological education and the rapid expansion of free market reforms replaced it with a cynical outlook.

“They lost the pursuit of their beliefs,” Zhu said. “Materialism became the priority, and they came to understand that beliefs are meaningless. The result is that they became the most pragmatic and materially oriented generation because they were left no other choice.”

“They were born in the wrong age,” he said. “They are the sacrifice of history.”

“They very much support the government in many ways,” said Liu Fengshu, the author of the book Urban Youth in China: Modernity, the Internet and the Self. “I think people will protest if the situation really goes beyond their tolerance level, but it is very hard now to say how much young people can bear. They are very nationalistic.”

Mandy Zi is an example of much that the disaffected resent. The 27-year-old works for an international company in Shanghai, hopes to buy an apartment with her boyfriend soon and can afford luxury products. Her father was in the military and her mother worked for a state-owned bank. When she was young, she studied abroad.

She acknowledges the dark side of China today, but she remains an optimist. “Things happen a lot here in China that sometimes exceed our ethical standards, and I think it is just getting more and more outrageous. So many scandals, so much unfairness,” she said.

“Still, I think economic growth gives us a lot of opportunities. China is still a place of hope. That is my conclusion.” — MCT

Who Is A Modernist Muslim ?

How do you recognize a modernist? Every alim and Islamic group who explicitly or tacitly does not want to eliminate the constitutions. The ones who do not recognize the constitutions as being haram; are the same who do not say the Central Banks are haram, National Debt is haram or fiat money is haram. This omission of the modernists explains the state of our affairs.

The constitutions of course they are secular. That means the State and religion are separated. In the West it means the State does not support religion; in the Muslims lands that are dominated by modernist ideology means that Islam is deprived of its political and economic morality. That is to say, the elimination of Muamalat as a legal code and as a model. What is implied is that Islam does not have an economic and political model. Instead the attempt was to Islamise democracy and capitalism. A good example to understand this is to read the constitution of Pakistan.

I do not want to forget that Constitutions have installed the power to governments to tax other than Zakat.in Islam there is no tax other than Zakat. And today under the new constitutionalist models Zakat has been eliminated, transformed into welfare charity and given to wrongful recipients.


2. You are connecting political colonization to economic colonization: could you please explain how the fall of the Islamic Khalifate had a huge economic impact?

When the colonial powers granted independence to the new Muslim States they left a gift behind: the constitutions. Every constitution guaranteed the preservation of capitalism through the Central Banks, the National Debt and the Law of legal tender. This model ensured the hegemony of the West by means of their financial supremacy. This could have never been possible without the tacit support of the modernist Islamic groups who altered the definition of Riba and diminished the gravity of its prohibition; they turned an ultra-liberal approach to Riba and in some cases the attempt was purely criminal through the Islamization of capitalism, while they obsessively focused their puritan fervour on the personal morality which centred around women, and their dress code in particular.