Shadee Elmasry – S5 E7 Flat Broke How Sharia Bridges the Wealth Gap
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The main story tonight is income inequality. A new analysis shows
the richest Americans the top 1% made nearly 20% of all the
available income and America last year. That's the widest income gap
since the roaring 20s. The combined trends of increased
inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the
American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the
globe. I believe this is the defining challenge of our time.
Let me just say no one is arguing for complete perfect equality.
Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim Al hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam
ala Rasulillah he were early he was Sufi woman. Wella welcome
everybody to Safina society podcast. We have an episode today
for you which we're calling flat broke. How should he bridges the
wealth gap with a special esteemed guest? A brother who have son of
respect for have invited him one time. Wish it was more to the New
Brunswick Islamic center. Remember we peppered
we peppered this Schiff? Probably until like 10:30pm, with
questions, and he had to drive all the way back to New York, but he
comes from a pedigree of Muslim academics. His father and his
mother were both from Princeton, and they were his father did a
dissertation on Muslims in China before anyone else really even was
talking about it. My guest today is Schiff updatable. Steve,
welcome to the program. I still don't like most people. Why do you
consider mitula it's an honor for you to be with us. And before we
get into the meat and potatoes of the topic, let's turn it over to
Moines. We have more ina NAS with us today. As you can all tell we
have a little bit of a switch up playing quarterback and Maureen
will be my running back today. And Knauss out on wide receiver. So
Moines Why don't you tell us a little bit more about shift.
background for the listeners who aren't familiar, Sam. Well,
welcome to the subpoena study podcast. Thank you for joining us.
It's an honor. Sure. So a little bit of background on chip da
Schicht. I was born and raised in New York City and
shipped up in Hassan Abdul Basir is he was a consultant researcher
and translator in the field of Islamic ethics and law. And he was
a Lead Researcher and Contributor to the Sharia database the Harvard
Islamic finance information programs electronic database on
Islamic financial ethics and jurisprudence. schicke the highest
translated and annotated more than 100 ethical legal fatawa on
finance. He was a chaplain of the Harvard Islamic Society former
tutorial instructor at Harvard University, former Lecturer in
Arabic at Boston University and has served as a Sharia consultant
for Fajr capital M Ron global property fund, the date stone
group, A salaam Islamic Bank of Canada, white star equity partners
and other financial, commercial and nonprofit entities. He's
received an A B in the comparative study of religion from Harvard
College, a certificate in the advanced study of the Arabic
language from the spectrum Institute of language studies.
Aim in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the Department of Near
Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard
University and is an ABD in the department of Near Eastern
Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, has been
studying for many, many years, and it's been studied traditional
Islamic disciplines since he was 17 years old, in Yemen, and the
United States with teachers from the Sudan, the from Yemen,
Tanzania, and behind. He has a traditional license and ijazah
from Sheikh Nizam Jacobi, and He currently resides in New York City
with his wife money for Matthew and their three children. So
welcome to the program. It's an honor, this is mashallah a
phenomenal background as well. It is a phenomenal background. It's
an honor to be with you before the good work you did
in the society podcast. Thank you so much. We appreciate your advice
and your time. And now a quest quick question about reading about
Yemen. Was that? Which Which school? Was it in Yemen that you
went to or which group did you study with? Yeah, so it was an
opportunity, I think, you remember is right around the same time,
because I think that actually remember, if not an early
communication between yourself and myself, but I think you sent out
one of the earliest things the fillable item in the 90s.
So online was, I think, a sort of early blog posts from you talking
about what you had experienced. I think it was in the late 90s Oh,
god, yes. It was, like 2000 2090 99. Yeah, so this is
about five years earlier than that.
So Yemen had just
Did you know there was northern Yemen and in southern Yemen that
just come together. And then I was slated to go just for an academic
program to study Arabic and fighting actually broke up between
North Yemen and selfie Rama.
And so I couldn't go my, my sophomore year, within the junior
year. At Harvard, I went, and that would have been like 95. And while
I was there, I was in, you know,
there were a lot of actors, and a lot of activity going on. It was
jam into Limon. Yes, there were activities. Talk about self and
Hadramaut. But I couldn't go to the South because actually the
tribes in the middle of the country that summer, well then
take people from the north to the south, the protocol, yes. was like
no, we can take you from Santa to can take you to the south to have
the remote. Wow. I got to see it. I got to see. Tat is I got to see
things in the north.
I got to see the dam, of course. So I'm humbled I get to sit in
some
of Berlin and Masha disobey, and others of misogyny and said, ah,
it was beneficial. And
it was a great period of time, because back in the 90s, that blue
passport could take you so far. And the dollar take you so far in
those places. And you were safe in those worlds with as long as you
have big blue. Now, you know, that passport, of course, everyone
would think by Allah's permission, but we were so safe to go around
traveling and hip hop and criss crossing the world. It's happening
all over the world. And I remember one brother AbdulKareem Yahia,
show me his passport one time, and it was like exploding, like you're
out of the
bind, because of how many countries he traveled to. And you
think about it Subhanallah that was reread. We didn't realize we
were living in a moment that was safe, and nice and everything. But
now it's just
the places that you can go as far limited. And on top of that, the
internet has beaten us to those places and basically ruin them.
Because back in the 90s, for example, if you went to Fez,
Morocco, you went to a different times you went to you went through
a warp zone, basically. So you are going through a in a different
century. But now I met last night someone told me that they went
there, and they found Eminem, Music blasting, and it was just,
it's the same world, right? They saw target bags, right? And it's
like your go to Fez, Morocco, you don't want to see a target bag,
you want to see another world but that's over. It's almost one world
now.
That's like the that's like the Instagram world, right? I mean,
everybody's just traveling. I mean, people actually traveled to
properly travel before learn things or do things now it's just
you know, traveling for the sake of traveling, life is made up of
these moments.
That's what the world is. And our topic today that we want to get
into, is a topic many people might think is a political topic, it's
not political at all, they might think it's a worldly topic. It's
not worldly at all. Because one of the most amazing things that I
remember that when in the talk that you gave on Zika, and I'm
ready, I've got my notebook ready to talk about the fear of Zika.
But you actually talked about Assad is aka, the secrets of Zika.
And one of them is it makes a person think about two things.
Number one are three things it makes a person think about where
the poor are in your town, because you have to give them the money,
right? Number two, it makes you count your own money. Right? It
makes because people might not have made actually not go years
without counting their own money and having assets and not knowing
you know how much their fortunes are increasing, too. And number
three, by doing all this, it forces a person to think of the
permissibility the purity of their wealth and the permissibility of
their wealth acquisition. So I think at some point, there was
even a mentioned that for the tagit. To calculate or to examine
a contract, and to see if that contract is a valid contract or an
invalid contract is greater in the sight of Allah than to hedge it.
And I think that someone's like, how is that possible? Well,
because that's fourth and tahajjud is an ephah. Right? And the fourth
is always greater than the NFL. So that really got me realizing that
sometimes we flee from the questions related to money. We
flee from finances
in an incorrect way, right? Because the Quran talks about it
as Metallica or or the allurement or delusion or a dunya. billowy
thing. Okay. And we see
The prophets, I seldom say that if this dunya would weigh the wealth,
the weight of a wings net, and that's wink, you wouldn't give a
catheter of it a single drink. And so we take all this and say, Oh,
we got to run the opposite way, from everything related to money.
But in fact, economic activity is lawful and good, when directed in
the right way, even necessary and obligatory, and when a Muslim,
treat it as a means and not an end. That's where Allah calls it
Fudd lillah, the bounty of Allah or alcohol, he calls it an Claire
mentioned twice in the Quran, or Zeniths, Allah, the beautiful
things that Allah has, right? Or Eve at human risk, the good things
of adornments or food, right, apply you Batuman or risk, the
good, pure, wholesome things of your your risk. So that's the
outset attitude that I wanted to take care of that Islam is very
open, that people need to make money, and that people have a
drive to make money. Right. And it seems that it's allowing this
within a certain parameter of not losing perspective of the ACA, and
knowing that we are still servants of Allah, we submit to His law. So
that's my opener, if you want. Anyone wants to comment on that.
That's
not so low. That's a wonderful point. You're correct that one of
the many challenges that the community
is facing hasn't been facing for a while,
is operating in an environment in which there are ideas,
impressions.
ontologies worldviews
that don't come from why
they don't come from the blessing, spring of Revelation, they aren't
indicated by the book of Allah, Quran. They aren't indicated by
the Sunnah, the paradigm of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu, early
Fernleigh. So in order to be not just a thinking person, but in
order to just function in a way that's consistent with guidance,
it's helpful to be able to identify in each domain of human
activity, what are the prevailing ideas, or the prevailing
sentiments? What is why?
Where do they overlap? Where's the disjunction, and you put your
finger on a very important one.
There are ideas floating
in the ether, if you will, about the relationship between ethics,
or religion, or spirituality,
and money,
economics, and one of those ideas, which if you're a student of
Western intellectual history, it's very easy to put your finger on in
one sense, and difficult in the sense that it it's a long running
idea,
not only in the modern West, but going back to its
contributing civilizations, that there should be a disjunction that
money
making money, husbandry, material life, those things belong in one
sphere, in the truly spiritual, the truly religious, truly ethical
person is in another sphere entirely. Right? Sometimes there's
a reference to words that are attributed to a 7 million in the,
in the New Testament, you know, render unto Caesar what is
Caesar's. But that's just
by way of pointing to this recurring theme, which has nothing
to do with the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad Salah
has nothing to do with recurring themes from the Quran.
And by virtue of the fact that Allah has blessed us with the
Quran as the furqan and Haman, you can trace it and see that it has
nothing to do with why and what remains of why, of all of Gambia,
right. All of the Anbiya one of the themes that they reinforced
is, if you love Allah,
and if you aspire to Allah's love, into a good outcome and the
alQaeda you must be concerned with matters economic. You cannot be a
good person, a righteous person, a person is supposed to a lot. And
people are starving next door to you starving in your community.
And that has nothing to do and yeah, right. You can't be a godly
person. You can't walk with God, to use terminology from the Bible.
Right? And the society in which you live the community in which
you live has institutionalized reinforced Vaughn, directed from
the small group
of the wealthy towards the dispossessed, it's not possible,
rather than the NBR, the opposite there hydrophone, the desecration.
There the elite, no person who knows anything about why it has
any sense really doubts that in terms of godliness closest, so
last spiritual attainment, they are the closest and the highest.
And they are the people, even in what remains in the portraiture of
a 7 million in Christianity, that is understood even in other
communities, who are around the poor, walking with the poor,
concerned about the poor, going into the temple in overturning the
the tables of the money changers. I mean, there are things that
remain even with all the evidence that has come from outside of the
so called Abrahamic tradition. These are these are platonic
Neoplatonic. They are they come from other places we will go and
they come from other places other than white, that have come in have
been superimposed upon European understanding. It's in particular
Christianity. It's clear and even what remains, that's not what it
used to be the money was about, right? It's not with Musa. And
it's not about it's not a new was about, it's not what the anemia
are about. Right?
There's a reason there's a cut
is one of the
Shourya. One of the prominent rites and practices by which the
dean is known as such, right? There's a reason that Hodge is
described by the one amount when they're describing the secrets of
Hodge, that it's, it's an anomaly which is Bedini and involves the
body, right. But it's also mainly involves wealth.
If you're not concerned with how you make it, how you maintain it,
do you have it, you can't discharge the responsibility.
There are a time and other in secret assault associated with
those two, and others, that make it clear to anyone who reflects
upon the book of Allah and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad
Sallallahu
sallam, that if you want to draw close to Allah, you need to be
concerned about what the what he means within this domain that in
our tongues we call economic and financial, and not let the
prevailing ideas that money what you do is the hard nosed, mundane,
clear eyed, unsentimental thing that you do. And then religion and
spirituality is a sort of ethereal thing that you do some other
place, because that dichotomy leads to failure, which is a major
loss if you and me and all of the Muslims.
And before we get to NAS, I just want to say that it's one of the
biggest bids or innovations in that has come upon
maybe Christian tradition more than the Jewish
we've probably even maybe even worse than monasticism, because
when you leave, and you remove from a religion, any financial
element to it, and you don't basically say this is okay to do
and engage in and this is how to engage in it, or be
governance and warfare,
in the name of purity, spiritual purity, what ends up happening is
that those voids will get filled, and they will get filled with
something that was greatly damaging to the spirituality that
you were trying to preserve. So one of the worst things for
Christianity, for example, is World War One, World War Two,
which made people so disillusioned with that. And I remember, a
scholar was saying, if they had had a law, on how to have
conflicts, then there wouldn't have been a void in which the
conflict became becomes an all out, you know, conflict that
consumes the entire continent, and demoralizes people and causes them
to basically to lose their faith and anyone who knows, you know,
sort of the history of, of belief in atheism in Europe that it's
World War One and World War Two, where the right hook and the left
hook to belief and people started losing their faith. So that's
where you don't address a natural need of human beings, it's
something that does happen.
Can't deny that it happens, whether it's conflict or trade, or
the even the ambition to make money. If you don't address it and
put it in somewhere productive, then you open up a void, and
something negative is going to come in there and damage that
period that you were trying to have. So now it's you had
something to say. Yeah, you know, I was just gonna ask actually two
questions. The first of those is, I just want to come from the
perspective of, let's say, a person from the west right that
doesn't have the
The light of belief are sort of speaking, I'm just role playing
here.
The main issue with them is that while they'll say that, that
economics is isn't really concerned about morality, it's
more so concerned with with a naturalistic idea of how human
beings are supposed to be, you know, human beings are creatures
that only care about, you know, getting more, right. So how can we
create a system that maximizes their this desire for them to get
more it isn't necessarily really about morality. So they would say,
right, and the second thing that they will say is that look, look
at the system that we've created, and how much wealth it's produced,
and how the entire world now, I guess, more or less has to follow
that system. Right. So it's, it's clearly that, you know, it's very,
very successful. So, you know, what, what, why should we consider
B, we be concerned about sort of spiritual aspect of wealth, and,
you know,
thinking about economic questions from a spiritual perspective, you
know, we've been doing good so far, they would say, so how would
you respond to that issue? Well, I'll just give it something first,
because it leads exactly to our first Roman numeral here a topic
is that Islam is always an interdisciplinary, so to speak, a
religion that all the disciplines are intertwined. And the short
answer that is that
there can be no answer to that without first assuming or
establishing the existence of a creator of Allah subhanaw taala.
Which leads us to the next point is that you had mentioned the
creation of wealth. Well, the second point that we have to
discuss his creation, wealth is a created thing. And its owner, is
its creator, and its creator, is Allah, its owner is Allah. And
that is that this this important point of wealth being the property
of Allah subhanaw taala. So before we get that we can get to shift
our thoughts on whatnots. That,
yes, those are excellent questions. And that is excellent
response. Maybe the second question first, right. So one of
the themes
of the book of Allah, by which here I'm referring to something
like one of his mighty is that term is used by for example, Chef
is a theme of the salon and as a CO, GM or surgeon,
and model, by which he means one of the themes of the Quran, that a
person does the job of it, and who's gifted with understanding of
it, understands and sees, repeated again and again, one of the themes
of the book of Allah, that is perhaps most manifest when talking
about the pharaoh of the time for Musa
and the institution's disbelief and people who populate in
institutions of power this week around them is that looking at the
apparent success of a person or group of people, or institutions,
or themes or philosophies in the dunya, and deducing there from
that they are successful with a capital S, and worthy of
mimicking, and emulating and using as a paradigm, and expecting that
that type of reasoning results in success in the dunya. And akhira.
is faulty. Right? And no aka No. Sane, thoughtful person, not to
mention someone who has a higher level of understanding of the book
and so the no often should make that mistake.
Right? Because
Mr. Looby Whoa, Artemia right. Actions are relative actions are
how they end in the end of Farrell is
in the water, drowning.
Claiming to be a believer, but having that statement rejected
from him. That's just reality.
In his reality is asking you to describe in greater detail, right,
leading his people every single cycle in the Hellfire to be the
target of implications from the melodica who are
the guardians of the fire as one of the people the wild the earlier
people, that other people emulated know like the people in the
Babylonians and others what happened from whom many of the
wrongheaded, disbelieving practices of people who came after
them come.
They're also cursed by people who come after them.
Right? So that cycle, the cycle of having
apparent success associated with volume, because Allah has sealed
the heart of the person and open the dunya to them, so that they
feel in their whole role that what they're doing is even better. And
they're short and short, certain more and more certain of that. And
the people who are following them are more and more certain of that.
That's the state of La Nina, of distance from Allah Rama, that
again, every single sound believing person, I'm talking
about, Oh, am I not only someone who has a deep understanding of
every single person who reflects on the book and the Sunnah. Ask
the law to save them from that state. Not to mention actually
imitating
Yeah, so we're all Muslim. So anyone at any given time pointing
and saying, we're at the top,
you know, this is our material achievement. This is our
institutional achievements, our cultural achievement. That's not a
convincing argument for us, because there are people who
relative to their competitors, had even more Dominion in the past.
And those people are among source or lay him they're explicitly
mentioned in the Quran as losers call zero capital L.
So we don't fall into that trap.
So the first answer, and that's very good.
Outside of the critique, that folk AHA and thinkers in the post
colonial reality
in the late 19 hundred's and throughout certainly in the first
and then the second half, of the 20th century, directed towards
Western economic norms within the
modern Western post modern
intellectual circle circles, there's a critique from outside of
economics of economists for not being sufficiently aware of the
ontological epistemological.
That is the philosophical underpinnings of economics. Now,
that's been,
it doesn't apply now, as much as it did maybe even 10, or 20, or 30
years ago. But philosophers,
intellectual historians, I'm talking about in the, in the
academic tradition used to laugh
at economist about the fact that they don't realize that, before
you begin to speak about the things, they're starting port, you
have an idea of what is human being? What's the purpose of life?
What's the relationship between human being human human beings and
the resources in integrated world? There's an ontology there, what
does that ontology if you don't accept the ontology, if you don't
accept the etiology, if you don't accept the epistemology, then it's
not only possible, but it's expected that you might arrive at
different ideas about the basics of an economic theory, not to
mention the secondary matters that flow there from so yes, homo
economic is, right, you know, the economic man, you know, the
assumption that people are primarily concerned with gathering
as much as they can, and they're in competition. And people are
selfish by their nature, and resources are unlimited, or
they're limited, and it's tempting them to or just not, not
acceptable to consider ethical considerations. It it goes to the
question of to what extent is the economic theory or economic
understanding that you're dealing with informed by a worldview of
velten showing? And instead of philosophies, and
should we talk about those before we talk about some other things?
Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's totally. So the summary being all
discussion of economics is a footer, or a branch, from ontology
and epistemology. Right. And also, back to another thing NAS is back
to your question is that the real question is not that okay, we're
on top. So until the ology, right. What's the I mean, you know, where
are we taking things? Yeah. What's the purpose of doing things?
Exactly. And eschatology, even though I mean, people, you know,
that that might be a bridge too far. For most materialists. But,
you know, we have, yes, we consume and we eat and we destroy here.
Yeah. What are the consequences in the next world? Yeah. All right.
So so I'd like to ask a couple of questions, just to just to back up
a little bit and sort of unpack some of these five syllable words,
you know, the ontological underpinnings of, of economics so
I'm sorry, I wasn't gonna go there. But no, no. God, although
he
is
Northeastern. Real talk. Oh,
problem is he does have academic background
noises a philosopher. So this is what he was referring to as well.
So I mean, we clear, but we're not just people were saying, Oh, this
area, we want to inject Islam into this area as well, for sure we're
going to live and we're going to build communities and we're going
to, we're going to build a civilization which is true to the
things that we understand to be the lights upon which all of our
activity are based revelation, then it would be silly to think
that when it comes to this area economic activity, although then
the broadest do well don't do good, that there's there's no
guidance there. There certainly is guidance there. And the guidance
is not only specific, or we need to give a portion of our funds to
the needy, but there are principles, there are
understandings that underpin our approach to this this area of
human activity. know for sure, I mean, what I really wanted to ask
is, you know, what you talked about the, and I know, we'll get
into it more, but when I think about it, as if I speak for the
layman here is when you talk about the epistemological underpinnings
of economics and where economic theory comes from. When it comes
to the modern world.
People really are not thinking about these deeper concepts of, of
where, you know, these philosophies and theories are
coming from, when it comes to the common man, they understand really
a spectrum. You either have, you know, Jeff Bezos on one side, and
you have greedy capitalists, and you have, you know, Marxists, you
know, socialists on the left, and that's really what the common man
understands. They're not thinking from a and these philosophers,
let's take a take a philosopher, Adam Smith, right? The, you know,
their core principles, even Marx, their core principles, were based
on human,
you know,
movements across across the world, right. And so if they didn't have
underpinnings and of where they're getting their knowledge from, and
how they're defining what it means to be a human, what are the wants
of a human? What are the needs of a human? These things are all
based on something right. And I think that's what you're really
talking about is the ontological and the epistemological
underpinnings of these things. And I think that's where Islam comes
in. And it says, Okay, you can't have economic theory unless you
can understand what a human being is. Right. And I think that's
where you were trying to go right. And not only that, I would
actually add, that people's economic behavior is going to have
possibly a greater impact on their belief,
then and then even their religious behavior, maybe because economic
behavior is something you do all the time. So you're reinforcing a
premise, you reassort reinforcing an assumption. Right? Whereas
religious worship happens far less than commerce, I think, right?
Like people are tended to be engaged in commerce, more than
they're engaged in worship and studying theology. So that's where
Islam comes, bring something where the Quran which is recited aloud,
you know, multiple times a day and studied constantly so it's it's
not just in a classroom, it's recited in recited all the time by
insula has in it a set that are go to the heart of that foundation,
and the specific ones that I want to get to regard the ownership of
wealth? Because if we keep repeating, who's in charge her who
owns this wealth, right, in what way? Is he giving it to us? Right?
What is that relationship? If we keep constantly repeating that
through liturgical which means like constant recitation and
worship, right? Then it really becomes part of our in our bones.
And this is very important, what what Maureen just said is
something that the common person would never think twice of, but
yeah, maybe a Muslim will never think twice of economic
philosophy, but he knows the book of Allah. And he knows that Allah
said, we created this wealth and we give it to you, right? So the
reality of that question of the philosophy of wealth is already
embedded in every Muslim who is exposed to the Quran and that's
where I want to turn it to Shakhtar. Could you talk to us
about
the ownership of wealth? And it's, it's a I guess, you could say
distribution of its ownership to human beings from the perspective
of Quran and Hadith? Yes, so, I mean, these are these are a
crucial points. Just before I do that, if I might to mention
A very important issue fader point that you just mentioned.
Pertaining to the frequency with which we concern ourselves with
matters, economic matters financial, right? It's well known
that
one of the
principles of Salut
is that
vicar of Allah azza wa jal,
which in general is associated with the tongue,
which is
this muscle that we move quite quickly. And that unless we're
careful, we move without necessarily putting something
virtually between it in between the heart mind, right?
Because it's associated with passions and desires that drive us
to speak that often, for the unrefined and the undisciplined,
overtake the better part of a person that would say, okay, maybe
we shouldn't say this, or maybe she'll say that differently, what
happened?
That the tone, and similarly, you know, our sexual desires and what
have you, right, because also associated with very strong and
base, profound desire, that's part of our operation that has control
over these two things. Right? That the messenger SallAllahu sallam
said, is associated with
success. He grabbed his tongue is blessed in terms of Allah who
said, Look, whoever safeguards for me, this and what is between his
legs, I give them a guarantee of the of the gentleman I've said, in
the shelter of a hadith, it's because of the passions associated
with Yes, tongues, okay, both of you put comes out of it, and also
what you eat that comes within. And so it's because it's
associated with passion. Are there things that people are more
passionate about, perhaps after the natural attraction between the
male and female, then their stuff in their possession?
And Allah azza wa jal, and a set of meanings associated with the
statements, that, you know, we could spend the rest of this talk,
and we could write an entire tome about a Lobos in the very heart of
the spiritual and psychological attachment, that people have to
stuff being very clear that if you aspire to be close to Allah
lentinan Vera tunes according to hippo, Allah make lays it straight
out, you will never achieve their righteousness, piety into you
spend of that which you love. So the love and attachment that human
beings have to stuff is a part of being human.
Right? So Prophet salallahu Salam says,
that is the nature of anatomy. So now currently, in if Adam, the son
of Adam had to wear these two valleys full of gold,
he would want a third SubhanAllah. So this craving this desire for
more stuff, it's something that's very deeply inscribed in what it
means to be human. Right?
Trying to create a society consisting of a billion solutions
isn't or a billion people, which is completely absolutely free of
any attachment to stuff.
Never gonna happen might not be practical. Yeah. Right. But
institutionalizing practices that make it very clear in every single
thing that you do. We're not talking about on the greatest
level in envisioning an automatic enterprise in which we have to
answer questions as to whether or not the online there's a limit in
their life and can they borrow? Can I not borrow? I'm talking
about how do you feed your family?
You're a peddler. You sell things. You have to decide you have a
corner store. You're from Yemen, you're from whatever. Do I have
more fortified liquids in my corner store? Do I have
* magazines in my corner store?
Why? Why don't I
write the stuff I get for it from the people is cash. They pay cash
for vegetables, they pay cash for this cash is cash. It doesn't
matter.
Right? And if I allow my nerves to get the upper hand on me, I can
find someone who tells me that's okay. Or I can find and I can
twist this array or this pole or lock to a habit tells me this this
is okay. Right. When we know that the auto MA in general have agreed
that it's a principle filled that anything the consumption of which
or the use of utility of which is impermissible.
The price resulting from the sale of that thing is also
impermissible. That's a fide and Phil.
I have the right. I can't eat it. I can't drink it. I can't make
money from selling it. So far either they find those exceptions
but that's, that's that's the reality. So yeah, I mean, you,
gentlemen as is normally the case you put your finger on the very
heart of the matter.
The
Dalai Lama have made it clear. Then when it comes to stuff, gold,
silver
cattle,
mounts
material that says Allah azza wa jal isn't mad at the owner. Right?
He's in Marathi. He's the one who gives
that the real core of the relationship that we have with
stuff is caught up inside the recurring theme of Amana. And
that's what I mentioned over and over again. And that's a recurring
theme. Right? So more about it's less about the fact that, you
know, I was able to get to the forest first and put down what so
it's mine, it's not yours. Let us be very clear, the Chilean takes
milk ownership on level one beings very seriously, very seriously.
The Prophet sallallahu Sallam he said, When and the one on rely
associated with is coupled with Aveda.
And, and, and one love. He said, he asked the people what day is
this? And they tell him that, you know, it's the is the is the 10th
the ledger, your workplace is this, you know, it's outside has
met things I want to have, because he wants to reinforce it. This is
very important to the people, you know, even people prior to the the
Battle of the prophets of Allah wa salaam, the Arabs of the time,
this day, this time is held in high regard by the Arabs across
the peninsula. Right. Right. So then he lets the people know. So
indeed,
he's going to speak about some things that are more sacrosanct
than this Day of yours in this place of yours. And among the
things he mentions, are not only a blood of people, but also the
Muharram the things that are in violent lines that you cannot
cross. And those include the stuff that people have, not because this
stuff is so important. It's not because this stuff is so
important. Right? It's because if there's no respect for property
rights amongst human beings,
and we have chaos, yeah, it doesn't function. Nothing works.
Right. That's why a person whoever's killed
in the afternoon, it mean Dona Maliki, right? He's killed in
protection of his stuff is, has shahada Yeah. So so we have to
separate two things, as you mentioned, right. The fact that
the the overweening attachment that human beings have to things
is unjustified, because the dunya and all that's in it.
It's almost as though it has no weight compared to the things that
people prepared to give up for.
That is cheap, cheap, cheap nearness to Allah achieving a good
outcome from a i in the law, right. But the property rights
that people have, the Foucault has been very clear. You should not
feel comfortable leaving the dunya not safeguarding, property rights
money that you owe to someone having not given someone who
should have received an inheritance share, sister or
someone and and taking it over, having been fraudulent with this
business partner. And you know, no one should feel comfortable
leaving the dunya in that way, right? Because it's not the stuff.
It's the fact that a loss or John has said that this is a line that
you don't cross between us. And by being Cavalier and crossing it.
It's not the worst of the stuff itself, is what it means that you
actually feel towards the one who put the line and said some phone
call here. Yeah, it's disrespect. Which is very similar to saying
LAN Lionell Hola. Hola. Hola. Hola. de Malaga. What Aki
unallowed takamaka when we slaughter. Exactly, exactly,
exactly. You know, I'm gonna have a lot that was asked when he's
sitting among with other seniors to keep out of Harbor. And he was
asking, you know, what is tequila
is asking for them to do. These are people so hungover the premier
among Sahaba what is Taqwa? And one of the Sahaba mentioned, you
know, he said, you know, well, if you are going through a patch of
thorns, how would you proceed? And then the other he said, You know,
I would take my clothing and I would hold it close to me, so I
didn't get caught up. What have you Vatika taco that's not hung
on. How cool is that?
moving through space and time, in such a way that there's a concern
that what you do, what you don't do
is not going to push you back from a lot or is likely to cause you to
move forward. And that applies to every aspect of human existence,
including this aspect that we want to wall off and call economic,
economic or financial. So Amana so every person is an amine, with
regard to the things that are his, it's less a matter of his
controlling and being an absolute controller. Right and aggregating
to himself godhood Subhan Allah here on my iPhone, but it's a fact
that Allah azza wa jal has given him in Marathi something and visa
vie that he has an Amana and the Amana has to be discharged by
every single Amana, right, like every single all the Amanat.
Right. Right.
That that we that we give a man not back to early how to the
people tune there do that's basic, that's one of the basic principles
of Dean. So that
is, is what governs the way we respond to things. Then we use the
stuff that's given us in order to take care of the needs of people.
Right in the dunya. Right, a person who
who goes to sleep and his neighbor is hungry. That person hasn't
achieved the fullness of ima. Right. And the forms of Eman here
is the Prophetic phraseology that the automat se refers to it mamil
Eman is the phraseology is
that he does. Right. But go on about explaining that means, you
know, he hasn't achieved any amount that can be described as
not being associated with some knocks on some sort of defect.
Right. So that statement from the messengers to Laura sort of ties
what you were talking about before and what the other study that
we're talking about
email and being concerned about whether or not your neighbor's
hungry, the messenger slaughter was linked him in a way that no
one can ever separate them, that your middle
whatever goes on his stomach is full. And his neighbor is hungry.
That makes it super clear. Right? When Allah azza wa jal is
describing those of whom is pleased, right? will feel unworthy
him.
Right? It's not the people who he doesn't mention people who've
who've, who've seen lights of these colors or that colors or
who've achieved, you know, stage 10,749 on the mystical ride, what
happens?
All those realities and hockomock what have you, they are what they
are. Right? But because it's not only in this subsection of
civilization, it's a reoccurring theme among human beings, and they
like to talk about ethical and religious achievement. But when it
gets down to the ground, I'd like to separate that, from economic
justice. Allah azza wa jal reinforces that is no way to
actually achieve one without being concerned about the other.
So mine, actually, before you make that point, I just want to make a
quick point about what we had just said about the interdisciplinary
nature of everything in Islam, is that one thing that you had
mentioned is that the desire for stuff and the love of money is so
deep within the human being in the soul of the human being, which
really tells tells us that it's not just a bunch of laws and the
force of human beings that will rectify it and make human beings
act well. But it's something far deeper than that, which is a
conviction. And you can say, a spirituality, which is where, in
fact, religious, spiritual teaching is even equally or more
appropriate than laws in this respect, civil society laws or
what have you. You need both sides. And we all know that, for
example, this person could know all the laws. Well, if they have
no discipline, and no sense of desire to obey them, you can
equally find loopholes around them much easier than there were to
make the laws in the first place. And in the reverse, since it's
closest to these scenario that many of us live in, right, in
which we are aware of some of the religious teachings and the
ethical teachings. But because of the colonial and postcolonial
reality, the practices and institutions judge, contract law,
what type of transactions are permissible or not permissible and
need to be pressed?
They need to be adopted, they need to be modeled. We need to favor
them prefer them, we need to develop
positive reinforcement for people who adhere to them. Maybe there's
our negative reinforcement. Something which is not a very nice
idea and very well accepted in all areas of our community. But yes,
negative reinforcement for people who violate them. Right? We
shouldn't be at ease with awkwardly. Yeah, we should not be
at ease with fraudulence, those type of people shouldn't be
favored for the people to whom we marry our daughters.
Right. They shouldn't be the people to whom we point and the
shadow Bill banane. And say, Oh, how wonderful that person, you
know, he graduated from such a place. And then he's working at
Morgan Stanley, and he's been with him for 15 years. And now he's a
vice president, what have you know, this is one of the leaders
or our community, these things have consequences.
They have, they have consequences for people, right? We read the
ayat and sort of tobacco, which are in condemnation of the people
of the book, but as Allah Maha associate, have told us, the ayat,
blaming the People of the Book, and those who have gone before us,
their primary, the primary ID associated with the double of
them, is that we not follow
that marking them. Right, because they've gone they've gone past
sorry, go ahead. So if people we live amongst people, who had in
their book even remain, teaching about usury, in the river, we
should be fair,
as detailed is is in some ways, is what we have
in the reticle teaching, and the Commando, canonical law and the
church, and what happened clear about these things, but they found
ways to convince themselves and others and say and no longer
matters, what have you, it can be done.
It's crucial, that we not follow them on that crucial because once
you take certain steps, laws, Israel can bring you back but the
son of Allah azza wa jal has said it's very difficult to get back.
And I came upon this
discussion in which someone said, Why is there so much fic in you
know, certain times and certain societies and there's, you know,
so much law in certain societies, and less law and other societies,
and so much fit amongst the latter generations and much less in the
early Islamic generations. And they said that, in fact, law and
piety, the amount of law books and piety, it's an inverse proportion,
because when you have a lot of piety, you don't need a lot of
law, because not a lot of stuff comes up. But when you don't have
a lot of piety, you have a lot of people doing a lot of things, and
a speech, a reminder about afterlife will not move them. So
you need to make a law. Right? This is a good point. It is also
true that, you know, there are other factors involved as well, on
the actual circumstances in which you exist, right? I mean, we it's
been mentioned, right? The early Christian community
had challenges associated with being a despised minority,
set upon by the prevailing political power of the time, the
Jewish community has had a reoccurring theme of being, you
know, a despised minority and having times during which they do
not control a political state and don't have what would be called
self determination in political science or other places, Muslim
the this ummah was responsible for a vast and increasingly
sophisticated polity right and an economy and a political entity
from the very beginning, right. So, when you expand and you expand
into northern Africa or you expand into the cradle of human
civilization, and Mesopotamia, what happened and people have
highly sophisticated financial practices,
questions will arise, arise naturally, is this permissible? Is
that permissible? What are the conditions what happened? And so,
the fifth and the process of law Hassan
was a involved with each other himself. So the Muslims had no
confusion about the fact that you can be a pious person and be
involved in digital right? And they Shira, in other cognates of
those words, appear hundreds of times in the book of Allah.
So then the people because one of the primary themes of the Quran is
of course,
is by Yann
you must understand the Quraysh are traders. Yeah. restaurateur
schita was safe. That's what they know. So using mercantile
language, buying and selling cool loan to a lot of beautiful loan.
These are terms that the people they lived
They knew, right? They should all
live, what have you. So that's why it's crucial. And we live in a
society also in a time in which even the least of us economically
is involved in,
you know, 10s, maybe hundreds of transactions every single day, the
original transaction will happen. It's not possible for us not to be
concerned about knowing what is the outcome of a law with regard
to these things. It's not possible. I'm sorry, I'm speaking
in the realm of excellent questions. No, no problem does,
what would you got? Not? So I was gonna mean that that was a great
overview by shake behind you, Dr. Shadi, on the importance of, you
know, marrying the spiritual and the the economic plans, right. But
the question that I have is, what's the purpose of
distribution? Right? Like, what's the purpose of distribution?
Number one? And how do you do the the fairly distribute the wealth,
according to the Islamic Sharia? Because it seems to me that in
every single society in human history, you've had inequality,
right. And the socialists and the Marxist fiction is that somehow we
can, we can have zero inequality, we can rip apart all types of
hierarchies and structures and make everybody flat and make
everybody equal. But but the fact of the matter is that this, this,
at least from my perspective, doesn't seem at all practical.
Right? So what's the purpose of the of distributing wealth in
Islam? Is it to eradicate all of these hierarchies that we have? Is
it to just is it to acknowledge that there are hierarchies right,
but to make the situation much better for people despite those
obstacles in their, in their path? Like what what is actually the
purpose? Okay, I'm going to I'm going to start off with that, but
mine. So my question is actually not really another question. It's
actually this. It's a similar question to nozzles. But as you
answer his question, I really want to understand because you, you did
talk about property ownership, right? And wealth and Allah
subhanaw taala, creating wealth and giving property ownership. So
on top of sort of Knauss question is, the question is, how do we
understand property ownership in Islam? Right? Is it like an
absolute Property Ownership The way you know, capitalists think
about it, it's like, okay, I purchased this car, this car is
absolutely mine. I can I can take a hammer to it, destroy it, do
whatever I want. You know, if I if I buy a Tesla Roadster, tomorrow,
I put it on my driveway, and then I take a hammer to it. Nobody has
any right to tell me, you know that, you know, I can't do that.
Maybe, you know, maybe a car enthusiast won't like that. But
it's my car, I could do whatever I want. How does Islam understand
property ownership on top of this, you know, system, the Marxist
story and the system the question that knows that as well. So that's
where I wanted to go. Oh, good point. And the one area that came
to my mind when Shiferaw talks about a man being the theme word,
a man of means a trust your interest, so something is not
yours, but you are entrusted with it. And in this area, Allah says
Allah will administrate on the regime. To whom? Mad Allah, Allah,
the Atacama, give them. This is just it's literally like 123456
words, but it has so many themes in it. Number one, Kitab, Allah
Subhan Allah. Number one is that it says Melilla, it's Allah's
wealth. He owns it, however, he gave it to you, and let the attack
come. Alright, so we unlike capitalism, and unlike socialism,
socialism, almost wants to take away a lot of elements besides
consumer goods, of human ownership of wealth. Capitalism observes an
absolute ownership. Whereas Islam, the truth, it finds itself
actually written in the middle where you're not the owner, but
you're allowed to utilize it and exploit it. But how you have to
remember that the rights of well, the true heirs of wealth are not
just the producers of the wealth, but also those whom Allah has
commanded you from and we can glean that from the word what, to
whom he's telling you
give them right. And so the two themes here is that it's Amana,
that Allah is giving us ownership, we're allowed to have ownership.
It's not ours, but we're allowed to have ownership. And because
it's not ours, it makes sense in my mind, that I can be told what
to do with it by the real owner. And it's fair. So the second point
being that
who has the right to wealth, and both socialism and capitalism,
they're both actually in the same set here is that they they are
only talk about the producers of wealth. Okay, so, Cap capitalism
is
as capital, it's labor, it's land. And it's the entrepreneurs in
socialism, it's the labor, and the other three are the collective.
But Islam comes and says, no, no, no, there's a second category of a
rightful owner of wealth, which is, namely that the rightful owner
of wealth is the producer, and those who have been assigned the
obligation to receive that wealth, which is the recipients of Zika
NEFA. And we can I want to get to that point later, but I just
wanted to highlight it, highlight it now, because we are going to
come upon it later. It's a very important concept that socialism
and capitalism only limit the rightful owners to producers of
wealth. Whereas in Islam, it's producers of wealth and whom the
real owner of wealth, Allah has told you to give money to Nef,
aka, which is paying for your family,
mute off inheritance Zeca Confira, all that all shift, which is crops
from the farm dry goods from the farms. So we're going to cover
that later. Now the next section we want to get to is what NAS
opened up. So now as I want you to repeat your question, then I'm
going to give a short two second blurb and then shift I will take
the commentary from there. So the just to repeat the question,
again, the question was, what's the purpose of the distribution of
wealth in Islam, right? In an American society and other
societies, whenever we talk about distributing wealth, right, or
distributive justice, let's say it's always collecting taxes to
give back to the public or do do some of these things right? From
the Marxist view and from the socialists or democratic
socialists, what they want to do is they want to completely
eradicate hierarchies, right, the radical Marxist, right, because
hierarchies by themselves are in just inherently and why what they
want to do with distributing is to completely eradicate these
hierarchies. Right. So the question is, what is the son want
to do you know it? Does Islam want to eradicate every single
hierarchy? You know, is that the purpose of it? Is it bad being
rich, basically. Okay, so we can say that your question truly is
What is Islam economic objectives? Right, right, right. And I'm going
to say that there are three and then shift, talk and comment and
add or subject and give us as his view on it. The first one is a
practical economic system that's natural and can be implemented. So
this is very important because it needs to be something natural and
practical. Alright. Second one. Eradicating wealth concentration,
que les Hakuna, do let them be in an Avenir iminco. So that the
wealth is not just only going cycling through amongst the rich
and never reaching anyone else so that it Radek if you think about
inheritance law that breaks up huge rich
individuals estates, it breaks up and it produces maybe four or five
middle class people. Okay.
And then number three, enabling everyone to get what is their
Huck.
Okay, so, in terms of the practical economic system, one
that does not require too much use of force, one that allows for
human aptitude and ambition that's really important. It allows for
that. It allows for ownership allows for employer employee
relationships, it recognizes that there'll be rich and poor, but it
narrows their gap. Okay, as much as possible. And it will disallow
the Will It will disallow a sucking up of wealth into one
sector of the society. So those are the three objectives of
Islamic economics and shift if you want to give your commentary on
those.
Yeah, I mean, this is is that's a
nice categorization. There, of course, have been many others.
thinkers such as Nigella Siddiqui and Omar childfree, and others,
trained economists, who also have
read and benefited from the automa and study some themselves as well
took on some of these philosophical issues in the last
century, that are, as you intimated, associated with trying
to understand where Muslim peoples
should find themselves between the struggle between socialism and
between capitalism. And to a certain extent some of the
literature and some of the answers that arose from that period
are highly affected.
By the dichotomies ation which is embedded in the discussion.
So you find answers such as neither neither capitalism nor
Marxism, but it's not just an acceptable response. There's
somebody responded and said, well, the dean is more of course than an
economic system.
And the principles of the Dean allow for perhaps multiple
systems, and yet also said
because of the association between socialism between Marxist thought
and more generally
that and because the West one, and people are inclined towards the
winner, instead, okay, so we reject the socialism,
reject communism, certainly. And Marxism. But we're sort of
modified we're consistent or, or find consistent sort of modified
capitalism.
There's all approaches that can kind of have a greater discussion
in In and of ourselves.
As as, as I've alluded to, both of the
philosophies and we're treating them as philosophies. Right,
because there are other things, their economic systems there, but
as we intimated, as we indicated, they're associated with certain
understandings of the world. There are aspects that are inconsistent
with both and shakes out he has referred to them
the short answer to your question will be light or fake is that the
purpose is in the goals associated with the treatment of wealth of
math
per the Sharia or the goals and the purposes of the Sharia itself,
right. So the MacArthur assembly are known right?
The five and they include of course, right safeguarding the
safeguarding life
safeguarding progeny, human offspring, right.
AKA safeguarding, you know, often unmatched sanity and and thought
and some people such as Ben fall hit
prominent on him from the last century North African Island and
also include abled as well, but the classical one I had. Now, you
notice a one of those one of the five purposes that many of the one
of my agree that the Shelia itself is characterized by the
maintaining it safeguarding while safeguarding wealth itself is one
of the
purposes of the Sharia, which you we could discuss at length, but
you notice that it includes of course, safeguarding theme,
safeguarding,
progeny, humankind, right. So this generation is not the last
generation, right. So there can be, children can be can be
produced, and they can live and they can go on and they can do it
again, what happens?
So we can basically say is that the needs of human beings then
Masada.
It's known, those can't be met. Without economics. We have no
understanding, no evidence that any human civilization, any
society has ever successfully met its needs without dealing with the
issue of wealth, creating it, maintaining it,
spending it so on and so forth. So that's crucial to human existence.
Amana the fact that it's given to us by a law and we're we're
required to give it to people who need it in the law. Yeah, modicum
unto Amana, at law orders you that you render, things that are given
to you for safekeeping to they're just recipients. So that's one of
the purposes of wealth, as well isn't Amana and they should be
given to people who are the people who need it. The people who are
the will, how much people will have needs.
So for matters of Dora
for life, for health, for well being shelter, what have you,
okay, if those things are not being met in a society, and people
have wealth,
then according to the Panama, it is a hug that the people who don't
have it have in the account Vemma as well, of those who do have it,
meaning and what do we mean by a hawk? We mean that on the day when
volume
is full of Matt, meaning with no failure when going past the
boundaries, right when when failing to uphold other people's
rights, or transgressing ID when that villain manifests itself its
darkness on people.
I
either day when rights rights are upheld will be upheld. So the
point of the Prophet sallallahu sallam said all rights will be
safeguarded dead to the point that, you know the animal who
nudged another animal with its horn, that will be even out on the
Day of Judgment, before they will enter into the agenda. So that's
one of the characteristics of the day. On that day. Those people
could find themselves in a difficult situation. So you have
an Amana but then there's Wilaya people responsible for other
people, human people, human being cannot humans cannot live without
parents who are responsible for safeguarding
children. And that's a view of what people may cynically look at
us power hierarchies. But you have now put it in another way of
caretaking. Yeah. Not anarchist. Right. So since it's popular to
talk about, you know, we have college and then we maybe some of
us become philosophers or get doctors what have you, and talk
about it in a more structured way. And we talk about different isms.
So a Muslim can be an anarchist, right. But the dean is not
consistent with anarchy. Destroying hierarchies, is not
only not a goal that's consistent with the book, the guidance away
from the book and the Sunnah. But surely, it requires requires
the recognition of in the respect for certain
hierarchies, right, because as every functioning human
civilization knows, it's impossible to do the things that
have to be done, or that need to be done. If there are no power
discrepancies, and that power of an army, no one has ever heard of
an army that successfully defended what needs to be defended. When
everyone is a general, a sergeant, and a private or the equivalent,
we have no historical record of anyone ever doing that. We have no
historical record, to be honest, of the most basic unit in
humanity, the family unit,
functioning on a suit on a society and civilization, in which there
are power discrepancies.
Whether those are what are now called patriarchal as is as a so
for the super majority of most human societies, right, and it's
now under under attack. But certainly every single sign I'm
aware of, and we always have our anthropologist so what I
specialize in trying to find the exceptions, but every single sign
I'm aware of, has a built in
acceptance of and maintenance of a power discrepancy between young
human beings who don't have many years yet, and they older human
beings. And we deal with that hierarchy without being confused
about the fact that because we recognize a functional difference,
and power discrepancy, we don't we aren't confused about whether or
not being an adult means that you're fundamentally better than
being a young human.
But when it comes to some of these other discrepancies that we
referred to patriarchal or otherwise, we allow ourselves to
be drawn into the confusion as to whether or not recognizing the
existence of the hierarchy, or dissonance of a power discrepancy,
which has a functional muscle or financial benefits often means
that we're confused about whether or not being male or female means
you want is fun is fundamental, because of that characteristic,
closer to Allah or more lover to Allah, which is all that it means
for Muslims to be better or not. But that takes us somewhat to
somewhat to the side. Similarly your question, write among the
Sahaba there were people who had more money and people who had less
money, we have no indication of book of Allah, and no indication
of the Sunnah of the Prophet salallahu Salam that he ever told
the Muslim moon in order for you to achieve the
safeguarding of the rights each of you have the other you're gonna
take all the wealth that you all have put it all into a pot and
distributed amongst yourselves so there is no deal Hama dinar
difference amongst you, rather than on a sofa, where people who
were facing serious economic challenges, which is why they had
to live where they live inside of the happy. Some of them, of
course, later, had more money than they could spending their entire
life because of the photo hot, which is of course the way that
life exists. And their hearts didn't change which is of course
what we
aspire to right. Amen. Amen. Amen. 100 Buck
was asked about so what he says is not being poor, or not having
things right, though it is this is the paraphrase is a state that
Allah gives one. Were being increased in the amount of stuff
you have, or being decreased in it doesn't affect your heart state at
all. That's all that's what Zod is Subhanallah some of the Sahaba why
the prophets Allah cinnamon he was
Uh, when he was digging along with them the hunt duck during 100,
right? He said in one of the sparks, he saw the riches of the
of the palace of hospital. That's the chief executive of one of the
two superpowers of the time, the subsonic Persians. And at the
time, some people had stones tied in their stomachs in order to sort
of deflect the effect of being hungry and people were dressed in
rags or what have you. It's only because they knew that the
prophets Solana samosa saw the climax look, but when he spoke
truthfully, in whose truthfulness was attested to
that they can say, Oh, we're in this situation now, but a time
will come in the future, when you will have more wealth than you can
imagine. What happy
the fact that some people are taller than other people, more
handsome than other people, right, have more money and other people
as Allah has made clear our ways of testing both a person who's
apparently favored
and the person who isn't both of them are tested.
Creating a society in which there are no discrepancies is not one of
the purposes of the Shelia
Okay, however, as you know,
sexuality, there is great, great harm associated with some forms of
fuckery. The prophets Allah Salam is reported to have preferred he
was given the choice of preferred
to have what we would see and we will say that the message is a
little son was in a state of serious economic challenge.
Right. However, he made dua,
not to be placed in a certain type of poverty because there's some
types of poverty that characterizes many parts of Soto
global self, whatever you were the lack of basic necessities
exigencies like food, and water, and shelter. And health is so
great, that the ability as a human being who's a hole inside of this
creation of ours, our body, the ability to have any part of your
mentality, to even be able to think about, Dean,
not the hybrid, just this becomes challenging. And that type of
poverty
is a fitna. And it's part of the principles of our dean, not to ask
for fifth, not to ask for tests in our dean, because then that
becomes a testing Dean. Right? Right, not whether or not I should
get a Tesla whether or not I should go for something lower
school, right? But am I going to be able to put food in the mouths
of the woman who lives with me and I'm responsible for taking it by
contract? Right, and the children are my children when they die,
because they haven't had a certain amount of nutrients what happened?
That's a test
and the fraying and deflecting, though that type of fuckup that
type of poverty is one of the purpose is associated with well,
Maureen
so it's a balance in between, in between the two, not trying to
destroy and redistribute completely and totally, but to try
to deal with some of the harm associated with cancer and
Michaela to call the doula to combine and Evernia iminco. So as
the as
a district official imagine, so that wealth only circulated among
the wealthy amongst people also has been clear, so that avoiding
that
is one of the purposes of the shutdown. Okay. Also, when the
audit when the autumn are mentioning, I think I mentioned
earlier when they're mentioning one of the Hichem one of the
wisdoms associated with the impermissibility of using gold or
silver silver, as
as dinnerware, it's things that you eat with a drink with which
the Emperor essentially up. One of the heads of the mentioned, the
book I mentioned, that Imam mentioned over and over again, is
so that it's not hurtful to the hearts of the poor Subhanallah
which is to say there's a very important dynamic, very important
dynamic that exists in the society.
When the gap between the wealthy and the poor becomes increased,
and there is prominent and, and conspicuous ostentatious display
of wealth.
There is a psychological harm associated with that, which is non
trivial.
If it's not checked, it results in the Bolshevik Revolution or in the
French Revolution, people's heads being cut off and people running
and women and children not being safe behind the doors of their
houses. The basic
I'm a man of society become suspect because eventually boils
over to something else. That's the way human beings are happy, okay?
And hurting the heart of a believer in the Muslim society
is an enormity potential.
Right? So even when you
have wealth how you deal with wealth is something for which
there are minerals, Sona and GM associated with it. Right? The
prototype of a person who was given wealth, who makes an
ostentatious display of it
being a fitna for the people around him, either the people who
are poor, and they're hurt by it, or the people who are fools around
them and say, Oh, we wish we were like him in school.
Or in the Bible, right? What happened to him? He didn't just
die. And you know, he went to whatever it is that waits for the
law to the moon and after life. Right? Allah opened the earth, in
the sight of other people in Bani Israel, and swallowed him in his
household, and the people who are too close to him
in this moment, a lot of them associated with that. So it's
something that we'll be talking about now, you know, 1000s of
years later. This is what happens to people. Not only he make
ostentatious display of well, this is all of us we live in a
capitalist society or consumer is hyper capitalist, hyper
materialist society, like you want to live with it. Not only did he
make it onstage to display, but what did he say? When he got the
wealth? He said, In NAMA, I'm only given this because of my own self
knowledge. Because because of some knowledge, some skill I have, I
really deserve this. Yeah. Not Allah gave this to you. He could
have given it to someone else when he gave you some tests for you.
It's a test for the people who are looking at it and wish they were
you. And when Allah azza wa jal Subhan, on the book of Allah azza
wa jal, swannell, may Allah have mercy on us to give us insight to
take it, as it should be taken in due to double of what it will
Allah say about it afterwards, after the people after he had been
swallowed in earth? What have you, the same people the day before,
who were saying, Oh, we wish we were like, Cara, we wish he had he
had, you know, he's balling out of you know, he's doing everything.
He's the man, he has this, he has whatever, they were saying, Oh,
thank God, we were so close to them. We were saying, Well, this
is the way human beings are.
This is the way human beings are. So when it comes to this matter of
money, and wealth, what have you, if we're going to be serious, with
regard to or not, I'm talking to even the basic loyalty towards
Allah and His messenger in the book of Allah, we have to stop
playing games with a guard to his mirror and just saying, you know,
I'm just trying to make it for myself and make it for my family
good enough in order to be able to marry a, you know, a good sister.
And if I have to do this, and I have to do that, and you know,
this brothers will be talking about Viva people talking about
Islamic banks, and what have you, and all that stuff is this, but
they're not being realistic. And we need to develop brother, we
need development, what have you said, etc.
that's driving the car off the cliff.
If you want to achieve the good for which the severe was
made incumbent upon human beings, on the individual, familial, and
societal level, you need to take with regard to matters economic
and financial seriously, because behind them and associated with
them, is the well being of the individual, the well being of the
family, and the well being of the society will be likely to fail.
I'm sorry for going on too long. No, no, no, no, no, that was
beautiful.
So actually, you did cover the question a little bit. But just to
get a little bit more specific.
I do want to ask about
when it comes to wealth distribution, right, the, the when
you mentioned wealth distribution to a person today, they
immediately think the state, right that I'm going to pay some version
of taxes or you know, I'm going to have a salary or a business or
whatever it is, and I'm going to take a lump sum of that money and
give it to some entity, more than likely the state. And the state
now has the power to now take that money and distributed. Now the
problem comes is when you make a power, right, such as the state,
right, you have the ability to take wealth and the node now
distributed, you you forfeit a number of other powers in order to
do so. Right. Whereas Islam, it it doesn't look at it the same way.
Right? If you don't really take your wealth and Islam, even if
it's your as a cop and hand it over to the state entity, which
now does the distribution, right. There's an entire system we have
around that. So what even the way that we as you know, as in the
Dean understand the distribution of wealth. It's a completely
different system than you know, you're you're granting this, you
know, external. I'm not I'm not sure that it's an entirely correct
city. Oh, God. You know, I understand the point that you're
making. And this is no this is redolent of some of the
discussions you see on Reddit and about libertarianism in the dean.
They are important
discussions in detail these types of late night call discussions
that we that we have
you know, a Lawson
with a god is a cat
is that it's paid to representatives of the state.
What you find later in the books, for example, the books of the
Shafi 700 You know, that I know best, right? Is if there's JOEL
Right if there's injustice on the part of the authority knowing that
authority is going to miss Mona Have you then the non Mr. Explicit
Okay, so it's better for you to give it to someone yourself, but
awesome. Is it there's a cut is is that the Imam sends out multiple
classes these are mentioned in the books of the class of individuals
associated with a collection of zakat people who who keep track of
wealth like typically in a grazing cattle what have been counted over
time, people will go and collect it, people will distribute it,
people who keep maintain the ledgers of it. So, this is a this
is an aspect, a significant aspect of the authority of government.
Okay.
And in the sheikh Shadi referred to this Heckman is great him
associated with that, because government can't do that, without
among other things, knowing who are the poor people in society. So
this argument, you often see that, you know, the deen is consistent
with a sort of pre modern abroad the libertarian state in which
there was a small government that had fairly low interaction with an
individual and wasn't as intrusive as the modern state. I generally
agree with it, but we should be
careful of overgeneralization generalizations, for sure, for
sure, oh, wait to maintain calm and and Sunan and the other of the
cat without monitoring, you know, this person actually is one of the
recipients, particularly since Allah azza wa jal has praised and
describe
into the Quran, those people who are poor, but they maintain
outwardly that they aren't that poor, so that even people who are
close to them don't know that means in Ahmedabad, ricotta was
consistent about this. You have to exert yourself.
I say find out who are the people who are actually are recipients of
zakat, because the Muslim was on some of the prophets, Allah, so
he's going to do, it's not a matter of lying. But he's, you
know, he's very unlikely he's going to reach out his hand and
ask people and beg for people in the street of a login. And what
will happen is in just in the drama that's associated with the
dean, you know, the prophets have the upper hand is better than the
lower hand, we'll have Muslim Sahaba took this seriously. And
they had to exert themselves to know oh, you know, actually, you
know, we haven't seen a fire lit and this person's house for 15
days, is eating hot food at all.
He goes to the marketplace, what have you, Senator, Senator, but
the person that he buys from what happens? He's, he's buying mash?
No, he's buying
barley and water. And that's, that's it? So what you have to
know that is there a difference, though, between, you know, this,
there is a difference, if I'm not mistaken, between the entity that
we describe the state in the Islamic world, right, versus the
entity that we described the state in sort of. That's why I said I'm
broadly agree with the sort of late night college discussion,
that libertarian inclinations towards describing the pre modern
state as being less inclusive, less intrusive into the life of
the individual are broadly consistent not only within Islamic
norms at the time, but also other pre modern civilizations. However,
the degree to which a group of people get together and agree
amongst themselves so the idea is similar to a constitution, like
the other existed among the prophets a lot of time in the old
Yatra many others and the unsought the constitution that
that Dr. Hamid a lot of squad is the first constitute arguably the
world's first constitution, the Constitution of Medina.
That whatever people agree amongst themselves,
that is the basis for their understanding and that like every
other thing that the Imam does, as for the Sharia, to several of the
several fields and the Imam are known to be massage and
every single thing that the Imam does it authority does, its
linchpin, the chief consideration is whether or not achieves or
doesn't achieve the interests of the people. So if you know we were
to put together the precursors for a nomadic polity, and we say, you
know, in order for us to do what we need to do, we need to have a
modern state in which a level of what will be considered from the
point of view of
of the 12th century intrusion in which there are taxes that are
collecting what have you and what is what have you that will be
permissible provided that it was associated with a widow enough's
right because it's prohibited for any Muslim isn't one of the themes
of the diamond mama that is prohibited for any Muslim to take
use infringe upon transgress the wealth of any other person without
being given up from three but knifes that means without it being
given in a contractual either even given outside of contract, as is
as charity, or been given as per
a willed contract indicating that they've been compensated for it or
there's some other bilateral contract. Otherwise, that is going
to be accounted for on the Day of Judgment, every instance of gospel
of misappropriation is accounted for
less than a law forgives one.
Not only includes every type of misappropriation, and every type
of spending of
any wealth is not yours, outside of it being freely given to you.
Or they've been some sort of contract by which you've
compensated the person for it or the light. Yeah. Okay. Now, I have
a question. So,
in our assessment here, that we said that wealth is the right of
the producers of wealth, which tends to be the one who invest the
capital, the one who does the work and the one who possesses assets
such as like, land or what have you. And also, there is a second
category of recipients of wealth and we said that is the recipient
of Zika. Or should which is the 10%, or some cases 20% of the dry
crops. Then you have your enough aka what you have to spend upon
your family meat off inheritance, Kufa, rots,
punished punishments, or purifications, which is a
cathedra, and sends and so the fitrah as well. So how we
distribute this now we've moved from the philosophy of wealth
ownership. We talked about that we talked about the objectives of
Islamic
economics, we discussed that quite a bit. And now I want to talk
about the actual methods. And I hadn't actually prepared to talk
about this, but now that it's been brought up, we know that this is,
who should be who they have a rightful, their rightful owners of
wealth. Now, my question is, and it's based on what we talked about
last week, or the last podcast about taxation. And it's in the
classical books that the government has not have the right
to take your money,
even if they claim to do something good with it. However, we do know
that in Islamic history, the Ottoman folk Aha, in the Ottoman
times, they did recognize the need for public services for other
things to tax the people. So and I don't know the details, I actually
haven't discussed the details with anyone or read much about the
nature of those fatawa. But since you know, that topic has come up,
can you talk a little bit about what leeway the Imam has, in
fulfilling this Islamic objective? What you have already mentioned is
that the Imams power should be used for the benefit of the
people. Yeah, so but at the same time, how do we balance that with
the sort of subjective nature of how much you taking from me? Why
are you taking it by force? Do you have the right to do that? Can you
talk to us a little bit about this issue of
taxation, and Sharia and by the Imam. Yes, and this is as as of
mine was alluding to, this is an important issue that's discussed
among football, there's some diversity of opinion. But as you
said, there are a number there's a lot disagreed about, and you start
at a good place, right? The starting point is that everything
single thing that a person owns,
is prohibited for any other person
to spend, take or otherwise do emphasize, to any disposition with
regard to that, without that person's will.
Yes.
And that means it includes that includes, um, the amount there's
nothing about being the mom or representative the, the means that
you get to engage in hospital and miss up misappropriation of
wealth, the man being the Khalifa, or the authority just for people
who who's gone the Imam, the government, the authority of the
government, for use of contemporary terms.
Now
if
The cut
or can be taken forcefully from people.
Because there's not a violation of that principle, because the FDA
has been very clear and this is indicated by the source, that at
the time that the conditions for payment of zakat are met. At that
moment, the cut becomes the hook the right of the most the happy
and of those who receives a cut that is just in the custody of the
people who haven't paid it yet. So a person is not paying zakat is
they're withholding the right of something that belongs to someone
else, the poor and indigent, who actually own it. And the phone
call, I'll clear about this. Okay.
So the question is, what about non zakat?
taxes in the light? Good. So the cat find non Zika Okay, all right.
And, you know, even though this in the Sierra and and in the CF, you
know, when the so called Florida wars took place, and people refuse
to play as a cut. And there was discussion among the football
among the Kubota. The, the Sahaba, you know, about our vocal about
having, you know, shouldn't go to war, it's very important not to
fight amongst the believers or what have you. And I'm about to
say, you know, if they refuse to give me
the
bright, the, the candle they use to connect from one part of the
body to another part of body on a goat, to give to the prophets,
Allah, God, I will ride and go to meet them in war.
Right and later, almost at, okay, it's reported that almost came to
that opinion. And he said, Okay, he understood better than me,
because if you allow people to institutionally
reject the cut. That's one of the shout out of the dean. Yeah,
you've cooperated in the transmission of something that's
not the dean to the next generation and told them it's
Dean, where's the profit and loss I'm gonna lead you left you with
the dean is this and includes payment of zakat as an obligation?
Not not something like that? Okay. So the question is, with regard to
taxes, there are a couple of things that are written in in
Arabic and English on this so we could get our bibliography and we
want it. But essentially, if a group as we mentioned before, this
what I was alluding to if they haven't heard between themselves,
remember it according to most of the foci, as indicated, and as
alluded to, inside the memo, my water these comments on here,
which has vibes, the philosopher in the basic structure of
government, as understood by Mr. Sunil Majumdar, from early on,
that is possible to put shrewd conditions on the Khilafah. And on
the anonymous on PA, we know that basically, he has to do, right.
But there's possible truth on them. So if the unhealthy will,
are representatives of the people come and say, we agree that these
people can go in consultation with the Imam. And they can decide when
expenditure is needed, for some purpose that we decide whether
it's good or not, whether it's necessity, whether it's hot, or
whether it's need something that's freshly when not at the same level
as exigency, or whether it's even something that's a superlative,
it's not one of those was something that, that decide you
want to go in this direction, and they decide.
And an order comes from the mom saying, you know, inconsistent
with my record, in my mind, the conditions you placed upon me as
part of the day,
right, affirmed by Hollywood, the notables that are represented from
inside and represent the people consistent with the agreement that
we have that says, when we come to an agreement, that there needs to
be additional monies that come forth,
and now reinforced by an order from the Imam.
The Muslims are bound by TA, right? Yeah, they're bound by
obedience to the AMA, do the Muslims have to consent to this?
The financial consent is in the form of the conditions placed on
the Imam potentially in the HUD, which is the formative document of
the of the society.
And certainly in the form of the representatives, perhaps the
people of no binding and dissolution, often the luck the
* they will act, who represent them,
who agree that this is needed.
Then, very importantly, this is a role function similar to the
Supreme Court in in contemporary system affirmed and agreed to by
the full kaha by the Obama. This is a role function and automatic
play. And this is not a mythological role for
fiction, stories about Israel didn't love the Sudan, right? One
of the famous stories about it is written right, is that at his
time,
they gathered the, the Sultan of the early MOOCs, Malik Mamluks.
gathered his nobles, what have you and they needed to go in order to
to meet the Mongols. Right? They're recovering. And it said,
you know,
we're an exigent situation, we need to raise the taxes on the
people. And I'm going to call the orlimar. Together, we're going to
put pressure on them. We're going to get them to sign off on this.
Yeah. So people signed off because you know, sometimes pressure
pressure is real, right? Right. Firstly takes many different
forms. And he said, um, and he called soltanto Lemma and he said,
You know, I need you to sign this thing. What have you said or said,
or he said, and he wrote a fatwa, he said, Not until you have gone
to your own family, into the earrings and necklaces on the ears
and the necks of your daughters and your womenfolk that are Gold
and Silver's, that are actually misappropriated. Funds that you've
done, you've gathered all of that together, melted down the gallon,
have you event shown that there's still a need in order to make this
session? What have you until that point is impermissible for you to
take any people?
So yeah, this is not remember this is like, you know, a person about
whom some of the football said that there's no h ma there that
can be
recognized in the OMA without so the novena salon being on the side
of the HMO?
The I mean, the the market position is that he wasn't on
which side with a lot of questions, have you had a question
as to whether or not he had reached that level? He had, by the
time that he's this is a senior honor, it's called sometime in
part because of these brave stances in the face of
powerful what will be called secular, you know, political,
political artists. So, it is true to say that
there is a narrow lane and it is a narrow, narrow lane. For narrow
how wide it is, is a factor of one, the formative document and
represents the agreement between the people in between and notables
and the leadership of
the Constitution, the shorter in which the people, the notables and
representatives of the people participate, as part of the
conditions of this hut, that allow for gathering of funds beyond of
this. And third, whether or not the full kaha in the form either
of the Adil Kadar, or the leading football have the time in the form
of fatawa, or preferably and this is what the Ottomans are referring
to at least mechanically, the SR, SR movies of the society acting as
consultants in the court,
as a court advisors to the body and then we'll call the releasing
a judiciary statement indicating that, yes, this this, this can be
done. And you can see that's very similar to action, what's done in
a multi branch,
contemporary government, there's an incident in the Sierra in which
at the Battle of conduct, there was a big tribe in the province of
southern thought they have really no interest against Islam and the
Battle of the conduct is the Battle of the Trench in which so
many mom pagan tribes came to destroy Mecca, Medina, one of them
was the biggest one of the biggest tribes, their Prophet SAW, they
have no real religious interest, theological interest in this.
They're just here with Abu Sophia and probably to get some gain. And
he said to the two sides, who are the leaders of the ocean, the
Huzzah, Raj, what do you say that we will give them a third of our
crop of our produce for them to just go home? Right, pack up and
go home? Now, many of the automat say that there's a great
limitation on this because you can't you don't you? They said no.
So there's limitation on how you can use this incident as a
religious as a legal evidence. Right. But
outside of war, they said, you know, it's not illegal evidence in
war, because if that was a precedent, then we'd always be
just paying people instead of fighting. So the outside of war,
could that be used as an evidence or have you seen any of the folks
using
this as an evidence that in dire need, the Emir's can speak on
behalf of their people because in this case, the prophet is talking
to sad the two sides about all their people there tribes, which
is the 1/3 produce is going to come from everybody if Medina not
just them to know at no I haven't seen it as such
as evidence in and
that context, but remember, the
the the scope of activity of the, of the Imam of the soul time is is
is potentially wide it can be limited based upon the shadows
that are introduced as part of the day. And or as part of the ad as
part of the covenant or a constitution that forms the
political structure of society, when it comes into it comes into
existence or is updated or reformed, subsequently.
And with a phone call acting as a sort of
elements that can sort of check as, as pulled off
to the sub roof of the solta. Particularly, right, these are so
times in particular, right, because they have even less scope
in some ways formally than the amount then.
All right.
But most
taxes or taxation or imposition of tariffs, or the like, were treated
famously inside of the books of the film, as Max as just lost.
It's just pure misappropriation, as a whole, can ask from the
people. Can I ask a quick question? What is the Sutra of you
have to settle with me is a disposition some act? So, whether
it be buying, selling spending, loaning, what have any type of
reaching of one's hand over into the wealth of someone else? doing
anything with it? Right. So any dispositive act. So the idea that
we mentioned that the
chef that Shafi colleagues consider to be the central
authority that governs the scope of activity of the Imams, so time
is the guide, I gave one love of it as slightly different,
which basically is that sub refer to the Imam, that this dispositive
acts of the Imam of the Sultan have the political authority, that
the basis for it, and the limit of it is that it'd be associated with
achieving the Mossad, the the interests of the area, he or she
leads, anything that he does is not associated with that.
It's baseless, anything that he does associated with that is
potentially permissible subject to any other should route or
structures or ad that may have agreed among themselves that
further circumscribe the activity of the amount. Aloha. Okay, now as
you have some time, yeah. So, you know, I've been listening for the
past couple minutes. And it's clear that obviously, there are
various structural things that we could do to, I guess, equalize the
distribution of wealth, right, and make it fairer, and Islam gives us
certain guidelines to do that. I mean, that's, that seems great.
But what I want to challenge is, I just want to say that, at least
for me, I don't think the primary level of analysis of how we look
at the world is through the structural sense, but rather, it's
probably the psychological individual, right. And the reason
I point that out is because the same economic policies that you
implement in the United States has a different effect, let's say in
Japan, right? Or in Sweden. I mean, people compare, for example,
they say, why can't we have democratic socialism? And, you
know, they have that in Sweden, they have that, in these other
various countries, look how those countries are doing, they're doing
great.
Or let's look at Japan, right?
People don't cheat as much, you know, people are very helpful.
They,
their cities are incredibly clean, why can't we implement those
policies? But the the main reason isn't necessarily the policies
themselves. It's the culture. Right? Like, it's the it's the
it's what people believe about wealth. It's what people believe
about
the responsibilities that they have. So in the United States, for
example, the rich person, Jeff Bezos, right, he has the same type
of psych psychology that the poorest individual in society has,
which is that
it's a doggy dog world, right? That's the expression.
It and it's, it's a free for all, you know, and if I have a chance
to get some money, and it's legal, meaning I don't run into the cops,
then I'm good. Doesn't matter how you actually do that. So in our
society, we celebrate people that have wealth, regardless of how
they actually got it. Right. So Hugh Hefner, incredibly, you know,
huge *, and he's very successful apparently, and people
love that and so on and so forth. Right.
So, I think the the
While there are structural things, right, the primary thing that
determines if those structural things will actually have effect
in society, and benefit people is the psychological thing. Right?
Like, if it will, if people will have the psychological thing I
just want to end with. And I want you guys, I want to show you can
you know more in your opinion on this, there was a fascinating
study that I heard about, and
it uses. So what those sociologists were trying to do was
trying to predict the criminal activity, right in a certain
locality. So they analyze a country, they analyze the city,
they analyze down to the county, and what they found. And this is
one of the most replicable studies that have ever been done, and it's
it's so incredibly accurate. What they found is criminal activity is
directly related to something called the Gini coefficient, which
is the Gini Coefficient. It's like, the income inequality in a
society. Right. So they looked at very poor societies. You know,
everybody's poor, right? Everybody's living in mud huts,
very little crime. They looked at very rich neighborhoods,
everybody's rich, very little crime, looked at now, the crime
level actually increases, you know, proportional to the, the
inequality in a given place. So, you know, in the United States,
it's not that people are poor in the way that if they're poor, and
other places of the world, but rather that, because of the huge
level of inequality, people have this tremendous rage within
themselves that look, the structure is not working, I can't
get up the social ladder, right? And the people at the top actually
don't even care about me. So it's a dog eat dog world, it's an all
out combat. So this is what actually fuels the crime cycle.
According to these these sociological studies. I want you
guys reaction to that study. And the last thing I want to say is,
it looks like the way Islam fixes that problem is that regardless of
where you are in the social ladder, it seems like it's almost
a religious obligation
to have some concern for people that are not in at your level, you
know, does this seem accurate? And it's an it it's almost like an
obligation on every single person in society, whether they're the
ruler or the lowest of the bunch? Yeah, that's uh, I read a similar
study to that. But I read it on regarding civil wars. I was
reading about civil wars and anyone who knows that you know how
I'm and you want to listeners of the podcast know that I always I'm
reading a lot about Civil War to the next Americans
have an interest in this topic? Because I mean, our the country
now culturally, politically, it's so extreme the distance between
both sides but what the another extreme that's growing is the
wealth gap is growing so extreme between both sides. And I read
that whenever there's 1/3 of the population is not satisfied and is
not really meeting their fundamentals needs. Then there is
civil strife in this society not civil war, per se, but civil
strife for example, Egypt we saw that I don't know why they took
the 2011 they had the uprising, right? The Arab Spring.
It's you know it they were very patient for a long time that all
these Arab countries blew up. They mainly blew up because of this.
You had some of these leaders having tigers and having jets and
having homes in Paris, and these people can't even buy an eggplant
right or a couple of potatoes to fry so in their homes, so that's
the I came upon that too and it's something to that's important, but
in the solution, it it is yeah the ethic, the religious ethic of
fearing the afterlife fearing God and and being told by Allah, you
to him and Marilla the attacker and in Allah Moodle calm and to
Abdullah manatee in earlier, Allah commands you to give the Amana the
wealth that he's given you, and anything is an MN anything else
can be in a manner to which people but also and this leads us to
part, I guess maybe it's part three or four of our part four of
our our notes here.
The critique of capitalism and in specific how interest destabilizes
the distribution of wealth and sucks up wealth in one area, for a
simple reason is that the investor, if he loans out his
money is guaranteed a return. Whereas the laborer who poor guy
opens a pizzeria or something and takes the loan and tries to make a
business. He's at risk. Of course.
But, of course, the bankers always tell you well, we're at risk too,
because what if he doesn't pay? Yeah, but you've assessed that he
has collateral, right, that he has enough collateral that you can
take. Right. So the that's the crux of the issue of interest,
being one of the main sources of the destabilization of wealth
distribution, in that, again, of the three producers of wealth, the
investor, the
labor, and the people with assets that they rent out their assets,
whether it's land or machines, or what have you, in this respect, in
the capitalist system, the the investor of wealth, if he does it
through money lending, he guarantees His return, while the
labor, then the entrepreneur,
it can fail, right, and end up with a zero. And that as a result
of that constant, guaranteed victory, guaranteed victory,
guaranteed victory, you end up with all of the wealth going back
to the same people in England, it was the inheritance system, that
all the wealth will always go to the first son. So you have this
family just keeps getting richer, right? Because the all the wealth
is going to one person in this system. It's going back to the
bank. So critique of capitalism is the next discussion that we're
going to have mainly on interest. And then we have critique of
socialism after that. So let's talk about shifts tell us about,
you know, what I've just said, you know, what, can you add, subtract
or comments on? I mean, the football historically are very
practical,
right? Because
an OEM is is trying to, to benefit himself and benefit others to be
able to take the role to a loss or
to achieve one Allah subhanaw taala.
And we understand that's not achieved, although then by
complying with the laws, orders, and his prohibitions, that is,
with the Sharia, which is this sort of roll this path through
space time,
that when you stay on it, you're in compliance, and when you don't,
you're not.
Right, so what I have said, there's, there's
really few things that you can think of that are more beneficial,
that are more meaningful for Muslim they do with regard to
another Muslim, than to give him the Knowledge by which he knows
whether he's on the road or not on the road.
That's the that's the beneficial knowledge. Right.
As we spoke about before, right, mmm was already mentioned, and the
majority mentioned before, and it's a theme, that the knowledge
which is most beneficial, is the knowledge by which a person knows
how he's able to safeguard and how he's able to deal with the things
that are made obligatory upon him.
Right? That includes, of course, their Ebola, that the devotional
practices that we think of such as Salah Kahala is a prerequisite to
it, to cut say, on what have you.
But as we mentioned, the football has been very clear that when
you're involved in a thing,
then knowing what the outcome of Allah come of Allah are then
associated with the thing you're involved in, becomes obligatory
for you.
Like Salah and CMR. So if you are turgid, if you're a merchant, the
noise that are associated with transactions Mamilla is faulty for
you.
Because it's being involved in something and may engage in a lot
of Acts and not knowing whether you're doing is haram is is
mindlessness, folly, from the point of ensuring you're right.
And we just indicated Of course, we mentioned before, there's a lot
that we have now with electronic transaction what have you that
every single one is involved in transactions, maybe 100 And maybe
1000 times the number of transactions that maybe the
largest most prosperous mega trader was in 12th century Egypt
just because of the velocity in nature what happened so we have to
know these comet associated with it. Now, when you do is this call
when you do deductive analysis, just look at and
see you know, you look at a road and see what it's made of where
it's going you get a good idea, where's it trying to go? was
trying to have me avoid what pastors are trying to happen is
what will happen if you know the the outcome that are associated
with this area of mouth. So the Mamilla transactional sale there's
some recurring themes
riba usury is prohibited.
Not just prohibited, it's prohibited using language is
prohibited. And law prohibits it. And the the the the in it
In the Prophet sallahu wa salam speaks about it
is mentioned as one of the Southern movie thoughts on the
seven things that cast the committer of them on their face
and fire along with Xena in
Qatar and NASA the hardware Mala,
illegitimate killing and murder and what have you major used since
the football have asked? None so do so now. For example, as in a
lot of the corporate I asked what is you know what is what's so bad
about this?
Simple 1am I upset okay. The reason that I ended up behind this
prohibition is it's not cool, you can understand that what happened,
some of the say that some Buddha associated with you don't
necessarily know what's wrong with it, have you
inclined towards the idea that when it comes to modern life in
general, the reason that it prohibited is something that the
human mind can attain to, it's not like the hardest for a robot. Why?
Because Allah azza wa jal said so
what this means is may Allah have mercy on us because we live in a
society which has normalized Aviva normalized user. And notice I use
user id rather than interest. Right? Because user is from the
Latin you will Saudia which is prohibited and canonical law is
prohibited. It's been prohibited in Jewish law and Christian law
for a long time.
European Christians went through a formal process whereby they
systematically
at certain high points
rationalized its criminality in it's evil, out of their discourse.
But as per canon canon law, the official law of the Catholic
Church is prohibited as recently as the 1890s. Formula. Right,
which historically is just yesterday, right? You use Korea,
which in some contexts, legally now means charging interest beyond
a certain
amount and exorbitant interest. Right. Does it didn't mean that in
the history of Europe, it meant charging any illegitimate increase
that attends to or is to the benefit of one party in a
bilateral transaction while not to the other, so, any amount of
return on loan in principle what happened? Which is now so for
centuries, yeah, and any amount Vettel mad bet the min River all
remnants of river in the Quran. So, right. So, what this indicates
is anyone who understands something when the book comes on
Sunday and looks initially and understands that handle when
things that are made haram that are prohibited and that all the
things that are most harmful to you means because right will the
show yeah the show he is what it was established, in order to
procure masala
and to deflect Professor Mufasa facet. So something's Halong
rather than being macro, that means associated with more harm
than the thing when something's mentioned is one of the seven
casters of the committer. And then on the face, or is mentioned in
the Hadith about which is some discussion has been worse, then,
you know, incestuous * with one's closer, kinfolk. All
right, or Allah azza wa jal mentions it along with Wilaya in
the Hadith,
of Wilaya, is something that puts you in a state of war.
With Allah azza wa jal, that means that the harm associated with it
is enormous. It's not liturgical, ritualistic, a nicety. That means
that if you do not
extirpate this practice from your society, that your society
is at risk, because if you look at the other southern mobile card,
right,
they're not just for individuals or families they go to, if you
allow people just kill it legitimately, that the entire
society is at risk. Right? If Xena as we understand, threatens, the
family which is in right in the threatens entirety of society,
bloodlines and familial lines are in doubt that Riba is deadly fatal
to the society in one of his manifestations. And what that
means is among the things that Maureen mentioned, that's one of
them, but we'll be finding out different types of harms
associated with it. As long as people do sociological studies.
Yeah. Yes, it increases, it keeps a wealth concentrated in amongst
the people amongst a small group will have it, right. So
distribution of social mobility tend to be limited, right? It
makes people fail and this goes to the so called Gini coefficient. It
makes people who on the lower part of the economic ladder feel as
though the way that people get
Money, who at the top? That is fundamentally unfair. So they have
a resentment in their heart. It's just unfair, all sides unfair in
all societies unfair to things like law and not doing this in
order to get ahead what happened to those things? Don't you know?
How can people I'm African American, right? So I know this
phenomena very well, right? When you have long standing volume
directed by one people and other people have the ability of the
volume to then turn around to the mother room and tell them, you
shouldn't do X, Y and Z, you should comply with this norm and
that norm and this law and that law, there's no moral authority
associated with that. Yeah. Even if you have religion.
And in fact, one of the fitten that the Muslim can fall into, is
that they will turn their back on the religion.
If your religion tells you when we're in the slave shack, right,
and you have the minister comes to us, that is part of complying with
your religion, that because we are melanin rich in your melanin poor,
that we can be treated as worse than animals. I don't, I'm not
really attract your religion. Now, the African American people are
African people with such a such a religious people, they went the
other way, people went deeper into Christianity. And, and still to
this day, African Americans are more committed to Christianity in
general,
than others.
Right.
Because of what sent of actual Naboo, whether they could they
could find it, that was what was what was available to them. But it
threatens the entire ethical, religious, moral, social premise
of a society, when people who have less feel fundamentally that there
are mechanisms in place by which those who have more will
constantly continue to have more, and the gap will increase. And
that playing by the rules, there is no way for them to win, to win.
Yeah. And the rules, usually profoundly deleterious effect, not
only an individual psychological and familial level, but on a
societal level. And it's
very dangerous, of course, to Muslim society in which the
society is supposed to have a shared theme and purpose right.
Out of Allah. Yeah. If people are fighting amongst themselves
fundamentally harboring resentment amongst themselves, killing each
other, feel fundamentally a society is unfair suffering from
back breaking poverty, unable to put a lock them up for the morsel
of a fluid inside of the mouth of their of their loved ones. Why
they see people who are gaining wealth, not primarily because they
are, you know, we're Americans, self made men. But no, that's not
primarily even how people who are supposedly self made men. That's
not primarily how the individual that you mentioned earlier.
Yeah, what do you do so now you primarily make wealth by virtue of
the fact that labor and other mechanisms that are associated
with Miss consumption of the wealth of people and
unwillingness, even though to
increase the wealth that people already have it? Yeah, at the
expense.
Of those who don't know, it's Vaughn was Birdman follow Matt,
Yeoman.
And Allah azza wa jal doesn't abide have a massive one, on on on
the on the basic level. And we haven't live in a society in which
the basis of the currency we use is based on what
the interest bearing loan is the foundation
of our entire economic system. So although the structural discussion
that we had earlier about what an idealized long society would be is
important, because you'd have fingers what happened as a
practical matter, we needed to know where we live, what we're
surrounded by what have you, and how can you live a life
individually, familiarly, and then on larger communities, it's
consistent with the Sharia and being able to to the extent
possible
given the some of the autumn, I think that we live in a time that
the Prophet someone was gonna mention, in which he said that the
time will come when if people are not engaged in actual label a
transaction service transaction that they bought the dust of it
will reach them. Yeah, some people think this is that time because
this is everywhere. Yeah. How can you live your life to the extent
possible, and that's where we're the brother was mentioning before
this tension, which is the tension of all this law, all reform
October, on the communal level, how do you balance between
individual psycho spiritual
reform
and collective reform? The Deen doesn't allow you to do one to the
exclusion of others. Right? Because come to the cilia.
Of course, they're based upon, of course, their opinions, the bong,
smoke and the scare to nuts, reordered knifes and
McFadden. Kulu would have, of course. And of course, a slavish
commitment to laws and regulations, while having a
corrupt heart and mind is meaningless hyper formalism. So
it's antimony anism. Right. So it's claiming that I'm just a good
person, I'm just very and in in regulation and law doesn't matter
at all. Yeah, I mean, is the Prophetic medium, always. And this
is a time in which we have to start to build institutions that
facilitate, because some of the effects or economic effects of
engaging in offline warning us about, and misappropriation of
wealth and unjust enrichment, including labor. They're Mass
Effects, they're there. They're scaling effects take place because
they're associated with institutions. Yeah. So it's not
it's not enough handled. I don't I won't take it alone. What
happened? So that's good, that's important. But to make it easier
for people, do we have ways for people to get money if they want
to start?
Yeah. And then that's the thing is, it brings up and maybe this is
going to be our part to that, because it's a huge topic of how
do you compete? And when you said the self made men, and when I'm
looking at, you know, their stories, without Ribba you're not
making anything you're a middle class dude with a little internet
company, right? Without an interest loan. Right? And if you
look at the people, almost always I don't want to be you know,
because you have to care for being jealous about people who have more
wealth. But if you look at people they're described as ruthless
businessman, and they said, almost, almost admiringly, what
have you? This is not the ethos of the genre. In the deed.
I think Sheikh Hamza Yusuf was the one who mentioned you know, how it
was the ethos of being sitting in a gun on the bench inside of the
soup.
I'm higher up someone comes, you know, I've done the mount I do
today, what have you, I'll let it flow down to others that are
further down. Every single cent doesn't have to be a dean is
prohibited. But it's not part of the ethos of the dean that l
competitors need to be crowded out. Everyone needs to be
destroyed. All my competitors need to go out of business. I have 10
million, I need 100 million, I have 100 million. I need a billion
I have 1,000,000,010 billion, that would be actually be i on a
person's character. Yeah.
So that shouldn't be pointed to praise in a praiseworthy fashion.
We shouldn't speak to our sons, well, you can be like him, we
shouldn't tell it Oh, you can marry him, or what have you. We
need to take this thing by the reins. And realize, okay, we live
in this time, and we live in this place. But these values in these
ways of being actually we're not gonna be hypercritical, but we're
not going to be say over the truth. They actually are not
beneficial to us, in our families, and to our into our civilization,
into our community. And we need to create alternatives, not just
criticizing, shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do this, you
shouldn't do this, you do this lab. What do you want to create
Muslims came to
areas of Byzantine control and Persian control and Berber areas
and very well, they're rich societies. They didn't say, oh, I
want to burn everything down. And we want to recreate everything
based upon our idealized idea of where we know, some things need to
be kept. And they're good, and they need to be expanded. Other
things need to be discontinued. Other things need to be changed
and reformed, interacting with what exists and dealing with it in
a wise and sagacious sagacious and meaningful manner, using the laws
as well gives you that comes primarily from reflection with the
uncle on the Y. That's the path of our ASLEF. Yeah. And that's what
needs to be done now. But you have to call something's called spade a
spade. Reba is societally deadly, you need to come up with
alternatives and if the alternatives that are created and
as people are in the process of trying to create alternative
products or what have you don't perfectly mesh with what we would
have created if we were creating de novo from scratch that's
consistent with
the full kaha deal with things as they are yeah not in some idealize
the state right. And Sophia nfld is reported to have said you know,
no, every single person would be Arland can tell you that this is
haram and this is haram what happened okay is the the
insightful for key is the one who finds a way for you to do what can
be done within the bounds of the Sharia. It makes things easy for
people. Okay, and I want to bring up something it may be a can of
worms, but I we got maybe three minutes
to cover something in terms of you had said usery and not interest,
what is your take? What do you know about and what is the opinion
on those who are bringing forth the thesis that the money that we
have today is fluctuating and its value?
And that interest is merely to match that fluctuation. Yeah,
there's not a position on football Ha, this is I mean, we have to be
right. This is three 250. Throughout the years of Imperial
encounter with Europe. This is not we're not coming out of nowhere.
Right? The way filter works out it's not it's not you find
something that this person or that person says that maybe a fee may
not be a fee, and Zillow what happened. The the thing that's
adopted
the mataman, among the folk Aha, the dean, from the very first
encounter with Venetian bankers, what have you
is that the interest bearing loan is prohibited.
There's a list of how it's put forth as just balancing out the
fluctuations in in purchasing power, are known for gold and
silver, they're known for copper fills what have you know,
okay, whether it's man made or not, doesn't matter.
Yes, there's a discussion among some of the football as to whether
or not so called fiat currency, whether the Afghan Mareeba
applying the same, we will have those interesting discussions, and
as soon as I felt we should talk about the right, the fatwa and the
position of the Imams and the focus of this ummah, across
Morocco, right, from the 17th century, second century encounters
with Europeans in a major way to our time, is an interest bearing
loans impermissible, and that's consistent with what it was for
gold or silver actuation purchasing power is not a new
phenomenon. It's something that's known, whatever the fact that yes,
if you allow gold or silver or fiat currency percent under your
bed for 510 1520 years that it doesn't purchase as much in the
future, maybe as it does. Now, that's nothing new. It's not most
of the Gen, that's a known issue, which is why this surely doesn't
encourage that in some situations prohibits it is prohibited for the
Wali of an orphan,
to allow his wallet to set and just lose value, or just have the
cart for those orders. Akkad is doing it as part of the demo, and
for just eating and not to engage in a way that's balanced between
safety meaning conservative investment, but also has his grow,
what have you, it's these are things that are known
99 times out of 100
When a person thinks that a matter is Mr. Judd and in his in his
nothing, what have you, and therefore he can go wherever he
wants, which almost always turns out to go in the same direction
that the is the prevailing
mode of thought among the Kafala. May Allah save us? I'm sure that's
just coincidental. But
99 times out of 100 That's not the case. Yeah. Subhanallah I mean, in
realize that do more, do more batalla
have more respect for the International half associated with
what, by any objective
assessment.
The Islamic intellectual tradition is one of the great intellectual
traditions of humanity, people should just be more humble.
And realize when you find the phone call, particularly over time
telling you something.
There's a reason there's a reason for that. And you're saying that
hold on is a golden silver can fluctuate, right? I mean, that
pretty much ends the discussion right there. And then whether that
because their their argument that oh, the rate is is man decided by
the Federal Bank or the Federal Reserve, sorry, the rate, but
that's not the only reason that the value of the dollar goes up
and down. Right. So it's not just purely a manmade scheme, right.
Yeah. No. So certainly the ability of
monetary fund central banks to manipulate
currencies as a different additional
complexity, the questions are large, but the core question is,
is prohibited to engage in interest bearing loans, because
the fiat currency is subject to loss of purchasing power, and
therefore the person that holds it is norm and therefore, it's
prohibitive for him to do that? No, it's not. Yeah. Because
similar phenomena is unknown to attend to the
A
fiddler
and it's not allowed.
Right? Rather, if they want you if you want to hedge against the
effect of currency risks, there are multiple Sharia compliant ways
associated with it. Not the least of which not to over simplify the
matter is to engage in parallel investments.
Will that put your money at risk? Yes. But putting your money at
risk potentially allows for the Adjara and for others to get
access to it? Yeah. It means that it's less likely to stay with you.
And there's a benefit associated with that as well. Yeah. Okay,
good. I just wanted to get a get the clear, clear statement on
that. And we did and Hamdulillah. And it was pretty analogy, like
you said, his Makuta and mana, and what's masculine mana, meaning our
intellects can attain to why certain ruling is in why minutes
and matters of interaction. And that Mr. Jia debt is the word that
you use, which means new matters. And that many times people imagine
that a new matter, something is new 99% of time, it's actually not
new. And the the essence of the issue is found somewhere else. And
the essence of the issue of the gold or silver fluctuating and its
amount. It's also it's been there. And so this concept that because
the Federal Reserve is raising the interest rates, or the fluctuation
rates, or the rate of the value of the dollar up and down, should not
will not be a factor to make permissible taking an interest
bearing American dollar, the European Euro,
a future basket coming out of China, which is a basket of
American Euro, what have you and in other fiat currencies, even as
they are disconnected from gold or silver or underlying commodity,
your Kuhmo common the Habima. Fifth, they play the role of the
hub in the fifth in our in our lives. Yes. And then a practical,
sir. practical purposes, the dollar is your golden silver
today. So it's not it doesn't make a difference, you know, as a
measure of value in order to procure things that otherwise they
couldn't get from the person because the person is willing to
accept it in return for services in turn for goods. Okay. It's very
simple. It's money. Yeah. So, a person who should treat it
accordingly, just the way he would treat money, it should be
exchanged
spot basically, and in equal amounts. Right. And it is going to
be a dissimilarity associated with an exchange in a bilateral
transaction, it needs to be associated with the corresponding
Batman, right? Yeah, it needs to be some rudely, some,
at least potential risk associated with its appreciation, analogous
to something like the appreciation and might that an animal that
raising animal might hurt hurting or let go by virtue of the fact
that they grow naturally, yeah, or by virtue of the fact that it was
put to some productive activity, which generates more wealth and
that wealth is added to the base amount according but just
receiving in exchange for the money
as a service for procuring the money, which means essentially
selling the money itself is not permitted to sell gold and silver,
for gold and silver, meaning in addition to the base amount,
similarly is not permitted to sell us dollars, European euro or other
fiat currencies, or to rent it in return for more, more the same
loan of principle was stipulated repayment or customarily accepted
repayment in excess of the loan principal. That's the safe way to
say it to put a safe is mildly that's the reasonable way to deal
with the issue. minoritarian discussions even within
our mother, notwithstanding, those are intellectual discussions, it's
hard to find any for key whoever of note whoever gave a fatwa for
it. And if even if he did, or under pressure, or what have you
said resetera. The weight of the opinion of the football has such
that can't be considered to be an individual opinion that has
weighed in constitutes the law. It's a villa. I mean, it's a
Zillow, it's a misstep, that only following is associated with
following an individual and not to mention communally or
collectively, which means summary is not all opinions are the same.
One opinion from one individual is subjective to so much bias, so
much vulnerability, biases, limitations, etc. Whereas the
opinion of generations is immune to that bias.
Is the requirement on Mr to
To make that clear at the time of the contemporaries, so, you know,
what am I known known for, you know, going at each other or
Hamdulillah. This is what happens, and that needs to be reined in. So
it's done.
But it's different from saying I disagree with your opinion.
And saying This opinion is a mistake, it's not permitted for
some other person to follow it. Yeah. Where people from his same
institution or your other institution, although Allama, for
example, are sort of saying, you know, you may hold this position
or that position, but often
it is not the case with regard to this that the other one happy in
that case. It's a Zillow. And we have a methodology with regard to
the Zillow galima, right?
They're not reimplemented that doesn't necessarily mean the
person is our respect for the person who's that's why they've
been on this matter, he can't be falling, which doesn't necessarily
necessitate his entire body of scholarship, because he might be
upon maturity and others goes.
Well, thank you so much, there was the critique of socialism. But I
realized that you already did talk about this impermissibility. And
this is not or this not being a goal of the city to take
everyone's wealth melted down, divided up equally. So we did
discuss that and that was basically the summary of the
socialist doctrine on ownership and on distribution. And so we
don't need to rehash that. And we've taken you up now for near
almost two hours now. A little bit more, but this was a meaty topic.
People had wanted a part two and this was the part two on wealth
distribution. I think people love the topic, so we may eventually do
it again. Until we cover all of its bases. So TJ's aka loca chef
ta NAS if you're still with us, there's anything closing
statements that you'd like to make
not shake I think both of you have covered the topic
and haven't done a very very well very well covered check. Really
appreciate your time. Please make dua for us. And if you have any
other you don't have any other closing statements to make then we
go I spoken too much as it is not at all it was beautiful. What you
and the brothers for that. I mean, I mean it's just like a lacuna.
Subhanak hola como be I'm Dick and scheduling La ilaha illa Anta
nostoc for going into a lake but also in in Santa Fe a coastal Illa
Allah Deena am me know slightly hurt. What? Soviet Huck what was
sort of a sub was set up in a coma
whoa
whoa Daddy
Daddy
Oh