By Imam Muhammad at-Taaweel, may Allah have mercy on him
Blurb:
Any fatwa allowing bank interest, whether taking it or giving it, is an invalid juridical opinion, an affront to the Islamic Revealed Law and a slander against it, if not an objection and outright opposition to it.
Likewise, it is an immense service to usurious banks, a priceless gift that they have waited for and yearned for a very long time. On the one hand, it destroys the religious barrier that Islam had placed between the Muslims and the usurious banks, protecting them from their greed and exploitation and from their economies and destinies being controlled.
On the other hand, it mobilises and conscripts the Ummah to serve imperialistic capital by providing its banks with sufficient monetary liquidity, so that they can expand their activities, secure their influence and consolidate their monopoly, after which they can acquire further fixed benefits. This is how they eat the profits of those who save and exhaust the efforts of those who invest and borrow, and they appropriate Muslims’ wealth because of fatwas given by Muslims.
To Allah we belong and to Him we shall return.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
FOREWORD by Ustādh ʿAlī
Filālī
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION and
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE GREAT EVENT HAS OCCURRED
THE FIRST JUSTIFICATION: Bank transactions are a modern form of
transaction that was completely unknown to previous fuqahāʾ
THE SECOND JUSTIFICATION: They say, ‘There is no clear text in the Book
of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him
peace, that declares this transaction unlawful.’
THE THIRD JUSTIFICATION: They say, ‘Bank transactions are not lending,
and what the bank receives from its customers by way of money cannot be called
a loan such that it would fall under the prohibition against lending with a
surplus.’
THE FOURTH JUSTIFICATION:
Some of them say that a bank transaction is a sleeping partnership (muḍārabah) or some type of investment,
and that the holders of the wealth deposit their money in the bank with the
intention of investing it and they have a fixed share of the profit
THE FIFTH JUSTIFICATION: They
say that bank transactions are sleeping partnerships and sleeping partnerships
are in accordance with what the partners agree to and consent to and it is not
stipulated that that profit not be specified in advance
THE SIXTH JUSTIFICATION: Some
of them say that a banking transaction is the same as commissioning another to
do something (wakālah), meaning that
the bank is the agent (wakīl) of the
money’s owner and can invest it in what Allah has declared lawful and he is
satisfied with whatever comes back to him by way of profit
THE SEVENTH JUSTIFICATION:
They say that if the ruler sees nothing wrong with banks specifying the profits
in advance then there is no harm in it
THE EIGHTH JUSTIFICATION: Necessity (ḍarūrah)
THE NINTH JUSTIFICATION: Following the school (madhhab) of Abū Ḥanīfah in allowing usury in the abode of war (dār al-ḥarb), based on the fatwa of the
European Council, which has permitted Muslim minorities in Europe to buy homes
by way of usurious bank loans
THE TENTH JUSTIFICATION: The claim that interest-bearing loans remove
difficulties for Muslims and make their transactions easier for them
THE ELEVENTH JUSTIFICATION: To cling to the outward purport of the
Exalted’s statement: “You who believe! Do not feed on usury, multiplied and
then remultiplied.”
THE TWELFTH JUSTIFICATION: To say that taking out a mortgage to buy a
home has an undoubted benefit for the borrower embodied in the ownership of a
home in the end, and in that he is exempt from taxes for the duration of the
loan
SUMMARY
APPENDIX A: Understanding Ḍarūrah and Ḥājjah and Their General
Rules
APPENDIX B: Is it permissible to take out a mortgage?
(Refuting the European “Fatwa” Council)
APPENDIX C: The Abodes of the
Earth
APPENDIX D: Europe is not Dār
al-Ḥarb
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
UPDATE: The book is now available
from Amazon.
UPDATE: If you are in South East Asia or Australia, the book is
available here.
