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 M A T T E R S

MUʿĀMALA AND THE REVIVAL OF THE ISLAMIC GIFT ECONOMY¹

Adi Setia

The Islamic Gift Economy (IGE) is an integrative Islamic economic system that is autonomous and can stand and prosper on its own ethical and economic principles while in constructive engagement with current neo-liberalism, instead of one that is co-opted, wittingly or unwittingly, into the mainstream, free-market capitalist system, as is largely the case with what currently goes by the name of Islamic Banking & Finance (IBF).

Keywords: Islamic Gift Economy, muʿãmala, partnership, cooperation, moderation, economics of abundance, waqf, common good.

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Introduction

The Islamic Gift Economy (IGE; al-Iqtiṣād al-Infāqī) can be envisioned as an integrative economic system based on the operative principles of cooperation (taʿāwun),² mutual consent (ʿan tarāḍin/murāḍātin)³ and partnership (mushāraka), and these are in turn founded on the principal ethics of raḥma (mercy), gratitude (shukr), generosity (karam/iḥsān), moderation (tawāzun/ʿiffa), khilāfa (trusteeship) and amāna (trustworthiness/responsibility). These operational and ethical principles are grounded in the foundational psycho-cosmological outlook expressed in the belief that (i) the natural and cultural⁴ resources of the world are abundant,⁵ while (ii) the material needs, wants and desires of human beings are limited⁶ and should be limited.⁷ The natural and cultural resources of the world seen as blessings and bounties (faḍl) from the Merciful Creator (niʿam/ālāʾ al-Khāliq) are abundant and even unlimited in principle because wa-in taʿuddū niʿmataLlāhi la tuḥsūhā: if you would count the bounty of Allah you cannot exhaust it (Ibrāhīm: 34).⁸ Viewed in the light of belief (īmān), these resources are gifts and favors (ālāʾ) from the realm of transcendence to which the human ethico-cognitive response is gratitude (shukr), which in turn results in contentment (qanā‘a). Hence man will take according to his need but not his greed, for because of abundance there is no anxiety over scarcity that feeds greed (ṭamaʿ) and accumulation (takāthur/jamʿ al-māl wa taʿdīduhu).⁹ Moreover, shukr itself becomes an existential and psychological state of being that is generative of abundance (ziyāda) both material and spiritual, for la-in shakartum la’azīdannakum = verily, if you give thanks, I will indeed give you more (Ibrāhīm:10). Thus by definition, Islamic economics is an economics of abundance,¹⁰ and never an economics of scarcity.¹¹

          In the secular darkness of disbelief and ingratitude (kufr), however, these resources are cut off from their transcendent, spiritual source, and restricted to their limited, purely quantitative level of being; hence man views these resources as limited and scarce, despite its actual abundance, and they will engage in mutual, unending competition over them out of anxiety over their perceived scarcity: al-shayṭānu yaʿidukum al-faqra wa yaʾmurukum bi al-faḥshāʾi wa Allāhu yaʿidukum maghfiratan minhu wa faḍlan = the devil promises you destitution and enjoins on you lewdness, but Allah promises you forgiveness from Him with bounty (al-Baqara: 268). Without belief, man will, out of anxiety, take these resources according to his greed (ṭamaʿ) without any sense of recognition of, and reliance on, their true, transcendent source, which in turns results in ingratitude (kufr al-niʿma) and hence loss of contentment, leading to an existential and psychological state of perpetual anxiety and endless yearning: wa la-in kafartum inna ʿazābī la shadīd = but if you are thankless, then indeed my punishment is dire (Ibrāhīm: 7).

         In this state, which can be referred to as the “pathology of consumption,” what is attained is never really felt to be attained, and satisfaction is fleeting leaving in its wake disillusionment and boredom, and of course, ecological desolation of the cultural and natural landscape.¹² The Australian economist Clive Hamilton has referred in his book to this state of perpetual anxiety and endless yearning that is never satisfied as a disease called “affluenza.”¹³ Although he was not referring to the Islamic perspective on the situation, his thinking is of some significance in the interests of what my friend Faizel Katkodia of South Africa has referred to as cross-cultural “convergence on commonalities”¹⁴ in the quest toward finding common solutions to the common problems of humankind.

        Thus, Muslims, if they are sensitive to the worldview of Islam,¹⁵ cannot go on agreeing explicitly or implicitly with the standard secular definition of economics that more or less asserts that it is the study of “the allocation of scarce resources to fulfill unlimited wants.”¹⁶ This is because this and similar definitions of economics in the standard economics textbooks¹⁷ used throughout the world are based on two basic mistaken and largely unexamined dogmatic assumptions, one cosmological and the other psychological. The cosmological assumption, as implicit in the phrase “scarce resources,” is that nature is purely material without a transcendent source of being, renewal and regeneration, and so it must be a closed system, hence finite and limited. The psychological assumption, as implicit in the phrase “unlimited wants,” makes a claim about the nature of man, in that he is limited to his physical self and materialistic ambition without deeper spiritual substance and higher transcendent aspiration, hence he lives only to realize his immediate sensual, bodily desires and to create new desires, thus leading, from the Islamic point of view, to his seduction into “rivalry in worldly increase” as the only goal of his purely temporal life: alhākum al-takāthur ḥattā zurtum al-maqābir = rivalry in worldly increase distracts you until you visit your graves (al-Takāthur: 1-2).

        In contrast, Muslims believe that (i) both nature and culture and their resources have a transcendent source of being, regeneration and renewal, and hence natural and cultural resources are not limited in respect of that transcendent source of renewal and regeneration, but rather they are abundant: wa ātākum min kulli mā saʾaltumūhu = and He gives you of all that you ask of him (Ibrāhīm: 34); and that (ii) man’s self is both physical and spiritual in which the physical is embedded in and serves the spiritual.¹⁸ Hence man voluntarily limits his material desires through cultivating the self-discipline of zuhd (spiritual detachment and economic downshifting)¹⁹ in order that he might better realize his higher and truer spiritual aspirations by which he finds his true self and place in the larger order of creation and being.

         He pursues his short-term material needs only in the conscious context of higher, more encompassing and long-term non-material goals and objectives and thereby attains to meaning and happiness in service of those higher imperatives.²⁰ Thus man’s material needs and wants are limited by virtue of his own impulse toward self-realization of his higher, spiritual (i.e., intellectual, ethical and moral) calling, which transcends the temporal, sensual life of the world; bal tu’thirūna al-ḥayāta al-dunyā wa al-ākhiratu khayrun wa abqā = Indeed, you prefer the life of the world, but the Hereafter is better and more lasting (al-Aʿlā:16-17). In other words, he finds his identity and destiny in the service of the transcendent and not in serving his whimsical ego.

         This foundational Islamic cosmo-psychological outlook has deep and far reaching implications for how we should understand and engage both Islamic and Western economics. Muslims need to be critically and creatively self-conscious about these two cosmo-psychological principles in order to formulate an authentic, integrative Islamic economic system that is viable in the contemporary age; namely, one that is autonomous and can stand and prosper on its own ethical and economic principles while in constructive engagement with the West, instead of one that is coopted, wittingly or unwittingly, into the mainstream, neoliberal free-market system, as is largely the case with what currently goes by the name of Islamic Banking & Finance (IBF).²¹ This foundational consideration brings us to the notion of the Islamic Gift Economy and the manner in which we should go about defining it and outlining its general conceptual and operative parameters.

Defining the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE)

For our limited, critically reflective and programmatic purpose here, the Islamic Gift Economy²² (IGE) can be provisionally defined as: the provisioning and sharing, by mutual giving and receiving, of natural and cultural abundance for realizing material and spiritual well-being.²³ This definition takes into consideration that the world and humankind are not only material or physical but more fundamentally they are also spiritual and have a higher, spiritual or metaphysical significance. They serve a cognitive and moral purpose that transcends their immediate physicality or sensuality; namely, a purpose which is indicative of a higher, more encompassing Reality (al-Ḥaqq) on which they depend, in which they are embedded, and to which they respond.²⁴

        This definition of the IGE is made operative in practice by a systematic, integrative revival of the mechanisms of religious, social and commercial exchange as formally embodied in the traditional fiqh of ʿibāda and muʿāmala,²⁵ such as zakāt (obligatory charity), waqf (charitable endowment), ṣadaqa (voluntary charity), hiba (gift-giving), farāʾiḍ/irth (estate division), waṣiyya (bequest), qarḍ ḥasan (goodly personal loan), ʿariyya (lending something for use), ijāra (renting and hiring), jaʿala (job wages), muḍāraba (venture capital or financing a profit-sharing venture) and mushāraka/sharika (business partnership).²⁶

       Here the foundational notion of the ‘gift’ or rather gifting, giving and provisioning (ṣadaqa, hadiya, hiba and infāq)²⁷ is significant, for deep reflection on the above-mentioned religious, social and commercial exchange mechanisms will show that they have less to do with taking than with giving, and hence, ultimately more about serving wider, communal/public rather than narrow, individual/private interests. As a matter of fact, even the so-called individual ‘private interest’ that is served in formal commercial exchange is inseparably embedded in the larger fabric of communal ‘public interest’, for it is a principal axiom of Islamic law that public, communal interest (maṣlaḥa ʿāmma) has precedence over private, individual interest (maṣlaḥa nafsiyya). Hence, the commercial is never in spite of the communal.²⁸

       To illustrate this point, let us look at the institution and mechanism of farā’iḍ/irth (the Islamic law of inheritance and estate division). Because of this law even the most greedy and accumulative of people will be compelled at the end of his life to redistribute his accumulated wealth amongst members of his extended family, such that at the end of the day he gives away, in a redistributive manner, very much more than what he has actually consumed of his hard-earned wealth. Another case in point is the august institution of zakāt, which ensures that the urgent, material needs of the most vulnerable members of the community are immediately taken care of through a system of obligatory giving by its relatively more well-off members.²⁹ 

        Even in the various formal systems of commercial exchange, such as the business partnership (mushāraka/sharika) and the venture capital (maḍāraba/qirāḍ), the basic, underlying governing vision is still that of giving, i.e., mutual giving, of capital by the investor, on the one hand, and of skill, by the entrepreneur, on the other hand, to a common business enterprise, and the mutual sharing of the risks that go together with the benefits inherent in that common enterprise. Hence, what we have here is an economics of giving and receiving, not one of taking and hoarding.

       We can glean from a close, intelligent and creative reading of, say, Jaʿfar ibn ʿAlī al-Dimashqī’s (circa 600 H) slim treatise³⁰ the underlying message that good management of the self (ethics, akhlāq) is the basis for good management of the household (the original meaning of ‘economics’, or tadbīr al-manzīl), and this in turn is the basis for good management of society (politics, siyāsa), and therefore the material economy should be embedded in the moral economy in order to realize a true economy of the common good leading to felicity in temporal and eternal life. As Essid explains:

 We see here the beginnings of an ideology of the common good in which commercial exchange satisfies the common necessity, with trade raised to the rank of an eminently social link.³¹

       And so, in this mode of thinking, the market aspects and the welfare aspects are both integral, constituent aspects of the same economy, which, in this regard can be termed as the ‘market-welfare’ economy,³² or the Islamic Gift Economy (al-itqtiṣād al-infāqī), or an economics of “provisioning,” in which profits and surpluses are to be reinvested into serving local communal well-being rather than the speculative interests and bottom-lines of far-way, indifferent absentee stockholders, or rather, free-riders.

      This understanding of the underlying notion of “giving” or “gifting” findssupport in Michael Bonner’s careful study of early, pre-Dimashqīan economic thought in Islam as exemplified in al-Shaybānī’s important Kitāb al-Kasb.³³ Here the corresponding notion is that of a virtuous circulative exchange between rich and poor or an economics of interdependence between rich and poor in which the surplus of the rich is “returned” (radd, rujūʿ) to the poor in order to maintain order, peace and balance in society, especially in urban society.³⁴ So the “gift” economy is the “return” economy, in which the circulation of wealth is from the rich to the poor and not from the rich to the rich, so that it does not become something which circulates among the wealthy in your midst (al-Ḥashr: 7). 

       The kind of run-away speculative, overly money-centered economics that has been systematically destroying middle-class America for the past few years or so would be something unfathomable to the Dimashqian and Shaybanian economic vision.³⁵ As a matter of fact, al-Dimashqī devotes a number of pages of his treatise to warn hardworking, honest business people against the temptations of all sorts of speculative enterprises marketed by the sophisticated smooth talkers of his time,³⁶ the kind of economic predators we now call “economic hit-men.”³⁷ Similarly, his lucid explanation of why gold and silver have been the commonly-agreed medium of exchange and unit of value among all people doves tail perfectly well with the current call—in the face of the ongoing financial meltdown—for abandoning the overly centralized fiat, paper-money system and returning to the gold and silver system, and other forms of community-based “healthy” money and currency systems.³⁸

      This governing vision of mutuality, participativeness and partnership, or common interest and common good instead of self-interest, can be contrasted to the generally one-sided affair in conventional banking (including so-called ‘Islamic’ banking) in which capital is merely rented out by one party, say the bank, to another, the businessman/entrepreneur, through various elaboratemark-up instruments, thus ensuring guaranteed returns to the bank without obliging it in any way to participate in the risks inherent in the enterprise, risks which are to be borne exclusively by the businessman/entrepreneur.

       Even informal, social giving or general voluntary charity and alms giving (ṣadaqa) has been institutionalized in Islamin to a system called waqf (charitable endowment or trust). Through the formal, legal system of waqf, a normally one-off gift is transformed into a particular kind of charitable capital that indefinitely generates either revenue or usufruct or both which perpetuates for its specified beneficiaries the benefits of that initial act of giving. Thus waqf is also called ṣadaqa jāriya³⁹ = ‘perpetual charity’, an “ongoing” charity that is always current, whose benefit always flows out to the beneficiaries as long as the original charitable corpus stands or is preserved and maintained. In the waqf (literally, to retain, to restrain, to reserve) system, private wealth is voluntarily retained and dedicated for the perpetual, free provision of public goods and services in order to serve the larger, public interest of the community, in the hope of generating perpetual spiritual reward to the wāqif or endower, who takes to heart the Qur’ānic admonishments: lā tanālū al-birra ḥattā tunfiqū mimmā tuḥibbūna = “you will not attain to piety until you spend of that which you love (Āli ʿImrān: 92) and yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū anfiqū mimmā razaqnākum = O believers, give of what We have provided for you (al-Baqara: 254).⁴⁰

        In contrast, neoliberal privatization is a system in which public wealth is retained (or enclosed, hence the so-called “enclosure of the commons”)⁴¹ and dedicated for the provision of private profit, in which the larger communal interest is only of an ad hoc, marginal and incidental consideration, despite sweet-sounding political rhetoric and elaborate economic jargon to the contrary.⁴² In the case of waqf we have the “pouring-out” economy, whereas in  the case of privatization we have the “trickle-down” (i.e., cream for the rich and crumbs, if any, for the poor) economy. On the one hand we have the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE), and on the other hand we have the Neoliberal Scoop Economy (NSE). Since as Muslims (or as decent human beings) we can’t have both, we better then think carefully which of the two systems we want to adopt, develop and implement, at the communal, national, regional and global levels of exchange.

        It is in the nature of giving, gifting and the gift that ultimately nothing is actually given away never to return to the giver. As a matter of fact, the giver, instead of being impoverished, stands to benefit as much as if not more than the receiver, in both material and spiritual terms, for, indeed, if everyone gives then everyone receives, and none is left out, and everyone is embedded and is participative in the material and cultural life of the community, which in turn leads to social cohesion rather than fragmentation and alienation: wa mā tunfiqū min khayrin yuwaffa ilaykum wa antum lā tuẓlamūn = and whatsoever good thing you spend, it will be repaid to you in full, and you will not be wronged (al-Baqara: 272). The basic idea here is that wealth must always be circulating amongst people and not be systemically siphoned off from the community into the hands of the rich to be accumulated for self-serving interest, so that it won’t circulate among the wealthy in your midst (al-Ḥashr: 7).⁴³

        This universal ethical principle of reciprocity (tabādul, ta‘āwun, tarāḍin, murāḍā, mushāraka, muʿāmala, jazā’al-iḥsān bi al-iḥsān) under lies the gift culture of traditional Islamic societies, including traditional, non-westernized cultures in general.⁴⁴ This principle of reciprocal giving and receiving is enshrined in the Qur’ānic verse: hal jazā’ al-iḥsān illā al-iḥsān = is the recompense of goodness aught save goodness? (al-Raḥmān: 60). In a community in which everyone gives, everyone receives also, and most times, everyone receives in return much more than what he or she has given out in the first place, hence none is left out, none is marginalized or alienated or ostracized, but everyone belongs as a way of truly humane living, well-expressed in the South African traditional socio- cultural concept of ubuntu. As Justice Mahomed Jaybhay explains it:

 In South Africa the culture of ubuntu is the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening the community. Ubuntu speaks of our inter-connectedness, our common humanity and the responsibility to each that flows from our connection....Ubuntu means that people are people through other people....It  not only describes human being as“ others, i.e. what “being-with-others” should be all about.⁴⁵

The Nature of the Gift

Before we go on, enhancing our critical understanding of the meaning and practice of mutual giving and receiving requires us to analyze the nature of the gift, both conceptually and culturally. I think it is best that we do this by looking at the various forms of giving, or rather, “gifting,” in the traditional communities which many of us still live in, or identify with, or have learnt about. Maybe I can start by giving my own experience of traditional gifting in Malaysia, my home country (as encapsulated in the term gotong royong = mutual helping”).⁴⁶ Here we really need to extend the concept and practice of “gotong royong from merely helping out during kenduris⁴⁷ to the wider context ofsocial and commercial exchange in general for the promotion of communal solidarity.

          We may also be acquainted with some of the inspiring examples of the giving and gifting culture in South Africa, which I visited twice a couple of years ago on the generous invitation of its non-governmental (or rather, civic societal) National Awqaf Foundation (AWQAF SA)⁴⁸ to talk and exchange views and experiences on this very topic of giving in its various forms, tangible and intangible, especially in the form of waqf.

         Now, the significance of waqf for the tiny yet relatively affluent South African Muslim minority (roughly 1.8-2% of a population of almost 50 million), is that its beneficiaries need not be restricted to Muslims but can also include non-Muslims, especially the still economically marginalized majority black African population. Hence waqf is one of the most effective ways by which affluent South African Muslims can give back to the land on which they have found their home and prosperity and thereby embed themselves more firmly into the larger South African cultural landscape as indigenous sons and daughters of the soil. We can here also invoke some of the many, high quality formal academic, specifically anthropological, studies that have been undertaken on the culture of gifting in both historical and contemporary⁴⁹ times, in both Muslim and non-Muslim societies.⁵⁰

The Gift and the Problem with Islamic Banking and Finance

Contemporary discourse on Islamic economics is too narrowly focused on issues related to Islamic banking and finance (IBF), whereas Islamic Economics, by definition, involves also domains of exchange other than the purely financial or commercial or market-driven. As a matter of fact, it can be shown from Islamic economic history and the formal fiqh of muʿāmala that by far the major domain of exchange in an Islamic economy is the voluntary, devotional and communal one, involving the operative mechanisms of zakāt, ṣadāqa, waqf, hiba, qarḍ ḥasan, hadiya, farā’iḍ/mirāth, waṣiyya, including non-monetary lending and borrowing of tools and facilities, and reciprocal non-financial exchange of skills, services and expertise, and even goods. I think that it can be argued quite empirically that these non-market exchange mechanisms were in fact just as efficient, if not more, in the just, equitable and timely allocation of natural and cultural resources to those who needed them most.

        One fundamental problem with current IBF, as has been pointed out by Meera, Larbani, Cook, El Diwany, Vadillo,⁵¹ and many others, is its adherence to the Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB) model also adhered to by conventional, usurious banks by which deficit-based money is created as credit as a multiple of the capital base in accordance with the capital requirements set 52 out by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in the 1988 Basel Accord.⁵² So we have a situation in which an Islamic bank may be fully compliant on paper in its contractual form with the basic principle of loss and profit sharing in its business relations with customers, but the fact remains that at bottom the bank is still funding its investment through fiat money it creates out of nothing thanks to the usurious FRB principle.⁵³

        According to Cook, “this reality is at best not made clear by Islamic banks and is at best deliberately obscured,” and thus he concludes that “Islamic banking as currently practiced is an Islamic veneer on an un-Islamic reality.”⁵⁴ As Meera and Larbani elaborates:

Fractional reserve banking (FRB) is the basis of the present day monetary systems. In most countries, Islamic Banking and Finance too operates under this principle....FRB has effects on the ownership structure of assets in the economy, and that this effect violates the Islamic principles of ownership....money creation through FRB is creation of purchasing power out of nothing which brings about unjust ownership transfers of assets in the economy, to the bank effectively, paid for by the whole economy through inflation. This transfer of ownership is not based on human effort by taking on legitimate risks and neither with the knowledge nor the consent of the initial owners. These violate the ownership principles in Islam and tantamount to theft. It also has the elements of riba. On the same basis, Islamic governments should not create fiat money since this is equivalent to taking assets of the people, rich and poor alike, forcefully without compensation. It is, therefore, important that Shariah scholars come up with a fatwa on both the fiat money and the fractional reserve banking system. Such a fatwa is urgent and pertinent before Islamic banking and finance that operate under these systems, takes a course that may prove to be difficult to reverse later. The Islamic economic and finance system cannot be founded upon a money system that is fundamentally equivalent to theft and riba.⁵⁵

      In short, fractional reserve banking allows the very few to consume the wealth of the great majority, wrongly and unjustly, in direct disregard of the divine injunction: wa lā ta’kulū amwālakum baynakum bi al-bāṭil = and do not consume your wealth amongst yourselves in vanity... (al-Baqara: 188).⁵⁶ As a matter of fact, quantitative studies have shown a direct correlation between FRB and compound interest, and the systemic destruction of both the cultural and natural environments in both so-called first and third world countries. It is also this system that privileges the short-term interests of the present generation over the long-term interests of future generations, who are forced to bear the debt-burden of our current life-style of profligate consumption and the systemic wastage of resources that goes with it.⁵⁷

        Another problem in the current obsession with IBF is what has been called the murābaḥa (rent-seeking) syndrome,⁵⁸ which is the emphasis on loan-or debt-financing (even though this may be “asset-backed”)⁵⁹ by means of elaborate mark-up instruments to ensure lucrative, risk-free profit on the part of th efinancing institution, regardless of the economic situation of the borrower or the financial performance of the borrowing enterprise. This predilection for loan-/debt-financing results in the systemic marginalization of ventur ecapital financing (or commend, qirāḍ/muḍāraba) and financing by means of the business partnership (shirka, mushāraka) in which the financing institution or investor provides (i.e., gives instead of lends) capital and participates in the conduct and outcome of the enterprise, which is thus seen and treated as a truly common enterprise.⁶⁰

        To my limited knowledge (especially since I have taken a serious interest in economic issues only during the past two years or so), there is only one Islamic banking group in the whole world that is exclusively devoted to equity-financing and venture capital financing,⁶¹ while the rest are mainly devoted to conventional murābaḥa, rent-seeking instruments, with venture capital or commenda (qirāḍ), business partnership (sharika), and the goodly loan (qarḍ ḥasan) thrown in only as an afterthought to justify the label “Islamic.”

        Even when it comes to equity or venture capital financing, as in the case of that particular bank or rather venture capital investment company, the question arises as to whether the investment portfolio is spread out more or less evenly over both up-scale projects yielding high financial returns and medium- to small-scale ones yielding relatively low financial (but perhaps higher “social”) returns, or concentrated on the up-scale ones. If the latter, then it is no better in essence than conventional western venture capital firms, whose motivation is mainly very high profit margins over the short and medium terms, with little or no concern for contributing to, and participating in, the larger communal well-being in which a particular enterprise is located.

          In contrast, Islamic venture capital would be one whose investment port folio is more or less evenly spread out over both market-driven and community-driven productive investment projects. In this way equitable allocation and reallocation of productive wealth is built into the general business culture in which the focus is not on financial growth per se but, much more importantly, on communal well-being and cohesion. Such a way of doing business will still make money and generate moderate profit and even moderate growth over time up to a certain size, beyond which a part of the company could break off and become a separate, autonomous entity, thus preempting over-accumulation and over-concentration of capital and wealth in the hands of a few powerful individuals or organizations.

          The ideal company or corporate organizational structure would then be in the form of a management-cum-employee-owned enterprise (or common-ownership enterprise) instead of the present conventional structure in which ownership is largely vested in far-away absentee investors or shareholders (financially headquartered and coordinated for the most part at Wall Street) who don’t really care a jot about the enterprise except as a disembodied, money-making machine. This means we also have to really, really rethink the conventional notion of the corporation as a legal person.⁶²

          So, while the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE) willingly participates in the well-being of the community, the Wall Street Scoop Economy (WSSE) deliberately free-rides parasitically on communal wealth and sucks it dry, which explains the current system-wide financial and economic melt-down in the United States, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Iceland and Italy.⁶³

Rethinking Money, Finance and Economics

Of course, if we think along these radical (i.e., values-based-going-to-the-root-of-the-problem) lines, then we obviously have to rethink the concepts of‘ bank’ and ‘banking’,⁶⁴ including the mutually related concepts of ‘money’⁶⁵,cost’, ‘benefit’, ‘revenue’, and ‘profit’; the concepts of the ‘firm’ and the‘corporation’,⁶⁶ employer-employee and management-owner relationships;⁶⁷ the organization of labor and commerce, and ultimately the concepts of  economics’⁶⁸, ‘growth’⁶⁹, ‘wealth’⁷⁰ and ‘development’⁷¹ ; including the largely ‘unexamined concept of the GDP/GNP (Gross Domestic Product/Gross National Product) as a measure of well-being which has been so hegemonic over our economic thinking for the past five decades.⁷²

         It is beyond the scope of this general re-visioning to go into these re-thinking in any detail. I myself have started researching these issues only recently and am still in the process of critically synthesizing them within a coherent and viable counter-economic framework which engages conventional economics leading to a positive counter-economics and while systemically grounding itself in our worldview, tradition sacred law and history. But if we have more like-minded intellectuals, researchers and ulama joining hands and minds in systemically rethinking these foundational muʿāmala issues, then eventually something positive will bear fruit, intellectually and operationally, in the very near future, in shā Allāh. By way of example, I believe everyone should seriously consider Chris Cook’s very sound and practical ideas on “21st Century Islamic Finance,” based on various forms of “debt-free asset-based finance” and “mutual interest-free deficit-finance or credit” that are “entirely consistent with the values underpinning Islam.”⁷³

        It is also pertinent here to say that this manner of systemic rethinking has been taking place for some time amongst the more conscientious economic and social thinkers and intellectuals of the West, such as Karl Polanyi,⁷⁴ E. F. Schumacher,⁷⁵ Kenneth Boulding,⁷⁶ Bill McKibben,⁷⁷ Herman Daly,⁷⁸ Howard Zinn,⁷⁹ Noam Chomsky⁸⁰ and Hazel Henderson,⁸¹ including Mark Anielski (with his interesting book, Economics of Happiness),⁸² many of whose proposed solutions are inharmony, atleast in spirit, with the Islamic imperatives of giving, gifting, sharing, temperance, moderation, justice, mutuality and gratitude, as these were realized in the long history of our traditional, community-centered socio-economic institutions. As a case in point, I see much of the traditional Islamic economic ethos reflected in the “green economics” of Molly Scott Cato 83 and in Tim Watson’s economics of “growth-less” prosperity.⁸³

       Muslim economists, including intellectuals, policy makers, fuqahāʾ and ulama in general, should make it an aspect of their communal obligation (farḍ kifāya) to take a deep, critical and proactive interest in these constructive trends toward an alternative or counter-economics, and thereby contribute a systemic and creative Islamic viewpoint to the global post-economic discourse. One important aspect of this communal intellectual obligation would be for ulama, researchers and intellectuals to work together to rearticulate tradition alI slamic economic ethics⁸⁴ in contemporary terms, and then to systemically work out the implications of this ethical framework for what is actually happening on the ground now in the modern economy. Thus the IGE outlined here can be the basis of a comprehensive, long term Islamic Economics Research Program (IERP) leading to the eventual reclaiming and reviving of our civilizational heritage in the economic domain of life. We should view our tradition as the beacon of the present toward the future.

       In tandem with the growing worldwide trend away from the Scoop toward 85 the Gift economy, leading eventually to a future of global conviviality,⁸⁵ Muslims today should remind themselves (through the works of Professor Murat Cizakca, for instance⁸⁶ that they do have a 1000-year civilizational track record in developing a successful and prosperous global gift economy, and that they should start revisiting, reviving and reliving that track record,⁸⁷ both for their own well-being and for the well-being of humanity at large, and both for today and for the future: wa jaʿalnākum shuʿūban wa qabāʾila li yataʿārafū = and We have made you nations and tribes that you may become acquainted with one another (al-Ḥujurāt: 13).

wa man yashkur

fa innamā yashkuru li nafsihi

and whosoever gives thanks,

he gives thanks for the good of his own soul.⁸⁸

 

 

 

Adi Setia is Founding Coordinator of the Mu‘amalah Research Group (MRG), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM); Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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1. This is a revised, extended and fully documented version of a presentation originally delivered at three separate waqf workshops in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, organized by the National Awqaf Foundation of South Africa (AWQAF SA) between August1-8,2009. My thanks are due to the many committee members of AWQAF SA who made my ten day visit so enjoyable and fruitful, especially to Mr. Zeinoul Abedien Cajee, AWQAF SA’s founding Chief Executive Officer, for his gracious invitation to me. The original paper and related articles are published for limited circulation in the booklet, Adi Setia & National Awqaf Foundation of South Africa, Islamic Gift Economy and Selected Articles, and Waqf Institutions (Durban, South Africa: Friday Forum, 2009). This latest version is specially prepared for the Singapore Institute of Management 2-Day Colloquium & Workshop on the Islamic Gift Economy, Singapore, January 8-9, 2011, and further revised for publication here.

2. wa taʿāwanū ʿalā al-birri wa al-taqwā = and help one another in goodness and piety (al-Māʾida: 2).

3. tijāratun ʿan tarāḍin minhum = and trade by mutual consent among them (al-Nisāʾ: 29).

4. Natural refers to tangible physical resources found in the natural world, while cultural refers to intangible non-physical resources found in human culture as a result of human creative endeavor, such as knowledge, skills, customs, belief systems, moral norms, value systems and social institutions.

5. Though the natural world and its resources are physically finite or limited, yet these are abundant since they undergo a process of perpetual renewal and regeneration, a process which is termed in Islamic theology as tajdīd al-khalq (the divine renewal of creation). Cf. the economic argument against scarcity in Wolfgang Hoeschele, The Economics of Abundance: A Political Economics of Freedom, Equity and Sustainability (Farnham, Surrey, Gower, 2010).

6. Limited as a matter of biophysical reality, for there is a limit to how much we can eat or drink or wear at any one time. Also, the famous law of diminishing returns can also be applied to show that meeting more and more wants can result in diminishing returns or even negative returns from those realized wants; i.e., too much wanting is depriving.

7. Limited as a matter of ethico-moral imperative grounded in human nature; see Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1990); and idem, The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993). Cf. Amartya Sen, On Ethics and Economics(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).

8. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Qurʾānic verses are based on Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, The Glorious Qur’an: Text and Explanatory Translation (Makkah: Muslim World League, 1977).

9. al-Takāthur: 1; al-Humaza: 2.

10. Or: economics of plenitude. In this regard one can also say that there can be abundant and perpetual use of even “limited” resources when the “limits” of natural re-generative and carrying capacities are respected, thus limits need not entail scarcity. In short, there is in nature what corresponds to the Chomskyan “infinite use of finite (linguistic) means.”

11. This Islamic viewpoint is of course in direct contrast with the economics of scarcity taught and promoted in standard western economics textbooks. However, some futurist western thinkers are already thinking,in their own way,along these lines of abundance,as in Barry Carter, Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era (Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999); whereas Tim Jackson envisages a post neoliberal era of prosperity without growth in his Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009). Cf. Wolfgang Hoeschele, The Economics of Abundance: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity, and Sustainability (Farnham, Surrey: Gower, 2010) for “a systematic critique of the economic concept of scarcity.”

12. See the insightful article by William E. Rees, “Ecology Footprints and the Pathology of Consumption,” accessible online at http://www.ubcpress. ca/books/pdf/chapters/fatal/chapter1.pdf, accessed June 01, 2011.

13. Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough (Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005). His other book along this line of analysis is The Growth Fetish (Crow’s Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2003), which, from the Islamic point of view, would be the fetish or obsession with takāthur/jamʿ al-māl = growth/wealth accumulation. See also his interesting The Mystic Economist (ACT Australia: Willow Park Press, 1995).

14. Personal email communication; he is planning a doctoral study to elaborate further on this “convergence.”

15.On this,see Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Prolegomena to the Metaphysics of Islam: An Exposition of the Fundamental Elements of the Worldview of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2001); and his important Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1993). Cf. Serge Latouche, The Westernization of the World (London: Polity Press, 1995).

16. Although definitions of economics in the standard textbooks might vary, the phrasing given here is pretty much representative.

17. Such as N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, 3rd ed. (Mason, Ohio: Thompson South Western, 2004), 4, where he says that economics is “the study of how society manages its scarce resources.” Another popular textbook is Paul A. Samuelson & William D. Nordhaus, Economics, 18th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005), 4, where they say that “economics is the study of how society uses scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people,” and that “given unlimited wants, it is important that an economy makes the best use of its limited resources” (all emphases added).

18. As elaborated in Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, The Nature of Man and the Psychology of the Human Soul: A Brief Outline and Framework for an Islamic Psychology and Epistemology (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 1990).

19. John D. Drake, Downshifting: How to Work Less and Enjoy Life More (Berret Koehler, 2001).

20. Cf. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which emphasizes self-actualization; see Abraham Harold Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: HarperCollins, 1987).

21. For some critiques, see Muhammad Saleem, Islamic Banking: A $300 Billion Deception (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2006); idem, Islamic Banking, A Charade: Call for Enlightenment (Charleston, NC: Book Surge, 2006); cf. Timur Kuran, Islam and Mammon: The Economic Predicaments of Islamism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). I especially recommend the excellent, scholarly analysis by Mahmoud A. El-Gamal, Islamic Finance: Laws, Economics and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), who shows (pp. xi-(xii) that “despite the good intentions of its pioneers, Islamic finance has placed excessive emphasis on contract forms, thus becoming a primary target for rent-seeking legal arbitrageurs. In every aspect of finance—from personal loans to investment banking, and from market structure to corporate governance of financial institutions—Islamic finance aims to replicate in Islamic forms the substantive functions of contemporary financial instruments, markets, and institutions,” and proposes “reorientating the brand name of Islamic finance to emphasize issues of community banking, microfinance, socially responsible investment, and the like.” See also the BBC expose by John Foster, “How Sharia-compliant is Islamic Banking?” in BBC News, Friday, 11 December 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ business/8401421.stm. Cf. Tarek El Diwany, The Problem with Interest, 2nd ed. (London: Kreatoc, 2003), especially 135-195 passim.

22. The word ‘economy’ originally referred to “household management” (tadbīr al-manzil), and the primary duty of the householder is to ensure that the resources and revenues of the household, tangible and intangible, are managed prudently so that all the needs, material and spiritual, of the members of the household are met in such a way that none is marginalized, especially the weaker members, such as babies, young children, the handicapped, the elderly, including even pets and animals and plants of the household. In the classical Islamic system of philosophy, tadbīr al-manzil comes under the division al-ḥikmat al-‘amaliyya, or practical philosophy, which includes, apart from economics (management of the household), ethics (management of the self) and politics (management of society); see Yassine Essid, A Critique of the Origins of Islamic Economic Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1995). The definition of the IGE given here is a conceptual elaboration of this original meaning in the light of the worldview of Islam.

23. In the light of this redefinition of economics, what counts as “warranted” needs and wants would refer to what is warranted in the Islamic ethico-moral system of values, as encapsulated in the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah (Objectives of the Divine Law), and not to what finds warrant in subjective human whims and fancies leading to runaway consumerism; see Adi Setia (forthcoming), “The Significance of the Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿah for Directing Research in the Natural and Social Sciences.”

24. Details in Adi Setia, “Taskhīr, Fine-Tuning, Intelligent Design and the Scientific Appreciation of Nature” Islam & Science 2 (Summer 2004) 1, 7-32.

25. Mahmoud A. El-Gamal (Māḥmūd Amīn al-Jamal), trans., Financial Transactions in Islamic Jurisprudence, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dar al-Mouaser, and Damascus: Dar al-Fikr). This is a 2-volume translation of Wahbah al-Zuhaylī’s famous and authoritative al-Fiqh al-Islāmī wa Adillatuhū.

26. Translations of these terms into English have largely followed those given in Nuh Ha Mim Keller, trans. & ed., Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, new ed. (Beltsville, Maryland: Amana Publications, 1997).

27. There are lexical and technical, fiqhi differences in the meaning of these four terms, but they all denote the general meaning of giving away something of value for a worthy purpose. For instance, infāq means to spend something in support of a good cause, like to support your family or relatives (nafaqa) or to set up a charitable endowment (waqf).

28. A theologico-economic exploration of this theme is Marcus Braybrooke & Kamran Mofid, Promoting the Common Good: Bringing Economics & Theology Together Again (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 2006).

29. A serious study in English is Farishta G. de Zayas, The Law and Institution of Zakāt (Kuala Lumpur: The Other Press, 2003).

30. Kitāb al-Ishārat ilā Maḥāsin al-Tijārat wa Maʿrifat Qīmat Jayyid al-Aʿrāḍ wa Radiyyihā wa Ghushūsh al-Mudallisīn fīhā, which can be rendered in English as The Book of the Indicator to the Virtues of Commerce and to Recognizing the Value of Good and Bad Merchandise and Discerning the Adulteration of Merchandise by Swindlers, or briefly as The Indicator to the Virtues of Commerce; see al-Sayyid Muḥammad ʿĀshūr, Dirāsat fīal-Fikr al-Iqtiṣād al-ʿArab: Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn ʿAlī al-Dimashqī (Cairo: Dār al-Ittiḥād al-ʿArabī li al-Ṭibāʿa, 1973), 1-69 after p. 192; and al-Bishrī al-Shurabjī (ed.), al-Ishārat ilā Maḥāsin al-Tijārat (Cairo: Maktaba al-Kulliyyāt al-Azhariyya, 1977); complete English translation by Adi Setia, The Indicator to the Virtues of Commerce (Kuala Lumpur: IBFIM,2011).

31. Essid, Critique, 221.

32. Relli Shechter, “Market Welfare in the Early-Modern Ottoman Economy: A Historiographic Overview with Many Questions,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) 48 (2005) 2, 253-276; accessible online at http://www.bgu.ac.il/~rellish/publications/market_welfare.pdf.

33. Al-Imãm Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybãnī, Kitãb al-Kasb, ed. ʿAbd al-Fattãḥ Abū Ghudda (Aleppo: Maktab al-Maṭbūʿãt al-Islãmiyyah, n.d.); and also the edition by Suhayl Zakkãr (Beirut: Dãr al-Fikr,1997).

34. Michael Bonner, “The Kitãb al-Kasb attributed to al-Shaybānī: Poverty, Surplus, and the Circulation of Wealth,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (Jul.-Sep. 2001) 3, 10-427; idem, “Poverty and Charity in the Rise of Islam” in Michael Bonner, Amy Singer and Mine Ener (eds.), Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (New York: SUNY, 2003), 13-30; and idem, “Poverty and Economics in the Qur’an,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (Winter 2005) 3, 391-406.

35. There are a great number of books describing and analyzing the causes of the current global financial meltdown, but perhaps among the more accessible is the succinct volume by Dean Baker, Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (Sausalito, CA: PoliPoint, 2009). 

36. As discussed in ʿĀshūr, Dirāsat, 77-83.

37. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (San Francisco: Berrett- Koehler, 2004).

38. For instance, Nathan Lewis, Gold: The Once and Future Money (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007); and Deirdre Kent, Healthy Money, Healthy Planet: Developing Sustainability through New Money Systems (Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton, 2005).

39. See Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ḥadīth #4199 in the commentary of al-Imām al-Nawawī, al-Minhāj Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, 18 parts in 10 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿārif, 2000/1421), pt. 11, vol. 6, 87; see also the following ḥadīths #4200, #4201 and #4202 in the Chapter of Waqf.

40. Cleary’s translation. A good history of waqf is Murat Cizakca, A History of Philanthropic Foundations: The Islamic World from the Seventh Century to the Present (Istanul: Bogazici University Press, 2000).

41. Vandana Shiva et al., The Enclosure and Recovery of the Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights (New Delhi: Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, 1997).

42. In personal communication, Mohamed Elmeadawy points out that multinational corporations, driven by expansionism, growth and profit maximization, not only dominate strategic services of the nation in question and drain public money into their pockets, but also the people end up by not receiving the service at all; for the corporations, after buying at fire-sale prices promise quality services that they price at a range beyond what most of the poor can afford, and so the people can’t pay and hence can’t get the service, as was the case with water privatization in Bolivia in 1999 and later on in South Africa. See, for instance, David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters, The Age of Commodity: Water Privatization in South Africa (London: Earthscan, 2005).

43. Translation by Thomas Cleary, The Qur’an: A New Translation (Starlatch, www.starlatch.com, 2004), 271. Cf. Stig Ingebrightsen and Ove Jakobsen, Circulation Economics: Theory and Practice (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007); John Bowes, ed., The Fair Trade Revolution (New York: Pluto Press, 2011). See also Center for Partnership Studies, http://www.partnershipway.org/.

44.See the famous study by the French sociologist Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (London: Routledge, 1990). For a good insight into the intimate link between the gift and the economy of abundance instead of scarcity, see Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (London: Routledge, 2003); see also in this regard his seminal article extracted from that book, “The Original Affluent Society,” accessible at http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent. htm. Cf. E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people Mattered (Harper Perennial, 1989); idem, “Buddhist Economics,”http://www.smallisbeautiful.org/pdf/buddhist_economics/english. pdf. For a forceful debunking of the “self-interestedness” conception of human nature in modern economics, see also Marshall Sahlins, The Western Illusion of Human Nature (Cambridge: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008).

45.Justice Mahomed Jaybhay,“ The Spirit of Ubuntu,” Awqaf Insights (2007/1428), 0-12, on 10-11. Cf. Rachel E. Kranton, “Reciprocal Exchange: A Self-Sustaining System,” American Economic Review 86 (September 1996), 830-851.14

46. For more on gotong royong, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotong_royong. For gotong royong in action, see Floor Grootenhuis, “Yogyakarta Earthquake Community Recovery Grants supporting gotong royong” in From Poverty to Power: How Active Citizens and Effective States Can Change the World (Oxfam International, 2008), accessible at www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/downloads/FP2P/FP2P_Yogyakarta_Earthquake_CS_ENGLISH.pdf.

47. Communal events or functions where food is served.

48. See their website, www.awqafsa.org.za.

49. For some case studies of the Islamic Gift Economy, see Benjamin Soares, Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town (University of Michigan Press, 2005). See also Benjamin Soares, “The Prayer Economy in a Malian Town” (https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dspace/bitstream/1887/9400/1/ASC_1293978_001.pdf). For the Mamluk gift economy and the role of pious endowments within it, see Adam Sabra, Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam: Mamluk Egypt, 1215-1517 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); also Michael Bonner, Mine Ener and Amy Singer (eds.), Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (New York: SUNY, 2003); Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (New York: SUNY, 2002); Holger Weiss (ed.), Social Welfare in Muslim Societies in Africa (Stockholm: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2002).

50. For a brief, general analysis of the gift economy, see Gifford Pinchot, “The Gift Economy,” In Context 41 (Summer 1995), accessible at http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC41/PinchotG.htm. A book length treatment in the context of modern industrial societies is David J. Cheal, The Gift Economy (London: Routledge, 1988). Fractional reserve banking (FRB) is the basis of the present day monetary systems. In most countries, Islamic Banking and Finance too operates under this principle....FRB has effects on the ownership structure of assets in the economy, and that this effect violates the Islamic principles of ownership....money creation through FRB is creation of purchasing power out of nothing which brings about unjust ownership transfers of assets

51. Rais ‘Umar Ibrahim Vadillo, The Return of the Islamic Gold Dinar: A Study of Money in Islamic Law and The Architecture of the Gold Economy (Kuala Lumpur: Madinah Press, 2004).

52. Chris Cook, “21st Century Islamic Finance,” Awqaf Insights (2007/1428), 18-9.

53. Cf. the important econophysics article by Vladimir Z. Nuri, “Fractional Reserve Banking as Economic Parasitism: A Scientific, Mathematical Historical Expose, Critique, and Manifesto,” EconPapers, http://129.3.20.41/eps/mac/papers/0203/0203005.pdf.

54. Chris Cook, “21st Century Islamic Finance,” 19.

55. Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera and Moussa Larbani, “Ownership Effects of Fractional Reserve Banking: An Islamic Perspective,” in Humanomics, vol. 25, no. 2 (May 2009), 101-116. See also Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera and Moussa Larbani, “Seigniorage of Fiat Money and the Maqasid al-Shariʿah: The Unattainableness of the Shariʿah,” in Humanomics, vol. 22, no. 1 (2006); and idem, “Seigniorage of Fiat Money and the Maqasid al-Shariʿah: The Compatibility of the Gold Dinar with the Maqasid,” in Humanomics, vol. 22, no. 2 (2006). 

56. Cleary’s translation.

57. See especially the works of Susan George, Ill Fares the Land (Penguin, 1990); A Fate Worse Than Debt (Penguin, 1988); The Debt Boomerang (New York: Pluto Press, 1992); with Fabrizio Sabelli, Faith and Credit: The World Bank’s Secular Empire (Westview Press, 1994); and Whose Crisis, Whose Future? (Polity Press, 2010).

58. Tarik M. Yousef, “The Murabaha Syndrome in Islamic Finance” in Clement M. Henry and Rodney Wilson (eds.), The Politics of Islamic Finance (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 63-80.

59. As elaborated by, for instance, Mufti Muhammad Taqi Usmani, An Introduction to Islamic Finance (New Delhi: Idara Isha‘at-e-Diniyat, 999), 18-22, though he admits (on page 151) that “Murabahah is not a mode of financing in its origin. It is a simple sale on cost-plus basis.” He then proceeds to place strict conditions on it for it to be legally valid (151-154) and says that “It should be noted with care that murabahah is a border-line transaction and a slight departure from the prescribed procedure makes it a step in the prohibited area of interest-based financing” (153, last italics mine).

60. A good critical study is Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Islamic Law of Business Organizations: Partnerships (Kuala Lumpur: Other Press, 2002). Cf. Mark. A. Lutz, Economics for the Common Good: Two Centuries of Economic Thought in the Humanist Tradition (London: Routledge,1999).

61. Venture Capital Bank, set up in 2005, claims itself to be the first Islamic investment bank in the GCC and MENA region to specialize in venture capital; see its website, http://www.vc-bank.com.

62. Joel Bakan, Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press,2005); and Marjorie Kelly,The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy (San Francisco: Berret-Koehler, 2003).

63. Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall (eds.), The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century (Montreal: Global Research, 2010); Matt Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” Rolling Stone (July 13, 2009), 1082-1083, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29127316/the_great_american_bubble_machine.

64. Abdalhalim Orr and Abdassamad Clarke, Banking: The Root Cause of the Injustices of Our Time, rev. ed. (London: Diwan Press, 2009); cf. Nik Mahani Mohamad, Rethinking the Islamic Financial System (Kuala Lumpur: Saba Islamic Media, 2010).

65. See for instance the important work of Thomas Greco, Jr., The End of Money and the Future of Civilization (Chelsea Green, 2009); and his website www.reinventingmoney.com; and Deirdre Kent, Healthy Money, Healthy Planet: Developing Sustainability through New Money Systems Mydin Meera, Real Money: Money and Payment Systems from an Islamic Perspective (Kuala Lumpur: IIUM, 2009). Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton, 2005). Cf. Ahmed Kameel

66. Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997).

67. Susanna Hoe, The Man Who Gave His Company Away: A Biography of Ernest Bader, Founder of the Scott Bader Commonwealth (Wollastons, UK: Allison Printers, 1995).

68. Bill McKibben, Deep-Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007).

69. Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009); cf. Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003).

70. Juliet Schor, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth (New York: Penguin, 010).

71. Gilbert Rist, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London: Zed Books, 2003).

72.The basic problem with the GDP is that it does not differentiate between costs and benefits, and hence it sees both as productive output. Alternatives to the GDP include ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) and GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator), see “Progress,” and “Genuine Progress Indicator,” in Adbusters (August/September 2009), 33-35. For an alternative to the GNP, see Clifford W. Cobb & John B. Cobb, Jr., The Green National Product: An Alternative to Gross National Product (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994). In the small Buddhist country of Bhutan, the state uses its own home grown holistic Gross National Happiness (GNH) to replace the GNP; see Karma Ura and Dorji Penjore (eds.), Gross National Happiness: Practice and Measurement. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Gross National Happiness (Thimpu, Bhutan: Center for Bhutan Studies, 2009). I believe all Muslim countries should follow suit!

73. Chris Cook, “21st Century Islamic Finance,” 19-20; see also idem, “Limited Liability Partnerships as Development Mechanisms,” Awqaf Insights (2007/1428), 23-26. 

74. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957).

75. Ernst Freidrich Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper, 1989); see also his Good Work (New York:Harper & Row, 1979).

76. Kenneth E. Boulding, The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); see also his Beyond Economics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968).

77. Bill McKibben, Deep-Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007).

78. Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth: the Economics of Sustainable Development (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997); see also Herman Daly, John B. Cobb, Jr. & Clifford W. Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994).

79. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); see also the new, abridged teaching edition (New York: New Press, 2003).

80. Noam Chomsky, Profits over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999).

81. Hazel Henderson, Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy (West Hartford, Connecticut: Kumarian Press, 1999).

82. Mark Anielski, The Economics of Happiness: Discovering Genuine Wealth (New Society Publishers, 2007); cf. the important book on the intrinsic relation between civil happiness, civil society and civil economy, and how that relation was subverted, Luigino Bruni, Civil Happiness: Economics and Human Flourishing in Historical Perspective (New York: Routledge, 2006).

83. Molly Scott Cato, Green Economics: An Introduction to Theory, Policy and Practice (London: Earthscan, 2009); and Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009).

84. For instance, the economic ethics of al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī (d. 443/1060) as nicely summarized in Yasien Mohamed, The Path to Virtue: The Ethical Philosophy of al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī, An Annotated Translation, with Critical Introduction, of Kitāb al-Dharīʿah ilā Makārim al-Sharīʿah (Kuala Lumpur: ISTAC, 2006), 375-414; cf. the ethics of infãq (spending, provisioning) in Jaʿfar al-Dimashqī (circa 600 H), al-Ishãrah ilã Maḥãsin al-Tijãrah, trans. Adi Setia, The Indicator to the Virtues of Commerce (Kuala Lumpur: IBFIM, 2011).

85. Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973). See also Abdullah Sharif, Creating a World that Works for All (San Francisco: Berret-Koehler Publishers, 1999).

86. Murat Cizakca, A History of Philanthropic Foundations: The Islamic World from the Seventh Century to the Present (Istanbul: Bogazici University Press, 2000); idem, A Comparative Evolution of Business Partnerships: The Islamic World and Europe, with Specific Reference to the Ottoman Archives (Leiden: Brill, 1996); idem, “Ottoman Cash Waqfs Revisited: The Case of Bursa 1555-1823,” in Foundation for Science, Technology and Civilization Limited (June 2004), 1-20.

87. As is happening in Egypt, for instance; see Daniela Poppi, “From Religious Charity to the Welfare State and Back: The Case of Islamic Endowments (waqfs) Revival in Egypt,” EUI Working Papers, RSCAS No. 2004/34, 1-12.

 88. Luqmān: 12.

IMAM MUHAMMAD IBN AL-HASAN AL-SHYBANī

ON EARNING A LIVELIHOOD:

SEVEN EXCERPTS FROM HIS Kitāb al-Kasb

Adi Setia

Muḥammad al-Shaybānī and his Kitāb al-Kasb are introduced, and then seven translated excerpts from the work are presented to illustrate the classical Islamic understanding of the role and purpose of earning a living and of work in general. 

Keywords:Muḥammadal-Shaybānī;Kitābal-Kasb; Earning a livelihood, communal solidarity; wealth; agriculture; commerce.

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The Author of Kitāb al-Kasb¹

He is the mujtahid² Imam, the great jurisconsult of ʿIrāq, Abū ʿAbdullāh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. Farqad al-Shaybānī. His father was of the people of Ḥarastā (a town or suburb to the east of Damascus, Syria), and emigrated to ʿIrāq, where Muḥammad was born to him in Wāsiṭ (ca.131/748). His father then took him to Kūfa and raised him there. From an early age he manifested profound intelligence and exemplary character, and he was a strong, healthy and handsome boy.

   He learned the Qurʾān and Arabic language, attended classes on hadiths, and, when he was fourteen years old, began studying with Imam Abū Ḥanīfa. He remained with him for four years, receiving instructions in fiqh ( jurisprudence) and hadith, after which he completed his education in fiqh under the guidance of Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798), may Allah have mercy on them all. He also learned from other great scholars of the time in Kūfa, Baṣra, Madina and al-Shām (Syro-Palestine), including Imam Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 1 61/778) in Kūfa, Imam al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) in Syria and Imam Mālik (d. 179/795) in Madīnah, with whom he studied for three years³.

  Eventually he became the foremost jurisconsult of ʿIrāq after Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf, his scholarly accomplishments became widely known, which attracted manygiftedandaccomplishedstudentstohimfromfarandwide.Amongsome ofhismoreprominentstudentswereImamAbūʿAbdallāhMuḥammadb.Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (founder of the Shāfiʿī legal school), Asad b. al-Furāt al-Qayrawānī (d. 213/828) (liberator of Sicily and documenter-compiler (mudawwin), of the Mālikīlegalschool),andShaykhSaḥnūn(d.240/854)(thenarrator-compilerof the Mudawwanah), and many others. He was also, indirectly, a great influence on Imam Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 855/241) (founder of the Ḥanbalī legal school), for he was once asked, “From whence did you acquire these legal subtleties?,” whereupon he replied, “From the books of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan⁴.” Among his prominent students too were Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838), the celebrated author of Kitāb al-Amwāl (Book of Wealth), an early work on what we might now term as macro-economics or public finance⁵.

Imam Muḥammad passed away in 189/804 in Rayy, Persia⁶. It is reported that he was seen weeping on his death-bed. When asked the reason, he said, “What if Allah Most Exalted makes me stand before Him and asks, ‘ pursuit of My good pleasure?’ What can I reply?”⁷ Someone dreamt of Imam Muḥammad! What brought you forth to Me? Jihād in My way? Or the Muḥammad after he passed away and asked about his condition, whereupon he said that he was forgiven because of his learning⁸.

   He left behind a legacy of many valuable and well-received scholarly works,⁹ largely in the field of ḥadīth and fiqh based on the principles laid down by Imam Abū Ḥanīfa. These include Kitāb al-mabsūṭ or Kitāb al-aṣl, al-Jāmiʿ¹⁰ al-saghīr,¹¹ al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr,¹² al-Siyar al-saghīr,¹³ al-Siyar al-kabīr,¹⁴ al-Ziyādāt,¹⁵ and Ziyādāt al-ziyādāt¹⁶. He also compiled a book of traditions, Kitāb al-āthār,¹⁷ in which he narrated mostly from his main teacher, Imam Abū Ḥanīfa, and from about twenty other teachers.¹⁸ Kitāb al-kasb, recently translated into English, is considered to be the last work he wrote before he passed away.¹⁹ Perhaps one of the reasons for the wide appeal of the Kitāb al-Kasb²⁰ (and also perhaps of his other works) is the fact that the author was no ivory- tower, armchair jurisconsult, but one who was concerned about grounding his legal conclusions not only in textual evidence (nuṣūṣ) but also in the everyday realities of political, social and commercial life. It is reported of him that he used to go out to visit the dyers (ṣabbāghūn) in order to be able ask them personally about their work and their transactions among themselves. Shaykh al-Kawtharī documented this report in his biography of Imam Muḥammad, Bulūgh al-Amānī, and commented in admiration:

Look at this great mujtahid, how he did not make do with what he possessed of knowledge of the Book and the Sunnah, and the opinions of the Companions and Followers, and others of the jurisconsults of all the lands….but rather saw himself to be in need of being familiar with the manners of transacting (wujūh al-taʿāmul) among the practitioners of the trades (arbāb al-ṣināʿāt), and the difference between the manners of the old custom (al-ʿurf al-qadīm) and those of the fresh new custom (al-ʿurf al- ḥadīth al-ṭarīʿ),that his words might be secured from errors in any aspects that pertain to the explication of the rulings of the Divine Law (al-Sharʿ).²¹ 

Kitāb al-Kasb

Kitāb al-Kasb²² (=The Book of Earning a Livelihood) is, in itself,²³ a small booklet expounding on the imperative of earning a livelihood for those who are able to do so, and the various juristic and ethico-moral dimensions in respect thereof The book is dictated along the traditional (āthārī) rather than strictly juristic (fiqhī) approach to the topic, and hence each legal position expounded on is supported by adducing one, two or more Prophetic hadiths or reports (āthār) and narratives (akhbār) from the Companions and the Followers, as well as relevant verses from the Holy Qurʾān.²⁴

   The book was narrated and transmitted from the author by his student Muḥammad b. Samāʿa al-Tamīmī,²⁵ and it is this narration and transmission which formed the basis of the commentary (sharḥ) on it by the learned and erudite Imam al-Sarakhsī.²⁶ His commentary exhibits a remarkably nuanced commonsensical and rational approach toward balancing the different juristic interpretations of the traditions and reports with a meticulous care to present as objectively as possible the views of opposing legal positions before embarking to refute them and to argue for the accepted Ḥanafī legal position. I personally find this lovely blending of traditional and rational argumentation (al-istidlāl wal-iḥtijāj bil-manqūl wal-maʿqūl) to be very intellectually appealing, thereby keeping at bay much of the inevitable tedium that tends to set in during the careful, measured pace of translating a classical Arabic text, or any serious, scholarly text for that matter. 

   One major difficulty noted by many scholars who study al-Sarakhsī’s commentary on the Kitābal-Kasb is the fact that it isquite a delicate task to tease out al-Shaybānī’s original wordings from the much more profuse wordings of the commentator himself. That task of teasing out and disembedding one from the other will definitely warrant a careful separate study and research in itself, which obviously I have not attempted to undertake here. However, in most cases, whenever al-Sarakhsī starts a sentence by, say, the words “He says (qāla),” we can be quite confident that the sentence is attributable to al- Shaybānī himself, and it is thereby put in quotation marks in the translation to differentiate it from the other sentences of the commentator. Other aspects of the commentary, such as the rebuttal of the Karrāmites, clearly point to issues and controversies that only arose during the time of al-Sarakhsī (d. 483), who flourished some two and a half centuries after the passing away of al-Shaybānī.²⁷

   Although many readers would deem the Kitāb al-Kasb to fall under the purview of the formal discipline now known as economics, al-Sarakhsī actually informs us that Imam Muḥammad wrote it to expound on the meaning of asceticism or detachment from the world (al-zuhd). He originally planned to write a long work of one thousand chapters or sections on the topic, but due to a sudden illness which overtook him, he only managed to complete a small  portion of it, which is theKitāb al-Kasb. It was his first composition on the subject of prudence (al-waraʿ) and abstinence (al-zuhd), and the manner in which such praise worthy character traits are to be steadfastly safeguarded from corruption through the unavoidable vexations, tribulations and temptations of working for one’s livelihood. 

   Here we have a work that explains how economic discipline can and should find its meaning and purpose within the ambit of spiritual discipline. Shaykh ʿAbdul Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda, Allah be well-pleased with him, considers this operative embedding of prudence and abstinence into the every-day mundaneness of earning a living to be a grand idea on the part of Imam Muḥammad: 

This is a lofty and subtle thinking (fikrat ʿāliya daqīqa) on the part of Imam Muḥammad, for he has embarked on expounding on the crux of abstinence and prudence (raʾs al-zuhd wal-waraʿ), which is wholesome livelihood (ṭīb al-maksib). Allah’s is his achievement and with Allah is his reward (li-Llāhi darruh wa ʿalā Allahi ajruh).²⁸

 

   Thus one closes the book and comes away with the profound realisation that the operational test of true abstinence and prudence—or true inner worth and spiritual discipline in general—lies in the way one conducts oneself through the every-day trials, tribulations, temptations, worries and vexations o fworking for one’s sustenance, whether by trading in goods and merchandise, working for a wage, or practicing a craft.

Earning a Livelihood as a Service to Communal Solidarity

In a nutshell, a person is prudent and abstinent when he takes care to work in a wholesome enterprise (al-kasb al-ṭayyib) in order to provide for his needs and the needs of his family and dependents, and, if there is surplus, to provide there from for the poor and needy in his community, while at the same time, avoiding the illicit, the abhorred, and the questionable, and turning away—as far as possible—from materialistic covetousness, and from indulging in an overtly opulent lifestyle that one may avoid casting rancour into the hearts of the poor. Only then can his whole life be a life of solidarity with the poor, and of total worship in humble devotion to his Creator, to Whom he shall be returned, and to Whom he shall be accountable for all the blessings and enjoyments bestowed on him in temporal earthly life. Hence in this regard, earning a livelihood in relation to the devotional life is as the ritual purification (al-ṭahāra) in relation to the canonically prescribed prayers (al-ṣalāt)—the one is seen to be dependent on the other, and the two are thereby integrated into a seamless whole.

      We may extend and expand on this reflection to come to the necessary insight that observing personal, individual worship (ʿibadāt) is not sufficient in order for a person to live a fully Islamic life—or to realise Islam as a complete way of life—unless at the same time he takes care to cultivate the interpersonal transactional relationship (muʿāmalāt) required to support it; thus the inextricable linkage between farḍ ʿayn (individual duty) and farḍ kifāya (communal duty), and between personal devotion and social relation, so nicely alluded to by Imam Muḥammad al-Shaybānī with his statements, “In earning a livelihood there is the meaning of cooperation in acts of devotion (fīl-kasb maʿnā al-muʿāwana ʿalā al-qurab),”²⁹ and “Permissible earning is in the category of cooperation in acts of devotion and obedience (al-kasb al-ḥalāl min bāb al-muʿāwana ʿalā al-qurab wal-ṭāʿāt).”³⁰ Hence, in order to observe ʿibāda, we need to cultivate an appropriate muʿāmala to support and nurture it; the one simply cannot do without the other.³¹

 Translated Excerpts from Al-Shaybānī on Earning a Livelihood

There are quite a few published editions of the Kitāb al-Kasb. I surveyed four of them, namely the one embedded in Imam al-Sarakhsī’s encyclopedic thirty- volume fiqh compendium, Kitāb al-Mabsūṭ, the one prepared by Dr. Suhayl Zakkār, the one by Dr. Aḥmad Jābir Badrān, and the one by Shaykh ʿAbdul Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda.

    I find the last two to be the most reliable, but Abū Ghudda’s edition is clearly the basis for the later Badrān edition, which quite openly acknowledges its indebtedness to the earlier edition, especially with regard to the collation of a number of different manuscripts, and hadith documentation.³² Although in the end I opted for Abū Ghudda’s edition on which to base my translation—not least because he was a well-known, authoritative scholar of hadith and fiqh (and also because I had already started to use it before coming across Badrān’s edition)—readers may occasionally find in the Badrān’s editon useful, informative annotations to the text not found in the Abū Ghudda’s edition.

   Shaykh Abū Ghudda has meticulously documented and evaluated all the prophetic traditions narrated in the Kitāb al-Kasb, except for the very few which he could not trace in the standard, published sources. In my translation, I have omitted repeating in to Abu Ghudda’s detailed documentation and evaluation of these traditions and reports, and limited myself to only mentioning the source of a tradition in general, such as Muslim or al-Bukhārī or al-Ṭabarānī, while referencing to Abū Ghudda’s detailed documentation in the footnotes for the benefit of more serious and scholarly readers who may want to pursue the sources of the hadiths further by directly consulting his Arabic edition of Kitāb al-Kasb.

     I have also found myself benefitting immensely from Shaykh Abū Ghudda’s other annotations to the text, and have gladly made use of them in my translation with proper referencing to the relevant page or pages and footnotes in his edition. In the relatively few places in the text where he was silent, and where I deem annotations to be warranted in order to render the text more understandable to readers, I have rendered those annotations myself, but on the whole I have left the translation lightly annotated.

    To render the translation more readable I have omitted the use of square brackets altogether, and only used round brackets throughout. Bracketted transliterated Arabic terms indicate terms or words already found in the original Arabic text, while bracketted English words or terms are my own to render the whole sense of the sometimes terse and pithy expressions in the original more accessible to readers, but I should hope that I have kept these to the barest minimum.

Excerpt 1: The Ranks of Earning and Their Legal Rulings (Marātib al-kasb wa aḥkāmuhā)³³

Earning is of several ranks. (The first is) the level (of earning) which is indispensable for everyone. This means that earning by which a person can lawfully strengthen his spine (mā yuqīmu bihī ṣulbuh) is individually incumbent on everyone, for the discharge of the obligatory duties (iqāmat al-farāʾiḍ) cannot be attained except by it; and that by which the discharge of the obligatory duties are attained is (in itself) obligatory. If he thereafter does not strive to earn more than what is necessary, he is at liberty (fī saʿatin) in respect thereof, because of the statement of the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, “Whoever enters upon morning in peace over his flock (sirb) and healthy (muʿāfan) in his body, having food for his day, it is as though the entire world has fallen into his possession.”³⁴

      The Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said to Ibn Ḥubaysh,³⁵ may Allah be pleased with him, advising him, “A morsel (luqmah) with which you assuage your hunger, and a piece of cloth (khirqah) with which you conceal your shame³⁶ (sawʿah), and if there is (also) for you a shelter (kinn) which shelters you, then (all) that is good; and if there is for you a riding animal (dābba) which you ride, then it is most excellent (fa bakhin bakhin).³⁷

    This is when he is not in debt (dayn),³⁸ but if he is in debt, then it is mandatory on him to earn an amount that pays off his debt, because paying off debts is incumbent on him as a personal duty (mustaḥaqqun ʿalayhi ʿaynan), (for) the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, "Debts are to be paid off (al-dayn maqḍiyy),”³⁹ and by earning this is attained.

    Likewise if he has dependants like a wife and small children, then it is personally obligatory for him to earn an amount that is sufficient for (upkeeping) them (qadr kifāyatihim), because providing (al-infāq) for his wife is incumbent on him ʿal(mustaḥaqq 'alayh), (for) Allah Most High says, Keep those women in the manner you live, according to your means (al-Ṭalāq: 6) which means, “provide for them according to your means,” and this is in the reading (qirāʾah) of Ibn Masʿūd, may Allah be pleased with him.

   Allah Most Exalted, Most Glorious, says, And it is the responsibility of the father to provide them⁴⁰ with food and clothing properly. No soul is burdened beyond its capacity (al-Baqara: 233). He, Most Exalted, Most Glorious, says, And let one whose provision is limited spend of what Allah has given him (al-Ṭalāq: 7). This duty is most surely fulfilled with earning. The Prophet, may Allah bless and gives him peace, says, “It is sinful enough for a person to neglect those whom he is responsible to support.”⁴¹ Hence safeguarding oneself (al-taḥarruz) from committing sins (al-maʾāthim) is an obligation.

   The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Verily, your soul has a right over you, and your family has a right over you, so give to each right owner (dhī ḥaqqin) his right.”⁴² However the obligation to the latter is lower (in degree) than to the former,⁴³ for the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says “...then (feed) those whom you support.”⁴⁴ If he earns more than that which he stores for himself and for his dependants, then he is at liberty to do so, for it is narrated that the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, had food for his dependants stored up for a year, after he had (earlier) forbidden that,⁴⁵ according to a narration that he, may Allah bless and give him peace, said to Bilāl, may Allah be pleased with him, “Give away O Bilāl, and do not fear any decrease from the Owner of the Throne (al-ʿarsh).”⁴⁶ The later (hadith) abrogates the earlier.

    If he has impoverished elderly parents (abawān kabīran muʿsiran), he is obliged to earn enough to provide for them because providing for them is a binding duty on him even if he is destitute as long as he is able to earn. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, said to a man who came to him and said, “I wish to fight in the path of Allah (al-jihād) with you.” He said, “Do you have parents?” He said, “Yes.” The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, said, “Return to them and fight,”⁴⁷ that is, earn and provide for them.

   Allah Most High says, And keep company with them courteously in this world (Luqmān: 15). It is not keeping courteous company to leave them both to die starving when he is able to earn; however, this is lesser than the previous case in obligation, because of what has been narrated in a hadith that a man said to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless and give him peace, “I have one dīnār with me.” The Prophet of Allah, may Allah bless and give him peace, said, “Spend it on yourself.” He said, “I have another one.” The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, said, “Spend it on your dependants.” He said, ” I have (yet) another one.” the Prophet may Allah bless and give him peace, said, “Spend it on your parents (wālidayka)⁴⁸.

   As for non-parents among the unmarriageable kin (dhaw al-raḥim al- maḥram), it is not obligatory for a person to earn to provide for them, because providing for them is not a binding duty on him except in the case of one who is affluent (illā bi iʿtibār ṣifat al-yasār), but it is recommended (yundab) to earn and provide for them, strengthening the ties of kinship (ṣilat al-raḥim); and this is something recommended (mandūb) by the Law. The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “There is no good in one who does not like (to have) wealth in order to thereby connect ties with his kinfolk, and to thereby honor his guest (ḍayf), and to thereby be beneficent to his friend (al-ṣadīq).”⁴⁹

    The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, said to ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, may Allah be pleased with him “I desire for you a desire of wealth (arghabu laka raghbatan min al-māl),” until he said (the words), “The most excellent virtuous wealth (al-māl al-ṣāliḥ) is for the virtuous man who renews relations with his kinfolk.”⁵⁰ The severing of kinship is prohibited as supported by the statement of the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, “Three things are suspended by the Throne (al-ʿArsh): blessings (al-niʿma), trust (al-amāna) and kinship (al-raḥim). Blessings say, ‘I was shown ingratitude and not appreciated’; trust says, ‘I was betrayed and not nurtured’; and kinship says, ‘I was severed and not joined.’”⁵¹

   The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “The joining of (bonds) of kinship prolongs (one’s) lifespan, while the severing of kinship takes away blessing from (one’s) lifetime.”⁵² And the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says in what he narrated from his Lord, Most Exalted, Most Glorious, “I am the Benevolent (al-Raḥmān), and these are the wombs (wa hiya al-raḥimu); I derived for them a name from my name, so whoever joins (ties of) kinship, I shall join him, but whoever cuts (ties of) kinship, I shall cut him (off).”⁵³

   There is something in the neglect to provide for kinfolk which leads to the severance of kinship (qaṭīʿat al-raḥim); hence it is recommended to earn in order to provide for them.

Excerpt 2: Permissibility of Earning to Amass Wealth though Safety Lies in Not Doing So (Jawāz al-kasb li jamʿ al-māl maʿa kawn al-salāma fīl-imtināʿ min dhālika)⁵⁴

Thereafter the matter becomes broadened (muwassaʿ) for him, so if he wishes he earns and amasses wealth, and if he wishes he desists (from doing so), for some of the (pious) Predecessors (al-salaf), may Allah Most High be merciful to them, amassed wealth and some did not, and thus we know that both ways are permissible.

   As for accumulation (al-jamʿ), this is due to what was narrated from the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, (that he said), “Whoever seeks what is permissible (ḥalāl) of the world with temperance (mutaʿaffifan) shall meet Allah Most High with his face like the moon (al-qamar) on the night of the full moon (al-badr); and whoever seeks it with conceit (mufākhiran) and excess (mukāthiran) shall meet Allah Most High while He is angry at him.”⁵⁵ 

   As for accumulation (al-jamʿ), this is due to what was narrated from the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, (that he said), “Whoever seeks what is permissible (ḥalāl) of the world with temperance (mutaʿaffifan) shall meet Allah Most High while He is angry at him.” This shows that accumulating wealth in a moderate way is allowed. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and give him peace, used to say in his supplication, “O Allah, render my sustenance most bountiful during my old age and toward the ending of my lifespan.”⁵⁶ And so it was, for it was accrued for him, toward the end of his life, forty lactiferous sheep (shātan ḥalūbatan), Fadak,⁵⁷ and a share in Khaybar.⁵⁸

    As for abstaining from amassing wealth, this way is also permissible because of the narration (ḥadīth) of ʿĀʾisha from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless and give him peace, “If there were for the progeny of Ādam two dales (wādiyan) of gold, he would wish to (add to) that a third one, and the belly of Ādam’s progeny will not be filled up except by dirt (al-turāb); and Allah relents to those who repent.”⁵⁹ It was said (by some), that this (hadith) was among what was recited in the Qurʾān in the chapter of Yūnus (Jonah), during the second or third bowing (of the prayer, al-rukūʿ), then its recitation was abrogated (intasakhat tilāwatahu) and (only) the narration remained (baqiyat riwāyatahu).⁶⁰

   The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Perished be wealth!” And in a narration, “Perished be the owner of gold and silver.”⁶¹The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “The accumulators (al-mukthirūn) are destroyed except he who says, ‘Thus and thus (hākadhā wa hākadhā),’”⁶² that is, he gives away in charity (yataṣaddaq) in every respect. The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Satan says, ‘The owner of wealth shall not be saved from me with respect to three things: either I will render it attractive in his eyes and so he will amass it unlawfully, or either I shall render it despicable in his eyes and so he will give it away unlawfully, or either I shall render it lovable to him and so he will retain what is due to Allah from it.”⁶³

   In this there is clarification that abstaining from amassing wealth is safer, and there is no blotch (ʿayb) on those who choose the path of safety. 

Excerpt 3: In Earning There is the Meaning of Cooperation in Acts of Devotion (Fīl-kasb maʿnā al-muʿāwana ʿalā-l-qurab⁶⁴⁾ 

(Imam) Muḥammad, may Allah have mercy on him, then explains that in earning there is the meaning of cooperation (al-muʿāwana) on acts of devotion (al-qurab) and obedience (al-ṭāʿāt),⁶⁵ regardless of the nature of the earning.⁶⁶ He says to the extent that in the (work of the) ropemaker (fattāl al-ḥibal),⁶⁷ the maker of jugs (al-kizān)⁶⁸ and earthen jars (al-jirār), and the work of the weavers al-hawaka), there is cooperation on acts of devotions and obedience (to Allah), (for it is not possible to perform the prayer except by (first performing the ritual of) purification (al-ṭahāra), and this requires a jug (al-kūz) with which to pour water, a leather bucket (dalw) and rope (rishā) with which to draw water (from the well), and requires the covering of (one’s) nakedness (al-ʿawra) for performing the prayer which is only possible by the work of the weavers (al-hawaka).⁶⁹

    Thus we know that all of that are among the means of cooperation (asbāb al-taʿāwun) on rendering obedience (iqāmat al-ṭāʿāt), and this (fact) was indicated by ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him, in his statement, “Do not revile the world, for the most excellent mount of the believer is the world to the hereafter (la tasubbū al-dunyā, fa niʿma maṭiyyat al-muʾmin al-dunyā ilā al- ākhirah).”

   Abū Dharr, may Allah be pleased with him, when a man asked him about the best of deeds after belief, said, “Praying and eating bread.” The man looked at him as one taken aback (kal-mutaʿajjib), and so he said, “If it were not for bread, Allah Most High would not have been worshipped.” This means that by eating bread, a person is able to keep body and soul together, and is thereby enabled to render (religious acts) of obedience.

Excerpt 04: Permissibility of Lowly Earnings (Ibāḥat al-makāsib al-dāniya)⁷⁰

The legal position of the vast majority of the jurisprudents (jumhur al-fuqahāʾ), may Allah Most High have mercy on them, is that all the (different types of) earnings (al-makāsib) are the same with respect to permissibility (al-ibāḥah). 

     Some of the ascetics (al-mutaqashshifa) said, “It is not allowed to undertake earnings that are considered to be lowly (al-danāʾa) in the custom of the people (ʿurf al-nās) except when in dire circumstance (ʿinda al-ḍarūra),⁷¹ due to the statement of the Prophet, blessing and peace be on him, “It is not for the believer to demean (yudhill) himself.”⁷² The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, (also) says, “Verily, Allah Most High likes noble things (maʿālī al-umūr), and He dislikes inferior ones (safsāfahā).”⁷³ The inferior (al-safsāf) is that which demeans a person due to its baseness (khissa).

    Our argument (ḥujja) for that⁷⁴ is the statement of the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, “Among the sins are sins that cannot be expiated (yukaffir) (even) by fasting and prayer (al-ṣalāt).” And it was said (to him),“ And what will expiate them, O Messenger of Allah?” He said, “Vexations (al-humūm) in earning a livelihood (al-maʿīsha).”⁷⁵ The Prophet, may Allah Most High bless and give him peace, (also) says, “Seeking the permissible (ṭalab al-ḥalāl) is like the battling of the warriors. Whoever retires in the evening worn out (bāta wāniyan) in seeking the permissible, retires as one who is forgiven.”⁷⁶ The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “The best of actions (afḍal al-aʿmāl) is earning to provide for dependents,”⁷⁷ without differentiating between the various types of earning.

    Even if there was nothing in earning except abstinence (al-taʿaffuf) and independence (al-istighnā) from asking (al-suʾāl), it would (still) have been recommended, for the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Asking⁷⁸ is the worst resort of the servant (al-suʾāl akhir kasb al-ʿabd),”⁷⁹ that is, he remains in his debasement (yabqā fī dhillatih) until the day of resurrection. 

    The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, said to Hakim b. Ḥizām, may Allah be pleased with him, or (he said) to someone else, “An earning in which there is diminishment in status (naqṣ al-martabat) is better for you than that you ask from people, regardless of whether they give you or refuse you.”⁸⁰

    Moreover, the disparagement (al-madhamma) in the custom of the people is not connected to earning (as such) but to betrayal of trust (al-khiyāna),⁸¹ breaking promises (khulf al-waʿd), swearing false oaths (al-yamīn al-kādhiba),⁸² and to the meaning of miserliness (maʿnā al-bukhl). 

Excerpt 5: Types of Earnings (Anwāʿ al-makāsib)⁸³

Earnings are four types: hired employment (al-ijāra),⁸⁴ commerce (al-tijāra), agriculture (al-zirāʿa), and craftsmanship (ṣināʿa). All these are equally permissible according to the vast majority of the jurisprudents, may Allah Most High have mercy on them.

Excerpt 6: Agriculture is Not At All Reprehensible⁸⁵ (al-Zirāʿa laysat madhmūma muṭlaqan)⁸⁶

Some⁸⁷ say that agriculture is reprehensible due to what was narrated that the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, saw something of the implements of plowing (ālāt al-ḥirātha) in the house of a people, and he said, “None of these enters a people’s house except that they become debased (mā dakhala ḥādhā bayta qawmin illā dhallu).”⁸⁸ The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, was asked about the statement of Allah, the Great the Sublime, If you obeyed those who scoff, they would turn you back on your heels (Āl ʿImrān: 149):⁸⁹ “Is it (about) (al-taʿarrub)?” He said, “No, but it is agriculture (al-zirāʿa).” Al- taʿarrub is dwelling in the desert (suknā al-bādiya) and abandoning emigration (tark al-hijra).⁹⁰

    ʿAbdullāh b. ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “When you buy and sell on credit (tabāyaʿtum bil-ʿīna), and pursue the tails of oxen (adhnāb al-baqar), you shall become (so) lowly until you are coveted (by your enemies, yuṭmaʿ fī-kum).”⁹¹

     Our argument for this⁹² is what was narrated that the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, “farmed in al-Jurf.”⁹³ The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Seek sustenance in the bowels of the earth (khabāyā al-arḍ),”⁹⁴ meaning (seek sustenance by) farming. The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, (also) says, “The farmer (al-zāriʿ) is trading (yutājir)⁹⁵ with his Lord.” The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, used to own Fadak and a share (sahm) in Khaybar, and his food (qūt) toward the end of his lifetime was from there.⁹⁶

    ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, used to own a piece of land in Khaybar called Thamghā.[97] Ibn Masʿūd, al-Ḥasan b.ʿAlī, and Abū Hurayra, may Allah be pleased with them, used to own agricultural lands (mazāriʿ) in al-Sawād.⁹⁸ They farmed those lands and paid their land tax (kharāj). Ibn ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with them both, used to have farmlands in al-Sawād and other places.

      The interpretation (taʾwīl) of the narrated traditions (al-āthāral-marwiyya)⁹⁹ is that these refer to the situation when all the people become preoccupied with agriculture and turn away from fighting in the path of Allah (al-jihād) so much so that their enemies¹⁰⁰ covet them. All this (meaning) is narrated in the previously mentioned hadith of Ibn ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with them both, who said, “...and you abstain from fighting in the path of Allah (qaʿadtumʿan al-jihād), and you become debased (dhalaltum) until you are coveted (by your enemies).” 

     But as for when some of them occupy themselves with jihād and some with farming, then in the vocation of the farmer there is assistance for the fighter (al-mujāhid), while in the vocation of the fighter there is defence (dafʿun ʿan)of the farmer. The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “The believers are as a building (bunyān); parts of which fortify the other.”¹⁰¹

Excerpt 7: Is Commerce Superior Or Farming? (al-Tijāra afḍal am al-zirāʿa)¹⁰²

Thereafter, our teachers (mashāyikh), may Allah Most High have mercy on them, disagree on (the relative merits of) commerce and farming. Some of them say that commerce is superior because of the statement of Allah Most High, And others traveling the land seeking the bounty of Allah and others fighting for the sake of Allah (al-Muzammil: 20). The meaning of “traveling the land” is commerce, and Allah gives precedence to it in mention over jihād, which is the hump peak of the religion d(sanām al-dīn) and the way of the Messengers (sunnat al-mursalīn).

     Because of this, ʿUmar, may Allah be pleased with him, said, “Indeed, that I die between the flanks of my camel (bayna shaʿbatay raḥlī)¹⁰³ while traveling the land seeking the bounty of Allah is more to my liking than to be killed fighting for the sake of Allah.”¹⁰⁴ The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “The trustworthy merchant (al-tājir al-amīn) is with the noble virtuous people (al-kirām al-barara) on the day of Resurrection.”¹⁰⁵

     Most of our scholars, may Allah Most High have mercy on them all, are of the view that farming is superior to commerce because it is of wider benefit a person fortifies his backbone¹⁰⁶ and derives strength to render obedience (toaʾammunafʿan).For through the vocation of farming is produced that by which Allah). The Prophet said, “The best of people is he who is most beneficial to people (khayr al-nāsi man huwa anfaʿu lil-nās),”¹⁰⁷ hence to be occupied with what is more generally beneficial is superior. 

    (Farming is also better) because charitable giving (al-ṣadāqa) in farming is also more manifest, for the people, animals (al-dawābb) and birds (al-ṭuyūr) inevitably (lā budda) partake of what is earned by the farmer, and all that is (counted as) charity for him. The Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace, says, “Never does a Muslim plants (gharasa) a tree (shajara), and a person or animal or bird partakes of it, except that it becomes for him a charity.”¹⁰⁸ And in a narration (riwāya), “What theʿāfiya eat of it becomes for him a charity.” The ʿāfiya are birds which go out searching for their sustenance and then return to their nests (awkār).

    When it is in the custom of people (ʿādat al-nās) to belittle earning that is lacking in charitable giving (al-taṣadduq) like the vocation of weaving (al-ḥiyāka) even though it partakes of assisting in the performance of the prayer, then we know that earning which involves more charitable giving is superior.

    As for the interpretation of what they have commented (taʿallaqū)—(with regard to the fact that) it has been narrated from Makhūl and Mujāhid, may Allah Most High have mercy on them both, that the meaning of “traveling the land (al-ḍarb fīl-arḍ)” refers to the quest for knowledge (ṭalab al-ʿilm)—we say concerning it that that is superior, for (Imam) Muḥammad, may Allah MostHigh have mercy on him, has (already) pointed to that in his statement, “The quest for earning is obligatory just as the quest for knowledge is obligatory.”¹⁰⁹ Therefore the comparison of this with that is proof that (the dictum) “the quest for knowledge is obligatory” is higher in rank than the other.

 

 

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1. Much of this section on the life and works of al-Shaybānī is based on Shaykh Abdul al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda’s introduction to his excellent edition of the Kitāb al-Kasb, which is in turn based on, among others, Imam al-Kawtharī’s biography of Imam al-Shaybānī, Bulūgh al-amānī fī Sīrat al-Imām Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, and earlier classical biographical dictionaries, such as al-Dhahabī’s Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ. See Abu Ghudda (ed.), Kitāb al-kasb (Aleppo: Maktab al-Maṭbuʿāt al-Islāmiyya, 1417/1997) (henceforth “Abū Ghudda”), 11 ff.

2. One qualified to exercise independent ijtihād or competent to “infer expert legal rulings from foundational proofs within or without a particular School [of jurisprudence]”; see the glossary in Gibril Fouad Haddad, The Four Imams and Their Schools: Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad (London: Muslim Academic Trust, 2007), 451–452 and 458.

Adi Setia is Coordinator, Worldview of Islam Research Academy (WIRA), and Director, Titiwangsa Advisory Group (TAG). E-mail: adisetiawang-This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

3. The version of Imam Mālik’s al-Muwaṭṭaʾ narrated by Imam al-Shaybānī has been translated beautifully into English; see The Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imam Muḥammad, trans. ʿAbdussamad Clarke and Mohammed ʿAbdurraḥmān (London: Turath Publishing, 2004).

4. Translated as Reliance of the Traveller by Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Beltsville,Maryland: Amana: 1997), 1077 x257. 

5. Ugi Suharto, Kitāb al-Amwāl: Abū ʿUbayd’s Concept of Public Finance (KualaLumpur: ISTAC, 2005), 34–35, and 213 n. 39.

6. Keller, Reliance, 1077 x257. Rayy is at the outskirt of present-day Tehran..

7.Haddad, Four Imams,15.

8. Ibid.

9. A lucid overview of his corpus of writings is given in the editor’s introductionto Ḥasan b. Manṣūr Awzjandī al-Farghānī Qāḍī Khān, Sharḥ al-Ziyādāt of al-Shaybānī), ed. Qāsim Ashraf Nūr Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turath al-ʿArabī, 2005), 51–58.

10. Ed. Abū al-Wafāʾ al-Afghānī, 5 vols. (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1990).

11. See the commentary on it by Imam al-Ṣadr al-Shahīd ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Mānara al-Bukhārī al-Hanafī, Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿ al-saghīr, ed. Ṣalāḥ ʿAwwād JumuʿaʿAbdullāh al-Kubaysī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2006).

12. Abū al-Wafāʾ al-Afghānī (ed.), (Hyderabād: Lajnah Ihyāʾ al-Maʿārif al-Nuʿmāniyya, 1937).

13. Edited, translated and annotated by Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi as The Shorter Book on Muslim International Law: Kitāb al-Siyar al-Ṣaghīr by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (Islamabad: Islamic Research Institute, 1998).

14. See al-Sarakhsī, Sharḥ al-Siyar al-Kabīr, 4 vols. (Hyderabad, 1916–1917); see also Majid Khadduri’s useful and detailed study, The Islamic Law of Nations: al-Shaybānī’s Siyar (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,1966), 41–57.

15. See the commentary on it by Ḥasan b. Manṣūr Awzjandī al-Farghānī Qāḍī Khān, Sharḥ al-Ziyādāt, ed. Qāsim Ashraf Nūr Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turath al-Arabī, 2005).

16. See the commentary on it by Imam al-Sarakhsī, al-Nukat: Sharḥ Ziyādāt al-Ziyādāt li al-Shaybānī, ed. Abū al-Wafāʾ al-Afghānī (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, n.d.).

17. The Kitāb al-Āthār of Imam Abū Ḥanīfa, Narrated by Imam Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, trans. Abdussamad Clarke (London: Turath Publishing,2007).

18. Further details are in the editor’s introduction to Muḥammad al-Shaybānī, Kitāb al-Kasb (al-Iktisāb fīl-rizq al-mustaṭāb), ed. Aḥmad Jābir Badrān Cairo: Markaz al-Dirasāt al-Fiqhiyya wal-Iqtiṣādiyya, 2004) (henceforth Badrān”), 72–83. See also Haddad, Four Imams, 15. A critical account, though dated, of his life and works is Khadduri, Islamic Law of Nations,22–40 passim.

19. See Suhayl Zakkār (ed.), Risāla fīl-kasb (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1997), 18.

20. Badrān, 141–142.

21. Abū Ghudda, 47–48; Badrān, 140–141.

22. Full English translation with notes by Adi Setia, The Book of Earning a Livelihood Kuala Lumpur: IBFIM, 2011).

23. That is, if considered apart from the much more lengthy commentary of  Imam al-Sarakhsī in which it is embedded. Abū Ghudda (21) says that the original text of the Kitāb al-Kasb is not extant, and that what we now have is a version that is embedded in its commentary by al-Sarakhsī, who, unfortunately, does not differentiate between the original text and his commentary on it.

24. Zakkār, Risāla, 27.

25. He is the learned Imam, Qāḍī of Baghdād, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Samāʿah b. ʿUbaydallāh al-Tamīmī al-Kūfī, student and companion of Imam Abū Yūsuf and Imam Muḥammad al-Shaybānī. He was born in 1 of 103 years (Abū Ghudda, 60, 65–66; and Badrān, 168–169 n. 2). 30/747 and passed away in 233/848, and thus lived to the ripe old age of 103 years (Abū Ghudda, 60, 65–66; and Badrān, 168–169 n. 2).

26. He is the Grand Imam Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Abī Sahl Abū Bakr al-Sarakhsī (of Serakhs in present-day Turkmenistan), student of Imam Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Azīz al-Ḥalwānī, and author of the thirty volume work on Ḥanafī jurisprudence, al-Mabsūṭ. He passed away in Fergana (in present-day Uzbekistan) in 483/1090. For more on him, see Keller, Reliance, 1093 x319; see Abū Ghudda, 59–60, and Badrān, 166–167 n. 1.

27. Abū Ghudda, 21. Al-Sarakhsī has embedded his commentary on the Kitāb al-Kasb in his encyclopedic fiqh compendium al-Mabsūṭ, and it constitutes a book (kitāb) of its own in volume thirty of the Mabsūṭ (That is, vol. 30,2 al-Shāfiʿī’, and published in 31 volumes in Beirut by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2001). 69–321 of the edition prepared by Abī ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ʿḤasan al-Shāfiʿī’, and published in 31 volumes in Beirut by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2001).

28. Abū Ghudda, 20.

29. Ibid., 136.

30. Ibid., 164.

31. See Adi Setia, “Muʾamala and the Revival of the Islamic Gift Economy,” Islam & Science (Summer 2011), 67–88.

32. Badrān, 148–149.

33. Abū Ghudda, 121–131.

34. Narrated by al-Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah and al-Bukhārī in al-Adab al-mufrad Abū Ghudda, 122 n. 1).

35. Abū Ghudda (122 n. 2–3) discusses in some detail on the actual identity of this Companion.

36. That is, private parts of the body.

37.  Narrated in Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid, and by al-Ṭabarānī in al-Awsaṭ (Abū Ghudda,23 n. 2).

38. That is,this level of earning should suffice for a person when he is not indebted to anyone.

39. Narrated by Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, and Ibn Mājah (Abū Ghudda, 123 n. 3).

40. That is, to provide for the mothers and children.

41. Narrated by Muslim, Abū Dāwūd and al-Ḥākim (Abū Ghudda, 124 n. 4).

42. Narrated by al-Bukhārī and al-Tirmidhī (Abū Ghudda, 124 n. 5).

43. That is, you are first obliged to provide for yourself and then for your family or your dependants.

44. That is, begin with feeding your own self and then those who are depending on you for provisions. Narrated in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and by Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī in Masāʾil al-Imam Aḥmad (Abū Ghudda, 125 n. 1).

45. Narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Abū Ghudda, 125–126 n. 2).

46. Narrated by al-Ṭabarānī (long discussion in Abū Ghudda, 127 n. 1).

47. Narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Abū Ghudda, 128 n. 1).

48. A hadith similar in meaning but different in wording is narrated by Abū Dāwūd (Abū Ghudda, 128 n. 3).

49. Narrated by Ibn Ḥibbān (Abū Ghudda, 129 n. 1).

50. Narrated by al-Ḥakim in al-Mustadrak and Aḥmad in al-Musnad (Abū Ghudda, 129, n. 2).

51.  Al-Suyūṭi in al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaghīr traced it to al-Bayhaqī in Shuʿab al-īmān (Abū Ghudda, 130, n. 2).

52. Narrated by al-Quḍāʿī in Musnad al-Shihāb (Abū Ghudda, 130 n. 3).

53.  Al-Haythamī in Majmaʿ al-zawāʾid says it is narrated by al-Bazzār in Kashf al-astār (Abū Ghudda, 130–131, n. 4).

54. Abū Ghudda, 131–136.

55. Narrated by Abū Nuʿaym in al-Ḥilya and al-Bayhaqī in Shuʿab al-īmān (Abū Ghudda, 131, n. 1)

56. Narrated by al-Tabarānī in al-Awsaṭ (Abū Ghudda, 132 n. 1).

57.  A rich and prosperous garden oasis to the north of and near Khaybar; on its surrender to the Muslim army following the capture of Khaybar, see Martin Lings (Abū Bakr Sirāj al-Dīn), Muḥammad, His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (Kuala Lumpur: A.S. Noorden, 1983), 267–268.

58. An oasis about two hundred and fifty kilometer from Madina.

59. Narrated by Aḥmad in al-Musnad (see long discussion in Abū Ghudda, 133 n. 1).

60.  See long discussion in Abū Ghudda, 133 n. 1.

61. Narrated by Imam Aḥmad in al-Musnad (Abū Ghudda, 134 n. 1).

62. Narrated by al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Mājah, and Aḥmad (Abū Ghudda, 135 n. 1).

63. Narrated by al-Ṭabarānī, Muslim, al-Nasāʾī and al-Tirmidhī (Abū Ghudda, 35 n. 2).

64. Abū Ghudda, 136.

65. That is, helping one another toward piety and devotion to Allah.

66. That is, so long as it is permissible (ḥalāl).

67. Literally, twiner of ropes.

68. Jugs of clay or tin.

69. That is, covering one’s nakedness requires cloth which is produced by the weaving of the weavers.

70. Abū Ghudda, 136–140.

71. That is, when one is hardpressed to earn a living and there is only lowly work available.

72. Narrated by al-Tirmidhī, Ibn Mājah and Aḥmad (Abū Ghudda, 137 n. 1).

73. Narrated by al-Kharāʾiṭī in Makārim al-akhlāq, al-Ṭabarānī, al-Ḥākim, and al-Bayhaqī (Abū Ghudda, 137 n. 2).

74. That is, for permissibility of lowly earnings.

75. Narrated by al-Ṭabarānī, al-Haythamī, Abū Nuʿaym (Abū Ghudda, 137 n. 3).

76. Al-Suyūṭī in al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr traces this hadith to al-Bayhaqī in Shuʿab al-īmān, and it is also found in Kanz al-ʿummāl; Abū Ghudda confirms it to be a weak hadith (71–72 n. 3).

77. Narrated by Ibn Lāl and al-Daylamī as documented in al-Suyūṭī’s al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaghīr (Abū Ghudda, 138 n. 1).

78. That is, begging.

79. That is, asking or begging from people should be the last (ākhir) resort after all else fails, like trying but failing to find work, or being debilitatingly handicapped; it can also mean that asking and begging from people is the most debased (akhir) form of work for a person. Abū Ghudda says that this is a mawqūf hadith which is only linked up to a Companion, namely, Qays b. ʿĀṣim al-Minqarī al-Tamīmī (see long discussion in Abū Ghudda, 138–139 n. 2).

80. A mawqūf hadith actually linked to ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, may Allah be pleased with him (Abū Ghudda, 139 n. 1).

81. Also breach of faith or deception.

82. Also false swearing or lying under oath.

83. Abū Ghudda, 140.

84. That is, to allow oneself to be hired to do a job or to render a service in return for a fee, wage, or payment.

85. That is, not demeaning or looked down upon.

86. Abū Ghudda, 140–146.

87. Probably in reference to some jurisprudents.

88. Narrated by al-Bukhārī (see long explanation of this hadith in Abū Ghudda, 140 n. 1).

89. Mawqūf hadith, linked up to ʿAlī, may Allah be pleased with him, narrated by Ibn Abī Ḥatim and documented in al-Durr al-Manthūr (Abū Ghudda, 142 n. 2).

90. Reference here is to the life of the bedouin.

91. Actually a marfūʿ hadith, narrated by Abū Dāwūd, Aḥmad and al-Dūlābī (Abū Ghudda, 142 n. 4). A marfūʿ hadith is a hadith which is linked back to the Prophet, may Allah bless and give him peace. As explained by Abū Ghudda (143 n. 4), al-ʿīna is that a person sells to another a merchandise on credit up to a certain term, and then the seller buys from the buyer the same merchandise in cash at a spot price that is lower than its credit price. By this transaction the buyer on credit obtains ready money for selling the same thing in cash back to the original seller, but what the former has owed to the latter is more than the ready money he received. So on the one hand the original buyer gets ready money, and the original seller gets more profit by selling on credit rather than in cash. This is also a roundabout way to lend money on interest, hence Abū Ghudda says, “This is a stratagem among the stratagems of usury (ḥīlah min ḥiyal al-ribā)!” See also the definition in Saʿdī Abū Jayb, al-Qāmūs al-Fiqhī: Lughatan wa Iṣṭilāḥan (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1988), 270; and in Muḥammad ʿImārah, Qamūs al-muṣṭalaḥāt al-iqtiṣādiyya fīl-ḥadārat al-Islāmiyya (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1993), 399–400. “Pursuing the tails of oxen” refers to farming and plowing the land, that is, agricultural activities.

92. That is, for saying that agriculture is not at all lowly or reprehensible.

93. Narrated by Ibn Zabālah; according to Nūr al-Dīn al-Samhūdī in Wafāʾ al- wafā bi-akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafā, al-Jurf or al-Juruf is a place in Madina, about three miles in the direction of Shām (Syria) (Abū Ghudda, 80 n. 1).

94. Narrated by Ibn ʿAsākir in Tārīkh Dimashq, al-Dāruquṭnī in al-Afrād, al- Bayhaqī in Shuʿayb al-īmān (Abū Ghudda, 143 n. 2).

95. Abū Ghudda (143 n. 3) says he has not come across this hadith.

96. See long exposition in Abū Ghudda, 132–133 n. 2.

97. Narrated by al-Bukhārī (Abū Ghudda, 144 n. 2).

98. By al-Sawād is meant the Sawād of Iraq (Sawād al-ʿIrāq). The term sawād refers to every place on which there are farms and villages, or to rural agricultural regions in general.

99. That is, the preceding Prophetic hadiths and traditions of the Companions which apparently disparage involvement in farming and agriculture.

100. That is, have plans for attacking, raiding and conquering them.

101. Narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim (Abū Ghudda, 146 n. 1).

102. Abū Ghudda, 146–148.

103. That is, to die on the camel saddle.

104. Narrated in al-Suyūṭī’s al-Durr al-manthūr, and in Kanz al-ʿummāl (Abū Ghudda, 72 n. 1).

105. Narrated by Ibn Mājah, al-Ḥakīmin al-Mustadrak, al-Tirmidhī (AbūGhudda, 146 n. 4).

106. That is, gives strength to his body.

107. Narrated by al-Quḍāʿī in Musnad al-Shihāb (Abū Ghudda, 102 n. 1).

108. Narrated by al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and al-Tirmidhī (Abū Ghudda, 147 n. 2).

109. That is, at the beginning of section 2; see Setia, Book of Earning a Livelihood,

 

 

THE ISLAMIC GIFT ECONOMY:

A BRIEF STATEMENT

1. What is the Islamic Gift Economy?

The Islamic Gift Economy (IGE) is an integrative economic system that is autonomous and prosperous on its own ethical and structural principles while in constructive engagement with the currently dominant neoliberal capitalist system. IGE is based on the operative principles of cooperation  (taʿāwun/muʿāwanah),  mutual consent  (tarāḍin), and partnership   (muʿāmalah/mushārakah), and these are in turn founded on the principal ethics of compassion  (raḥmah/iḥsān), gratitude   (shukr), generosity  (karāmah),  moderation/judiciousness  (iqtiṣād),  accountability  (muḥāsabah) and  responsibility/integrity  (amānah). While Islamic, these ethical principles also resonate very well with the ethical systems of other major world religions such as Buddhism and Christianity. 

    Metaphysically, IGE is grounded in the foundational psycho-cosmological outlook expressed in the belief and knowledge that the natural and cultural resources of the world are abundant, while the material needs and wants of human beings are limited by sufficiency (kifāyah) and should be thus limited. The outward quantitative growth in material prosperity are bounded by parameters of sufficiency (kifāyah) beyond which growth becomes qualitative and is directed inward towards the cultivation of immaterial prosperity expressed in terms of happiness, balance and peace in regard to personal fulfillment, family cohesion, social relationship, cultural enrichment and communal solidarity. In short, IGE is directed towards the cultivation of Right Livelihood for the Common Good.

    The Islamic Gift Economy can thus be defined as the provisioning and sharing—by mutual giving and receiving through fair social and commercial exchange—of natural and cultural abundance for realizing material and spiritual wellbeing. This definition takes into consideration that the world and humankind are not only material or physical in nature but, more fundamentally, they are also spiritual and have a higher, metaphysical significance. They serve a cognitive and moral purpose that transcends their immediate physicality or sensuality; namely, a purpose which is indicative of a higher, more encompassing Reality from which they have originated, on which they are dependent, in which they are embedded, and  to which they respond and are ultimately accountable.

2. What Constitutes a Gift?

The elements constituting a gift are basically six, namely (i) benefit, (ii) value, (iii) relevance, (iv) goodness, (v) licitness, and (vi) ownability. An economic exchange of goods and services that are constituted by these six basic elements will be a fair, just and equitable exchange serving both personal good and the common good. Here, the foundational notion of the ‘gift,’ or rather,  gifting, giving and provisioning, is significant, for a deep reflection will show that economic exchange has less to do with taking than with gifting, and hence, ultimately more about serving wider, communal/public rather than narrow, individual/private interests. As a matter of fact, even the so-called individual ‘private interest’ that is served in formal commercial exchange is inseparably embedded into the larger fabric of communal ‘public interest’, hence the commercial is never in spite of the communal. The Gift Economy is the Economy of Togetherness.

       The culture of the Gift is the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening the community. The Gift Economy speaks of our inter-connectedness, togetherness, our common humanity and the responsibility to each and yet to all that flows from our mutual connections. The Gift Economy realises that people are people through other people; it sees a person, an individual as being-with-others and not being-alone or being-isolated. It prescribes how we should relate to others, in that “ being-with-others” is all about the pursuit of personal good in the service of the common good. Thus the Gift Economy is also the traditional African ubuntu economy, as well as the traditional Malay gotong-royong (mutual-help, cooperative and participatory) economy.

3. The Gift Economy in the West and East

It is also pertinent here to say that this manner of systemic rethinking of what constitutes a true economy has been taking place for quite some time amongst the more conscientious economic and social thinkers and intellectuals of the West, such as Karl Polanyi, E. F. Schumacher, Kenneth Boulding, Bill McKibben, Herman Daly, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Hazel Henderson, Mark Anielski, Molly Scott Cato, Tim Jackson, Juliet Schorr and Charles Eisenstein, among other like minded thinkers, economists and philosophers in East and West, past and present, too many to cite here.

    Also, the many interfaith dialogues over the past few years between Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Christians (and even secular humanists) on engaging the modern economy and its monetary system have all converged on the imperative of re- integrating economic life into the socio-ethical discursive and structural framework of compassion, giving, gifting, sharing, temperance, moderation, justice, mutuality, participation and gratitude, such as was realized in the long history of the traditional, community-centered socio-economic institutions and practices amongst the world’s peoples. 

4. The Gift Economy as the Circulative Economy 

The Gift Economy as the Circulative Economy can be expressed in brief in the following three main points: 

     (a) When every one gives, every one also receives, and none is left out, and none is marginalized.

     (b) The Gift Economy is an economy of mutual giving and receiving; of earning and provisioning; of a healthy interdependence between rich and poor whereby the surplus value of the rich is reinvested in the poor.

     (c) This Gift Econony is an economy of virtuous circulative exchange between rich and poor, not a vicious monopolistic exchange between rich and rich; hence wealth is always in circulation among people and not hoarded or controlled by a select few.

5. The Gift Economy as the Economy of Embeddedness 

This can be expressed in the following set of principles: 

•  The material economy is embedded in the moral economy. 
•  The physical is embedded in the spiritual.
• The technical is embedded in the ethical.
•  The market is embedded in the cultural.
•  Economy is embedded in ecology.
• Commercial exchange is embedded in social exchange.
• The individual is embedded in the communal.
•  Self interest is embedded in public interest.
•  The short-term is embedded in the long-term.
•  The temporal is embedded in the eternal.
•  The sectoral is embedded in the total.
•  Financial returns are embedded in social returns.
•  The ideal is embedded in the real.
•  The financial sector is embedded in the real sector.
• Personal good is embedded in the common good.
•  The means of exchange are embedded in the ends of exchange

6. Some Salient Ethical Elements of Gifting

• raḥmah = mercy, compassion
• ‘adl = justice, equity, fairness
• shukr = gratitude, appreciation
• iḥsān = generosity, magnanimity
• tawāzun= moderation, balance
• ta‘affuf = temperance
• amānah = responsibility, accountability
• khilāfah = trusteeship, stewardship
• zuhd = abstinence, detachment
• qanā‘ah = contentment
• kifāyah = sufficiency
• ta‘āwun = cooperation, solidarity
• nuṣḥ = good counsel, transparency
• tasāwī, mumāthalah = equivalence, equity.

7. Operationalising the Islamic Gift Economy

The Islamic Gift Economy is operationalised through educational and training programs; through creating the appropriate enabling social, commercial and legal structures; and through initiating pilot projects on the ground for re-empowering local economic resilience and to provide proofs of concepts; and all these are facilitated through strategic collaboration with like-minded policy makers, professionals, non- govermental organizations, state agencies, community leaders, intellectuals, scholars, activists, business people and researchers, including ʿulama (scholars), fuqahaʾ (jurists), shuyūkh (elders), imāms (community leaders) and muftīs (community jurisconsults), and both religious and civic leaders in general. 

8. Conclusion 

Since the 2007-2008 (and still ongoing) credit crunch, which has caused a lot of hardship to many communities across the globe, many thinking and conscientious intellectuals and scholars in the East and West are working very hard to work out in theory and in practice long-term systemic solutions for redirecting the economy to serve concrete, flesh and blood people and communities rather than faceless, impersonal, abstract profit-maximizing banks and corporations. The Islamic Gift Economy can be read as a real, positive and viable Muslim contribution towards realising those long term solutions for the common good of all humanity and all life on earth, āmīn!.

Reflections on the islamic gift economy (IGE)

by

Adi Setia

(This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

 

A note to Readers: The following are my personal reflections on the meaning and elaboration of the Islamic Gift Economy in various exchange contexts. These reflections arose rather spontaneously out of spirited discussions with like-minded friends who are critical about Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) and concerned about the current economic and financial turmoil. Please note that the overall tone here is rather informal.

 

1. Business is Giving Good Advice

When you really think about it, business in Islam is also about giving good advice, e.g., you sell a thing only after all relevant true and correct information about it has been given to the buyer, so that the buyer truly benefits from the purchase. That is transparency (nuṣḥ) and fair dealing (ʿadl) in Islam, and an aspect of what is meant by “gift” in the Islamic Gift Economy (IGE). We are not allowed to take undue advantage of anyone’s innocence or circumstance. Fair dealing also underlies the Fair Trade movement in the West. This is of course in contrast to modern ‘marketing’ and ‘advertising’ that is all premised on khidā’ (deception) and window-dressing, including now “green-washing” to take advantage of people’s increasing concern for preserving socio-ecological well-being. But how many “pious” Muslims today are proud to have a BA or MA in Marketing and work as Marketing Executives in monopolistic corporations while gleefully oblivious of the big, perilous gulf between nuṣḥ and khidā’?

2. Convergence of Thought on the IGE

The conceptual parameters of the Islamic Gift Economy (al-Iqtiṣād al-Infāqī or al-Iqtiṣād al-Iḥsānī) is elaborated in my translation of Imam Shaybānī’s Kitāb al-Kasb (The Book of Earning a Livelihood), in Appendix 1 (pp.157—191). Everything about the IGE is rooted in the Qur’an, Sunnah, al-Salaf al-Ṣāliḥ, the Great Imams like al-Shaybānī, al-Khallāl, al-Ghazālī, al-Muḥāsibī, Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, al-Lubudi, ‘Uthman dan Fodio and and many others. So there is convergence of thought amongst our classical scholars on these conceptual parameters. The challenge is to be structurally and systemically self-consistent in our work to revive true mu‘amalah on the basis of these parameters and avoid allowing these parameters to be hijacked and corrupted by people who are heavily invested in conventional secular economics or in the so-called Islamic Banking and Finance (IBF) industry. Even the Christians are agreed with us on the Gifting framework as the basis of socio-economic exchange and on moving away from the silly, nihilistic, dogmatic obsession with scarcity chasing after wants towards true livelihood for the common good. On this, please see the detailed Appendix III of the Book of Earning a Livelihood reporting on our fruitful 5-day dialogue with them in Sabah, Malaysia, in October 2011. Some one read my translation and coined the term ‘zuhdonomics’ (zuhd + nomics), because in the IGE framework, zuhd (abstinence) and earning a livelihood (kasb) go hand in hand. However, I suggest we stick to the term Islamic Gift Economy’ in English and ‘al-Iqtisad al-Ihsani’ or ‘al-Iqtisad al-Infaqi’ in Arabic as too many fancy-sounding terms may confuse the issue in people’s mind and and scatter our focus.

Now the next task is to go beyond verbal, conceptual elaboration to actual application to everything we do in socio-economic exchange. Everything that we have learnt and practised in modern economics, management, accounting, investment, business, finance, etc., has to be transformed accordingly. This means we also have restructure Islamic Banking and Finance away from centralised ribawi/hiyali money laundering for the affluent toward decentralised debt-free, equity- and asset-based community investment structures under local control and ownership. This also entails doing away with the terms Islamic Finance and Islamic Banking altogether.

The ulama and fuqaha must abandon IBF altogether and embrace IGE totally. For starters, in all masjids, madrasahs and universities there should be lessons on the Kitāb Ādāb al-Kasb wa al-Ma‘īshah of Imām al-Ghazālī, or on Imam al-Shaybāni’s Kitāb al-Kasb. And then intellectuals, academics and researchers must work to translate these traditional, classical wisdom and insights into modern economic terms, and the professionals and business people implement them in their occupations and enterprises and commercial methods, and so on and so forth. Varsities should introduce courses on the science of earning and livelihood and on a new economics redefined as the science of earning and provisioning for the common-good. And so remind, for the reminder benefits the believers.

3. Adab, Fiqh, Mu‘amalah & the Role of the Ulama

When respected and well-known ulama, fuqaha and mufti give explicit public endorsement to the IGE (though they may opt to call it by different names) and write their own learned articles and books or booklets expounding on it by drawing from their own vast learning and experience, the Muslim masses will be brought to embrace it and withdraw from corrupted IBF. It is time for them to openly and explicitly call a spade a spade with regard to the IBF mess and its deliberate, systemic corruption (ifsād) of mu‘amalah, which happens when the ethico-moral substance of adab is taken away from the formal, contractual form of fiqh just so it could piggy-back on and fit into the imperative of ribawi capitalism and draw sustenance from it. They just have to announce in a big global loudspeaker: “The IBF Emperor has no clothes on,” and wake people up from this self-imposed collective mass delusion. Without substantive adab, fiqh can be twisted any way you like to fit into any silly scheme you like, and Imam al- Ghazālī wrote the Iḥyāʾ (see the very first book on knowledge = Kitāb al-‘Ilm) precisely to admonish the fuqaha of his time against that futile excercise in self-deception and in deceiving others through the fallacy of formalism. No wonder some of the fuqaha of his time didn’t like it and burned the Iḥyāʾ in protest. And that’s precisely why Professor Attas is so much against this futile short-sighted legalism and ḥiyalī (legal fictional) acrobatics, which only make the problem worse by giving pseudo-solutions for facilitating convenience over conscience. Livelihood ideas and initiatives like Permaculture and IGE and so on can only prosper in our own network of independent community-rooted enterprises and academies—our own counter-academia—and Bill Mollison actually has a document detailing the imperative of setting up our own autonomous academia. If these wholesome ideas are pursued in the current myopic university system, they will definitely be corrupted and subverted to serve totally alien, nihilistic meta-agendas serving Mammon instead of Islam and the Common-Good. With the widespread revival of true comprehensive mu‘amalah amongst ourselves as a community we shall be able to fund all our civilizational revival initiaves with our own internally generated and enriched resources instead of having to go begging around far and wide for hand-outs from the indifferent Gulf states or apply for grants from the Templeton Foundation. Stop begging (su’al) and start earning (kasb), and regain our self-respect, dignity and prosperity,inshāʾAllāh.

wa man yattaqiLlāha yajʿal lahu makhrajan

wa yarzuqhu min ḥaythu lā yaḥtasib  

'Who so fear Allah, He will show them a way out, and give them sustenance from sources he anticipates not.” 

And taqwā is definitely the way forward, and we all know that for certain.

4. Investing & the Imperative of Personal Responsibility

When we put our money in impersonal banks or the stock markets, we become passive investors, alienated from any awareness of how our money is being used and for what purpose. We abscond personal responsibility for the good or bad use of our money. For all we know, our money in Citibank, Barclays or HSBC may be used to produce WMDs like cluster bombs shattering to bits the limbs and lives of our brethren—men, women and children—in Chenya, Yemen, Palestine or Pakistan or Afghanistan ( http://www.realecontv.com/videos/us/cluster-bomb s-r-us.html), or funding Monsanto’s seeds of destruction, or even senseless isrāfī (dissipative, wasteful) pies-in-sands projects in Dubai, or multi-billion dollar extravangaza like the London Olympics. It is really silly of us to forgo tabayyun(due diligence) with regard to whom we entrust our hard-earned money and wealth, and think that our investments in banks and stock-markets are value-neutral, whereas we know for a fact that these institutions are value- and interest- laden; hence the question is: laden with what values and what interests—Islamic values and interests or Mammonic ones? We are not allowed to entrust our money to fools, and so, much less to evil doers. Where is our sense of self-accountability in this regard before we are taken to account by the One Who is Quick in taking into account even a single atom of our deeds and enjoyments in life?

 So, when we really come to think about it, we need to move away from passive, impersonal, disembedded investing to active personal embedded investing. This means that it is our duty as investors of conscience to personally identify and invest in locally relevant community-rooted wholesome projects for the common-good, which, in turn, means creating our own ethical businesses, and that means going back to ‘Ilm al-Iktisāb wa al-Infāq 101 (the Science of Earning & Provisioning 101), which entails studying, learning and applyling both the fiqh and adab of mu‘amalah, which means everyone taking lessons in Imam al-Ghazālī’s Kitāb Adab al-Kasb wa al-Maʿīshah (Book of the Proper Conduct of Earning and Livelihood), quite apart from the studying and understanding the standard fiqh of muʿamalah manuals, and so on and so forth. Without this systemic  downstream to midstream to upstream revival of true responsible, comprehensive and integrative muʿamalah as outlined above, we can forget about reviving viable Islamic communities in control of their own autonomous ethico-moral space for formal and informal exchange—we shall forever be praying in mosques but go out earning our sustenance by prostituting our minds, bodies and souls to nihilistic, secular, ribāwī, isrāfī structures, though prayers are supposed to preempt iniquities.

 And so remind, for the reminder benefits believers.   

5. IGE & the Circulative Economy

The so-called ‘distributive’ economy has to be understood and elaborated in the context of iktisāb-wa-infāq as outlined in the IGE paper, otherwise it can be just another bailout or QE (“quantitative easing”). In classical Mu‘amalah this is pretty clear in detailed black and white terms and everyone knows that or should: distribute (or rather, circulate) what you earn to (i) your self, then (ii) to your family, then (iii) to your dependents, then (iv) to relatives, then (v) to neighbours, then (vi) to friends, then (vii) to your local community, then, if there is still some surplus (viii) to the larger society, and then (ix) even overseas, like theḤa Awqāf al-Haramayn in our economic history. And the mechanisms of circulation and recirculation are all spelled out too in great detail in the adab and fiqh of Mu‘amalah (all alluded to in the IGE article). So when western, modern secular ambigious terms are used like ‘distributive’ or any other fancy jargons, we must creatively re-define them (if we find them useful) in our very own mu‘amalah terms, otherwise people get confused in all this pointless jargoneering and sloganeering, and we should do away with that passive approach if we have any degree of dialectical savvy. As a friend has said: “We don’t want people confusing that [i.e., infāq = provisioning] with ‘income distribution’ or ‘wealth distribution’, which is based on the false premise that life is a zero-sum game, i.e., the wealth pie (so to speak) is limited and therefore rich people are the actual cause of poor people. As...pointed out in the IGE article, Allah’s bounty is limitless.”

6. The Irrationality of IBF and the Fallacy of Its One-Size-Fits-All Standard

This is to share a discussion (edited) I recently had with a friend working in IBF (Islamic Banking and Finance) in Abu Dhabi as Shariah Advisor. Conventional IBF and AAOFI standards in practice do not care a jot about the fate of the Amazon forests or Fair Trade. It is not just the problem of interest (riba) or standards that is involved, it is the very conception of money (nuqūd) and its relation to real wealth (māl) and the role of the economy (mu‘amalah) in society that is the problem ever since the privately owned Bank of England’s fiscal takeover of the English economy centuries ago. Talking about Islamic Finance is like putting the cart before the horse when the conception of Islamic economics and even classical mu‘amalah in their socio-historical and ethico-legal aspects are still all messed up and corrupted due to the current obsession with quick hiyali (legalistic fictional) stratagems and fixes in order to make a quick buck for big corporations and their petro-dollar money laundering operations passing off as bona fide businesses and investments. IBF is nothing but a fatwa-selling-to-the-highest-bidder industry. It is, in short, a fatwa-auctioning business subsidiary of the riba-embedded banks, hence the convenience of the so-called ‘Islamic windows’ in conventional ribawi banks.. And why are we talking about centralised banks and centralised global standards and then talk about direct community relevance and rootedness in the same breath? Mu‘amalah or the IGE (Islamic Gift Economy) in our economic and legal history has never been centralised or monotonized in terms of (fiqhi? hiyali?) standards. We do not share common rigid operating standards decided by arbitrarily chosen (by whom?) muftis and decided (by majority vote?) imposed top-down from some disembedded centers in the deserts of sands or ivory towers of concrete and glass.

     But we do share common, creative, dynamic mu‘amalah principles, parameters and precepts as outlined in the IGE article, and it is up to the local community-rooted learned fuqaha, muftis and shuyukh and business professionals to set operating standards relevant to their particular socio-economic context (‘urf, needs, interests, socio-economic carrying capacity, etc) in accordance with their own respective schools of Islamic law. And when they do inter-community trading between different madhhab communities, then it is up to the respective fuqahas of those interacting communities to set mutually acceptable standards for equitable exchange bewteen these communities. In short, IGE is for creative unified principles, but operative diversified standards sensitive to local and regional socio-economic contexts. So, principles (uṣūl) are fixed and we all know them without being in need to be told or taught about them by impersonal, far-away, faceless bodies like Ethica or AAOFI or even the World Fiqh Council, but standards are flexible because they are rooted in diverse communities first and foremost, and it is definitely not the business of any disembedded outsiders in Dubai or Jeddah or Bahrain calling themselves Shari‘ah experts to set their one-size-fit-all standards and impose them (by leveraging on their global political and corporate influence) on local Muslim business and financial transactions in Papua New Guinea or Canada or South Africa. Islam is not Popish and neither is it fiqh. Ijmāʿ (consensus) is not imposed top-down, but arises out of intra-community and inter-community scholarly consensus, because the end of Ijmāʿ is truth and maslahah, not compromise and convenience to fit some banking CEO’s vision of corporate progress and prosperity.

    Frankly speaking, I will do away with the term ‘Islamic Finance’ altogether; for the term ‘finnace’ has already been conceptually and practically corrupted beyond repair. The same with the term ‘Islamic Bank’. We don’t have banks. We have viable, dynamic business partnerships, awqaf and various community-rooted investment structures and payment systems, and so it is all the way with the IGE or no way. No more talbis, but only tahqiq. IGE will bypass IBF altogether to revive classical mu‘amalah on its own integrative ethico-moral terms by working directly with local communities and their local scholars, fuqaha, shuyukh, lawyers, accountants and business people, while IBF can go ahead and implode with the soon to come implosion of the global ribawi system in which it is so clearly and thoroughly embedded. We won’t sink with the IBFatanic, we won’t even be bothered with its ad hoc lifeboats or with patching up its self-inflicted gaping holes in its hull. We are into creating our own boats and ships of various appropriate sizes and makes with our own internal intellectual and material resources, and thereby reclaim our self-respect, our prosperity, our dignity and our civilizational role as bearers of Prophetic mercy to all the nations of the world, amin! So it is high time for us to wake up and desist from this silly exercise in mass self-delusion called IBF. I urge our learned fuqaha and shuyukh to take back direct ownership of our mu‘amalah from the IBFers, for the sake of the socio-economic prosperity of their communities, and for the self-respect and honour of Islam in the eye of the world. 

And so remind, for the reminder benefits believers.

7. Arabic Rendering of the Islamic Gift Economy

Iḥsān has the meaning of giving, being charitable, generous, gracious, magnanimous. Imam al-Ghazali and al-Lubudi actually talk about ihsan in mu‘amalah and devote a whole chapter on it, right after the chapter on ‘adl = justice in mu‘amalah. Whereas justice means you just give or deliver what is due, ihsan means you go one step further and overdeliver what is due, always to give a little bit extra to play safe as per the imperative of wara‘ (prudence) and as a mark of magnanimity. And “be gracious as Allah has been gracious to you,” for He not merely gives you what is just enough, He gives much more than you need or even request for. Plus a friend, Sidi Mahdi Lock has said:

...ihsan ultimately means to worship Allah as if you are seeing

Him. Buying and selling is worship, so buy and sell as if you

are seeing Allah. You can’t see Him, but if you know that He

is seeing you in the marketplace then you won’t cheat and

steal, but rather you will try to please Him, and with Allah

alone is every success.

The problem with the term faḍl (bounty, favour) is that it also means excess, something superflous even waste, hence it is too equivocal; whereas iḥsān is unequivocal, and the Qur'an praises the muḥsinīn and exhorts to iḥsān. Ergo, the best Arabic rendering of the term ‘Islamic Gift Economy’ is either al-Iqtiṣād al-Infāqī (the Provisioning Economics) or al-Iqtiṣād al-Iḥsānī  (the Charitable, Giving, Gifting Economics), and I am inclined to the latter. Of course, we can opt to do away with all these academic semantics and stick to good old mu‘amalah but we need a contemporary dialectical device to bring classical mu‘amalah to bear forcefully and evaluatively on current nihilistic capitalism and IBF, and hence the totality of mu‘amalah was recast kalam-jadid wise into IGE discursive terms so that it can come to a close engagement with both ribawi capitalism and hiyali acrobatic IBF, and thereby carve an autonomous ethico-moral space for true, holistic mu‘malah to be revived in the modern world. Hence, the schematic of this creative, close engagement is as follows:

CLASSICAL MU‘AMALAH<<>>MODERN CAPITALISM<<>>REVIVED NEO-CLASSICAL MU‘AMALAH

where <<>> signifies dynamic two-way dialectical, critical, evaluative engagement. We either exercise this creative, proactive kalamic engagement or continue to allow our mu‘amalah to be hijacked and coopted into the service of the worldview of  Mammon rather than the Worldview of Islam. All this (and more) is part of the kalām al-ʿaṣr project outlined in the long paper entitled “Kalam Jadid, Islamization and the Worldview of Islam: Operationalizing the Neo-Ghazalian, Attasian Vision.” wa jādilhum bi allatī hiya aḥsan= “And debate with them with what is better.” 

WaLlāhu aʿlamu bi mā yuṣību al-ḥaqqa wa al-ḥaqīqah