4 ms·

This comment is important because it is so offbase and yet is sourced in what a lot of westerners think/know about 'islam'. Frankly, it kind of depresses and sc

This comment is important because it is so offbase and yet is sourced in what a lot of westerners think/know about 'islam'. Frankly, it kind of depresses and scares me a bit how little people understand about the thing that supposedly is causing them so much disruption in their lives. BTW, debt at interest is totally forbidden in Islam so building an entire state and economy on it - as happens in the west also, of course - is totally 'unislamic'.

kragen 16y ago
You know, I was thinking about this. I don't know much about sharia-compliant finance, but I have the impression that a lot of it works by giving the "lender" something like preferred shares in the venture they're financing — no voting rights, but a defined dividend, and liquidation preference. (I don't know; do you know anything about this stuff?) Dubai might be in much better shape if they had been financed this way instead of through debt at interest. It's hard to tell because the comment you're replying to is so absurd, but perhaps the commenter meant to say that Dubai is a sort of cartoon version of a European state, as imagined by some "Islamic" people who deplore the structure of such states — and thus was doomed to fail. It's hard to read it as other than a gross stereotype, though. Me, it depresses and scares me a bit how little I understand about the human world: not only the "Islamic world", to whatever extent it makes sense to lump together Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt under a single rubric, but also Africa, India, and China.
- adrianwaj 16y ago
  "Frank Gaffney addresses the Defense Forum Foundation (DFF) in the House of Representatives on the topic of Shariah and, broadly defined, it's threat within the United States. Some topics include Shariah-Compliant finance and AIG, homeland security and the Muslim Brotherhood." http://youtu.be/5wLEvYcmj_Q http://youtu.be/5wLEvYcmj_Q (goto 12:00) -- the ultimate issue is that there are Muslim supervisors who decide whether money should be lent or not on a case by case basis. It's subjective and it's biased. If the recipient promotes Shariah it's cool, if it's against Shariah, it's not. Shariah compliant finance is stealth jihad.
  - abdulhaq 16y ago
    Your mistake here is thinking that if something is not against the shariah then it must be 'promoting' shariah. That's incorrect. In Islam, everything is allowed (halal) unless it is clearly disallowed (haram), so someone administering a shariah compliant loan only needs to establish that it is not for the purposes of e.g. gambling, prostitution, the alcohol industry etc. If your business is to sell pet food then there would be no problem with that. You don't have to 'promote' shariah to get a loan. Frankly, it's bordering on the absurd to say that shariah-compliant banking (if you find any that really is genuinely compliant, let me know by the way, I can't find one to buy a house) is 'stealth jihad' but again that reinforces my point that the lack of knowledge the west (particularly Americans) has about Islam is scary and makes it so easy for those with a vested interest in war to keep the ball rolling.
    - kragen 16y ago
      The comment you're replying to is pretty inflammatory. Bravo to you for responding in a rational fashion. About home mortgages — it seems like it would be hard to apply the preferred-share-like structure I described to home mortgage financing. Your house doesn't produce profits that you could share with someone, does it? Maybe you could sign over a fraction of your total family income in exchange for help buying the house: say, one third of your income for twenty years. But that would still be pretty risky for the investor, even more risky than investing in a hotel, where they have a plausible reason to believe that their investment will produce results. (And I have no idea whether it would be legal, either under the shariah or under civil or common law systems.)
      - abdulhaq 16y ago
        I'm not sure whether to give the quick explanation to that or the proper one - an in-between one is that the income idea won't work because there is no guarantee that e.g. my health will continue OK for twenty years or that my job will remain steady. There would not be the equivalent of an income protection scheme available either. There are simple methods available in principle based on the real rental value of the home and treating the buyer as a form of renter but in reality all the so called 'islamic' schemes do not actually involve risk sharing and consequently it's hard to be sure that they are indeed 'halal'. BTW on your first point it's Ramadan so if I do lose my patience I've blown it....:-)
- abdulhaq 16y ago
  You and me both are ignorant about so much of world, but when we see how what we do know about it is so mistakenly represented in the media, it's a big concern. After the world trade center bombings the BBC news on the TV ran a piece in a classroom in the US and the teacher told the kids that the bombings happened because "they don't like our way of life". Frighteningly I think a lot of Americans still believe that.

kragen 16y ago

You know, I was thinking about this. I don't know much about sharia-compliant finance, but I have the impression that a lot of it works by giving the "lender" something like preferred shares in the venture they're financing — no voting rights, but a defined dividend, and liquidation preference. (I don't know; do you know anything about this stuff?) Dubai might be in much better shape if they had been financed this way instead of through debt at interest. It's hard to tell because the comment you're replying to is so absurd, but perhaps the commenter meant to say that Dubai is a sort of cartoon version of a European state, as imagined by some "Islamic" people who deplore the structure of such states — and thus was doomed to fail. It's hard to read it as other than a gross stereotype, though. Me, it depresses and scares me a bit how little I understand about the human world: not only the "Islamic world", to whatever extent it makes sense to lump together Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt under a single rubric, but also Africa, India, and China.

adrianwaj 16y ago
"Frank Gaffney addresses the Defense Forum Foundation (DFF) in the House of Representatives on the topic of Shariah and, broadly defined, it's threat within the United States. Some topics include Shariah-Compliant finance and AIG, homeland security and the Muslim Brotherhood." http://youtu.be/5wLEvYcmj_Q http://youtu.be/5wLEvYcmj_Q (goto 12:00) -- the ultimate issue is that there are Muslim supervisors who decide whether money should be lent or not on a case by case basis. It's subjective and it's biased. If the recipient promotes Shariah it's cool, if it's against Shariah, it's not. Shariah compliant finance is stealth jihad.
- abdulhaq 16y ago
  Your mistake here is thinking that if something is not against the shariah then it must be 'promoting' shariah. That's incorrect. In Islam, everything is allowed (halal) unless it is clearly disallowed (haram), so someone administering a shariah compliant loan only needs to establish that it is not for the purposes of e.g. gambling, prostitution, the alcohol industry etc. If your business is to sell pet food then there would be no problem with that. You don't have to 'promote' shariah to get a loan. Frankly, it's bordering on the absurd to say that shariah-compliant banking (if you find any that really is genuinely compliant, let me know by the way, I can't find one to buy a house) is 'stealth jihad' but again that reinforces my point that the lack of knowledge the west (particularly Americans) has about Islam is scary and makes it so easy for those with a vested interest in war to keep the ball rolling.
  - kragen 16y ago
    The comment you're replying to is pretty inflammatory. Bravo to you for responding in a rational fashion. About home mortgages — it seems like it would be hard to apply the preferred-share-like structure I described to home mortgage financing. Your house doesn't produce profits that you could share with someone, does it? Maybe you could sign over a fraction of your total family income in exchange for help buying the house: say, one third of your income for twenty years. But that would still be pretty risky for the investor, even more risky than investing in a hotel, where they have a plausible reason to believe that their investment will produce results. (And I have no idea whether it would be legal, either under the shariah or under civil or common law systems.)
    - abdulhaq 16y ago
      I'm not sure whether to give the quick explanation to that or the proper one - an in-between one is that the income idea won't work because there is no guarantee that e.g. my health will continue OK for twenty years or that my job will remain steady. There would not be the equivalent of an income protection scheme available either. There are simple methods available in principle based on the real rental value of the home and treating the buyer as a form of renter but in reality all the so called 'islamic' schemes do not actually involve risk sharing and consequently it's hard to be sure that they are indeed 'halal'. BTW on your first point it's Ramadan so if I do lose my patience I've blown it....:-)
abdulhaq 16y ago
You and me both are ignorant about so much of world, but when we see how what we do know about it is so mistakenly represented in the media, it's a big concern. After the world trade center bombings the BBC news on the TV ran a piece in a classroom in the US and the teacher told the kids that the bombings happened because "they don't like our way of life". Frighteningly I think a lot of Americans still believe that.