In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful
Below is an extract
from QUR’AANIC
STUDIES – A Modern Tafsir PART I. The Qur’aanic Verse extracted follows One
wherein Allah admonishes Believers to give up Ar-Riba accruing to their
accounts, but not received by them till the promulgation of total prohibition
against taking Ar-Riba vide Verse 2:275. ‘And if you do it not’ in the extract
signifies, ‘And if you do not give up Ar-Riba so accrued’.
279. Fa-in lam
tafAAaloo fa/thanoo biharbin mina Allahi warasoolihi wa-in
tubtum falakum ruoosu amwalikum la tathlimoona wala
tuthlamoona
2:279.
And if you do it not, take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger.520,
521 And if you return penitently to Allah, you are entitled to all that
comes under heads of account of your property and/or dues, so that you do no
wrong, nor are you wronged.522
520. "Take notice of war from Allah and His Messenger"!
What warning could be more dreadful than this divine one? It clearly shows that
the All-knowing Allah has given a very great importance to eradication of
economic ills from human societies. Ar-Riba is an economic ill that
corrupts human society and eats into its body polity, like cancer. It deprives
people of their dues to fill the coffers of the rich, thus creating a great
economic divide between the rich and the poor. On a mega scale, we have examples
in history wherein the divine notice of war was put to dreadful effect in such
cases. In the French Revolution, the numerically vast poor populace, for long
subjected to deprivation and oppression by the obscenely rich, took to
violence, took control over the land and put every rich person, they could lay
their hands on, to the guillotine. A similar thing happened when the
Communists, under Lenin, overthrew the Czars in Russia. On the micro individual
scale also, Allah punishes most of those indulging in Ar-Riba in this
life itself first, after giving them a long rope. A genuine believer cannot but
take heed of this dreadful divine warning. But what is the ground reality? Most
Muslims are unaware of what Ar-Riba means. I've already given earlier in
these Studies the example of a factory owner cheating his employees in their
salaries to fatten his profit. The factory owner may apparently be a very pious
Muslim, sporting a flowing beard and offering prayers regularly. With the fat
profit he is getting from the sale of goods produced in his factory, he may be
buying car after car for every member of his family, and he won't touch the haraam
interest money by putting his money in a commercial bank. But he is blissfully
unaware that by paying his employees less than their rightful dues, he is
guilty of committing the real Ar-Riba.
521. And there are examples galore of Ar-Riba
being indulged in, in every other walk of life. Employees cheat their employers
by attending to their own private affairs, during office hours, but get their
full salaries. Traders hoard goods to create an artificial scarcity to sell
them at higher prices and get fatter margins of profit. Taxi drivers compel
passengers to pay more than what the meters indicate. Tax-payers cheat the Government
by hiding part of their income. But none of our religious leaders apprise us of
Ar-Riba masquerading in any of the forms mentioned here. They are
content with declaring again and again from their housetops that interest is
'haraam' 'haraam', and they remain blissfully ignorant of the real Ar-Riba
growing luxuriantly in their own backyards.
522. If A lends B $1000, and B repays after a year, A
is entitled to get his amwaal back, as this Verse clearly indicates. But
money, per se, is not amwaal. It's only the present transitory value of amwaal.
As such, if the cost of living has appreciated by 5% during the year, A is
entitled to get $1050 from B. Otherwise A stands wronged. In addition, A is also
entitled to a just, mutually agreed compensation for his being deprived of
using $1000 for his personal purposes, for a year. It's another matter if A
& B are friends, and A waives all the additions lawfully due to him.
Please refer the preceding
blog post ‘Prohibited
Ar-Riba’ in this context.
Friday, the 11th
of October 2019.
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