About this blog

In recent times a plethora of misconceptions, misrepresentation and myths have been forged about Islam
and Muslims. Many western influentials from politicians, policymakers to judges have taken it upon
themselves to undermine the Islamic beliefs, values and rules so to make it palatable to their
egotistic minds and the secular liberal thoughts.

This blog is dedicated:-

1. To argue the point for Islam in its belief and systems and to refute the misconceptions.
2. To expose the weakness and contradictions of all forms of secularism.

28 Mar 2009

Corruption of Western Financial Systems

Understanding the Corruption of Western financial systems and banks

Financial institutions and banks in the western systems are established on a corrupt economic foundation, which is the acquisition of material benefit to satisfy a need, regardless of the damage this may cause to the individual or society at large. According to our Muslim viewpoint it is based on the foundation of usury, about which Allah (swt) said: ‘Those who eat Riba (usury) will not stand (on the day of Resurrection) except like the standing of a person beaten by Shaytan leading him to insanity.’ [Surah Al Baqarah (2): Ayah 275]

It is also based on the foundation of hoarding wealth, about which He (swt) said: ‘And those who hoard up gold and silver, and spend not in the Way of Allah, - announce unto them a painful torment.' [Surah At Taubah (9): Ayah 34]

Banks and financial institutions in western societies are established upon these bases. These massive institutions, in most cases, are formed via private establishments, which are owned by wealthy individuals or a group of wealthy people, or they may be formed by Joint-Stock companies using the money deposited by people into these institutions.

The nature of their work is mostly based on the use of the funds gained from 'usury', where this money is gathered from different people at a low interest rate, then loaned to others at a higher interest rate. Or these small institutions may alternatively deposit money in larger institutions to achieve a higher interest rate in the same country or a different one.

The banks may also initiate their own projects which will be funded by closing the deposit accounts of a group of clients for long periods of time. The benefit given to such clients is that their money will have an increased rate of interest for them. As for the danger and destructive effects of these institutions on society, they are reflected in the following:

Firstly: Money is tailored to be in circulation amongst a specific sector in society, depriving the rest of the people from benefiting from the circulation of this money. Thus, through interest, money is drawn from the hands of people, and through interest as well, the major Capitalists who are capable of investing and paying off debts are able to take large amounts of this money from these banks. Consequently, this increases the poverty of the poor and the affluence of the rich. The rich then initiate massive projects which dominate the country's economy and the poor live under the mercy of this class in terms of their offering goods and services and fixing the price. Thus the deposits of the working-class into the banks becomes an avenue by which evil is brought to them, contrary to their belief that it will bring them good, and the interest taken from usurious banks becomes a new artery feeding into the oceans of the rich.

Second: The policy of monopolies over production and consumption. This comes about when the major Capitalists, the owners of companies, are the ones who impose the prices on goods. They are able to do this because of their monopoly over projects and the inability of smaller companies to have any influence. The banks usually assist this policy directly or indirectly. They may set up projects for certain goods and stipulate that other investors will not compete over this, or they may assist certain capitalists to gain control by preventing others from competing with them. This is achieved either by convincing other investors that these projects are not economically viable and that they will not be able to pay of the debts, or by directly stipulating that they are not to set up such projects and this is achieved through agreement of other agents.

Third: The banks affect the high prices in society. This is because companies which have a monopoly over goods are able to impose any price they deem appropriate. Thus they raise the prices or withdraw goods or discard them as they please. Furthermore, the interest owed to the bank by those who own the companies pushes these companies to pay their interest in the shortest time possible by raising the prices of goods upon the consumers. This matter, i.e. the issue of the capitalists control over prices, occasionally pushes the state to intervene with a patchwork system by imposing specific prices on specific goods or subsidising certain goods to enable the citizen to buy them, or it may import specific goods and release them in the market in order to lower the price.

Fourth: The bank aids in the crises which occur in the money markets. This is either by granting massive loans to those dealing in the stock markets, enabling them to purchase a great number of shares for specific projects and consequently raise the value of these shares in the stock market and thereby keeping the people imagining that the value of these shares has truly increased. So the people start buying these shares in a mad frenzy, causing the price to rise again. But once the public have purchased a large number of these shares, the price drops suddenly when those dealing in the stock markets decide to sell; this is after the target for which the prices were initially raised has now been met, which is to fool the people into buying. What adds to the chaos is the confusion that develops amongst the people. They buy the shares in an insane manner, intensifying the process of the drop in value, resulting in the destruction of many individuals and in certain circumstances leading to economic disasters or even to the collapse of governments.

The banks also attempt to cover up the losses of those dealing in the stock markets from those who have incurred the losses. This is by loaning them money to enable them to continue the process of speculation and consequently leading to economic catastrophes for those people, due to their being in debt with the banks and their inability to pay off the 'loans' or the interest

Fifth: The laundering of capital from the developing nations, better known as the poor nations - or the Third World. This is done by setting up foreign banks in these countries and consequently withdrawing the money directly from the hands of people for the benefit of the foreign states. Money is also laundered via local banks which undertake the role of withdrawing the money from the hands of different groups of people at low rates of interest, which is about 7 or 8 per cent, and depositing them in the western banks at a higher interest rate, which accumulates to millions of dollars.

This is of great danger to those countries, in terms of depriving the country from the capital that would have enabled it to set up different projects, instead placing it in the hands of other nations for them to exploit in their own projects. There are a number of countries who impose special monitoring of the export of capital and there are others who open their gates on all fronts to the investments and establishments of banks etc.

Sixth: The Colonialist aims. This is represented by the actions of certain countries that have a financial cover for other currencies or other industrial nations, whom have a strong international currency.

The United States, for example, raises the interest rates in her banks to attract money to them and consequently increase the volume of money entering the country. This then enables her to undertake different projects. She also resorts to this method to support her domestic currency when it has been subject to turbulence and subsequent lowering of value, because of large economic or military undertakings.

At other times she may resort to the central bank by issuing great amounts of American Dollars, the financial cover for other currencies. Consequently causing the value of this currency to depreciate due to the release of extra currency into the markets. This forces those countries tied to the dollar to purchase extra amounts from the market in order to protect the value of their supplies and to also protect the value if their own currency.

Countries like America may lower the value of their currency via the central bank for commercial reasons. This encourages the traders to buy goods from their country due to the lower prices in comparison to other countries. This in turn is because the price of goods in the other country has gone down because the price of the dollar has depreciated.

These are just some of the destructive effects caused by banks in societies in the West and elsewhere. There are many other terrible effects, but unfortunately there is insufficient space to mention them all. Such a subject requires a complete volume to explain all the effects resulting from the actions of these banks and from their corrupt systems.

[Extracted from the Article ‘The Effect of the Corruption of Western Economics on Humanity’ written by Muttasim Billah]
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What they said...

“Islam represented the greatest military power on earth…It was the foremost economic power in the world…It had achieved the highest level so far in human history, in the arts and sciences of civilization...Islam in contrast created a world civilization, poly-ethnic, multiracial, international, one might even say intercontinental.”





[Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Orientalist and Historian, 2001]





"There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world. It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts…the civilization I'm talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600… Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage"





[Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard, 2001]





"For the first three centuries of its existence (circ. A.D 650-1000) the realm of Islam was the most civilized and progressive portion of the world. Studded with splendid cities, gracious mosques and quiet universities where the wisdom of the ancient world was preserved and appreciated, the Moslem world offered a striking contrast to the Christian West, then sunk in the night of the Dark Ages."





[Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D (Harvard), American political theorist and historian, 1932]





"Medieval Islam was technologically advanced and open to innovation. It achieved far higher literacy rates than in contemporary Europe;it assimilated the legacy of classical Greek civilization to such a degree that many classical books are now known to us only through Arabic copies. It invented windmills ,trigonometry, lateen sails and made major advances in metallurgy, mechanical and chemical engineering and irrigation methods. In the middle-ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe rather from Europe to Islam. Only after the 1500's did the net direction of flow begin to reverse."





[Jared Diamond, UCLA sociologist and Author, 1997]



"No other society has such a record of success in uniting in an equality of status, of opportunity and endeavour so many and so varied races of mankind. The great Muslim communities of Africa, India and Indonesia, perhaps also the small community in Japan, show that Islam has still the power to reconcile apparently irreconcilable elements of race and tradition. If ever the opposition of the great societies of the East and west is to be replaced by cooperation, the mediation of Islam is an indispensable condition."





[Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Professor at Harvard University, 1932]





“The Muhammadan Law which is binding on all -- from the crowned head to the meanest subject is a law interwoven with a system of the wisest, the most learned and the most enlightened jurisprudence that ever existed in the world.”





[Edmund Burke, British Statesman and Philosopher, 1789]





"The Exile here is not like in our homeland. The Turks hold respectable Jews in esteem. Here and in Alexandria, Egypt, Jews are the chief officers and administrators of the customs, and the king’s revenues. No injuries are perpetuated against them in all the empire. Only this year, in consequence of the extraordinary expenditure caused by the war against Shah Tahmsap al-Sufi, were the Jews required to make advances of loans to the princes."





[David dei Rossi, Jewish Traveller 17CE, quoted by Norman A. Stillman, The Jews of Arab Lands]





"The notable religious tolerance towards Christians and Jew under Muslim rule had given way to the uncompromising zealotry of Spanish Inquisition. Jews and Muslims thus fled Spain with large numbers of Jews immigrating to the Ottoman Empire which was known for its tolerance to the Jews."





[Graham Fuller, Author and former CIA, 1995]





“If there is much misunderstanding in the West about the nature of Islam, there is also much ignorance about the debt our own culture and civilization owe to the Islamic world. It is a failure, which stems, I think, from the straightjacket of history, which we have inherited. The medieval Islamic world, from central Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, was a world where scholars and men of learning flourished. But because we have tended to see Islam as the enemy of the West, as an alien culture, society, and systems of beliefs, we have tended to ignore or erase its great relevance to our own history”





[Charles Philip Arthur George, HRH The Prince of Wales, 1993]





"...Not being subject to the Sharia, Jews and Christians were free to go to their own religious authorities for adjudication of disputes; but in many cases they went instead to the [Muslim] Qadi"





[Richard W. Bulliet, Professor of History and Author, 2004]





"Here in the land of the Turks we have nothing to complain of. We possess great fortunes; much gold and silver are in our hands. We are not oppressed by heavy taxes and our commerce is free and unhindered. Rich are the fruits of the earth. Everything is cheap and each one of us lives in freedom. Here a Jew is not compelled to wear a yellow star as a badge of shame as is the case in Germany where even wealth and great fortune is a curse for a Jew because he therewith arouses jealousy among the Christians and they devise all kinds of slander against him to rob him of his gold. Arise my brethren, gird up your loins, collect up your forces and come to us."





[In his book 'Constantinople', Philip Mansel quotes a rabbi in Turkey writing to his brethren in Europe where they were facing increasing persecution after 1453]





"Praise be to the beneficent God for his mercy towards me! Kings of the earth, to whom his [the Caliph’s] magnificence and power are known, bring gifts to him, conciliating his favour by costly presents, such as the king of the Germans, the king of the Gebalim, the king of Constantinople, and others. All their gifts pass through my hands, and I am charged with making gifts in return. (Let my lips express praise to the God in heaven who so far extends his loving kindness towards me without any merit of my own, but in the fullness of his mercies.) I always ask the ambassadors of these monarchs about our brethren the Jews, the remnant of the captivity, whether they have heard anything concerning the deliverance of those who have pined in bondage and had found no rest."





[Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-990 CE) Jewish physician, chief minister of Islamic Caliphate in Cordova, 'The Jewish Caravan']





"In Baghdad there are about forty thousand Jews, and they dwell in security, prosperity, and honour under the great Caliph [al-Mustanjid, 1160-70 CE], and amongst them are great sages, the Heads of the Academies engaged in the study of the Law…’"





[Benjamin of Tudela, Rabbi in Baghdad in the year 1168 CE, 'The Jew in the Medieval World']





"Those Eastern thinkers of the ninth century laid down, on the basis of their theology, the principle of the Rights of Man, in those very terms, comprehending the rights of individual liberty, and of inviolability of person and property; described the supreme power in Islam, or Califate, as based on a contract, implying conditions of capacity and performance, and subject to cancellation if the conditions under the contract were not fulfilled; elaborated a Law of War of which the humane, chivalrous prescriptions would have put to the blush certain belligerents in the Great War; expounded a doctrine of toleration of non-Moslem creeds so liberal that our West had to wait a thousand years before seeing equivalent principles adopted.





[Leon Ostorog, French Jurist]





"The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence"





[Robert Briffault, Novelist and Historian, 1928]





"The only effective link between the old and the new science is afforded by the Arabs. The dark ages come as an utter gap in the scientific history of Europe, and for more than a thousand years there was not a scientific man of note except in Arabia"





[Oliver Joseph Lodge, Writer and Professor of Physics, 1893]





“Thus, when Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar from North Africa in 711 and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, Jews welcomed them as liberators from Christian Persecution.”





[Zion Zohar, Jewish scholar at Florida International University, 2005]







“Throughout much of the period in question, Arabic served as the global language of scholarship, and learned men of all stripes could travel widely and hold serious and nuanced discussions in this lingua franca. Medieval Western scholars who wanted access to the latest findings also needed to master the Arabic Tongue or work from translations by those who had done so.”





[Jonathan Lyons, Author, Writer and Lecturer, 2009]