Every time I see another headline about the economic crisis, some
part of me always wonders if it would have happened if the world
used Islamic banking. For those who don’t know what Islamic banking
is, it is a system that complies with Shariah law, which means
riba (interest fees) are haram (forbidden). It is
based on profit/loss sharing so that when you need a loan for a
house, the bank will buy it for you, then sell it back at a slightly
higher price.
What I didn’t know (until I looked it up) was that much of modern
capitalism originated from the Islamic Golden Age (the 8th-12th
centuries) when concepts such as limited partnerships (mudaraba)
and trusts (waqf) were introduced. Which got me thinking about other
things that Arabs have contributed to the world. “Europe had to
learn everything that there was to be learned from the Arabs,” wrote
the great Scottish Orientalist William Montgomery Watt (himself a
priest in the Scottish Episcopalian Church) in his book The Glory
That Was Islam. “Without whom European science and European
philosophy would never have been able to develop as they did.”
According to the Institut du monde Arabe, Paris, for example, Arabs
developed the system of weights and measures. Arabs even came up
with the concept of zero. We borrowed the ancient Indian numerical
system and named the “0” al-sifr, which literally means
“void.” The 7th-century mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi,
wrote the rules for zero in his book Algebra, another Arab
contribution to the field of mathematics. The Arab passion for books
and the great wave of translation (from Greek to Syriac and then to
Arabic) effectively saved works by Aristotle and Plato from being
lost to humanity. Public libraries became commonplace; there were
more than 100 in Baghdad by the year 900 CE, and Cairo contained
some 1,600,000 volumes. It is believed that in the Middle Ages when
Charlemagne and his lords were learning to write their names, Arab
scholars were busy writing treatises on Aristotle’s principles.
It’s fascinating how knowledge was built brick by brick, one people
adding on to where the people before them left off. Arabs formed an
important link in the knowledge chain. I think now is the perfect
time to readjust to the things we really want out of life and to
look to our past to find these things. Some people come to live in
the Middle East for money, but others come to share knowledge and
seek culture. I hope this current crisis will encourage more
expatriates to come for the latter reasons.
Baraka Allah Fekum “God bless you all”
@li
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