1. Am I Muslim or Momin?
O you who believed! Enter into the Islam completely (Al Baqara 208)
A beautiful and strange verse revealed upon our prophet Mohammad (pbuh) in which Allah
(SWT) addressing the believers to enter into the Islam completely. It means that the believing
in the religion Islam and entering into it something different from each other. The person who
recites the shahada with his tongue and accepts the unity of Allah by his heart is a Muslim.
But the person who believes in Almighty Allah and submissively obeys His commandments
and the commandments of His prophet Mohammad (pbuh) is the one who enters completely
into religion Islam and conferred with the status of Momin which in reality is the meaning of
the above mentioned verse.
When prophet Ibrahim (AS) dreamed, scarifying his beloved son Ismail (AS) in the way of
Allah, he expressed his dream to his innocent child who responded with the words
O my father! Obey the order of Allah, Insha
Allah you will find me among those who remain in patience (Al Saffat 102). Allah the
Almighty Himself ordained in His book that murder of an innocent is like the murder of
whole humanity. But here The Al-Mighty is ordering His prophet (AS) to slaughter his infant
and innocent son and the prophet Ibrahim and his son submissively obeyed this order. It
means that once an injunction is given by Allah AlMighty to His servants must be followed
submissively by the believers accordingly without any hesitation, human rationale and
reasons so that they may be included in those who have been bestowed with His favour and
mercy.
The basic pillars of Islam after Iman are offering prayers 5 times a day, fasting during the
holy month of Ramadan, payment of obligatory zakat and the journey to the holy cities of
Makkah and Madina for performing haj. Among these Ibadats, the zakat involves financial
obligation so that the concentration of wealth in few hands could be avoided and the
injunction of the holy Quran as mentioned in “Surah Hujurat”, “Verily all the Muslims are
brothers (Hujurat 10) could be upheld through payment of zakat by the well to do people to
the less fortune and destitute people of the Muslim community. Whereas the last pillar of our
religion demands heavy financial payment as well as body exercise and we believe that there
may be hardly any Muslim who could resist in discharging these obligations which require
financial expenditures. Every Muslim living in any corner of the world wishes to discharge
all these obligations including the last one according to his financial status and leaves for the
journey of hajj. In discharging these obligations, his objective is only to win the favour of
Allah who is our Creator, our Lord, and our Sustainer and to whom we revert.
Accordingly there are very few prohibitions imposed by Allah Almighty upon His servants to
avoid certain acts for which we are much more reluctant and come up with certain arguments
according to our rationale. Amongst these prohibitions is the payment and receipt of interest
factor in our financial dealings. Most of our Muslim brothers ignore this prohibition and

2. involve in interest based transactions considering it is not as a sin endorsing the Hadith
narrated by Abu Huraira that Allah’s Messenger (pbuh) said, “A time will come to the people
when a man will not care what he takes it from the lawful or is it from the forbidden. This
will be the zaman of fitna and the people would never know the basics of their faith”. This
era in which we are living today is the same for which our prophet (pbuh) forecasted fourteen
centuries back. Majority of Muslims today are ignorant about the involvement of interest
factor in their earnings and settlings of their financial obligations. However there are several
Quranic injunctions and the sayings of our prophet (pbuh) in which interest has been
condemned so severely that it is similar to waging war from Allah and his apostle. In a
hadith the involvement of interest based transactions is similar to association of partner
with Allah, for whom there is no mercy in this world and also on the day of judgement. Is
there any creature in this world that can think or expect about waging war from Allah and His
apostle? (Allah protects us from such thinking). Despite such warnings of severe punishment
on the day of judgement we are carelessly involved in this ill practice which is the root cause
of our social unrest and creating a huge financial gap between the fortunate and less fortunate
one. Furthermore we are now exploring different ways to advocate that the complications and
the advancement involved in today’s financial system cannot be operated without the interest
element thus challenging the Quranic & Prophetic injunctions. How could it be possible that
Allah Almighty encompassing the knowledge of the universe, the past, present and the future
could have imposed such restriction which is not possible to be followed by human being.
Because Allah Himself has mentioned in sura Baqara: Allah does not burden a soul beyond
its capacity (2_286). The sayings of Allah and His apostle is absolute and utter and no
arguments can be extended to invalidate any restriction imposed under the Islamic Sharia and
no one can dare to restrict a thing which has been allowed.
It has been proved in the recent past that our economic system can be build up in accordance
with the Sharia principles involving trade base transactions without involvement of interest
element. The capitalism which is the root cause of the world unrest has completely failed to
deliver justifiable and progressive system, can be easily replaced by the asset based financial
system where an asset is created against each financial transaction and it lies under the
Islamic financial system only. It is the responsibility of every Muslim in general and the
scholars in particular to endeavour in their utmost capacity to convince the people to avoid
interest element in their transactions for the sake of establishing social justice and to win the
Allah’s countenance in this world and the hereafter.
By Abdul Latif Parkar
Associate Fellow IIBI-UK.