THE PROPHET AND DIFFERENT FORMS OF RIBA
While the Qur’an had
identified ‘lending on interest’ as riba, it was left to the
Prophet (s) to elaborate and to explain the many different forms of riba.
Perhaps the most important of such explanations given by the Prophet (s)
is the hadith reported by Jabir:
The
Messenger of Allah (s) cursed the one who takes (i.e. consumes) riba, the one
who gives (i.e. pays) riba, the one who records the transaction and the two witnesses
thereof He said: They are all equally guilty.
(Muslim)
A similar statement of the
Prophet is reported by Abu Juhaifa:
The
Prophet cursed the lady who practices tattooing and the one who gets herself
tattooed and the one who consumes riba and the one who gives it. And he
prohibited taking the price of a dog, and the money earned by prostitution, and
cursed the makers of pictures.
(Bukhari)
Thus every time a Muslim
writes out a check to pay the installment of a riba-loan (i.e. a loan
on interest) which he has taken from a bank for purchasing a house or car etc.,
he should be aware that he is engaged in riba and that the
Prophet Muhammad (s) has cursed him! If he dies without making tauba and
without making every possible effort to extricate himself from riba,
then he could end up in the fire of hell!
DIFFERENT FORMS OF RIBA
The Prophet (s)
declared that there are seventy different kinds or forms of riba;
Abu
Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger as saying: Riba has seventy parts, the least
serious being equivalent to a man marrying his own mother (which is the polite
language of the Prophet with which to describe the abominable act of a man
having with his own mother).
(Sunan Ibn Majah)
But he did not identify all
seventy. In fact he described only a few of the different forms of riba.
The implication, therefore was that there are, or will be, forms of riba
existing in the world which have not been specifically identified as such by
the Prophet (s). Indeed Umar (r) lamented the fact that the Prophet (s)
died without specifically identifying all the different types of riba:
Ibn
Umar said: Umar delivered a sermon on the pulpit of Allah’s Apostle saying .....
I wish Allah's Messenger had not left us before he had given us definite
verdicts concerning three matters, i.e. how much a grandfather may inherit (of
his grandson), the inheritance of al-kalala (the deceased person among heirs
there is no father or son) and the various types of riba.
(Bukhari)
It remains for the scholars
of Islam to use inference and analogy to locate other forms of riba
not identified by the Prophet (s) and which may not have appeared as yet
in the world at the time of the Prophet (s), but have now made their
appearance, particularly in this evil age which has witnessed the
transcendental release of ya’jooj, ma’jooj and al-Masih al-Dajjal!
Muhammad Asad has envisaged a creative role for Islamic scholarship in this
respect. He observes:
... while the Qur’anic
condemnation of the concept and practice of riba is unequivocal
and final, every successive Muslim generation is faced with the challenge of
giving new dimensions and a fresh economic meaning to this term which, for want
of a better word, may be rendered as 'usury’.
Here are some of the forms
of riba described by the Prophet (s):
1 - Credit transactions (bai
muajjal). There are some credit transactions which have been prohibited by the
Prophet (s) because they involve riba:
Usama
bin Zaid reported the Prophet as saying: Credit involves riba. In another
version he said: There is no riba when payment is made on the spot.
(Bukhari, Muslim)
Such a credit transaction
would, for example, be one in which an animal is traded for another animal:
Samura
b. Jundub said that the Prophet forbade selling of animals for animals when
payment was to be made at a later date.
(Tirmidhi, Abu Daud, Nasai, Ibn
Majah ami Darimi)
The reason for the
prohibition appears to be the element of uncertainty in which death, for
example, might occur to an animal, or it may fail ill etc. Such an occurrence
can lead to disagreement and conflict between the parties to the credit
agreement. Credit is also discouraged because when payment is to be made at a
later date one may not be able to make the payment and that could have serious
consequences. In Latin America the white plantation owners deliberately
encouraged the Indian peasants to take credit and when they could not pay on
time they had to give their labor instead. And so the latifundia or
Latin American plantation economy was built on a scarcely disguised form of
slavery. One of the most powerful statements we have ever heard during our five
years in New York came from Tracy Riggs, in African-American inmate at the
Morristown Prison in the State of New Jersey. Credit, he said to me, is the
first step back to slavery.
The system of riba
creates its own self-generating and self-sustaining apparatus in the form of credit-worthiness
of individuals. A person has good or bad credit. The system forces every
individual to struggle to establish and sustain a good credit record. It does
so by punishing those who have bad credit! If someone has never borrowed money
on interest and as a consequence, does not possess a credit record, he is
looked upon with grave suspicion!
to be continued . . . .
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