I always believed religion was incompatible with a society rooted in addressing material reality, although I know we have have religious users and wanted to hear people’s takes.
I don’t disagree with what you have said here but I was also intentionally avoiding getting into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application of Sharia because it’s super complex.
Of course Riba has been one of those things that has always been hotly debated in Islam and it’s something that an Islamic jurist could spend a lifetime debating and you’d be able to split a denomination in two over your take on it.
Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn’t exist. Speaking as an outsider, I think that some of the basic problems were identified in trading and finance but the root of the economic problem was not fully ascertained until much later; if you can’t diagnose a complex societal problem accurately then you’re almost certainly not going to be able to fix it. At best you’re going to be taking a stab in the dark, which is what I think Islamic jurisprudence was doing with Riba or with edicts about charity or what shape a caliphate should take or what have you. So my sympathy for the prohibition on Riba is limited because it lacked a material basis (and I think this is where religious jurisprudence more broadly tends to fall down - the inherent idealism at the core makes it critically flawed.)
A+ for effort, but as for execution? Ehh, not so great.
I also think that this is where other things fall down like religious decrees on not turning away the needy from your door - is that in a literal sense? What implications does it have for refugees in the modern world where your government can effectively maintain its borders very strictly? What implications does today’s ability for transporting masses of people anywhere around the world in a matter of hours have? Obviously back in Muhammad’s era, refugees would almost always travel within their local region and it was extremely rare to have vast masses of people or entire populations fleeing from one part of the world to somewhere entirely different. Also the economic implications are very complex - in Muhammad’s day constructing housing was a much simpler affair and if people needed extra food or work then they’d be able to utilise the commons or to work the untended land on the outskirts of a town or village. These sorts of things options rarely exist in the developed world today. So while it probably worked quite well for the time it existed in, the world is a very different place today and shit is so much more complex than it was.
And you’re absolutely right about the creation of infinite loopholes to arrive at roughly the same destination in a way that circumvents the spirit of the law while technically adhering to the letter of the law (more or less). This is exactly why Ikea is a non-profit organisation lol.
And there’s no doubt in my mind that probably every Islamic financial institution that exists today bends the rules to the breaking point by charging things like “administrative” fees and stuff like that.
And really, if we look at this from a broad perspective, I think that the prohibition on Riba could be grouped in with all sorts of socialist utopian and reformist efforts as being guilty of the same general attempts to fix the system by tweaking at the dials rather than rebuilding it from the ground up.
This is why I give it an honourable mention - it was a good attempt. Flawed, insufficient, poorly articulated, vulnerable to exploitation, yes, but it was a good attempt all the same.
I think that a serious discussion on Riba would be a really good angle to agitate for socialism with a Muslim though and tbh as an atheist Marixst, it’s those kinds of pressure points that I’m most interested in; I’d be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn’t just be like “Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don’t jack the rents up too high, okay?”
Ultimately I think that Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time and, at that time, critique of the economy in a fully-realised way didn’t exist.
More precisely, it’s that the Quran and the hadiths - the written sources - that were a product of their time. Jurisprudence - if understood as the legal theorising and interpretation being done upon prior texts - is a continuing process that’s still ongoing today, and it’s definitely here where modern forces of global capitalism have influenced modern Muslim legal theorists into moulding the orignial texts into the current industry/academic edifice that’s labelled as “Islamic finance”. So yeah, technically speaking, it’s not that “Islamic jurisprudence was a product of its time”, but “is a product of its time”: that time being present-day global capitalist hegemony. (Sorry, I’m probably nitpicking here; I know you said you want to avoid going into the weeds with interpretation and real-world application. I think I would agree generally with most of what you’ve written above; just taking the opportunity to air out and give some structure to a few thoughts that had been jangling around my head for some time.)
I’d be fascinated in hearing what a Muslim would have to say about how they think Muhammad would respond today if he saw how private equity firms like BlackRock are grossly distorting the property market and squeezing every last penny out of people who have no other options for housing available. Something tells me he wouldn’t just be like “Alright guys, this arrangement is totally fine as long as you don’t jack the rents up too high, okay?”
True, and I’m aware that there is some existing discourse/scholarship by Muslims on the Islam’s compatibility with socialism as a political movement. Syed Hussein Alatas’s Islam and Socialism provides a good overview, I think. One bit I think is particularly relevant to the concept of riba is where Alatas outlines the position argued for by Oemar Said Tjokroaminoto, who was a nationalist figure in pre-independence Indonesia; Alatas suggests that Tjokroaminoto, in trying to prevent a spilt between the Islamic moderates and radical Marxists in his party (which eventually happened and led to the the radicals joining the Communist Party of Indonesia) attempted a theoretical reconciliation of the contradictions between Islam and socialism (pg. 62-4):-
In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism. (…) It arose out of the need to counteract communist propaganda. Tjokroaminoto’s party, the Sarekat Islam, was seriously infiltrated by communist elements which led to a split in 1923.
(…)
Regarding state ownership of the means of production, Tjokroaminoto suggested that this was Islamic. In the time of the Prophet, the state owned and acquired land. It is interesting how Tjokroaminoto linked Marx’s theory of surplus value and its expropriation by the capitalists to Islam. The Islamic prohibition of usury, according to Tjokroaminoto, is the same as a prohibition against the immoral capitalist expropriation of surplus value.’ The reforms carried out by the Prophet were thoroughly in the spirit of socialism. The instances cited by Tjokroaminoto are the following, in his own words:
“With the law of zakat Islam intended to make it obligatory for the rich to spend on behalf of the poor. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) land was the greatest source of livelihood for the working class, and as I have explained earlier, land was owned by the state. Small industry from pre-Islamic times was run by the poor or the slave for the sole profit and welfare of the owners, most of whom were harsh and oppressive. Before the advent of Islam, those who worked in industry were extremely looked down upon by the aristocracy, while the slaves who functioned as labourers were treated as animals by their capitalist masters. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) immediately raised the status of labour and workers. Though he descended from the highest Arab aristocracy, he worked as a trader before his preoccupation as a Prophet took up his entire time. As a recognized prophet he became ‘the spiritual and worldly ruler over Arabs and the Muslim territory, but he mended his own clothes and shoes. The biggest step he took in the direction of industrial socialism was when he raised the status of the slave to that of the free man. The slaves were given rights which they never had before. The slaves were made fellow workers; they were given positions of command in the army, or to become heads of other undertakings, while in yet other spheres as in the family, they became members of the family who treated them as animals before the coming of Islam. That being the case, the slaves took part in sharing the welfare and the profit of their masters. Truly, the step taken by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to improve the condition of the working class during his time, was unsurpassed in greatness in the economic history of the world.”
Tjokroaminoto was not blind to the fact that during the last thirteen centuries, despotism, autocracy and egoistic materialism had chiselled at the foundation of Islam. As long as the Qur’an is still with us, the ideal of democracy and socialism in Islam shall remain alive. He said: “If we Muslims truly understand and practise the teachings of Islam, we cannot avoid becoming a true democrat and a true socialist.
Damn, that’s fascinating thanks so much for the reply. I am ashamed to admit that I don’t know nearly enough about Indonesia as I should so I hadn’t come across Tjokroaminoto before. Good point on the nitpick - I was seriously sleep deprived when I wrote that last reply.
Obviously my angle on this is matter really clear but I know that if I sat down with a reasonably devout Muslim and we had at least an hour to chat about Riba, its nature and the intent of its prohibition, and to really hash it out we’d come to an understanding about how my position on the extraction of surplus value under capitalism is actually in line with a legitimate interpretation of the islamic prohibition on Riba.
Am I confident that I’d be able to get the other person to the point of being convinced my position is the right one? Nope lol.
But to walk away from a conversation really deeply analysing the economic circumstances we face from a Marxist perspective and having had one person make a solid case for why this is in line with the spirit of Islamic law would be a major victory imo.
Hey I’m glad that you find this interesting! I’m not really subject area expert on Islam or Islamic finance; just picked up a few things here and there from studies and from work. Honestly a bit surprised that I have this much to say about it, especially from the angle of Marxism.
And don’t worry about convincing your hypothetical Muslim interlocutor about the truth of the immortal science or whatever; even if they’re not convinced into immediately converting to secular communism, if they truly are arguing in good faith and with intellectual curiousity, they’ll probably arrive at some general position about their own religious belief and practice that would lead them to do some good in the world.
Go get some sleep!
In 1924, Haji Omar Said Tjokroaminoto, the leader of Sarekat Islam, then the biggest political party in Indonesia, published a monograph (113 pages) on Islam and socialism.
Is there any chance you can point me to an English translation of this text? I seem to be getting texts of the same title by other authors
Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s ever been a full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s Islam dan Sosialisme into English. :-(
In my English copy of Syed Hussen Alatas’s Islam and Socialism (which is itself a translation from Malay to English) from which I copied the above extracts, the footnotes say that the English translation of Tjokroaminoto’s words being quoted are Alatas’s own translation. In fact, I think the only extant full translation of Tjokroaminoto’s book is from the original Indonesian to Malay.
