economic thought in the qur"àn and sunnah 55reported that the Prophet said to one of his companions, Bilàl ibn
Rabàh, who exchanged two measures of low quality dates for one
measure of high quality (dates), “It is exactly Ribà. Never do it, but
if you want to buy such (high quality) dates you can sell yours for
money and then buy the dates you want” (flaœìœMuslim). In addi-
tion to seeking the advantages of monetary transactions over the less
advanced market mechanism of barter transactions, monetary trans-
actions help eliminate the elements of ambiguity related to the process
of estimating ‘equivalence’ in the objects traded.
The confusion surrounding the issue of Ribàis represented par-
ticularly in commodity Ribà, not the Qur"ànic Ribà. Some believe
that the items in commodity Ribà are as “numerated” in the six
commodities mentioned specifically in the Sunnah. As such, the rules
of commodity Ribàshould be confined to these while others suggest
that this Ribàis “exemplified” in these six commodities and it should
be applied to all types of commodities, even if not mentioned in the
Sunnah (Al-Qusi, op. cit.).
The motives for the prohibition of interest in Islam are twofold:
moral and economic. The moral motive revolves on the principle of
not exploiting the poor and the needy through charging them inter-
est on borrowed money. The economic motive emanates from:
- the principles of justice, which is deemed as the fairness of divid-
ing both gains and losses between the parties concerned in busi-
ness deals, - the encouragement of hard work and the promotion of a posi-
tive contribution by capital owners to economic activities, and - alleviating the tendency for the concentration of wealth in the
hands of the few. Islam is not against being rich, providing that,
among other things, this is not achieved through idle and selfish
activities such as the lending money for interest.
Economic Resources: Forms of Ownership
Basis of ownership
All that which is in earth and heaven is owned by God, “His is all
that the heavens and the earth contain, to Him shall all things
return”, (Qur"àn, 3:109), “We shall inherit the earth and all who
dwell upon it, to Us they shall return”, (Qur"àn, 19:40) and “His is