This approach will achieve our goal of helping people transact their busi-
ness in an RF way, according to the values of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic
system, and hopefully in a way that will normalize the effect of such a varia-
ble and major concern.
To attempt to meet this important challenge without having to wait for
a solution that may take many years to achieve, we followed what is believed
to be two wise solutions that are based on Shari’aa. One was an ideal solu-
tion in which we would apply thecommodity indexation ruledescribed in
Chapter 3. The approach was to replacefiatmoney with a reference com-
modity, such as gold or silver or even a staple food commodity like wheat,
rice, or soybeans—or a combination of all of these, as James Baker, III rec-
ommended in 1987 and which is detailed in Chapter 3. However, this solu-
tion would be complicated and impractical. It would take years and the
support of many of the countries that command strong economic, diplo-
matic, and military power—exactly as happened in 1948 in the Bretton
Woods agreement. That is why it was decided to use these reference com-
modities as a tool to decide, in a macro way, whether an economic bubble is
perking in the type of asset we intend to finance (by this we implicitly mean
‘‘to invest in’’). The other solution we use is tomark the property to market
using the rule described in Chapter 3. Applying the mark-to-market rule nor-
malizes the effect offiatmoney and its growth by evaluating the return on
the investment in the property at hand based on its actual lease or rental rate
in the marketplace. Doing it this way—going to the live market and research-
ing the lease that such a property or a business could command in the open
market—enables us to evaluate the economic viability of the capital invest-
ment. This way we can ascertain that the actual market rent or lease rate of
this property is used, and not interest rate, which is the rent of money.
Religious Leaders We deal with many categories of religious leaders. These
differ not only by their role but also by their country of origin and the
school of thought in Shari’aa they subscribe to. They are:
Popular Thought Leaders in the Muslim World These recognized leaders
write extensively on many religious, social, political, international, and ju-
risprudence issues that have to do with Islam in general and business trans-
actions and finance in particular. They became recognized and highly
respected stars in the field of religious leadership over the past 50 years. Be-
cause of their status, they were the first to be contacted by those who
wanted to develop Islamic banking practices. These leaders did the best
they could, based on the knowledge on hand at the time, to start the
‘‘engine’’ and get it going. Their biggest challenge was their lack of under-
standing and education in the fields of banking and finance. However, their
RF Banking Model for the 21st Century 235