The Islamic Lands
Religion and the Power of Money
Islam was both a religious and a political system. Over the succeeding centuries,
while empires were built up and fell apart, and different Islamic sects and schools
of thought were established, the essence of the Islamic message -the belief in
one God and his messenger Muhammad as the 'seal of the Prophets'
-provided a thread of unity across time and space. At the outset, the Islamic caliphate
had to reconcile the competing demands of God and of more temporal
concerns, a tension that is reflected both in Islamic attitudes towards money and in
the coins themselves. For the system of ethics established under Islam had to be
reconciled with the needs of an earthly community and the monetary
requirements of the state, such as the efficient collection of taxes, the successful
organization of commercial life, and so on.
From earliest Islamic times it was clear that a certain unease existed over the
power of money. There are repeated warnings in the Qur'an about its transient
nature: 'Woe to every kind of scandal monger and backbiter who piles up
wealth and lays it by thinking that his wealth can make him last forever' (Sura
104, v. 1-3). Added to this was an anxiety about the insidious tendency
of money to distract the believer from the 'true path': 'Wealth and sons
are allurements of the life of this world, but of the things that endure,
good deeds are best in the sight of the Lord' (Sura 18, v. 46). The
Prophet himself is supposed to have said 'Money puts my community to the test' (Ibn Hanbal, Book 4, p. 160).
As a consequence of this deep-seated unease about the power of
money, the religion itself attempted to regulate its influence and
prescribe certain conditions according to which the Muslim could possess
money and remain ethically just. One of the principal conditions was to
give zakat, the alms tax, calculated as a certain proportion of a
person's wealth. This was laid down as one of the five main obligations of Islam.
Despite these regulations, the Muslims developed a number of financial
instruments, and the prohibition on interest proved an obstacle neither to trade
nor to banking. Concern about the ethics of financial transactions led to the
development of the post of the muhtasib in the major Islamic cities. The
muhtasib was a functionary of the state and, at least in theory, was appointed by virtue
of his high moral integrity and knowledge of Islamic law (sharia). His role was
to make sure that in all areas of commerce the sharia was upheld. Thus he would
check weights and measures, and even test for counterfeit coins. He made sure
that merchants did not charge interest and dealt severely with hoarding. This
was a practice that was frowned upon, although it evidently took place for a variety of reasons.
|