Money matters in Islam

--- *This transcript was automatically generated by AI and may contain errors. * --- Alhamdulillah Rabbil Alamin wassalatuh wassalamu ala ashrafil anbiya'i walmursalin. Muhammadur Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa ala alihi wasami wasallam tasliman kathiran kathiran. Fa'ma ba'du fata'ala ta'ala inna allaha wa malaa'ikatahu yusalluna ala an-nabi. Ya ayyuha alladheena amanu sallu alayhi wasallimu taslimah. Allahumma salli ala Sayyidina Muhammadin wa ala ali Muhammad. Kama sallaita ala Ibrahimah wa ala ali Ibrahimah. Inna ka hamidun majeed. Allahumma barika ala Muhammadin wa ala ali Muhammad. Kama baraqta ala Ibrahimah wa ala ali Ibrahimah. Inna ka hamidun majeed. Yesterday we spoke about three different things. Today we look at the two other elements. And the first of that is money. And the reason money is important is because money makes the world go round, right? Things happen in this world because of money. Either the desire of money or having the money. Now, as I mentioned to you, the economic system at the time of Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam was very, very similar to the economic system that exists in the world today. It was a free market economy. It was not controlled by anybody. It was Mecca as a city was ruled by billionaires, by ruled by the wealthy people. Few of them used to gather in a place called Nadwa and they would, whatever they needed to decide, they would decide and that would be implemented. They didn't have a chief or a sultan or a sheikh or a king or somebody. They didn't have that. It was a bunch of businessmen who ruled the town. And they traded across, they had, they actually had a global international trade because they traded between the Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire. These were the days before the nation states. But if we interpret that in terms of nation states, we are looking at trade with at least in today's time, maybe 20, 30 different countries. So they had a multinational trading organization. They were not small businessmen. They were not small shoppers. These were big multinational businessmen who dealt in billions of dollars in today's money. People like Abdullah bin, people like Abbas bin Abdul Muttalib, Abu Sufyan, Abu Lahab, right, and you had others who were, Sufyan, Abu Sufyan, yes. These were, they were, Abdur Rahman bin Auf, Abdur Rahman bin Auf's actual amount of money which he left behind, his Tarka, when he passed away, we have the actual numbers. And with, according to those numbers, Abdur Rahman bin Auf, your Adal Anu was at least 10 times more wealthy than Elon Musk. And his money, his wealth was real wealth was gold. Halal. Halal. And gold, it was not, it was not the share on the share market. One day it goes up, one day it comes down. No, this is actual wealth. Right, so these are big people. Now, if you look at them today, we have to understand Islam is very much in favor of business, Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam in one hadith, and the, the Tahrir of the hadith, some people said it is a bit daif and so on, but it doesn't matter, Alhamdulillah the meaning of it is correct, which is he said that nine parts of baraka is in business and one part is in employment. So he encouraged business. He himself was a businessman and he was also employed for some time by Sayyidah Khadija al-Kubra, Umunah Radhe Allah Anha, and as a, as her agent to trade. So he knew both sides of the, of the, of the coin. So Islam is stands for what today we call a free market economy. It's not a regulated economy. Prices are not set. There is a incident in the, in the Seerah in Madina. At one point there was some shortage and the Sahaba came to the Prophet, they said, Ya Rasulullah please regulate the market, right? Set prices. Rasulullah sallallahu alaihi wa sallam said, no, I will not regulate what Allah has not regulated, I will not regulate. You regulate yourselves. So Alhamdulillah we know that free market is there. Now, however, there are some basic principles. First of all, in Islam, the business must not only be in halal things, but it must be morally defensible. Meaning that, for example, in the time of drought, right? You might say, well, I'm selling wheat or I'm selling corn, but in a time of drought, I am hoarding it and then I'm selling it for a high price. Even though the commodity you are selling is halal, which is, which is corn, but the way you are doing it has a big problem with it because you are now taking advantage of people's hunger and you are jacking up the price. Allahuhalam, this is whether it is halal or haram. We don't, we don't recommend that. We should not do something like this. So it's morally indefensible, even though the commodity itself is not, you can't say corn is haram, corn is not haram, corn is halal. But the way you are doing that business, that is a matter of, of doubt. And therefore you should not do it. Therefore we say it's a business which benefits at the cost of society. Islam is haram. Islam clearly and therefore Islam is categorically prohibited everything which is harmful, which is addictive, which is immoral and which is subversive. So interest based banking, selling alcohol and cigarettes and, you know, lottery tickets and all kinds of stuff. Sometimes people say, no, sir, but you know, I'm selling this alcohol only to non-Muslims. They buy it anyway. They buy it anyway or not anyway is not your problem. You don't do that. Right. It is haram for you to do that. Because the beauty of Islam is if Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited something, he prohibited everything around it. He prohibited everything that leads to it. So alcohol is prohibited. Anything addictive or anything, anything which changes the mind, all kinds of drugs are prohibited, which means not only their use, but also manufacturing them, buying them, selling them, storing them, transporting them, all of this is also prohibited. The same principle applies. Pork is prohibited from your, you cannot eat pork, but you also cannot have a pig farm. You can't have a pig slaughterhouse. You cannot be transporting pigs. You cannot be dealing with pigs. You can't use pig skin handbags and shoes and stuff. Everything to do with that is also prohibited. This is the safety net that Islam puts on it so that you don't go anywhere near it. Right. So this is something very important. And this is one of the reasons why the Quraysh opposed Islam the greatest because these were business people. And to them it looked like this Islam is going to destroy my business. Control it. I'll control it. So I cannot make the profits I was making. So we cannot. We will not do it. But just think about it. Read the history. What actually happened when finally they came to Islam and they started operating under Islamic principles. Did their wealth go up or down? It went up in a way they could not even have dreamt of. Even in their best times they never dreamt of ruling Byzantine and ruling Persia. Allah gave them that to rule. Right. And the most they dreamt of making money. They didn't think Abu Sufyan did not think I'm going to be the king of Persia. No. Allah made them. He did not make Abu Sufyan but the people but the Arabs they ruled the whole world. The whole world. Allah gave them that. Why? Because they followed Allah's subhanahu wa ta'ala's ahkam. They followed the way of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam. Therefore in Islam profit is the pleasure of Allah. It is not a return on investment. How do I? Its profit is the pleasure of Allah. Sometimes I say to my in the interfaith workshop we say we want peace. I said you will never have peace until you have your ROI return on investment based on war. Wars happen not because anyone hates anybody. Wars happen because wars make money. The highest return on investment is on weapons of mass destruction. So as long as you are making money out of debt. You will have wars. You cannot have peace. So find a different find another ROI you will get you will get peace in one minute. That is why Islam has. We want to today we want to live in a world where we want we don't want any moral and ethical considerations. Remove all ethics and morals. My desire whatever I wish to do I should be able to do. Whatever I wish to do I should be able to do. No problem. And I must make maximum amount of money by my making money who else is hurt. No problem. Somebody dies bad luck. This is our this is our way today. Then we say there is so much of suffering in the. Of course there will be suffering. How will you not have suffering. You put salt in the food you say there is too much of salt. Who put the salt you put the salt. There is no salt. Who told you to put salt. Take out the salt. Don't put so much salt. Right. So now if you think of the if you look at the the correlation banking system. You see what they did in my research I discovered this. What they did was they basically took the Roman system of finance which was almost a thousand years older than the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The Romans also had a global trade. They had a world empire. They had a global trade. So they use things like lines of credit deferred payments. LCs letters of credit right. Forward purchasing interest based lending multiple currencies. There is financing all of their stuff credit rating. The Romans had all this system and the Arabs just took over the system and the very simple reason. See if I am taking a caravan from basically the caravan meant as I mentioned yesterday from Yemen to Sharm and they stop midway in Mecca because this was home territory and it was time. It was a good place to take some rest replenish and go forward. And because of that stop it created a local market in Mecca which was also beneficial for them. So they made profit in three places in Yemen in Mecca as well as in Sharm. This was very good for them. But if you are if I'm taking a caravan and they took caravans of thousands of camels these are massive things like a moving city.