Buying shares ... narrow thought?
the government has invited the citizens, through various media means, to subscribe to the lucrative al-zour and stock exchange companies, and i have already done so, the first time i subscribed online and it was done easily and did not take more than ten minutes.
an hour after i completed the subscription, an official government fatwa was issued outlawing what i did because there was a suspicion that these two c o m p a n i e s deal with usury.
after reading the fatwa, i remembered what happened to me in 1964 at the gulf bank when a customer asked me to know the interest rate on the savings account. he handed me a large sum of money and asked to deposit in the same account, but warned not to mix the new amount with the balance of the old account, saying the new amount is halal money and the other (old balance) is haram money.
i explained to him that the money mixes in the bank treasury, and within the same account with each other but he did not understand, got upset for turning down his request, withdrew the money and said he will open an account in another bank and also turned down my offer to open another account for him.
it is possible to justify the behavior of that naive man, but how to justify the fatwa of the awqaf and thousands of such believers or followers? do they not know that the first joint-stock company in the history of kuwait was a commercial bank established in 1952 when some of those who force their fatwa down our throats today were not even born at that time?
do they not know that dozens of similar ‘usury’ companies have been founded since then? do those who issued this fatwa not know that their salaries and those of their children come from state/government investments locally and abroad and from the benefits of shares, bonds, and deposits of companies and banks established since 1952 until today?
do they not know that all the so-called islamic banks, without exception, depend on their dealings and determine the interest rates of their loans on the global ratios day by day?
advertisements placed at every street corner confirm this. the views of the three members of the committee which issued the fatwa are not the same and one of them said it is permissible to subscribe, is he ignorant or infidel, for example?
if we say that the opinion of the committee or its advisory opinion is optional, what is the fault of the families whose guardian decides not to subscribe and deprives them of the proven benefits of the two projects? if we say that this is the opinion of the committee, where is the government, the representative of the constitutional civil state?
it is in my personal interest, and in the interest of many, that the largest number of citizens refrain from subscribing to the shares of these two companies, in line with this fatwa, to increase our shares but this is a narrow thought and the issue is much more serious, accepting this fatwa accelerates the scope to the religious state that nobody in the world knows its boundaries, or where it starts and where it ends, or even how it can be managed in a highly complex world.
