‘Gift from the state, not interests’
the government has referred to the national assembly some time ago a draft law related to the establishment of a supreme shari’a supervisory council within the central bank of kuwait, whose task is to give a legal opinion on any issues referred to it.
the authority will be entrusted with resolving any dispute that may arise between the members of the shari’a supervisory board in any islamic bank. those behind this project aim to put an end to the conflict of fatwas and opinions and the competition between the bodies over who is more correct.
this draft law took me back to the past quarter of a century. it had become clear to me that the first item on the agenda of the meeting of the new board of directors of a bank was related to agreeing to open an ‘islamic’ banking unit within the non-islamic bank, in line with the wave of islamic awakening that was at its height in that time.
i vehemently opposed the decision, and i said that we must arbitrate logic. either that our work in the bank is illegal, and we must, therefore, convert to an “islamic” bank, or that what we do is sound and there is nothing wrong with it, and we must, therefore, continue our work and stop ‘playing the two ropes game’!
thus the proposal was stillborn and the chapter was closed and remains closed in that bank until today.
but with the increase in the number of institutions that follow the sharia method in its business, or this is what it says, and the presence of a legal body in each of them consisting of no fewer than seven clerics, a majority of the members of these institutions are subject to what is spent on them, the legislator or the central bank has discovered the defect and we had been always warned against it, and decided to intervene and put an end to the improper practices that raised many eyebrows.
since the early 1960s, i have opposed the establishment of religious style banks, which were called transcendentalism, since in islam or any other religion – in my estimate – there are not enough texts to create an integrated banking system that can cover the entire work of such financial institutions and the foundations of rules and modest systems.
most of them are due to the opinions of diligent jurists, and the work of each of them contradicts others. their sayings have no kind of sacredness, and therefore this serious gap was covered by the idea of the existence of ‘legitimate bodies’ within every islamic institution whose role is to interpret and justify what is in the interest of the owners of the institution, and this is normal.
a funny incident occurred after the liberation of kuwait from saddam’s occupation when it became clear to the government that banks would be exposed to the risk of total deficit if they did not intervene and buy their debts, from loans or banking facilities, and this is what happened, where the central bank bought those debts, and gave each bank interest, at a price.
the market is on it, i.e. in total debt. here, i put it in the hands of non-interest banks, as its legal laws prevent it from accepting credit interest on its loans or deposits to the state! here, the legal bodies that came out with an explanation allowing the breaking of the jurisprudential rule and accepting the interest were used as a ‘gift from the guardian’, not interests.
