Our dear Bob Hannah: Islam and al-Riba means Interest!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 23, 2018 at 15:33

Our dear Bob wrote:

>Modernist scholars such as Fazlur Rahman and Abdullah Saeed do not accept the equation of riba and interest.

Listen: In-order to understand what is al-Riba we have to depend on what we are being told in the classical commentaries including the early Mufasereen and not by a certain Pakistani by the name Fazlur Rahman. And the simple answer is no one had a clue And this is not unlike how much do ahl al-kitab have to pay for al-Jizya. It is all guessing!

We are told by al-Mufasereen that the word Riba in Arabic means الزيادة or al-Ziyada or The Excess which is not true

What is the etymology of the word Riba? al-Mufasereen don't know. More likely than not it is a loan word from Syriac ܪܒܝܬܐ or Ribayata Check this link

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DC%AA%DC%92%DC%9D%DC%AC%DC%90

This is the word ܪܒܝܬܐ in Syriac (also ܪܒܵܝܵܐ or Rbaia) and it means: Interest (paid by the borrower)

http://www.assyrianlanguages.org/sureth/dosearch.php?searchkey=13337&language=id

And it is clearly the meaning of the word not just in Syriac but also Hebrew רִבִּית‎ and Arabic. So it does not mean Ziyada but it means interest (paid by borrower)

Do you get it so far?

>The prophet never defined it,

Abul Qasim aka Muhammad was not a systematic theologian. Remember that he was a Jahil (illiterate) The Qur'an assumes that its reader must be able to fill in what Muhammad left behind (the there is plenty that Muhammad left behind).

The way out? There is a famous tradition that says: التفسير للصحابة والتاءويل للفقهة or The tafsir (exgesis) is for the followers of Muhammad and al-Ta'weel (read this as exegesis also) for the doctors of law (read this as al-Mufasereen the likes of al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir and for sure this does not include Mr Rahman) But al-Mufasereen had no clue and it is all guessing. Here is a very interesting link to Islamweb where al-Riba is explained very well and this is how it is defined

http://fatwa.islamweb.net/fatwa/index.php?page=showfatwa&Option=FatwaId&Id=101443

>so scholars are left to plumb the fragmentary accounts of the practices of unscrupulous moneylenders from that time when debt slavery was the norm.

Here are the Quranic verses where the word al-Riba is mentioned but again the Qur'an is a confused and confusing book where definitions of terms like Riba and Jizya are not mentioned and more evidence that the Qur'an is a confused and confusing book

http://quranbysubject.com/category.php?category=ff9a4e71-3ecc-11e4-8652-000c29db8d9b

>To equate their practices to interest in modern financial markets is ridiculous.

Muhammad was not only a poor theologian he was not an an economist. Nonetheless Riba means interest back then and now

Deal with it

PS: The word interest in MCA is فاءدة or Fa'ida not Riba anymore

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