ABY ABDALGHANY AOUESKHANOV
ssociation “Al Hunafa”, a Malaysian NGO, has been committed to Da’wah and charity work for 26 years and is a voice in the Muslim affairs of the country to be reckoned with; whereas numerous Islamic NGOs disappeared within these years “Al Hunafa” went from strength to strength: it conducts regular classes on various aspects of the Deen inviting speakers from and outside Malaysia, issues its own annual magazine also named Al Hunafa and continues to help poor and needy.
On 26th July 2010 Al Hunafa invited Dr. Umar Pasha Vadillo to deliver a talk titled "GOLD DINAR AND SILVER DIRHAM – CURRENCY OF THE UMMAH IN THE 21ST CENTURY. LAUNCH OF THE SHARIAH MONEY IN THE STATE OF KELANTAN". Muamalah Council Malaysia would like to thank Mr. Fuad Amir, secretary of Al Hunafa, for organizing the lecture.
Umar Pasha Vadillo presented the new coins of Kelantan Government to the Al Hunafa audience and said: “We were receding from Capitalsim for 300 years until complete surrender to the kafir system in the last 50 years with the islamization of banking. But now with these coins we stopped moving back and from here we begin to move forward”.
Umar Pasha outlined the ideology and impact of modernist movements that emerged in the last 150 years to show to the audience what led to the disastrous situation of today when Muslims not just sunk in Riba but completely endorsed an alien entirely usurious system .
At the background of islamization of banking lay a larger process called “Islamization of Knowledge”. The movement started in the late 19th century in Egypt and was greatly expanded after the de facto fall of Ottoman Caliphate in 1918 to become the mainstream Islam of the 20th century, the century when the Muslims for the first time didn’t have a caliphate. The objective and methodology of ‘Great Reformers’ were controversial from the outset: while they opposed Western colonialism they conspired against Ottomans in collaboration with Britain, while they called for renewal of the Deen they rejected the madhhabs, taqlid and traditional Fiqh as medieval backward scholarship, while they declared they would make Capitalism Shariah-compliant they reformed the Deen of Allah into a capitalist-compliant monotheist theology. In parallel to this event in Egypt there grew another movement of ‘purifiers’ of the Deen in the Arabian Peninsula, Wahabi, equally loved by Western powers. Why the kafir arch-enemies of Islam were fond of these two Muslim phenomena? The answer is obvious: both of them merged as a force for creation of independent nation states . Who they wanted to be independent from? From Islamic Khilafa of Ottomans and Moguls! But the real tragedy and irony was that their national independence from khilafa put them into submission to kafir powers, total submission.
The ‘independent’ nation-states born out of ruins of the Ottoman Caliphate happily adopted this new religion of Abduh and Reda as their ‘official Islam’ since it helped them to insist that they – de jure and de facto secular states – were yet somehow Islamic. From there on the army of state-sponsored ustadzs (the word “ustadz” is a modernist term, it is not Arabic word and scholars in the past were never called “ustadz”) was produced by ‘mainstream’ Islamic universities to strengthen the ideology of the nation-state by further islamization of capitalism. The ‘islamizers of knowledge’ of the second half of the 20th century continued the process of removing the Muamalat until it became possible to islamize bank. Then one by one they islamized every Haram thing they could possibly put their hands on: stock exchange, forex, credit cards, futures, options, bonds, insurance; virtually nothing left, mission accomplished. The governments couldn’t be happier with such an easy and rapid expansion of ‘Islam’. Malaysia succeeded Pakistan, at one time world champion in Islamic banking, and is now the reigning undisputed champion proudly giving master-classes all over Muslim world on how to beat Riba by doing more Riba.
“What happened in the last 50 years is absolutely unthinkable, a group of Muslims for the first time in the history of Islam declared Haram Halal. But islamization of banking – how dreadful though it is – is not the worse crime these modernists have committed, by far more damaging result of this shameful affair was to persist in notion that Islam hadn't actually had its own model” - said Umar Pasha to “Al Hunafa” audience.
Thus today we have class of priests – ustazs – teaching us Islam without Muamalat, a "decaffeinated Islam" of personal Ibadah reduced to: praying on time, lowering our gaze before women, putting scarf on our 3-year old daughters and looking for Halal chicken). Social, economic, political matters are not touched or made unimportant. “It is like teaching how to make cheesecake without telling what the cheese is” – said Umar Pasha. This is how we finally ended up with an ‘islam’ that endorses Riba. That is why the young people, especially ones with strong personality, do not attend these Aqida classes more than one time, because they are tasteless.
Unfortunately the ignorance of ‘islamic’ capitalists and their 'shariah' experts could only be matched by their arrogance for they have gone so far in betraying the Deen of Allah that they are prepared to defend their ‘Islam’ even if they know it has no basis in the Deen. I remember how a year ago at an Islamic economic forum during the prayer break Umar Pasha was speaking to an ‘Islamic’ banker from the Middle East face to face: “Stop this absurdity, come and join us now or else tomorrow you’ll find yourself on the shameful side of the history”, - said to him Umar Pasha. “I thank you for the advice but this is your opinion, brother”, - replied the banker without a change in face.
Association “Al Hunafa” sees its main goal as spreading the message of Islam and enhancing welfare of people of Malaysia, and the matter of Gold Dinar too is a powerful Da’wah and the key to creation of wealth for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. “Al Hunafa” expressed its desire to again invite Dr Umar Vadillo in near future to speak on the Fiqh of Zakat, the third pillar of Islam, and practical application of Dinar and Dirham for Zakat payment in Malaysia.