“Struggle against reality” bump.
Posted on 06/07/2002 9:24:32 PM PDT by swarthyguy
A LONG way from shellbursts in mountain gorges, Pakistan is waging another battle crucial to the country’s existence. In Pakistan’s Supreme Court yesterday Islamabad’s finest lawyers jostled with Islamic fundamentalists in a test case to decide if Pakistan’s 21st-century economy should be run according to a 7th-century sacred text, the Koran.
At issue is whether interest should be banned as un-Islamic, the demand of religious parties seeking to Islamise the country’s financial system. The outcome, if it goes against the Government, would be to ban interest rates, wiping out all attempts to rehabilitate an economy stricken by decades of corruption, mismanagement and misrule.
President Musharraf’s Government is seeking to overturn a judgment handed down by the Federal Shariat Court, a lower court dealing with religious law, in December 1991, declaring all forms of interest-based banking unIslamic. In June last year the Shariat Appellate Bench upheld the order and gave the Government one year to eliminate all interest-based banking by June 30.
With the religious parties yet to argue their case, economic analysts say that Pakistan will face serious problems attracting future investment or securing loans if the Government loses, or cannot find a compromise such as disguising interest as “profit” and “loss”.
Inevitably the proceedings required the reading of the sacred verses deemed relevant. Equally inevitably, heavily bearded clerics and religious leaders in the packed public gallery found fault with their opponents. When Raja Akram, the unfortunate counsel for the state-owned United Bank Limited, read out excerpts from the Koran, his opponents jumped up in their seats protesting that his pronunciation of Arabic was deficient to the point of illegality.
After much discussion one judge pronounced that failure to read Arabic correctly was not a sin and restored order by the carrot-and-stick approach of threatening to clear the court and invoking the Prophet Muhammad’s injunctions to calm and tolerance. Grumbling, the religious parties fell quiet, although Mr Akram complained that during the tea break he was told that he would go to Hell.
One speaker also held up proceedings by protesting that the judicial bench were insufficiently sworn in because they had not taken an oath accepting that the Prophet Muhammad was the last, the Seal, of the prophets.
Once the case was finally under way, learned argument raged back and forth over whether the Koranic injunctions applied only to demanding interest from the poor and oppressed, or to all transactions. In his opening address, expected to continue into next week, Mr Akram argued that Pakistan was not created to be a theocratic state and claimed that interest-based transactions were permissible, as long as they were not exploitative.
He also complained on behalf of the bank that with so many sects interpreting Islam in their own way, it would be impossible to implement so many different versions of Islamic law.
The dispute centres on interpretations of interest, usury and the meaning of the Arabic word riba (increase), defined by the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions as “the taking of interest on capital investment, which is prohibited in Islam”.
Muhammad Ziauddin, an economics specialist at Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, said no economy had ever sustained conversion to an interest-free system, but with $36 billion (£25 billion) of foreign debt, most of it interest-bearing loans, Pakistan was especially vulnerable.
“The impact of the Government losing on this issue would be massive, it would be total upheaval,” he said. “They would have to convert their entire banking and financial system to the Islamic mode. Interest would be out.
“The chickens are coming home to roost. This whole thing was started by the military itself because they started to use Islam as a strategy to serve their own ends in Kashmir and Afghanistan. They let the genie out of the bottle and now they are facing the repercussions from the religions parties they themselves nurtured.”
I'm sure they'll fudge it somehow but it's still amazing.
Correction:
"a 7th-century sack of baloney, the Koran."
"his opponents jumped up in their seats protesting that his pronunciation of Arabic was deficient to the point of illegality.Is this from The Onion?After much discussion one judge pronounced that failure to read Arabic correctly was not a sin and restored order by the carrot-and-stick approach of threatening to clear the court and invoking the Prophet Muhammad’s injunctions to calm and tolerance. Grumbling, the religious parties fell quiet, although Mr Akram complained that during the tea break he was told that he would go to Hell. "
This is the best these people can do? No wonder they're stuck in the 7th century.
They need missionaries more than anything. Any religion--other than the one they've got--would be an improvement.
Muslim societies seem to have a really hard time with reality too.
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Ann Coulter
Click HERE for the thread.
“Struggle against reality” bump.
"My idea of heaven is to be allowed to be put in manacles... just for a few hours. They must think the sun shines out o' your arse, sonny."
And just how do they think banking pays for itself?
This, I think, shows the world a glimpse of how the moslem world is going to destroy itself. They will turn on each other, as it's stated in prophesy.
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