The Moral Context of the Prohibition of Riba in Islam Revisited

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Abdullah Saeed

The prohibition of riba (interest) in Islam has been a hotly discussedissue among contemporary Muslims since the 1960s. Since rihd is perceivedby a considerable number of Muslims to be bank interest, andalmost all banking systems in the world, including those of the Muslimworld, are based on interest, many Muslims are concerned whether it islawful. For those who regard bank interest as rihd, any increase in a loantransaction over and above the principal is rihd because it involves anincrease over and above the principal. They contend that the fiqhi interpretationof riba is the interpretation and must be followed. For otherMuslims, the prohibition of riba is related closely to the “exploitation” ofthe needy and poor by the relatively well-off, an element that, for them,may or may not exist in modem bank interest. These Muslims have arguedthat the fiqhi interpretation given to riha is inadequate and does not takeinto consideration the moral emphasis associated with the prohibition.This paper looks at a) the overall context of the Qur’anic prohibitionof rihd; b) how the term is used in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and in thefiqhlliterature; and c) the lack of moral emphasis in the current debate.Riba and the Qur’an: The Context of ProhibitionThe Qur’an’s condemnation and ultimate prohibition of riba was precededby its condemnation of several other morally unacceptable forms ofbehavior toward the socially and economically weaker strata of theMakkan community. From the very beginning of the Prophet’s mission, ...

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa N. Terranova

This essay focuses on a body of photoconceptual works from the 1960s and 1970s in which the automobile functions as a prosthetic-like aperture through which to view the world in motion. I argue that the logic of the “automotive prosthetic“ in works by Paul McCarthy, Dennis Hopper, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall, John Baldessari, Richard Prince, Martha Rosler, Robert Smithson, Ed Kienholz, Julian Opie, and Cory Arcangel reveals a techno-genetic understanding of conceptual art, functioning in addition and alternatively to semiotics and various philosophies of language usually associated with conceptual art. These artworks show how the automobile, movement on roads and highways, and the automotive landscape of urban sprawl have transformed the human sensorium. I surmise that the car has become a prosthetic of the human body and is a technological force in the maieusis of the posthuman subject. I offer a reading of specific works of photoconceptual art based on experience, perception, and a posthumanist subjectivity in contrast to solely understanding them according to semiotics and linguistics.


Author(s):  
Roy Livermore

Despite the dumbing-down of education in recent years, it would be unusual to find a ten-year-old who could not name the major continents on a map of the world. Yet how many adults have the faintest idea of the structures that exist within the Earth? Understandably, knowledge is limited by the fact that the Earth’s interior is less accessible than the surface of Pluto, mapped in 2016 by the NASA New Horizons spacecraft. Indeed, Pluto, 7.5 billion kilometres from Earth, was discovered six years earlier than the similar-sized inner core of our planet. Fortunately, modern seismic techniques enable us to image the mantle right down to the core, while laboratory experiments simulating the pressures and temperatures at great depth, combined with computer modelling of mantle convection, help identify its mineral and chemical composition. The results are providing the most rapid advances in our understanding of how this planet works since the great revolution of the 1960s.


Author(s):  
Sam Brewitt-Taylor

This chapter outlines three examples of how secular theology was put into practice in the 1960s: Nick Stacey’s innovations in the parish of Woolwich; the radicalization of the ‘Parish and People’ organization; and the radicalization of Britain’s Student Christian Movement, which during the 1950s was the largest student religious organization in the country. The chapter argues that secular theology contained an inherent dynamic of ever-increasing radicalization, which irresistibly propelled its adherents from the ecclesiastical radicalism of the early 1960s to the more secular Christian radicalism of the late 1960s. Secular theology promised that the reunification of the church and the world would produce nothing less than the transformative healing of society. As the 1960s went on, this vision pushed radical Christian leaders to sacrifice more and more of their ecclesiastical culture as they pursued their goal of social transformation.


Author(s):  
Kenneth Bertrams ◽  
Julien Del Marmol ◽  
Sander Geerts ◽  
Eline Poelmans

AB InBev is today’s uncontested world leader of the beer market. It represents over 20 per cent of global beer sales, with more than 450 million hectolitres a year flowing all around the world. Its Belgian predecessor, Interbrew, was a success story stemming from the 1971 secret merger of the country’s two leading brewers: Artois and Piedboeuf. Based on first-hand material originating from company and private archives as well as interviews with managers and key family actors, this is the first study to explore the history of the company through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The story starts in the mid-nineteenth century with the scientific breakthroughs that revolutionized the beer industry and allowed both Artois and Piedboeuf to prosper in a local environment. Instrumental in this respect were the respective families and their successive heirs in stabilizing and developing their firms. Despite the intense difficulties of two world wars in the decades to follow, they emerged stronger than ever and through the 1960s became undisputed leaders in the national market. Then, in an unprecedented move, Artois and Piedboeuf secretly merged their shareholding in 1971, though keeping their operations separate until 1987 when they openly and operationally merged to become Interbrew. Throughout their histories Artois, Piedboeuf, and their successor companies have kept a controlling family ownership. This book provides a unique insight into both the complex history of these three family breweries and their path to becoming a prominent global company, and the growth and consolidation of the beer market through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.


Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-429
Author(s):  
Robert N. McCauley

Abstract Since the late 1950s, the rest of the world has come to use the dollar to an extent that justifies speaking of the dollar’s global domain. The rest of the world denominates much debt in U.S. dollars, extending U.S. monetary policy’s sway. In addition, in outstanding foreign exchange deals, the rest of the world has undertaken to pay still more in U.S. dollars: off-balance-sheet dollar debts buried in footnotes. Consistent with the scale of dollar debt, most of the world economic activity takes place in countries with currencies tied to or relatively stable against the dollar, forming a dollar zone much larger than the euro zone. Even though the dollar assets of the world (minus the United States) exceed dollar liabilities, corporate sector dollar debts seem to make dollar appreciation akin to a global tightening of credit. Since the 1960s, claims that the dollar’s global role suffers from instability and confers great benefits on the U.S. economy have attracted much support. However, evidence that demand for dollars from official reserve managers forces unsustainable U.S. current account or fiscal deficits is not strong. The so-called exorbitant privilege is small or shared. In 2008 and again in 2020, the Federal Reserve demonstrated a willingness and capacity to backstop the global domain of the dollar. Politics could constrain the Fed’s ability to backstop the growing share of the domain of the dollar accounted for by countries that are not on such friendly terms with the U.S.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben W. Dhooge

AbstractAnglo-American and Russian stylistics influenced each other substantially in the 1960s and 1970s. From the 1980s on, however, this fruitful mutual influence came to an end. The two schools started to grow apart, but despite that, they would develop almost parallel to each other, displaying many theoretical and methodological similarities. The present paper illustrates this by highlighting one such specificity – the idea of the possible reflection of one's conceptualization of the world in the use of literary language, and the possibility of reconstructing that conceptualization by means of a stylistic analysis (‘mind style’–‘kartina mira’). By comparing the Anglo-American and Russian theories on the topic, it is shown that the separately evolved conceptions are similar and even complement each other: the differences between them clarify and help solve possible theoretical and methodological gaps. Moreover, the juxtaposition of both conceptions allows us to perfect the notion of ‘mind style’ and its practical applications. A similar approach to other conceptions and tendencies in current seemingly mutually independent Anglo-American and Russian stylistics have the same potential, and may lead to a new convergence between the two schools.


Author(s):  
Thomas M. Hunt

Performance enhancement in sport has a long and controversial history. Although several organizations enacted prohibitions on the subject of doping prior to the Second World War, public scrutiny on the issue remained relatively light until the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1960s, officials passed a number of regulatory measures with the twin goals of protecting the health of athletes and ensuring the fairness of competitions. Due partially to the effects of Cold War political rivalries, the use of drugs by athletes nevertheless remained widespread in the world of sport. This policy situation changed dramatically with the end of the superpower conflict in 1991, however. The following decade was marked by increasingly vociferous calls for reform from outside the international governance structure for sport. In February of 1999, regulatory powers over the subject were centralized in a new organization called the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).


2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 777-790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Palmer ◽  
Gilberto Hochman ◽  
Danieli Arbex

The paper presents and discusses the travel notes diary of Canadian scientist Robert J. Wilson when he visited Brazil in April 1967 during the Smallpox Eradication Programme run by the World Health Organisation. Wilson's report makes it possible to reflect on the smallpox eradication campaign in Brazil; on the Canada-Brazil cooperation to improve the quality of the smallpox vaccine; on his assessment by of scientists and Brazilian laboratories; on the effects of intersections between scientific activity and social and cultural activities; on the role played by specialist communities of experts role in international scientific cooperation projects; and on a Canadian traveller's concepts and prejudices about Brazil at the end of the 1960s.


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