BEY’ and SHIRÂ (Buying and Selling) (I)

Men need one another and have to live together. Were it not for bey’ and shirâ there would not be any order on the earth. In Islam transactions of bey’ and shirâ run on a supply-and-demand basis. Islam is respectful of the individual’s economic freedom. It promotes private enterprise and investments. This commercial bedrock of rules commanded by Allâhu ta’âlâ and the politicoeconomic regime called socialism, the dipsomaniacal brainchild of a Jew named Karl Marx, are poles apart. The liberal economic system followed by the states of the free world approximates more closely to Islam’s economic rules. The economy as taught by Islam neither has to do with the Marxist socialism, which totally rejects private enterprise, nor is it Adam Smith’s liberalism, which categorically prohibits the state from interfering with the economic life. Since (in Islam) the state holds a monopoly in organizing and arranging the compulsory kinds of charity termed ’ushr, kharâj; zakât and jizya collected by civil servants called ’âshir; in setting fixed prices on some commodities, and in collecting and spending the other types of revenue due to the Beyt-ul-mâl; the Islamic economy is not a liberalism at large. It is an immaculate set of rules that sponsors the best possible avenues for private enterprise and nurture a social justice wherein individuals are administered their rightful shares from the national income.