The Nexus of Finance, Protest and Walāyah: Towards a Theoretical Framework

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The Nexus of Finance, Protest and Walyah: To-wards a Theoretical Framework

Professor Idris Samawi HamidColorado State UniversityFort Collins, CO 80523 USA.Email: [email protected] 5, 2013

1 Introduction

The cycle of protests that swept the United States of America beginning in 2010 has itsroots in the growing disillusionment of a signicant portion of the American populacein the prospects and opportunities for growth and development. Despite the exten-sive myopia of various sectors of the American public vis-a-vis the rest of the world, if there is one thing much of the American public holds dear is the belief in the so-calledAmerican Dream. This involves, in part, a belief in equal opportunity for economicsuccess for those who strive.

In the wake of the grossly inequitable distribution of responsibility for the 2008 nan-cial crisis in favor of the banking sector, accompanied by the reduced prospects fortodays youth for economic advances comparable to those of their parents and grand-parents, much of the white middle class has risen up in protest against a governmentthat has crossed the Rubicon into plutocracy or oligarchy. In this paper, we discusswhat has come to be known as the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement in the lens of an Islamic perspective. What caused the current crisis? What are the Islamic prece-dents for protest against the status quo?

We will see that there is a precedent in the example of the Companions of the Prophetof Islam that may serve as a guide to the ongoing protest. In particular, we will lookat the example of three Companions: Ab Dharr, Abdullh ibn Mas d, and Al ibnAb lib (A). In early Islamic history, the original rules of property rights, taxation,

and wealth distribution established by Islam were systematically violated in the wakeof the passing of the Prophet. Even when the correct laws were acknowledged theywere not uniformly applied to the elites of the society. From the collective example of protest by these esteemed gures against plutocratic and oligarchic economic injustice,we will explore the beginnings of the construction of an Islamic framework of protestin the 21 st century in the United States.


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2 Some Roots of the Crisis

2.1 Developmental Dysfunction 1 : Economic Roots

2.1.1 Economic Theory

The greatest economic breakdown in the West since the Great Depression was spurredon by the meltdown of the nancial system of Western Capitalism in 2008. Mirakhor(2009) has given a comprehensive analysis of the economic roots of this crisis fromthe point of view of Islamic Finance, and we draw liberally upon his analyisis. UponMirakhors denition (2009, p. 5),

a nancial system is a collection of institutions that facilitate transactions be-tweennancial resourcesand their users, and provide support for the real sectorof the economy to convert primary resources into production for nal use (Fry,1995).

In the West in general, and the United States in particular, the culture of nance isprimarily one of purchasing and investing through borrowing. Few can afford to sub-sidize a normal standard of living through ones salary or business alone. Savingfor, e.g., a reliable vehicle, a decent home, and medical expenses; and then paying forthese assets through savings alone is quite difficult-to-impossible for the average indi-

vidual. The high cost of immediate assets needed for comfortable living and livelihoodfar outweigh income. On the ip side, the high costs of those assets provide collateralfor loans for those who have some form of title to them. So in the case of a house,the rise in value of the home provides a source of collateral so that the borrower canpurchase other needed things. As Mirakhor (2009, p. 38) explains:

Corporations as well as consumers have been encouraged to adopt a cult of debt nance. To reinforce the process of progressive reliance on debt nance,asset price ination provides consumers and rms with collateral to supportdebt-nancial spending. Borrowing is also supported by steady nancial in-

novation that ensures a ow of new nancial products, allowing leverage andwidening the range of assets that can be collateralised. (Palley, 2007).

Yet the debt contract in particular is a one way street: In principle it does not take intoaccount the exigencies of the borrower. Regardles of the circumstances of the borrwer,the lender is contractually mandated to receive, for each passing moment the debt isnot paid, a ctitious1 surcharge called the interest rate is added to the amount owed.

1 The use of the term ctitious ( ) to describe the money that comes from interest goes back to theImm a-Ri (A) (ca. 765818) and ultimately to the Qur n, as we shall see shortly.


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This surcharge of money is ctitious because it has no organic or other coupling to theinvestment of the borrower, or to his or her circumstances. Mirakhor (2009, p. 38):

The debt contract requires repayment on the date specied by the contract re-gardless of the outcome of the project. In effect, the nancing bears no relationto the real investment. While it is true that the investor undertaking the projectmust compare the rate of return to the project to the rate of interest specied by the debt contract, the nancing itself (that is, the lender, amounts borrowed,the debt contract, and the rate of interest charged) is, in effect, decoupled fromthe real sector investment. Thus, the rate of interest specied in a debt contract,which is essentially a promise to pay more money in the future for an amount of spotmoney, dominates the rate of return to investment in the real sector withoutthe nancing itself having an organic relation to that investment.

Thus the real value of, e.g., the housing market upon which most Americans dependfor both living and asset appreciation is decoupled from the rates charged by thenancial sector. At the same time, it is in the short-term interests of that same nan-cial sector for the values of homes to continue to increase so that the banks can lendmore and make more wealth from ctitious instruments (viz. interest) and from in-vestors who purchase related nancial instruments (e.g., the infamous and apparentlyincomprehensible derivatives) whose value is tied to the value of the same housingmarket.

Thus, although there is no organic relation between the ctitious money generated byinterest and the investment activities of the borrower, there is a genuine relationship between the collecting of ctitious interest wealth and the push for asset price ina-tion, what economists call a bubble. One could suggest that, just as interest createsctitious wealth, the bubble of asset value driven by interest-based nancing is largelyctitious as well. When the bubble bursts, reality sets in (what economists call a mar-ket correction).

So if the housing market continues to climb in value, the scheme appears to work rel-atively ne for both the nance system and the consumers of credit. The interest as-sessed is partly ameliorated by increase in housing values. However, as housing prices

skyrocket, bigger and bigger loans are shelled out to borrowers. This lending becomes based less and less on their income abilities to pay back the loan, within the contextof the overall economy and its productivity, and more on the (largely ctitious) in-ated (and continuing-to-inate) value of the properties. Then the relationship of theamounts of nance capital needed to maintain the system begin to far outweigh theability of the real economy to pay it back. Mirakhor (2009, p. 40):

As noted above, Lim (2008) estimated that the global size of the nancial assetsin 2007 was 12.5 times that of global GDP! That such an inverted pyramid wouldeventually collapse under its own weight seems inevitable. Additionally, debt


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contracts essentially pit ex ante, xed and guaranteed payment commitmentsagainst an expected but uncertain future income stream from the underlyinginvestment in the real sector to validate the payment of principal and interest

stipulated in the debt contract. It is no wonder, then, that Keynes referred tosuch a system as a casino.

2.1.2 Islamic Perspective

From both the scientic and the Islamic perspective, the role of interest-based debt-con-tracts in themeltdown of thenancial system,and the devastating consequencesof thatmeltdown for the United States (and indeed the Capitalist world economy as a whole)cannot be emphasized enough. Islam encourages trade and allows the procuring andowning of assets to provide oneself, ones family, and ones community the basic needsof existence and comfort. At the same time, this is in accordance with a clear set of rulesand regulations.

According to the Islamic framework: The rst principle of property rights is the princplethat all property is ultimately and and invariantly owned by Allh (swt). The acknowledge-ment and operationalization of this principle within a society is critical. Ownership byindividuals is really trusteeship. 2

A corallary to this rst principle: Any gains from instantaneous property rights withoutcommensurate work or legitimate transfer from third parties is forbidden. This includes usury

or interest (rib ). Property is held as a sacred trust and Islam protects it againstexploitation through unjust, wrongful, and unfair dealings. For example:Do not eat the wealth and property that exists between you in ctitious ways; 3

nor use it to bribe judges and the ruling authorities so that one group fromamongst the people can, in inequity, eat up the wealth and property of the people. [2:188]

O you who dynamically believe! Do not eat the wealth and property that ex-ists between you in ctitious ways; rather [use wealth and property] so that

there may be fair and mutually satisfactory trade and traffic. And do not killyourselves! [4:29]

From the sources of the Sunnah there are a number of traditions that explain some of the rationale behind the prohibition of interest andusury. Imm Ali a-Ri (ca.765818)gives a concise summary of the Prophetic guidance on the issue. See Ilalu -Shar i

2 See also Mirakhor and Hamid (2009, pp. 215216).3 in ctitious ways. This includes forbidden transactions such as usury, gambling, and any nancial in-

struments that build wealth in unjustiable and instantaneous ways as discussed in the next paragraph.


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With no counterweight to their greed, the banks have engaged in a systematic cam-paign of accumulation by dispossession.4 As the value/cost of homes (and other valuablessuch as college and university tuition) outstrip the ability of debtors (within the con-

text of the productivity of the larger economy) to repay, the banks repossess the homesand throw out the occupants. There have been cases of families thrown out of theirhomes after paying the banks many times the homes original value over 40 years ormore. Adding to their greed, the banks pushed so-called sub-prime mortgages upon borrowers who were least likely to be able to pay the loans off even in a good economy,accelerating the process of accumulation by dispossession. Moreover, the banks wouldthen sell those same loans to investors as slickly packed nancial intruments (deriva-tives, mortgage-backed securities, etc.) to keep the housing values cticiously high.

In the education arena, when student-loan debt cannot be erased through bankruptcy

in the United States, this fact is aggravated by the fact that the space of prospects foruniversity graduates to nd the kinds of employment needed to facilitate the paying back of the loans has dramatically shrunk. A whole generation of students is experi-encing or facing the prospect of virtual life-long indentured servitude or slavery to thenancial sector, the same sector responsible for shrinking the space of suitable employ-ment opportunities to begin with!

Another way of looking at the problem of interest is through the principle of walyahordynamic loving. Walyah is the rst principle or pillar of Islm, and its most importantactivity. According to a famous tradition from the Prophet of Islm:

Nothing has been called to in the way that walyah has been called to.

What this means in the most general sense is that Islm is built around a networkof dyadic relations of love, manifested in guardianship, trusteeship, loyalty, and al-legiance. These relations are between God and creation, as well as between the dyadicunits of creation itself. 5 In a functioning society these relations are organic, that is, eachsegment of society is invested in the other by a network of mutual rights and obliga-tions, all built on a foundation of love. As Mirakhor points out in the previous subsec-tion, and as I have emphasized, there is no organic relation between the interest rateand the actual investment of the borrower. As the lender I say, If you win, I win; if you lose, I win:

They cut what Allah has commanded to be joined, thereby doing corruption inthe Earth. [2:27]

4 I owe the phrase accumulation by dispossession to another participant in this conference, HeatherGautney, who quotes the term from David Harvey.

5 For details about the concept and activity of walyah, see Hamid (2012), especially Chapter 2.


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The nature of the interest-based debt contract is such that it cuts off the lender from thedebtor in a way that breaks thebonds of love between them. In a truly functioning com-munity, the slogan should be, If you win, I win; if you lose, I lose. We are all invested

in each other in organic ways, in walyah. Once that connection is cut off, once walyahis broken; then destitution (e.g., crash of the housing market in the Unites States), andcorruption (e.g., the bailout of the banks underwritten by the banks collective owner-ship of the political levers of the Unites States) follow suit. This is an example of eatingwealth in ctitious ways combined with the de facto bribery of the rulers to keep thesystem working in favor of those who earn their wealth in ctitious ways.

The devastation wrought upon society, the tearing apart of the fabric of humanity,through interest-based nancing is such that the major Abrahamic religions in general,and Islam in particular, has condemned this institution in the strongest terms. Indeed,

it is universally reported from the Prophet of Islam that taking one dollars worth of interest is worse than 70 acts of incest in the House of Allah in Makkah. This is perhapsthe most devastating indictment of the current Capitalist nance system.

2.2 Developmental Dysfunction 2: Political and Social Roots

But there is another factor at work in the roots of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) move-ment. In the Islamic context, as Mirakhor (2009, pp. 6465) explains,

What makes for a truly Islamic system, however, is not only the prohibition of

interest (although this is an important element of the system), but the institu-tional framework within which the system has to operate.

A functional system, whether Islamic, Capitalist, or Socialist, must operate within a setof mutually agreed upon rules as provided by law. As Imm Al famously stated: Asystem can subsist without belief in the truth, but it cannot subsist through injustice.

Thus, despite the inherent instability of the Capitalist system and the evil of inter-est-based debt-contracts within its system of nance; its excesses are at least amelio-rated bya system of rules of behavior meant to, in part, preserve at least some minimum

standards and benchmarks for a level playing eld. By minimum in this case we referto that which is minimally necessary to maintain both the reality and the appearanceof fair play and the opportunity for upward socio-economic mobility. 6 Indeed, suchopportunity plays a key role within the context of the myth of the American Dream.

An aside: One explanation for the general lack of participation or interest in OWS onthe part of the Latino and African-American communities (at least as compared withthe white middle class) is as follows: The systematic discrimination and oppression of

6 The Islamic term for the reality and appearance of justice is qis ( ).


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these minorities from within the system runs very deep in both recent and not-so-re-cent American history. Thus, despite the presence of both conscious and subconsciousbelief or faith in the American Dream, cynicism and even resignation about the real

and/or apparent lack of opportunity for upward socio-economic mobility abound,even with the election of a colored man to the White House.

In white America, on the other hand, there is a general tradition of privilege enjoyed by those of Northern European descent or by other Europeans within the second orthird generation after immigration. This tradition of privilege serves often subcon-sciously to reinforce a strong belief in the ruling system of development within theUnited States. For the most part, the white middle class has grown to expect a rel-atively unfettered path towards upward socio-economic mobility based on followingthe rules of the game, viz., the minimum standards and benchmarks for a level playing

eld within the Capitalist system.It was always the case in the United States that the rules of the game have been mas-sively tilted towards the rich and the most privileged in society; towards the nancialsector and corporate elites. It is even arguable that there has always been at least ageneral subconscious awareness of this fact on the part of a signicant portion of thewhite middle-class masses. However, the collapse of the housing-market bubble and perhaps more importantly the response to it by the levers of power shattered theappearance of fair play with a clarity and plainness that was relatively unprecedented(in recent generations anyway). Two events stand out:

The bailout of the banks.

Despite the fact that the nancial sector was primarily responsible for the collapseof the US economy based in large part on treating the real-estate assets and in-vestments of average Americans as a casino , the priority of both parties in theUS Congress was to save, not the consumers, but the banking system. This theyaccomplished through a bailout package worth close to a trillion dollars (or evenmuch more, depending on how its counted).

From an Islamic perspective, one point that does not get emphasized enough in

OWS is the dedication to the sacrality of debt-contracts based on interest. Despitethe bailouts, the banks rmly resisted any suggestion of merely canceling the bal-looning rates on adjustable-rate mortgages that ruined so many low-income house-hold victims of predatory lending in the sub-prime mortgage market. Imagine ascenario where the government had allotted one trillion dollars (or more) to bailoutthe millions of American homeowners who lost home value, as well as those whoseinterests rates had ballooned. Imagine the government enforcing an interest holi-day for two years on housing loans, and using a trillion dollars (or more) to sponsorthat. Or imagine the government compensating the American consumer a portion


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of the lost value of their homes, and then taxing future banking prots to pay for itover the next decade or so.

But no: Instead, the banks were saved and the taxpayers were forced to pay at leasttwice: Once for the bailout of the banks, and second by having their access to creditsqueezed, both in the personal and in the business space. That is, the banks re-fused to lend to businesses and personal borrowers, tightening the credit on even borrowers with excellent payment histories. In the American credit system, thetightening of credit upon a borrower has the effect of increasing the interest ratespaid on future loans taken out by that borrower.

The laying bare of the corporate ownership of the political system.

Both presidential candidates of 2008 Barak Obama and John McCain took timeoff from their campaigns to unite in saving the banks. This uncommon outwardunity of the two parties in the bailout exposed the fact that the US legislative andexecutive branches of power were owned in toto by banking and corporate inter-ests. Two years later, the third branch of political power, the Supreme Court, ineffect sealed the corporate-nance ownership of the American political system byits now infamous Citizens United ruling, which in effect ruled that there can be nolimits placed on private or corporate donations to political candidates and theircampaigns. Of course the nancial sector wasted no time in funelling the same tax-payer money used to bail out the banks to sponsor political advocacy in its owninterest.

These two events in effect broke the bonds of trust between much of the Americanmiddle class and the locii of political and economic power within the United States. 7The unholy relationship between money and power is alluded to in the the same verseof the Qur n quoted above:

Do not eat the wealth and property that exists between you in ctitious ways;nor use it to bribe judges and the ruling authorities so that one group fromamongst the people can, in inequity, eat up the wealth and property of the people. [2:188]

The current nancial crisis was caused primarily by ctitious wealth run amok. Butusing that same ctitious wealth the nancial system could buy out the political in-stitutions that the people must rely upon to set things aright, even within the contextof Capitalism. The combination of ctitious wealth and purchasing of political powerconstitute the height of economic injustice.

7 Interestingly, this fact was explicitly acknowledged by Citigroups CEO Vikram Pandit: Trust has been broken between nancial institutions and the citizens of the U.S. See http://goo.gl/73Sed .


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3 Reactions to the Crisis

3.1 Tea PartyInterestingly, the rst mass reaction to the nancial crisis came from the right of thepolitical spectrum, in what is now known as the Tea-Party movement. Although theywere quickly and effectively coopted by the corporatist Republican political establish-ment, they started off as a reaction to the bailouts of the nancial sector as supported by both political parties in the United States. Unfortunately they were ideologicallyincapable or unwilling to connect the dots between the institutions of corporatism andthe evils of banking nance capital (which for them include especially the Federal Re-serve). This allowed the Tea Party to be easily coopted by corporate interests, whoseinterests in maintaining the current nance system are paramount.

For example, the Tea Party was effectively used as pawns in the ght against the strug-gle for universal health care in the United States. Indeed, it is arguable that, after in-terest-based nancing, there is no greater cancer in American society than the brokenfor-prot health-care industry. Yet the manner in which President Obama caved in tothe health-care industry without a ght, leaving Americans with a government-spon-sored mandate to purchase private, for-prot, health-care insurance, was cynicallyused by other corporate interests to mobilize the Tea Party against Obama.

3.2 Occupy Wall StreetBut it was not only the Tea Partiers who were outraged by the Presidents handling of healthcare. Indeed, especially on the progressive left of the political spectrum, dis-illusionment with Obamas empty promises of change we can believe in had begunto set in. Time after time, Obama would appear to roll over without a ght to reac-tionary demands from the far right: On economic stimulus, on healthcare, on fairertaxes on the wealthy, on union rights, etc. Even his political language of shared sac-rice needed to raise the United States out of the current recession seemed to echotoo much of right-wing talking points that blamed government spending on programs

for the poor and even infrastructure for the current crisis. Disillusionment with BarakObama, and recognition of the broken political process (due to the increasing ood of money in politics), are two factors in the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

While the Tea Party attracted a mostly older, conservative, audience, OWS has attractedlargely younger, college-educated crowds. As students they see that, today, student-loandebt accounts for more of Americas consumer debt than credit-card debt (just cross-ing the one-trillion dollar Rubicon in April, 2012). Student-loan debt cannot be erasedthrough bankrupty. Furthermore, the current jobs crisis brings home the fact that thecurrent generation of the white middle class will be the rst in American history to


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own less wealth than their parents. So where has this wealth been going? Well, to thetop 1% of Americans. Over the past 30 years the wealth of the top 1% of Americanshas tripled, while that of the lower 90% has dropped by over 20%. 8

Add to that the unprecedented ownership of the American political system by thosesame elites as demonstrated by the bailout and Obamas continuous kowtowing totheir interests and it does not take long for many of the youth to become disillusionedwith the prospects for change under the current circumstances. Hence the march to thestreets to protest the growing inequality in American life.

OWS has identied the 1% with the corporatocracy that controls the political insti-tutions. Beyond the immediate issues of instability in the nanial system that pre-cipitated the current economic crisis, OWS has concerned itself with the ravages thatrun-away corporatism has inicted on American society in particular and the world ingeneral.

3.3 Towards an Islamic Assessment of OWS

A full analysis of the articulated aims and goals of OWS is beyond the scope of thispaper. Indeed, the lack of articulation of a clear ideological path forward has been amajor weakness of the movement. 9 One wonders if OWS will be able to transcend theleft-right divide especially on social issues which the Tea Party abjectly failed todo. 10 Will it become just another pawn in the Democratic party? One wonders if the

energy of OWS will dissipate once housing prices go up again and unemployment ratesgo down.

On the onehand, a deeper ideological analysis of the relationship between corporatism,the nancial system, and the effects of their synergy upon the rest of society seems to be missing. The framing of the debate in terms of the 99% versus the 1% in a waydistracts from some of the core issues. Most importantly, there appears to be no clearawareness of the role that the institution of interest-based debt contracts plays in thegross inequality of wealth distribution. Although there is clarity on the broken natureof the political system and the inequitable assessing of taxes, there does not appear

to be a comprehensively articulated appreciation of the fundamental instability of theentire nance system of American Capitalism. From an Islamic point of view indeed,from an Abrahamic point of view, including primordial Judaism and Christianity onecannot leave the institution of interest-based debt contracts off the table. Everythingelse will serve only to manage some symptoms of the cancer, but not save the patientfrom certain death.

8 For some related statistics go to, e.g., http://www.goo.gl/Jlfsw and http://www.goo.gl/qkbC8 .9 The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City ( http://www.goo.gl/n6gQM ) encapsulates many

of the grievances and aims of the movement.10 Indeed, it became a magnet for outright racism, bigotry, and xenophobia.


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( ) used in the above yah literally means divulging, exposing, or broadcast-ing; but it also carries the connotation of jahrah ( ) meaning to be loud. Sothe scope of this yah would appear to include the general notion of protest against

injustice, in the sense of that word as used in peaceful demonstrations and the like. 11

Injustice results when the rules of fairness are violated. The act of protest is thus en-couraged as a function of rule-violation. When the rules themselves are unfair, thenthat is also a violation of fairness, and injustice results. The question of the objectiv-ity of the rules of fairness and unfairness is a question of meta-ethics, which we willnot engage in here. Islam, of course, propounds its own set of normative rules whichare divine in origin and universal. From that perspective one can say that the OWSprotests t largely, if not squarely, within the Islamic spirit of the reality and appear-ance of justice ( qis ). One way of recognizing this is to examine some early Muslimhistory.

4.2 Rule Violation in Muslim History

The generation of Islam after the passing of the Prophet () was plagued by a numberof serious and systemic violations of the rules he set in place. We will mention threeviolations that happened immediately after his passing:

Political.

The appointed successor of the Prophets Walyah (love and guardianship) over

the young Muslim community was pushed aside from the political responsibilitiesof his position. This made the political system unstable and paved the way for atakeover of the Muslim community by the tyrants of Banu Umayyah.

Property.

The property of the Prophets daughter Fimah (A) was expropriated against herwill for use to fund the early Muslim armies in their wars. This set a precedent forthe expropriation of wealth under rubrics such as public interest and the like;

Spiritual.

The spiritual tax, the zakh, was collected by force whereas the Prophet had reliedupon the consciences of those who owed it to pay it.

After the initial vigorous (if outwardly unsuccessful in theshort term) protests byImmAl (A) and others immediately following the passing of the Messenger (), the com-munity remained largely quiet. But the consequences of these and other early viola-tions of the rules became so egregious that, during the rule of Uthmn ibn Affn, the

11 Although we have focused on this one yah for a brief analysis, the theme of struggle against injusticeis too widespread in the Qur n to need any proof.


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early Companions of the Prophet had to once again take up the banner of protest, andat great personal cost. In the three cases we will mention, the theme of economic injus-tice is the overriding concern, much as economic injustice is the overriding theme of

the OWS movement. Let us see how these three great students of the Prophet of Islamdealt with the challenge of economic injustice in their time.

First a bit of background. Umar ibn al-Khab, the second ruler of the Muslim com-munity, was the one who established the foundations of economic injustice withinMuslim society. As the community became wealthy after the conquests of Persia andthe Byzantine Empire, Umar famously decided upon an inequitable division of theexcess wealth that owed into the public treasury. The earliest Companions of theProphet from before the Hijrah to Madinah were given the largest share, followed bythe Companions of the Prophet who joined him between the Hijrah and the fall of

Makkah to the Prophet. Then the thousands of Muslims who came into Islam after-wards would share the remaining portion. This resulted in class divisions within Mus-lim society, something Umar claims to have regretted towards the end of his life. 12 Butit served a very important function:

An aristocracy of the Makkan Companions, to whom Umar himself belonged, wascreated;

The Madinan Companions were eliminated as a threat to the rule of the Makkancompanions;

A religious counterweight to the Family of the Prophet, already forced out of thepolitical leadership, was cultivated and made nancially secure.

Whether or not Umar was sincere in claiming to regret what he had done, by thetime he died a religious aristocratic class had been created, with all the trappings of wealth, power, and religion. This policy served as a precedent for the more extremeactions of the third ruler of the early Muslims, Uthmn ibn Affn. Where Umar hadnot used the wealth of the community for his personal aggrandizement or that of hisimmediate family (despite wittingly or unwittingly creating the Makkan aristocracy),Uthmn threw all inhibition to the winds. He treated the treasury as a personal bank

for himself, his family the Banu Umayyah , and his loyalists; this included outrightenemies of the Prophet of Islam. By the middle of his 12-year rule the Umayyad clanhad been able to leverage these gifts of Uthmn and the system set in place by Umarto become the top 1% of Muslim society (and much to envy of the Makkan aristocracyestablished by Umar).

A number of Companions wanted none of it. Although they apparently benettedfrom the system Umar had established, generally gures like Al ibn Ab lib (A),

12 See Qutb (1993, pp. 171172).


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Abdullh ibnMas d, and Ab Dharr gave away virtually all of theirexcess wealthandrefused to aggrandize more. They continued to live close to the poor of the community,and identied neither with the Makkan aristocracy nor with Uthmn. The rst to raise

the voice of protest against the rising economic injustice was Ab Dharr.

4.3 Ab Dharr

The paragon of Islamic protest par excellence is Ab Dharr. He lived in the Umayyadstronghold of Damascus and began to openly and loudly preach against the behaviorof the rulers:

Surely you have invented works that I do not recognize. They are not in theBook of Allah nor the Tradition of his Prophet. By Allah I see fact erased, ction brought to life, the truthful belied, and selshness with no awareness. O youcommunity of the rich at the expense of the poor! Those who aggrandize goldand silver, and who do not spend it in the way of Allah: Give them the tidingsof an iron whip of re [in the next life]. With it they will be branded on theirforeheads, their sides, and their backs.

O hoarders of wealth! Know that there are three who share in your wealth:

1. Fate, which will not consult you on taking away the best or worst of whatyou have through death or destruction;

2. Your heir, who waits for you rest your head and then he drives you aside,leaving you to blame;

3. And you are the third; no matter how hard you try to not be the weakest of the three you will not succeed Surely Allah says, you will not reach right-eousness until you distribute from that [wealth] which you love! [3:92]

You have draped yourselves in silk, pillows of brocade, seeking to recline on thenest wool. Yet the Messenger of Allah slept on a mat. You sample the mostexquisite varieties of food, yet the Messenger of Allah was satised with barley bread.

Eventually the people of Damascus began torally around Ab Dharr, much to the frightof its rulers. They wrote to Uthmn demanding that he do something, or risk losingDamascus altogether. So he summoned him to Madinah and then banished him to avillage in the wilderness where he died virtually alone. 13

13 See Qutb (1993, p 174). Translation is my own; there exist at least two published translations of thisimportant work in English.


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For the OWS movement, the lesson of Ab Dharr lies in the coupling of the matter of the distrbution of wealth (or the lack thereof) with the spiritual. Too often the wealthinequity between the super-rich and the rest of the masses is framed in purely mate-

rialist terms, especially in the United States. The progressive movement is often themost hostile to Abrahamic spirituality, while the proponents of Abrahamic spiritual-ity are often the most reactionary and most allied with the institutions of wealth andpower. There are exceptions of course, but they are generally few and have the leastvoice.

For the OWS movement one of the biggest challenges is to reach the religiously conser-vative masses of the heartland of America and beyond, and remind them that JesusChrist also protested against the banks and money lenders of his time. Indeed, theone and only act of violence attributed to Jesus was his throwing the money changers

(who lent money on interest) out of the temple. It is my rm belief that, at least inthe short-to-mid-term, movements such as OWS will not be successful on a mass scalewithout a strong spiritual backbone that draws upon the Christian heritage or at leastrespects the traditional values of that heritage within the United States. 14

4.4 Abdullh ibn Mas d

As fate would have it, another companion of the Prophet, Abdullh ibn Mas d, waspassing through the village where Ab Dharr passed away just after it happened. Helead the funeral prayers for his friend, bemoaning his treatment at the hands of Uth-mn. 15

Abdullh ibn Mas d was the treasurer of the city of Kufa. During his tenure thereUthmn appointed his cousin Wald ibn Uqbah as governor of Kufah. Upon his ar-rival in Kufah Wald demanded access to the treasury to dispense with in line withUthmns nepotist policies. Abdullh ibn Mas d, who was also the leading scholarof the city and teacher of the Qur n, then began to preach openly against Uthmnand his policies, accusing him and his cronies of innovations in the Islamic way of life.As he was beloved by the people of Kufah, Wald wrote Uthmn asking him to removeIbn Mas d from Kufah if he wanted to keep Kufah under his authority. So Uthmnsummoned ibn Mas d to Madinah and had him beaten publically till his ribs broke.Then Uthmn kept him under house arrest till his death, and cut off his and his fam-ilys pension. 16

14 Within the United States there is a syndrome known as Whats the Matter With Kansas? The pointis that many of the religiously conservative communities that abound throughout the so-called heart-land of the country consistently vote against their own economic interests for candidates who success-fully demagogue their values, values which the liberal and progressive elites generally look downupon.

15 See abar (1967, Vol. 4, pp. 308309).16 See Amn (1951, Vol 9, pp. 35).


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One of the lessons for OWS from the example of Ibn Mas d is the example it setsfor people in positions of power and inuence. Ibn Mas d freely let go of power inorder to promote the truth. For someone of the status of Ibn Mas d to quit the ruling

establishment and accept the consequences of nancial and wordly ruin for the sake of the truth is to have a major impact.

Although Ibn Mas ds protest against Uthmns nepotism is not quite as famous asthe protest of Ab Dharr, in a sense it had more immediate consequences. The follow-ers of Ibn Mas d kept up the protest, especially after the cruel way that their teacherand master was treated. It is no accident that Kufah would soon after become thestronghold of Ibn Mas ds master, Al ibn Ab lib (A), after the latter came to power.

4.5 Al ibn Ab lib (A)

Theforces unleashed by Uthmns nepotism and the exhortationsof Ab Dharr, IbnMas d,and others led to a revolt of the masses in which Uthmn was unfortunately killed.After his death, the elders of the Muslim community chose Al ibn Ab lib (A), theProphets cousin, son-in-law, and chosen successor of his walyahover the Muslim com-munity, as its fourth political ruler. The Imm faceda hugechallenge. On one side therewas the 1% of his time, the Banu Umayyah, who controlled so much of the wealth of the community. Then there was the Makkan aristocracy, chang to regain the preem-inent position they had under Umar and to maintain their wealth and status. Bothcamps lobbied the Imm to compromise with their economic interests, but he refused.Indeed, although he was the ruler, much of the rule of the Imm could very well bedescribed as a rule of protest. In the eyes of Al ibn Ab lib (A) there would be nocompromise with economic injustice, past or present. The resources of the public trea-sury would not be used to benet only the elites of the society. In his very rst speechafter coming to power, the Imm made the following announcement:

O people! Let it not be said tomorrow by any of you that the present world over-whelmed them to the point where they have taken possession of huge estates of land, dug out private canals, kept fancy horse stables, and taken for themselvesthe choiciest of slave-girls; let it not be said that they did this because I did not

restrain them from their pursuits. Let them not say, after I have restricted themto their fundamental rights, Al ibn Ab lib (A) has forbidden us our rights[the ctitious ones established by Umar and Uthmn]. No! If any one of theCompanions from amongst the Emmigrants [pre-migration to Madinah] or theHelpers [post-migration] sees a preferential virtue for himself over others, thenthat preferential virtue may be presented to Allah tomorrow, and its reward andrecompense is upon Allah.

You are the servants of Allah! All wealth is the wealth of Allah, [excess pub-lic wealth] is to be divided among you equally [in contrast to the misguided


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poilicies of Umar and Uthmn]. There is no preference of one of you over an-other, and for those who are dynamically aware of Allah is the most beautifulrecompense. 17

After giving up on coopting the Imm into thepre-existing sytem of preferentialwealthditribution, with all of their energy and ill-gotten resources the Makkan aristocracy andthe Umayyads, one after the other, fought against the Imm. Eventually the Imm wasassassinated, and the tyranny of the Umayyads took over the Muslim world for a time.

A lesson for OWS is that those who possess wealth and who own the levers of powerthrough their wealth will not give it up very easily. The struggle for fairness in thecurrent system in the US will be long and not easy in the least. On the other hand,the principle of standing up to expose injustice remains as a cardinal principle of truehumanity, one exemplied by the example of the three afore-mentioned Companions.To that degree OWS has already become a microcosmic reection of the Islamic spiritof protest.

5 Conclusion: An Islamic Contribution to OWS

In conclusion, the framework of Islam has at least three things to offer to the OccupyWall Street movement by way of example and guidance:

The role of interest and usury.

In the mainstream media in the West, and even most of the alternative media onthe right and the left of the Western ideological spectrum, the role of interest-baseddebt contracts in the fragility and instability of the Capitalist system (and the grossinequalities and injustices engendered by that instability) is hardly touched upon.OWS does not appear to have brought this matter into its current critique of thecorporatist system. Yet it remains essential. As Mirakhor (2009, p. 61) puts it,

it is now clear that nancial systems dominated by interest-based debt con-tracts are prone to nancial fragility and instability.

That instability is currently ameliorated to the benet of the institutions of inter-national nance, who are bailed out for all their malfeasance at the expense of the

17 See Qutb (1993, p 163). One of the fascinating things about this speech is that it turns one of the modernarguments against religion on its head: Usually religion is accused of making promises of heaven as adistraction to keep the poor and the oppressed from focusing on seeking redress of their plight in thisworld. But in this speech the Imam tells the elites of society to take their claims of eliteness to God andask for their special treatment in His court. If they are right in thinking they are so special, then theyshould seek their recompense there. But in this life, the excess wealth of the community belongs to allof its members equally.


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citizenry. Although the corporate and nancial-sector virtual ownership of the po-litical space in the United States is what ultiamtely makes this highly inequitableamelioration possible, the root of the problem goes deeper, to the heart of the -

nancial system itself. As Richard Wolff points out in his lecture, Can We AffordCapitalism?, 18 it is not enough to merely bandage the system with more Great-De-pression inspired regulations that the banks will buy their way out of yet again.On the other hand, Wolff (at least in this lecture) also misses the critical role thatinterest-based debt contracts play in the systemic instability of the current system.At some point, any change for genuine benet of the 99% will come about onlywhen the cancer of interest-based debt contracts is abolished.

The connection between protest and spirituality.

OWS, despite its attempts toreach out toothers in theAmerican middle class, comesout of a largely secular, progressive side of American life. To reachout to a greateraudience the spiritual side of the argument for economic justice needs to be empha-sized more. The example of Jesus Christ, who fought the banks and the 1% of hisown people, needs to be highlighted. Indeed, one thing that political discourse inthe United States severely lacks is a liberation-theology discourse that is beholdenneither to the reactionary right-wing nor the materialist left-wing. One sees someglimmers of this within OWS, but there is a long way to go.

The need to avoid compromise with economic injustice.

Do not eat the wealth and property that exists between you in ctitiousways; nor use it to bribe judges and the ruling authorities so that one group from amongst the people can, in inequity, eat up the wealth and property of the people. [2:188]

From this yah we have extracted two principles that cannot be compromised:

1. Fictitious wealth (from interest to inequitable distribution of public monies) is acancer that must be fought tooth and nail;

2. Wealth cannot be used to control politics.

As leader of the community Al ibn Ab lib (A) refused to compromise one iotaon these two principles, even at the cost of his life and rule. This is the exam-ple of leadership, along with the example of Jesus Christ forcefully throwing themoney-lenders from the Temple, that the protesters can look up to as a standard forpolitical integrity (although this is admittedly a hard standard to emulate).

In conclusion: Occupy Wall Street is one of the rst genuine mass-based movementssince the Vietnam War to rise in protest against the systemic economic, political, and

18 Available from LinkTV cable programming.


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related injustices that plague the United States. It is an open question whether this ini-tial wave of protest will achieve any concrete results beyond, perhaps, a few cosmeticchanges here or there. Yet it will certainly play an important role as a precursor of the

future waves of protest to come, as the United States continues its steady march to de-cline under the weight of global corporatism and international interest-based nance.And in that role it mirrors the Islamic spirit of protest as exemplied by its earliestadherents.


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References

Amn, Abd al-usayn Amad (1959). (Al-Ghadr). Tehran: Dr al-Kutub al-Islmiyyah. 1995Reprint.

Fry, Maxwell (1995). Money, Interest, and Banking in Economic Development. Baltimore: The Johns Hop-kins University Press.

Hamid, Idris Samawi (2011). Islm, Sign and Creation: The Cosmology of Walyah. New York: GlobalScholarly Publications.

Lim, M. M. H. (2008). Old Wine in a New Bottle: Subprime Mortgage Crisis Causes and Conse-quences, Working Paper No. 532. New York: Annandale-on-Hudson, NY: The Levy Economics In-stitute. Available on the LEI website.

Mirakhor, Abbas and Hamid, Idris Samawi (2009). Islam and Development. New York: Global ScholarlyPress.

Mirakhor, Abbas (2009). The Recent Crisis: Lessons for Islamic Finance. Kuala Lumpur: Islamic FinancialServices Board. Available online: http://www.ifsb.org/ .

Qutb, Sayyid (1993). (Social Justice in Islam). Cairo: Dr al-Shurq. 13 thprinting.

abar, Muammad ibn Jarr (1967). (abars History). Beirut. Reprint by Raw i al-Turthal- Arabiyy.

Professor Idris Samawi HamidColorado State UniversityFort Collins, CO 80523 USA.Email: [email protected] 21, 2013

The Nexus of Finance, Protest and Walāyah: Towards a Theoretical Framework

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