{"id":312,"date":"2009-04-29T02:08:42","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T02:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html"},"modified":"2009-04-29T02:08:42","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T02:08:42","slug":"islamic-finance-and-magical-mo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html","title":{"rendered":"Islamic finance and magical money"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a great article in the London Review of Books <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lrb.co.uk\/v31\/n08\/hard01_.html\">about Islamic finance<\/a>, in the context of the global banking crisis. I found this excerpt particularly insightful:\u00a0<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\"><p>One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults &#8211; which may well see a revision before the end of this crisis &#8211; ascribe supernatural powers to money. Cult specialists are at great pains to understand and control how it works, but admit that it does so in magical ways that go beyond the effects of human commerce (for the markets, too, have magical attributes, including innate goodness). Whatever we want from money, we suspect, as devotees, that in the end it will always behave as it sees fit. Our awe of it is a bit like a rapt meditation on the way the shower of gold behaves &#8211; shimmering and falling &#8211; when it cascades over Dana\u00eb in her cloister in Argos. In the story, it&#8217;s merely the form chosen by Zeus for her seduction, but in our meditation, there is no Olympian in disguise and no intention to seduce, just the metal shimmering and falling, in consummate self-expression, as deity and dogma. Islamic approaches &#8211; there are quite a few &#8211; are much closer to Nonconformist and Anglican traditions, where the divinity stands to the side of money, reminding the faithful that he is one thing and mammon another. Money, in this view, is an object of caution rather than superstition &#8211; and, in spite of its dangers, a useful tool for anyone who wants to build a respectable world, with God&#8217;s instructions pinned to the wall above the workbench.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>well worth a read in full.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a great article in the London Review of Books about Islamic finance, in the context of the global banking crisis. I found this excerpt particularly insightful:\u00a0 One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults &#8211; which may well see a revision before the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[94,89,26],"class_list":["post-312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-read-this","tag-economics","tag-islamic-banking","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Islamic finance and magical money - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Islamic finance and magical money - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is a great article in the London Review of Books about Islamic finance, in the context of the global banking crisis. I found this excerpt particularly insightful:\u00a0 One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults &#8211; which may well see a revision before the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-29T02:08:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Aziz Poonawalla\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Islamic finance and magical money - City of Brass","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Islamic finance and magical money - City of Brass","og_description":"This is a great article in the London Review of Books about Islamic finance, in the context of the global banking crisis. I found this excerpt particularly insightful:\u00a0 One of the central differences between the Islamic and conventional approaches to finance is that our own cults &#8211; which may well see a revision before the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html","og_site_name":"City of Brass","article_published_time":"2009-04-29T02:08:42+00:00","author":"Aziz Poonawalla","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html","name":"Islamic finance and magical money - City of Brass","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-29T02:08:42+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-29T02:08:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2009\/04\/islamic-finance-and-magical-mo.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Islamic finance and magical money"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/","name":"City of Brass","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Aziz Poonawalla","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/87dfd5533a0222456bb5ad6eaf152fbb","name":"Aziz Poonawalla","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a95\/a95f814e7f2984c887f3b03aed357433x96.jpg","caption":"Aziz Poonawalla"},"description":"Aziz Poonawalla is a member of the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community, and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}