Glossary.

Glossary

riba

Riba is forbidden by decisive text (Q 2:275-279). Its paradigm is riba al-qard, an increase contractually stipulated on a loan, void by the decisive text (Q 2:279) and by ijma'; any increase stipulated on a loan or a debt is riba. The law also forbids riba al-fadl (below).

riba al-fadl, ribawi

The excess in a hand-to-hand exchange of a ribawi good for its own kind. The ribawi goods are the six the sound hadith names, gold, silver, wheat, barley, dates and salt, and what the schools join to them by a reasoning on which they differ.

zakat

The obligation Allah set on qualifying wealth above the nisab: on money, trade goods and livestock held across a lunar year, and on crops at the harvest (Q 6:141). It goes to the eight categories named in Q 9:60, and to no other purpose.

batin wealth (amwal batina)

A category of zakatable wealth, not a description of hidden wealth: gold, silver, cash and trade goods, as against apparent wealth (amwal zahira), livestock, crops and goods passing the collector at the frontier. A bank balance is cash, and so is batin. The schools differ on the state's claim to collect it; in Book Two's design the owner pays zakat on it himself, as the obligation it remains.

kharaj

The standing charge on conquered farmland left with its cultivators. Its classic instance is the settlement of the Sawad of Iraq by 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (R.A.), the second of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. The schools characterise it differently: in the Shafi'i school, and in the Hanbali where the imam made the land waqf, it is a rent (ujra) on land held as waqf for the Muslims; in the Hanafi school it is a charge on the land (wazifa); in the Maliki school it is the revenue of land that became waqf by its conquest.

the Sawad

The farmland of Iraq. After its conquest 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (R.A.) kept it as a standing revenue for the whole community, including generations not yet born, rather than as spoils for the conquerors, and left it with its cultivators under the kharaj. In the Shafi'i account it was first divided and then given up by its conquerors and made waqf.

'ushr

Literally, a tenth. In fiqh it also names the zakat on harvests; and the due on the goods of merchants crossing the frontier that 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (R.A.) set by reciprocity. The site uses it in the second sense.

jizyah

A due fixed by text (Q 9:29), paid within the dhimma, the compact of protection; nothing on this site touches its standing. Book Two holds, by tahqiq al-manat, that the confessional jizyah does not transfer to its design, because the manat it rested on, the dhimma compact, "is not the relation in which a modern citizen stands to the state"; it does not judge the ruling itself. Whether that ground is present in a given settlement is a finding for the muftis and the fiqh academies.

dhimma

A compact of protection between the Muslim polity and a protected non-Muslim community within it, with a stated counter-performance.

waqf, cash waqf

A charitable endowment. In the form Book Two describes, a person dedicates income-producing property, and its income funds a stated purpose. A cash waqf endows money, held and invested, its return spent on the purpose; the schools differ on it, and the OIC Academy affirmed it (Resolution 140 (6/15), Muscat, 2004).

bayt al-mal

The house of wealth of the Muslims: public funds held as a ring-fenced fiduciary trust, not as the ruler's property, each revenue stream with a defined source; zakat, in addition, has its eight defined categories.

Shari'a

The revealed law.

fiqh

The jurisprudence of the schools, set out in their own books, with the recorded agreement and disagreement among the schools.

madhhab

A school of fiqh. Mizan argues from the four Sunni schools, those of Imam Abu Hanifa, Imam Malik, Imam al-Shafi'i and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (may Allah have mercy on them).

mu'tamad

A school's relied-upon position: the view its own authoritative books settle on, as distinct from the individual view of one of its jurists.

ijma'

The consensus of the jurists. A consensus is claimed only with the scholar who reports it; otherwise it is not asserted.

ijtihad

The reasoned judgment of qualified jurists, reached from the sources. Where the schools differ, each view is valid ijtihad; the application of the law to a modern instrument is ijtihad, offered as the better view and defended as such.

manat, tahqiq al-manat

The manat is the ground a ruling turns on, its 'illa. Tahqiq al-manat takes that ground as known and verifies whether it is present in the case at hand.

maslaha

The public good as the Shari'a defines it and bounded by it: the preservation of religion, life, intellect, lineage and property. Imam al-Ghazali developed the framework of maslaha in al-Mustasfa.

hisba, muhtasib

The office that oversees the market. The muhtasib's remit is honesty in trade, the inspection of weights and measures, quality against adulteration, and action against hoarding and manipulation; he enforces admitted rights and may not adjudicate contested ones.

nawa'ib

The extraordinary levy the jurists allow in a calamity. It is admitted only on an actually exhausted treasury, and only for the duration of the need.

fatwa, mufti

A fatwa is a mufti's answer on a question of the law. Whether a given arrangement satisfies the law for a given person is a ruling for a mufti; Mizan issues no fatwa.

Sira

The life of the Prophet ﷺ. Book Three reads the Sira as itself a transition, from an order that knew interest as an established practice to an Islamic one.

Sunnah

What the Prophet ﷺ said, did and approved, known through the authenticated hadith with their gradings.

hadith

A report of what the Prophet ﷺ said, did or approved. A hadith is cited with its collection and number, and, outside the two Sahihs, with its grade and the scholar who graded it.

ummah

The community of Muslims as a whole.

hudud

The limits Allah has set. Inside them lies a wide field of lawful reasoning; outside them there is nothing lawful to reach for.

haram

Forbidden by the law.

sukuk

Certificates representing an undivided ownership share in real assets, usufructs or services (AAOIFI Shari'ah Standard 17). In genuine sukuk the holder's return is what the asset earns, a lease's rent or a venture's profit, and not an increase on a loan; Book Three sets out where issued sukuk fell short of that (Shari'ah Standard 17 and the statement of February 2008).

musharaka, diminishing musharaka

A partnership in which the parties jointly contribute capital, and loss is borne strictly in proportion to each partner's capital. In diminishing musharaka one partner's share passes to the other over time, under guards that keep it a genuine partnership rather than a capital-guaranteed loan.

mudaraba

One party supplies capital and the other supplies labour or expertise; profits are shared by prior agreement, and losses fall on the capital provider, unless the worker was negligent or broke the terms.

murabaha

A sale at the seller's disclosed cost plus a stated profit. In Islamic banking the bank buys an asset at the client's request and resells it to him at a marked-up price, usually deferred.

tawarruq

Buying a commodity on a deferred price and selling it for cash to a third party, to obtain cash. In organised tawarruq the bank arranges both sales, assembling a loan at interest out of two sales so that no single contract is a loan; the OIC Academy ruled organised tawarruq impermissible (Resolution 179 (5/19), Sharjah, 2009).

takaful

Mutual insurance on a donation (tabarru') basis: participants contribute to a common fund from which they jointly indemnify each other, and the fund is managed rather than owned by a shareholder-insurer.

qard hasan

The benevolent loan, repaid at principal with no increase.

dinar, dirham

The gold coin and the silver coin. In Book Two's design each is redeemable in its metal.

milkiyya

Ownership. Contemporary Islamic economic writing classifies it in three tiers: private ownership, public or communal ownership, and state ownership.

fiqh al-ma'alat

The fiqh of consequences: it weighs how and in what order a settled ruling is applied, and it never weakens the ruling.

AAOIFI

The Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions, whose Shari'ah Board issues the Shari'ah Standards.

OIC Academy

The OIC International Islamic Fiqh Academy (Majma' al-Fiqh al-Islami al-Dawli), whose resolutions are cited by number.