Having a good job is not a hindrance to the spiritual path, but may rather be a help, as long as it is a means and not an end, and one has the time and concentration left to focus on Allah. The Ottoman Caliph Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II had a Shadhili sheikh, illustrating the maxim that “a Sufi is in the world but not of it.”

   Because of the imperative of having a trouble-free atmosphere between members of the path for the sake of spiritual progress, Sheikh al-Hashimi used to urge his brethren not to go into business with each other. In our times, if members want to have commerce with one another, the following conditions should be met:

   Every transaction between disciples that is not paid for and delivered immediately and exceeds fifty dollars should be written down, dated, and signed in duplicate by the parties, each of whom retain a copy. This includes such things as buying or selling by deferred payment, com­missioning another to buy something for one, lending books (no matter what the value) to read or to copy (which should be specified), and other transactions. If done by telephone, the parties must agree on the wording of the deal, which they each write. A single line about it on a slip of paper is sufficient.

   As for commercial dealings in the non-Islamic world that we find around us, Imam Zaid Shakir has drawn up a number of guidelines, mentioned below, which the author feels should be observed by everyone in the West con­cerned about their din, including all tariqa members.

The Souk of the Travellers

   The Sacred Law, as a plan for a whole way of life, deals with every facet of human existence. The traveller to Allah must scrupulously adhere to the Sacred Law in every aspect of his life if his journey is to be successful. The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:

“O people: Allah is goodly and accepts only what is goodly. And verily, Allah has commanded believers with what He has commanded the prophetic messengers, saying, ‘O Mes­sengers, eat of goodly things and work righteousness: truly, I well know everything you do’ [Koran 23:51]; and, ‘O you who believe, eat of goodly things what We have provided you’ [2:172].” Then he mentioned “a man on a long journey, unkempt and dusty, raising his hands to the sky, ‘O Lord, O Lord,’—while his food is unlawful (haram), drink is unlaw­ful, clothes are unlawful, and he has been nourished upon the unlawful: So how could he possibly be answered therein?” (Muslim, 2.703: 1015. S).

   We too are on a long journey, out of this world, and we are asking Allah—with our words and acts and state—to reach safety and nearness to Him. So how should we be answered if we are fastidious in our basic acts of worship, but our food is bought with unlawful money, or is filled with pork derivatives and other unlawful and harmful things, or we are constantly committing transgressions with our tongues, like slander, talebearing, and lying? With this key point in view, we are making a few basic suggestions for disciples living in the West concerning the souk or ‘marketplace,’ meaning their economic affairs, as this is the area where perhaps not a few travellers sometimes fall into the unlawful.

   Most of these suggestions involve the avoidance of interest (riba), hence we will begin with a few introductory comments on the subject. A fuller treatment will be developed at a later date, Allah willing.

   Dealing in usury (riba) is a very grave sin in Islam. It is listed as an enormity (kabira) by everyone who has written on the subject, and is the seventh major sin in Imam al-Dhahabi’s Kitab al-kaba’ir [Book of enormities]. The gravity of this sin is borne out by the words of Allah:

   “Those who eat of usury shall not rise [on Judgement Day] except as those arise who are smitten by the Devil with madness—which is because they say that trade is but like interest, though Allah has made trade lawful and has forbade interest. So whoever is reached by a warning from his Lord and desists may keep what was before [Allah forbade it], and his affair is with his Lord. But whosoever returns, those are the denizens of hell, abiding therein forever.

   “Allah extirpates [all benefit from] usury, but makes charity bounteous, and Allah loves no sinful ingrate.

   “Verily, those who believe and do righteous works, who perform the prayer and give zakat, they possess their wage with their Lord: no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve.

   “O you who believe, fear Allah, and give up whatever remains of interest, if you be believers.

   “But if they do not, then be apprised of war from Allah and His messenger, though if you repent, you may keep your principal, neither wronging nor being wronged” (Koran 2:275–79).

There is no other crime in the entire Sacred Law from beginning to end that is declared to merit war from Allah besides enmity with the friends (awliya') of Allah. And if Allah, Master of every atom in existence, declares war against someone, who does one imagine will win?

   If this were not enough, Ibn Mas‘ud (Allah be well pleased with him) relates that “the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) cursed whoever eats of usury, feeds it to another, witnesses it, or records it” (Tirmidhi, 3.512: 1206. S). And Abdullah ibn Handhala (Allah be well pleased with him) relates that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “A single dirham of usury that a man eats knowingly is worse than committing thirty-six fornications” (Ahmad, 5.225), a hadith whose narrators Imam Nur al-Din al-Haythami said were “those of the rigorously authentic (sahih)” (Majma‘ al-zawa’id, 4.117).

   In light of the seriousness of these warnings, the traveller on the spiritual path must disregard all so-called fatwas or ‘formal legal opinions’ that declare any form of usury (riba) to be lawful. Such opinions are the product of a psycho­logically defeated and humiliated Islam that emerged after colonization of Muslim lands and abolishment of the social and political manifestation of the Sacred Law. The traveller should help begin the process of bringing back this mani­festation by taking the following steps:

(1)  Cease all buying on credit. This includes houses and cars. Credit buying is the widest door leading to usury in the West, to say nothing of the grave consequences of debt in Islam. All existing debts should be paid off as soon as possible. Houses or cars purchased on interest-based installment plans should be sold as soon as possible. This imposes little burden on Muslims in the West as decent housing can be rented, and reliable used cars can be obtained readily at manageable prices. As far as buying clothing and furniture on credit, these purchases are usually wasteful and unnecessary to begin with.

(2)  Credit cards are a useful form of identification and handy for renting cars and other items. If one chooses to maintain a credit card, American Express and Diners’ Club, which facilitate car rentals but do not apply interest (as of this writing (1999)), are preferable. If the spiritual traveller cannot obtain one of these two cards, and chooses to maintain a regular credit card, he must pay any bills immediately before any interest accrues. If he finds he is frequently tardy in paying such bills, thereby falling into interest, he should discard the credit card immediately.

(3)  Taking loans from banks, savings and loans associations, credit unions, and the like should be avoided as much as humanly possible. This will not only help keep the traveller away from interest and debt, it will also help to undermine the banking industry, an industry which is primarily responsible for the economic enslavement and rape of most of humanity, including the entire Muslim world.

(4)  If one places one’s money in banks, be sure that it is in a non-interest-bearing checking account. If one has interest from a regular savings account, before one converts one’s account to a non-interest-bearing account, the interest should be given anonymously to a non-Islamic charity (e.g. The American Cancer Society) that does not help the strategic balance against Islam. As for the argument that any money in banks should be left in interest-bearing accounts indefinitely in order to make charitable contri­butions, it is preferable to avoid this practice. The way of Islam is to have one’s money working in commercial ventures out in the community, helping both others and oneself.

(5)  As for insurance, nothing has changed since the Reliance of the Traveller was written: insurance is still unlawful (haram) because it is usurious. A policy is taken out to pay back far more than one pays into it. This suffices for its unlawfulness, but in the words of the Reliance:

 . . . In addition to the fact that they are usurious, buying and selling insurance policies are unlawful because of the Prophet’s prohibition (Allah bless him and give him peace) of sales in which there is a chance or risk (gharar). Muslim relates from Abu Hurayra that “the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) prohibited sales of ‘whatever a pebble thrown by the seller hits,’ and sales in which there is a chance or risk (gharar)” (Muslim, 3.1153: 1513. S).

Gharar is “chance or risk, meaning it is not known whether it will come to be or not, such as selling fish in the water or birds on the wing. . . . It includes transactions of unknown things, the particulars of which are not fully comprehended by the buyer and seller” (al-Mughrib, 2.100).

   Urging the permissibility of insurance, one Muslim modernist has written that the very precise statistical data possessed by insurance companies concerning the probabilities of various eventualities makes what they are selling determinately known (ma‘lum). This argument fails when one realizes that statistical data from a group of events yields probability figures that, properly speaking, are a description of the group as a whole, and are only analogically applied to the individual events within it. When generalized to similar groups of events in the future, such probabilities yield commercially useful knowledge about the likelihood of a particular outcome for these future groups. But they cannot and do not tell what the outcome will be for any particular member of the group, in this case the particular insurance policy. Thus, a “17 percent probability” that circumstances will enable one to collect such and such an amount on a policy is a mere description of the whole group of previous policy holders in similar circumstances, which does not tell whether one will collect the amount or not. One may collect a certain amount or may not collect it, which is precisely the gharar that is unlawful.

   When one needs a car in a country whose laws force one to have car liability insurance, buying the insurance has effectively become a tax, and is the moral responsibility of the lawmakers, not the person forced to comply (Reliance of the Traveller, 942–43).

(6)  Anyone working in any industry directly connected with institutionalizing the unlawful—banks, stores selling pork, alcohol, pornography, and the like—should imme­diately begin looking for alternative forms of employment, even if they mean less income. A little of the lawful which is blessed is better than a lot of the unlawful which is devoid of any blessing. The search for alternative employ­ment should be sincere and earnest. If a substantial period of time elapses and one finds that one’s livelihood is still directly connected to the unlawful, one should seriously consider emigrating to a place where one can find lawful employment.

IF we are inconvenienced by any of these measures we should remember that a Sufi is first and foremost a mujahid or ‘spiritual warrior.’ He is engaged in a battle against his nafs or ‘lower soul,’ and he is engaged in a battle against the oppressive practices and institutions which the Devil and his dupes have initiated to veil human beings from their Lord. Our success in this affair will not only benefit our souls, but provide tangible benefits to all of humanity. And Allah alone gives success.

(Selection from The Shadhili Tariqa) MCMXCIX © N. Keller