Chapter I: ISLAM AND BANKING

I dedicated my first article to Jamila who really patient waiting this article . I copied this article
from Islamic Banking by Adiwarman Karim. If someone want know about him or want to buy it,
just contact me ^^

A. The Coverage of Islam

Maybe people will ask “why I explained about Islam first”. Well, Islam rules everything in
human life include economic. So I think we should know first about Islam

Islam has three major aspect namely aqidah, sharia and akhlak. We start it with Aqidah.
I. Aqidah  Faith
Aqidah is mean something by which human heart or sublime feeling is tied to. Aqidah is
like a contract between we as human and our God. It represent a conscious confession
or testimony of the belief and faith the Only One Being does exist, who has creatred the
entire universe and whatsoever in it, Allah Subhana Wa Taala (SWT).

Islam has 5 faith fundamental (we’ve called it Iman fundamental):

1. Belief in Allah SWT as the One and Only God
2. Belief in the Angels
3. Belief in Scriptures (Al Quran as Holly Scriptures)
4. Belief in the Prophets and the Messenger (Muhammad SAW the Prophet)
5. Belief in the Day of Judgments and
6. Belief in Qadha and Qadhar (Qadha and Qadhar it’s mean the predestination)

II. Sharia  Sets of rule and laws

Sharia is defined as a set of divinely presanctioned laws and rulings or prescribed
principles by which Muslin should abide themselves so they can relate to Allah SWT as
well as other human beings.

The application of sharia conforms to human evolutionary civilization as with the sending
of the messenger to their respective ummat in their own time. The Process of
development of sharia was eventually complete with the Prophet Muhammad SAW
being sent to convey Islamic Sharia.

Sharia consist of two elements, there are:

1. Ibadah: regulates between human and the Creator. Ibadah principle is “everything is
prohibit except there is the rules which allow it”
2. Muamalah: regulates relationship among human beings. Muamalah principle is
“everything is allowed except there is the rules which prohibit it”

Undertanding sharia contains’s Allah SWT prescriptions and prohibitions which called
division of laws or taklifi laws in Islam. These are matrix of taklifi laws:

Nature
Certain Uncertain
Taklifi Law
Prescription Fardhu (obligatory) Mandub/Sunnah
(recommended)
Prohibition Haram (Unlawful) Makruh (unrecommended)
Option (choice) Mubah (Indifferent)
 III. Akhlak  behavior
Akhlak is often called as ihsan defined as “such state that you worship Allah SWT as if
you see Him, but since you didn’t not see Him, then you know that He is seeing you”
(hadist by Muslim)

So how to describes relation between Aqidah, Sharia and Akhlak? Aqidah as our faith is
the foundation in human life. Aqidah needs implementation and the guidance for
implement aqidah is Sharia, which if well adhered to, will result in good conduct (Akhlak).

B. Islam and Islamic Banking

From the above, we can conclude that since it constitutes an outlook or way of life that
regulates all aspects of human life, Islam doesn’t leave any aspect uncovered, including
aspect of the economy.

There is stipulating that if something must exist before an obligation is considered perfect, is
it obligatory to ensure that something exists. In Addition, since economics activities in the
modern time may not work well without the existence of banking institutions, it’s obligatory to
bring them to existence. In this light, relationship between Islam and baking is quite clear.

The guidance to implement Islamic banking are Al-Quran and Sunnah only provide basic
principle and philosophies, as well as impart clarifications over prohibitions to avoid. As
such, what needs to pursue is identification of whatever is prohibited in Islam. Moreover,
anything is permissible and as much as possible we can resort to innovation and creativity.