Human Usury & the Divine Debt - between servitude and servanthood

Servitude or Servanthood?

Indebtedness to usurious men

Will imprison you forever 

In the chains of servitude.

Indebtedness to God and His Prophet

Will release you from your enslavement,

And bring you to the station of servanthood.

..............................

Human Usury. When I am a little (or a lot) late in paying my credit card bills, car instalments, phone bills, my daily life suddenly becomes stressful with the constant barrage of calls, emails, sms-es and legal notices, all of them making it plain that woeful consequences will befall me if I fail to regularise my account. This is the curse of the credit-driven consumer society that we live in now.

Divine Debt. God is so different though we are utterly indebted to Him for everything, He do not even ask to be repaid, for He knows very well that we cannot. All He asks is that we realise our indebtedness to Him, and that we use our heart and our mind to conjecture from there how best to live our life.

And this admission of indebtedness will make us rich beyond our imagination. 

Creation and all its contents cannot be weighed

Against the heart of a true believer

For he sees beyond his worldly needs,

Piercing the veil to see

The all-nourishing attribute

Of the Creator Almighty...

And on top of all these divine goodies, God the Giver is asking us to continue asking more and more from Him... His generosity is infinite and incomparable. 

If you are attending to matters of the Infinite,

You have to start loving infinitely.

Which brings us to our greatest debt to God... His Beloved, Nabi Muhammad (saws), the Mercy to all the Worlds and Nations. 

You don't remember asking God for the Prophet (saws)? You did, my friend, you certainly did - a long, long time ago, before your soul was ever dressed in your mortal coil, before any mountain grew from the earth, before any bird flew in the sky. 

wa min Allah at-taufiq

-Notrumi Embun, 4th August 2014

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way 

God's Own Fool - courage is not something that can only be found in the battlefields

Take courage. Do not let fear cage your compassionate heart...

The Lord's Own Fool

"What have you given away?" The man asked his sister, 

looking at the retreating back of the beggar.

"I didn't have anything to give, so I borrowed some dinari 

that I might give to the poor man..."

"Are you a fool?" The brother hotly interrupted, 

To which she said firmly,

"I may be... but if I am, 

I am the Lord's own fool!"

................................

A friend of mine called me early this morning. She had just taken a loan to settle her outstanding credit card bills. But as is often the case with parents and their magical instincts, it was on this very same morning that the father asked to borrow a substantial amount of money from her. 

And she lent it immediately, knowing all too well that it may never be repaid.

People often talk of the parent's sacrifices for their children that shall never be repaid. But not every child put to practice such noble sentiments. My friend cried a little thinking of her own financial woes, and how there appear to be no end to her worries. "I must be a damn fool!" she exclaimed.

Indeed she is foolish. But if you would believe me, she is God's own fool. For God loves those who do not allow fear to stand in their way of compassionate fealty. Courage is not something that can only be found in the battlefields... It can be found in the exemplary conduct of people all around us.

May God enrich this world with our generous friends, sunshine!

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

Slaying the Beast of Debt - the Crusade-Jihad against Banks, Usury and Fiat Money of all Religion

14. The Pyramid

There is no get-rich-quick schemes,

No multi-level marketing pyramids

More heinous and globally prevalent

Than the interest-banking

And fiat currency systems of the world.

And lo! Its illusion is guarded by watchdogs

Zealous in their affairs.

................

Which Christians will now complete the mission of Jesus to rid the world of the money-changers and the contagion of usury? Which Muslims will now rise to expel the new Islamic banking hegemony from the halls of power and influence?

Bankers in Jerusalem had to migrate their business due to
a regulatory change in the Temple. But they are back.
With a vengeance.

The rich nations become richer and the poor becomes poorer, and not by the natural state of human talent and endeavour. Oh no. Because if you are in the class of those who set the rules of the game, you can do anything, because you can change the rules to suit your fraud.

For every dollar of 'aid' sent by the rich north to the poor south, many times more are repaid by these southern nations back to the Western banks to service the interest payments for such loans often pushed upon the weaker countries who knew not to trust the bankers, the IMF and the World Bank.

Those who make it their vocation to study and chronicle the fluctuating fortunes of the world, cannot but be amazed at how forgetful Mankind is. Just how many times do we need to pay the price for overweening greed of the ruling rich, the banks and corporations? Only five years ago the world was shaken by the 2008 debt crisis. Worldwide, millions upon millions lost their jobs as demand dried up, and millions more will lose their homes by the connivance of banks and mortgage companies who fleece the uninformed and poor class who did not read the fine print in their mortgage contracts. Because of the sub-prime fiasco, credit dried up as financial institutions refused to lend each other, global trade froze and mighty banks and insurance companies that once ruled Wall Street fell like dominoes. And yet, it was the tax payers that paid to save the too-big-to-fail banks. Yes, I know that it is the (future) US taxpayers who is bearing the direct cost. But trust me, at the end, everyone man, woman and child on Earth will be footing the bill. Trillions upon trillions upon trillions... 

Obama has done nothing, because he is a creature of the very same establishment which caused the crisis.

So who among the Christians and Muslims are going to take the quest to slay the Beast of Debt? I promise it shan't be easy, but I can almost guarantee you that it will never be boring.

Have a lovely interest-free day, sunshine.

wa min Allah at-taufiq

Hate has no place in Islam

Love will show the Way

The 7th Billion Baby and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis

7,000,000,000th billion baby? Gosh! Just make sure that there
are enough diapers to go around, mummy!

22. Babies & Ahmad

Babies and rose petals

Fragrant and little,

God’s gift springs eternal

From a crownless mantle.

Well, sometime today our 7,000,000,000th baby is born somewhere. This was the news headlines yesterday but I guess it is nigh impossible to actually pinpoint the newborn that has pushed the human population on earth above the 7th billion mark.

Emina up there is not that baby for sure, being born a couple of months earlier to an Indian-Muslim-Malay Turkish parentage. But you know, I am looking for any excuse to publish her picture and ramp up the eye-candy quotient of this almanac. What's the point of a beautiful baby if not to beautify your blog?

In the 1970s (yes, I am that old), I recall reading about the population boom, and how 'experts' and 'pundits' claim that massive overpopulation will lead to world wide famine and starvation. And I remember that they say big-population countries, especially China will be heading for a disaster when this happens. So it is interesting to note that China now is the second largest economy in the world, having overtaken Japan in October 2010, more than one year ago. And this week Europe is coming to China and asking her to save Europe from its current sovereign debt crisis. On top of this, countries of West Europe and Japan is facing a major problem with its aging population, with not enough people of working age to support the growing population of OAPs (old aged pensioners) in the country. So perhaps more babies ain't so bad after all, yes?

For me, now that we have 7 billion souls here, I like to take the optimistic view that now we have 7 billion solution providers and problem solvers, we have 7 billion stories to tell and 7 billion dreams to achieve. Problems? Of course there will always be problems, but if we have God on our side, what problems are insurmountable? Each baby born is another indication that God has not given up on us- "Me, give up on you?" asks God, "I have given you 7 billion reasons to show that I have not given up on you."

So happy birthday to you, sunshine, and happy birthday to me. And happy birthday to that anonymous baby somewhere who is the 7,000,000,000th citizen of the nation of Adam and Eve. Lets make this world a better place, together.

wa min Allah at-taufiq