Towards Understanding Islamic Fiqh – Sukuk

Sukuk is an Arabic term صكوك, plural of صك sakk, “legal instrument, deed, check” for a financial certificate or termed as an Islamic equivalent of bond. In Islam, fixed income or termed as interest (riba’) bearing bonds are not permissible. Hence, Sukuk is considered as securities that comply with the Islamic law. Its investment principles prohibits the charging, or paying of interest. Financial assets that comply with the Islamic law can be classified in accordance with their tradability and non-tradability in the secondary markets. It is estimated that over RM3,500 billion of assets are managed according to Islamic investment principles. Such principles form part of ‘Syari’ah’ (Islamic Law), but it is actually broader than its concept that it also encompasses the general body of spiritual and moral obligations and duties in Islam. Syariah-compliant assets worldwide are worth an estimated more than RM1,750 billion and have grown at more between 8-12 per cent per year over the past decade, and in the Gulf and Asia, Standard & Poor’s estimates that 20 per cent of banking customers would now spontaneously choose an Islamic financial product over a conventional one with a similar risk-return profile.

In classical period Islam sakk (sukuk) – which is cognate with the European root ‘cheque’- meant any document representing a contract or conveyance of rights, obligations or monies done in conformity with the Shariah. Empirical evidence shows that sukuk were a product extensively used during medieval Islam for the transferring of financial obligations originating from trade and other commercial activities. On the other hand, the essence of sukuk, in the modern Islamic perspective, lies in the concept of asset monetisation – the so called securitisation – that is achieved through the process of issuance of sukuk (taskeek). Its great potential is in transforming an asset’s future cash flow into present cash flow. Sukuk may be issued on existing as well as specific assets that may become available at a future date.

The sukuk market valued for more than RM175 billion (at the end of 2006) is due for an exponential rise in 2007 with every issue likely to be oversubscribed 5 to 6 times amid a fast growing interest in the western countries.

One point to note here that Syari’ah requires that financing should only be raised for trading in, or construction of, specific and identifiable assets. Trading in ‘indebtedness’ is prohibited and so the issuance of conventional bonds would not be compliant. Thus all Sukuk returns and cashflows will be linked to assets purchased or those generated from an asset once constructed and not simply be income that is interest based. For borrowers to raise compliant financing they will need to utilise assets in the structure (which could be equity in a ‘tangible’ company). It is worth noting that Equity financing is Syari’ah compliant and fits well with the risk/return precepts of Islam.

In the eyes of Islamic Jurisprudence or As Syari’ah, money is a measuring tool for value and not an ‘asset’ in itself, it requires that one should not take or receive income from money (or anything that has the genus of money) alone or in other words “if money generates money per say” it will tantamount to riba’. This generation of money from money (simplistically interest) is ‘Riba’, and is forbidden. The implications for Islamic financial institutions is that the trading/selling of debts, receivables (for anything other than par), conventional loan lending and credit cards are not permissible.

Now come the question of uncertainty or ‘Gharar’ principle. It is widely understood to mean the uncertainty in the existence of an underlying asset in a contract and/or uncertainty in the contractual terms and this is an issues for Islamic scholars to address when considering the application of derivatives. Syari’ah also incorporates the concept of ‘Maslahah’ (Public interest), denoting that, if something is overwhelmingly in the public good, it may yet be transacted – and so hedging or mitigation of avoidable business risks, may fall into this category but there is still much discussion yet to come.

Sukuk are widely regarded as controversial due to their perceived purpose of evading the restrictions on Riba. Conservative scholars do not believe that this is effective, citing the fact that a sukuk effectively requires payment for the time-value of money. This can be regarded as the fundamental test of interest. Sukuk offer investors fixed return on their investments which is also similar in appearance to interest in that the investor’s return is not necessarily dependent on the risks of that particular venture. This seems to be similar but the fact is that it is not the same as the reality is that banks invest in assets and the return from these such as rent is evenly spread over the rental period and it is this stream of income which forms the basis of the “fixed” income stream and return to investors. Furthermore, given that there is an asset in the background, there is more security for the investor which makes sukuk increasingly appealing to global investors including both Muslims and non-Muslims.

Sukuk financing can be quite mystifying for the outsider. A good analogy is one of ethical or ‘Green’ investing. Here the universe of investable securities is limited by certain criteria based on moral and ethical considerations. Islamic Finance is also a subset of the global market and there is nothing that prevents the ‘conventional’ investor from participating in the Islamic market.External link for your further reference can be linked below:-
http://islamicbankingandfinance.com/islamicbankingandfinance/index.html
http://gifc.blogspot.com/
http://www.gr8dubai.com/sukuk.htm
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/114128889/ABSTRACT
http://www.lmcbahrain.com/Global-table.asp
http://sukkook.googlepages.com
http://gifc.blogspot.com/
http://www.moodys.com/
http://www.bankerme.com/bme/2005/feb/how_to_structure_sukuk.asp
http://www.middleeastbusinessforum.com/sukuk
pdf file sukuk-risks.pdf

Can a diabetes patient takes coffee?

There are many health complications associated with diabetes that can be reduced by making positive changes in your coffee consumption. By cutting back on coffee, you can better manage your blood sugar and your health. Here are the top 5 reasons kicking the coffee habit can help you stay healthy with diabetes.

1. Raises Blood Sugar Levels
   One study suggests that caffeine intake may interfere with the body’s ability to remove sugar from the blood leading to an increase in blood sugar levels. This can make it more challenging for diabetics to regulate their blood sugar. Have you ever had one of those days when you can’t figure out what is making your blood sugar high? Keep a food diary and see if your blood sugar runs high when you drink coffee. Once you have kicked the coffee habit watch to see if there are improvements.
2. Can Lead to Insulin Resistance
   Insulin resistance is a major factor in Type II diabetes. This occurs when a person makes enough insulin but it is not working properly leading to high blood sugar levels. Studies suggest that even moderate caffeine consumption may contribute to insulin resistance leading to high blood sugar and increased risk of weight gain. The good news for type II diabetics is that decreasing coffee intake may help you to manage your blood sugars and your weight more effectively.
3. Increased Heart Attack Risk
   Diabetics are already at an increased risk of developing heart disease. Studies show a correlation between coffee drinking with high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure leaving a diabetic at an even higher risk. The more coffee consumed, the greater this risk becomes. Just think… you can decrease your risk of having heart problems by limiting your coffee intake. This is a huge step a diabetic can make towards optimal health!
4. Elevated Homocysteine
   Homocysteine is an amino acid that is directly associated with an increase risk of suffering from a heart attack. It also promotes the break down of the blood vessels in the eyes leading to poor eyesight. Both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee intake increases homocysteine levels within hours of consumption. By habitually drinking coffee, you may be increasing your homocysteine levels daily. You can take steps towards decreasing your risk of heart disease and poor eyesight by cutting down on your coffee intake. Seeing is believing!
5. Increased Appetite
   Caffeine causes constriction of blood vessels and decreased circulation to the brain, which causes a feeling of low blood sugar even when the value is within normal range. This false sense of low blood sugar can trigger a person to eat more food than needed leading them to high blood sugars and weight gain. You can take control of your appetite and decrease unnecessary high blood sugars by limiting your caffeine intake.

Zionist Protocol

Protocols Of Zion

1. To-day I may tell you that our goal is now only a few steps off. There remains a small space to cross and the whole long path we have trodden isready now to close its cycle of the Symbolic Snake, by which we symbolizeour people. When this ring closes, all the States of Europe will be locked in its coil as in a powerful vice.

2.The constitution scales of these days will shortly break down, for we have established them with a certain lack of accurate balance in order that they may oscillate incessantly until they wear through the pivot on which they turn. The GOYIM are under the impression that they have welded them sufficiently strong and they have all along kept on expecting that the scales would come into equilibrium. But the pivots – the kings on their thrones – are hemmed in by their representatives, who play the fool, distraught with their own uncontrolled and irresponsible power. This power they owe to the terror which has been breathed into the palaces. As they have no means of getting at their people, into their very midst, the kings on their thrones are no longer able to come to terms with them and so strengthen themselves against seekers after power. We have made a gulf between the far-seeing Sovereign Power and the blind force of the people so that both have lost all meaning, for like the blind man and his stick, both are powerless apart.

3. In order to incite seekers after power to a misuse of power we have set all forces in opposition one to another, breaking up their liberal tendencies towards independence. To this end we have stirred up every form of enterprise, we have armed all parties, we have set up authority as a target for every ambition. Of States we have made gladiatorial arenas where a lot of confused issues contend …. A little more, and disorders and bankruptcy will be universal ….

4. Babblers, inexhaustible, have turned into oratorical contests the sittings of Parliament and Administrative Boards. Bold journalists and unscrupulous pamphleteers daily fall upon executive officials. Abuses of power will put the final touch in preparing all institutions for their overthrow and everything will fly skyward under the blows of the maddened mob.

POVERTY OUR WEAPON

5. All people are chained down to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever. They were chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they might free themselves. These could be settled with, but from want they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All these so-called “Peoples Rights” can exist only in idea, an idea which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble any nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from our table in return for their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we place in power, the servants of our AGENTUR … Republican rights for a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony, for the
necessity he is under of toiling almost all day gives him no present use of them, but the other hand robs him of all guarantee of regular and certain earnings by making him dependent on strikes by his comrades or lockouts by his masters.

WE SUPPORT COMMUNISM

6. The people, under our guidance, have annihilated the aristocracy, who were their one and only defense and foster- mother for the sake of their own advantage which is inseparably bound up with the well-being of the people. Nowadays, with the destruction of the aristocracy, the people have fallen into the grips of merciless money-grinding scoundrels who have laid a pitiless and cruel yoke upon the necks of the workers.

7. We appear on the scene as alleged saviours of the worker from this oppression when we propose to him to enter the ranks of our fighting forces – Socialists, Anarchists, Communists – to whom we always give support in accordance with an alleged brotherly rule (of the solidarity of all humanity) of our SOCIAL MASONRY. The aristocracy, which enjoyed by law the labor of the workers, was interested in seeing that the workers were well fed, healthy, and strong. We are interested in just the opposite – in the diminution, the KILLING OUT OF THE GOYIM. Our power is in the chronic shortness of food and physical weakness of the worker because by all that this implies he is made the slave of our will, and he will not find in his own authorities either strength or energy to set against our will. Hunger creates the right of capital to rule the worker more surely than it was given to the aristocracy by the legal authority of kings.

8. By want and the envy and hatred which it engenders we shall move the mobs and with their hands we shall wipe out all those who hinder us on our way.

9. WHEN THE HOUR STRIKES FOR OUR SOVEREIGN LORD OF ALL THE WORLD TO BE CROWNED IT IS THESE SAME HANDS WHICH WILL SWEEP AWAY EVERYTHING THAT MIGHT BE A HINDRANCE THERETO.

10. The GOYIM have lost the habit of thinking unless prompted by the suggestions of our specialists. Therefore they do not see the urgent necessity of what we, when our kingdom comes, shall adopt at once, namely this, that IT IS ESSENTIAL TO TEACH IN NATIONAL SCHOOLS ONE SIMPLE, TRUE PIECE OF KNOWLEDGE, THE BASIS OF ALL KNOWLEDGE – THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE STRUCTURE OF HUMAN LIFE, OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE, WHICH REQUIRES DIVISION OF LABOR, AND, CONSEQUENTLY, THE DIVISION OF MEN INTO CLASSES AND CONDITIONS. It is essential for all to know that OWING TO DIFFERENCE IN THE OBJECTS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY THERE CANNOT BE ANY EQUALITY, that he, who by any act of his compromises a whole class, cannot be equally responsible before the law with him who affects no one but only his own honor. The true knowledge of the structure of society, into the secrets of which we do not admit the GOYIM, would demonstrate to all men that the positions and work must be kept within a certain circle, that they may not become a source of human suffering, arising from an education which does not correspond with the work which individuals are called upon to do. After a thorough study of this knowledge, the peoples will voluntarily submit to authority and accept such position as is appointed them in the State. In the present state of knowledge and the direction we have given to its development of the people, blindly believing things in print – cherishes – thanks to promptings intended to mislead and to its own ignorance – a blind hatred towards all conditions which it considers above itself, for it has no understanding of the meaning of class and condition.

JEWS WILL BE SAFE

11. THIS HATRED WILL BE STILL FURTHER MAGNIFIED BY THE EFFECTS of an ECONOMIC CRISES, which will stop dealing on the exchanges and bring industry to a standstill. We shall create by all the secret subterranean methods open to us and with the aid of gold, which is all in our hands, A UNIVERSAL ECONOMIC CRISES WHEREBY WE SHALL THROW UPON THE STREETS WHOLE MOBS OF WORKERS SIMULTANEOUSLY IN ALL THE COUNTRIES OF EUROPE. These mobs will rush delightedly to shed the blood of those whom, in the simplicity of their ignorance, they have envied from their cradles, and whose property they will then be able to loot.

12. “OURS” THEY WILL NOT TOUCH, BECAUSE THE MOMENT OF ATTACK WILL BE KNOWN TO US AND WE SHALL TAKE MEASURES TO PROTECT OUR OWN.

13. We have demonstrated that progress will bring all the GOYIM to the sovereignty of reason. Our despotism will be precisely that; for it will know how, by wise severities, to pacificate all unrest, to cauterize liberalism out of all institutions.

14. When the populace has seen that all sorts of concessions and indulgences are yielded it, in the same name of freedom it has imagined itself to be sovereign lord and has stormed its way to power, but, naturally like every other blind man, it has come upon a host of stumbling blocks. IT HAS RUSHED TO FIND A GUIDE, IT HAS NEVER HAD THE SENSE TO RETURN TO THE FORMER STATE and it has laid down its plenipotentiary powers at OUR feet. Remember the French Revolution, to which it was we who gave the name of “Great”: the secrets of its preparations are well known to us for it was wholly the work of our hands.

15. Ever since that time we have been leading the peoples from one disenchantment to another, so that in the end they should turn also from us in favor of that KING-DESPOT OF THE BLOOD OF ZION, WHOM WE ARE PREPARING FOR THE WORLD.

16. At the present day we are, as an international force, invincible, because if attacked by some we are supported by other States. It is the bottomless rascality of the GOYIM peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless towards weakness, unsparing to faults and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism – it is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier- dictators of the present day, the GOYIM peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuses as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings.

17. What is the explanation of this phenomenon, this curious inconsequence of the masses of the peoples in their attitude towards what would appear to be events of the same order?

18. It is explained by the fact that these dictators whisper to the peoples through their agents that through these abuses they are inflicting injury on the States with the highest purpose – to secure the welfare of the peoples, the international brotherhood of them all, their solidarity and equality of rights. Naturally they do not tell the peoples that this unification must be accomplished only under our sovereign rule.

19. And thus the people condemn the upright and acquit the guilty, persuaded
ever more and more that it can do whatsoever it wishes. Thanks to this state of things, the people are destroying every kind of stability and creating disorders at every step.

20. The word “freedom” brings out the communities of men to fight against every kind of force, against every kind of authority even against God and the laws of nature. For this reason we, when we come into our kingdom, shall have to erase this word from the lexicon of life as implying a principle of brute force which turns mobs into bloodthirsty beasts.

21. These beasts, it is true, fall asleep again every time when they have drunk their fill of blood, and at such time can easily be riveted into their chains. But if they be not given blood they will not sleep and continue to struggle.

Abuyya and anti-zionist