In this abridged extract from his tafseer, The Ascendant Qur’an: Realigning Man to the Divine Power Culture, Imam al-Asi looks at the connection between ribā (usury) and perpetual war. These verses of the Qur’an 3:130-136 are related to the Battle of Uhud. Imam Asi looks at their contemporary relevance at the time of writing circa 2010, a review of which is more than pertinent now.
Usurious Profits are Secured by Wars of Occupation
The gap in the contemporary Muslim mind, generally speaking, is that it tends to fragment the integrated lessons of the Qur’an. In this lesson, a direct relationship between going to war and institutionalization of ribā is described. Society has to be visualized as a whole. There is a mutually supportive relationship between ribā – or capitalism – and global instability leading to war. Governments are willing to go to war to defend or expand their usurious gains. The (national) interest of concentration of wealth needs a concentration of physical and material strength. When dedicated Muslims are called upon to go to war, according to these āyāt about the Battle of Uhud, they should understand they are not only confronting military power; they are also confronting every element of the power of those they are fighting, including the economic powers behind the military forces. Approaching these āyāt with the larger context in mind, a thinking Muslim can begin to see how the financial establishment is linked to the military establishment. An oppressed people can be financially, economically, and institutionally occupied, just as they can be aggressed upon militarily. Thus, confronting ribā and eliminating it from society are inseparable from confronting the military power of the usurious capitalists.
After understanding how compulsive militaries and oppressive usurious institutions go together, how can any Muslim “rationalize” or justify ribā? If a Muslim is sure of Allah’s
power, and if he is certain of Allah’s wealth, then what excuse does he have to join the side that is inimical to Allah? People who carry Muslim names should not be allowed to get away with being considered genuine Muslims while they are the suppliers of wealth to the usurious system that has enslaved the peoples of the world. People should be evaluated by their conduct and its relative consequences, not by the camouflage they cast over their behavior. In today’s world there are many ribā magnates who get away with appearing as “Muslims” while they invest in the institutions of the kāfirs and tie their own interests to the power of the mushriks.
If nothing else, this extended lesson shows it is impossible to combine a commitment to Allah with a usurious financial structure. By its nature ribā and its vast network of exploitation and manipulation ultimately stands for a concentration of wealth; well a commitment to Allah and a financial socialization of this commitment stands for a more equitable distribution of wealth.
These āyāt that tie the financial to the military have their contemporary relevance. The destructive dynamics of ribā and Uhud are not things of the past; they are still at work today, and will continue to be a part of human relations until a ribā-free world emerges. These āyāt lend themselves to a more precise focus on the Anglo-American war on Iraq. The ribā side of the equation is beginning to show its ugly face, even though attention remains focused on the military element. Iraq has immense oil and gas reserves – officially, 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, while some oil companies estimate reserves to be around 230 billion barrels.[1] And the capitalist elites have far greater economic interests in Iraq than just oil; Iraq also has more than 250 trillion ft³ of proven natural gas reserves. For the usurious powers, this is far more than enough motivation for seizing the country in the name of humanitarian reconstruction and long-term development, even without less direct interests, such as securing a power base in the oil-rich region.
The pertinent question here is: can the Muslims apply this Qur’anic commentary to the world they live in today? Will Muslims be able to oppose the forces that are moving into Iraq to exploit its national resources and then recycle the bits and crumbs to the Iraqi people, while hiding behind a complex facade of pro-democracy and reconstruction rhetoric?
For the last few generations, the people of Iraq have been living the torture and miseries of a brutal and ruthless dictatorship – one that was supported, financed, and coached by the US itself during the 1980s. Their social cohesion had hit rock bottom. After occupying Iraq and setting up a puppet government, the US and its subordinates will aim to show the Iraqi people an improvement in many areas of their lives. But this improvement – in terms of religious freedoms for previously persecuted communities, political freedom for those who accept the constraints of the pro-American system, injections of investment into the economy, infrastructure development, and more emphasis on Iraqi individuality – will be intended to obscure the real issue here – militant ribā interests vis-à-vis Islamic cooperative economy – and thus delay the day of reckoning. To put it slightly differently: are today’s Muslims able to bring the facts of Uhud into today’s world? Can they see the Iraq war in terms of America’s historical opposition to Islamic self-determination? Are the Muslims capable of seeing how American based ribā corporate interests turned Japan and Germany, after the two world wars, into productive consumers and consuming producers without any independent character of their own?
Thanks to the affluence of the US and its global reach, Germany and Japan stand out as countries without muscle, states without significant militaries, and peoples without full autonomy. They have, of course, the trappings of all these things; but only because the US is confident now that they will not exercise any independent power counter to the larger interests of the US and the global capitalist elite. The US, and its Euro-capitalist and ribā-rationalizing Zionist allies, will never have this kind of confidence in any Muslim country or people. Are the Iraqis, void of awareness of these āyāt, doomed to the fate of other nation-states conquered, defeated, and controlled by the usurious establishment of the US military-industrial complex and its global allies?
Yet the rapacious policies of the USA and its allies in the global capitalist order do not always have it their way. After WW1, they tried to collect more than $30 billion in reparations from Germany. This was more than twice Germany’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) at the time. And what happened? Adolf Hitler and Nazism took hold of the country instead.
Nobody can say with any authority how large Iraq’s foreign debt is today – a doubt that accumulated due to usurious practices, wars of aggression, and several years of economic sanctions.[2] Even excluding exploitative oil contracts of a wasteful nature, which will most probably be rendered irrelevant by future and current agreements that Iraq’s new government is obliged to sign with US companies, Iraq’s foreign debt, including war claims, could still exceed $300 billion. Just “servicing” such a debt at a “nominal” ribā rate of 5% would cost $15 billion per year; and that would do nothing to reduce the principal owed. A US Department of Energy analysis reported that oil industry experts generally assess Iraq’s current sustainable oil production capacity at no higher than about 2.8–2.9 million barrels per day, with net export potential of around 2.3 to 2.5 million barrels per day. Exporting 2.5 million barrels per day at a price of $60 per barrel (the current price of the OPEC basket of 12 crudes) would generate $52.5 billion a year for Iraq[3].
In the short term, therefore, Iraq cannot conceivably pay the due ribā (that is, Iraq cannot “service its debt”), make payments against the principal, refurbish its dilapidated oil sector, and finance its reconstruction. The repayment program could become even more problematic if the oil price drops. Iraq’s oil-wealth could, over the long term, finance its reconstruction, if the burden of its external debt were substantially written off – whatever price there may be for that to be done. With an export potential of seven million barrels per day achievable within about six years, Iraq could be generating about $153.3 billion per year at a price of $60 per barrel.
This is tempting and insidious profit-multiplying ribā calculation that throws armies into war and countries into conflagrations. In the aftermath of the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, reconstruction contracts with billions of dollars for the reconfiguration of Iraq were handed out by the US government, offering delirious profits to a few favored companies, many with high-level contacts in the George W. Bush administration and a history of donations to the Republican party. These rebuilding contracts were allocated exclusively to US firms and, instead of the usual tendering process, were by invitation only.
The connections between these companies and the Bush administration were substantial. Bechtel was one of the six construction firms chosen to bid; from 1974-1982, George Schultz, the secretary of state in the Reagan administration, was an executive at the firm, eventually becoming its president, and later served as a member of its board of directors. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger was the vice president, director, and general counsel of the Bechtel Group of companies. Jack Sheehan, a senior vice president with Bechtel, was on the Defense Policy Board, the Pentagon advisory group that cooked up intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. Other firms that came in for the “legal looting” of Iraq were Halliburton, the company once run by Dick Cheney, the notorious vice president in the Bush administration; and United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Ray Hunt, a director for Halliburton, was on the president’s intelligence advisory board. Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state under President George H. W. Bush, was also a Halliburton director. Kenneth Oscar, the vice president of Fluor, another of the six bidders, was a former army secretary and used to oversee a portion of the Pentagon’s budget. Flour’s board also included Bobby Inman, a former deputy director of the CIA. Elaine Chao, former secretary of labor in the Bush administration, worked on the board of another of the six, Parsons, before joining the government.[4]
And what about Iraqi oil profits, now that a new administration entered the White House? Will the Iraqi people decide what to do with them or will the imperial power muscle in on the country’s new oil policy? Because the occupation of Iraq has given the US public image a black eye, Obama and his staff have been busy rebranding the occupation, a Madison Avenue window dressing that all Democratic administrations in the US are very good at. Listen to the recent comments of Michael Schwartz, author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, which explains how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the US to dismantle the Iraqi State and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war,
After all, there can be no question that the Obama administration’s policy is indeed to reduce what the Pentagon might call the US military “footprint” in Iraq. To put it another way, Obama’s key officials seem to be opting not for blunt-edged, Bush-style militarism, but for what might be thought of as an administrative push in Iraq, what Vice President Joe Biden has called “a much more aggressive program vis-à-vis the Iraqi government to push it to political reconciliation.”
An anonymous senior State Department official described this new “dark of night” policy recently to Christian Science Monitor reporter Jane Araff this way, “One of the challenges of that new relationship is how the US can continue to wield influence on key decisions without being seen to do so.”
Without being seen to do so. On this General Odierno and the unnamed official are in agreement. And so, it seems, is Washington. As a result, the crucial thing you can say about the Obama administration’s military and civilian planning so far is this: …put all that talk of withdrawal aside for a moment and …what is vaguely visible is the silhouette of a new American posture in Iraq. Think of it as the Obama Doctrine. And what it doesn’t look like is the posture of an occupying power preparing to close up shop and head for home …you begin to identify a deepening effort to ensure that Iraq remains a US client state, or, as General Odierno described it to the press on June 30th, “a long-term partner with the United States in the Middle East.”
All the features of classic colonialism took shape in the Bush years in Iraq and are now, as far as we can tell, being continued, in some cases even strengthened, in the early months of the Obama era.
The US Embassy in Iraq, built by the Bush administration of $740 million, is by far the largest in the world. It is now populated by more than 1,000 administrators, technicians, and professionals – diplomatic, military, intelligence, and otherwise – though all are regularly, if euphemistically, referred to as “diplomats” in official statements and in the media.
Such a concentration of foreign officialdom in such a gigantic regional command center …certainly signals Washington’s larger imperial design: to have sufficient administrative labor power on hand to ensure that American advisors remain significantly embedded in Iraqi political decision-making, in its military, and in the key ministries of its (oil-dominated) economy.
The intrusive presence of the Baghdad embassy extends to the all-important oil industry, which today provides 95% of the government’s funds. When it comes to energy, the occupation has long sought to shape policy and transfer operational responsibility from Iraqi state-owned enterprises of the Saddam Hussein years to major international oil companies. In one of its most successful efforts, in 2004, the US delivered an exclusive $1.2 billion contract to reconstruct Iraq’s decrepit southern oil transport facilities (which handle 80% of its oil flow) to KBR, the notorious former subsidiary of Halliburton. Supervision of the famously mismanaged contract, still uncompleted five years later, was allocated to the US Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
The Iraqi government, in fact, still exerts remarkably little control over “Iraqi “revenues. The development fund for Iraq (whose revenues are deposited in the federal reserve bank of New York) was established under UN auspices just after the invasion and receives 95% of the proceeds from Iraq oil sales. Government withdrawals are then overseen by the UN-sanctioned international advisory and monitoring board, a US-appointed panel of experts drawn mainly from the global oil and financial industries.
In the meantime, the campaign to transfer administration of core operations to the major oil companies continues. Despite the resistance of Iraqi oil workers, the administrators of the two national oil companies, and majority blocking Parliament, and public opinion, the US has continued to pressure the al-Maliki [sic] administration to enact an oil law that would mandate licensing devices called production sharing agreements (PSAs).
If enacted, these PSAs would, without transferring permanent ownership, grant oil companies effective control over Iraq’s oilfields, giving them full discretion to exploit the country’s oil reserves from exploration to sales.
… the Iraq oil industry would become more deeply embedded in the occupation apparatus, no matter what officially happens to American forces in that country. Among other things, the American Embassy would almost certainly be responsible for inspecting and guiding the work of the contract-winners, while the US military and private contractors would become guarantors of the on-the-ground security.
In 2007, Alan Greenspan, former ahead of the Federal Reserve, told Washington Post Reporter Bob Woodward that, “taking Saddam out was essential”… Because the United States could not afford to be “beholden unto potentially unfriendly sources of oil and gas” in Iraq. It’s exactly that sort of thinking that is still operating in US policy circles: the 2008 national defence strategy, for example, calls for the use of American military power to maintain “access to flow of energy resources vital to the world economy.”
After only five months in office, the Obama administration has already provided significant evidence that, like its predecessor, it remains committed to maintaining that “access to flow of energy resources” in Iraq…[5]
On a related note, before Timothy Geithner became the Obama administration treasury secretary, he was serving as the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the same bank that receives 95% of the revenues from “Iraqi” oil sales.
The way ribā is mentioned in Surah Al Baqarah and the way it is mentioned here, in Surah Al Imran, requires some comparison. In Surah Al Baqarah, ribā and sadaqah were mentioned together. The inference was that ribā (coercive spending) and sadaqah (cooperative spending) represent two diametrically opposed concepts that are at the root of two dissimilar economic orders: ribā represents the capitalist freedom to accumulate unlimited wealth even if widespread poverty results, and sadaqah stands for the Islamic responsibility, to distribute wealth even if that means the diminution of the wealthy class. Ribā institutions and establishments are inaugurated by the military-commercial complex, and sadaqah-based administrations are pioneered by the Islamic movement and its forms of governance.
In Surah Al Imran, ribā is discussed in the context of war. Aggressive wars served to open up new frontiers for the expansionist and usurious financial dealings of the military-financial duopoly. The inference here is that without wars of aggression, whether in their colonialist, imperialist, or post imperialist modes, ribā would be drastically reduced to its primitive size and once it is stripped of its military and individualistic proportions it becomes easier to identify by “Muslims” who have failed to identify its transnational range of destruction and devastation.
The Muslims who read the Qur’an must begin to understand what Allah is telling them. It is not a matter of happenstance that the military campaign at Uhud and its cruel circumstances are framed with an emphasis on ribā. Someone in a position to make policy must decide whether or not to have ribā as part of the economy, and hence part of the military and social reality of society. The right decision has to be made despite the infatuation with wealth of pro-ribā officials, in line with the aversion to poverty of anti-ribā administrators. Promoters of ribā will justify their position with arguments about “free market” “trickle down” economics, the dynamics of “supply and demand”, and the insistence that “the market has a way of balancing itself out.” But the world today is suffering from the results of precisely these arguments. The relations between people within societies are strained, and the relations between rich and poor countries in the world are fraught with distrust because of the failure of these theories. Perhaps, in a certain sense, it would be more appropriate to say “the success of these theories,” because it is the world’s wealthy who promote them. The fact is that more and more of the resources of the world are falling into the hands of fewer and fewer rich people, while increasing numbers of people, even in wealthy countries, are suffering from poverty and hardship.
This is the moment for responsible and insightful Muslims to move in and tip the balances of God-given resources toward the oppressed and deprived peoples of the world. Hunger and disease do not discriminate; they strike anyone and everyone who has been victimised by corporate ribā. And when decision-making Muslims weigh the advantages and disadvantages, they also know they have to factor in Allah’s power presence. Thus, the decision is an offshoot of taqwa. When Allah is in the public mind, it will be easier to spend in times of affluence and in times of poverty. Therefore, one of the fighting points is whether to have Allah in the public mind or to “privatise” Him. Obviously, those who want a freedom that justifies ravaging the resources of the world would like to exclude Allah from His power position as the one and only authority in human affairs. They will say, “You mean to tell us that God has something to do with the way we obtain our wealth and the way we invest in our commodities, and the way we run our businesses?” If God is taken out and kept out of peoples’ common ideas and discussions, then these merchants of wealth will be able to have their way in the short term; in the long run, their misdeeds will catch up with them, and they will be held accountable for disregarding and omitting God from their decisions and policies.
This extract comes from Imam Muhammad al-Asi’s tafseer Volume 5 pages 57-67 on ribā based social orders and the battle of Uhud. Imam al-Asi is currently working on the first-ever English Tafsir of the Qur’an titled: The Ascendant Qur’an: Realigning Man to the Divine Power Culture. Imam Asi has also published a translation of the Qur’an. Both the tafseer volumes and translation are published by ICIT. Imam is based in Washington D.C.
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