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Subject: 
Re: Taxes from Lego auctions?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.off-topic.debate
Date: 
Mon, 27 Dec 1999 03:10:05 GMT
Viewed: 
828 times
  
"Selçuk " wrote:

The latest news is that a court in Pakistan has just in essence
subscribed to your views. They say interest is against the the Qur'An.
By 2001 Pakistan will have to have an economy without the practice of
charging interest.

Or else they'll have to admit that it's a necessary evil, or just ignore the
statement in practice.  Was this a civil court or a religious court?  I don't
think they're one and the same in Pakistan, but I haven't been keeping up with
late developments.  (As an aside, has Pakistan instituted shari'a law, or is
there just a loose interpretation much as Christian morality provides the basis
for European law?)

So I guess we'll be able to see in practice how much economic growth
that will result in.

I don't think so. We have a party here, which defends fundamentalist
opinions mostly, claimed once (before they came to the rule after an
elimination) that they would have been making interest forbidden, even
saying that they have an economic model for it. Of course it was bull s and,
after taking the government, they couldn't even mentioned it a second time.
I think they just realized that world ruled by money, not the god.

I agree.  It's the same sort of end vs. means argument often used to justify
acts that would be immoral by themselves in the name of country or
religion--"It's for the greater good" and so forth.  It's been used to justify
genocide in many countries, the use of nuclear weapons by the US, forced
collectivization and industrialization in the Soviet Union, and God knows (no
pun intended) how many other things that would be unconscionable without having
one's eyes on the end goal.  (And no, I'm not going to get into the Hiroshima
morality argument *again*, except to say that I can understand how both sides
reach their conclusions.)

That might be an alarming conflation, to put a financial decision on par with
mass human suffering, but the rationale is the same.  Principles now, or power
now and (maybe) principles later?  I think the Pakistani decision should be seen
as the former, and also as a statement meant to distance themselves both from
India and from the Europe (including the US) that has been attempting to
pressure the junta.  They may in fact have no intention of making it into policy
(even the shi'i Iranians don't, although IIRC they made much noise about it
while Khomeini was still alive).

It is even much more impossible for a 3rd worlder country like Pakistan or
my country, with 2-3 digit annual inflation rates. Isn't it strange that
most of the Islam countries are 3rd worlders?

This has much more to do with the phenomena of imperialism and European hegemony
than with anything intrinsic about Islamic systems.

best,

Lindsay



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Taxes from Lego auctions?
 
Jasper Janssen <jasper@janssen.dynip.com> wrote in message news:387356c2.218055...net.com... (...) understand why (...) 12 of (...) I don't think so. We have a party here, which defends fundamentalist opinions mostly, claimed once (before they came (...) (25 years ago, 24-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)

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