By the Token of Time "Wal 'Asr"

Saiful Azhar Rosly, Ph.D saiful@inceif.org

INCEIF www.inceif.org

The Quran says, "by the token of Time, man is at loss (khusran) except
those who:

1. have faith (iman)

2. do good deeds ('amal salih)
3. strive for the truth (haq)
4. act in patience while striving for the truth (sabr)

One may ask, why Time is put forth by Allah s.a.w. as the backdrop in
defining people who are not lost but guided (i.e. those who posses the 4
attributes in the above).

A lot can be said about the meaning and importance of Time and but I can
only examine one meaning and that is from the economic prspective.

In economics, we can say that time is scarce. Under that notion of scarcity,
time has value. But man can choose to live in leisure and earn nothing. He
can also wisely spend the time to work in order to earn money. Man is
given the freedom to choose. For that he must be ready to face the
consequences of his action. This is a law in nature that no rational person
will frown at.

The time factor also shows that people can choose to spend today or
postpone their spending to some future date. Choosing the former certainly
mean securing the pleasure of spending without delay. People who have
work hard to earn money will now enjoy the fruits of their labor today. i.e.
attaining happiness and pleasure derived from current purchases.

However, those who chooses to postpone their current spending will have a
no definite idea how much pleasure they can secure from future purchases.
This is called spending under uncertainty.

The interest system i.e. riba actually came into being to guarantee
certainty. It came to put the law in nature upside down. By paying interest
on loans to those who postpone current spending i.e. creditors, the interest
system guarantees identical pleasures to that when one chooses to
consume today. In this way, people who take and receive riba are indeed
those who are in loss (khusran) in a sense that they work against the law in
nature.

Investment in Islam operates under uncertainty (i.e. unknown business

outcome) as no one but only God knows the outcome of business. If a
scheme guarantees certainty on the return of investments, it is none other
than the devil. The Quran says, "They who swallow down usury, shall rise
in the resurrection only as he aristh whom Satan hath infected by his
touch"