Islamic Revival

Three years to the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed another rogue trader scandal has hit. Thirty one year old Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) trader Kweku Adoboli is accused of losing £1.3 billion. Following on from such luminaries as Jerome Kerviel who lost £4.3 billion for Societe Generale in 2008 and Nick Leeson who gambled and lost £827m and effectively collapsed Barings Bank in 1995, Adoboli was last reported as updating his facebook status to “Need a miracle”. In the absence of that miracle Adoboli was  arrested at 3.30am on fraud charges (15 th  September). Post Leeson and Kerviel the major banks have ramped up their risk management operations. All serious players have teams of accountants poring over trading and position data looking for overbought positions and potential disasters. They also seek to keep traders within reasonable risk positions against agreed trader limits. It is a losing task and runs counter to the whole ethos of modern “banking”. The industry in...

3. Unrestricted  Maslahah  ( al-Mursal ):  This is a proper and harmonious attribute which is neither accredited ( mu c tabaran ) nor discredited ( mulgha ) and based upon this definition is not espoused by anyone. Rather, it is rejected unanimously. Any scholar who has discussed the  Maslahah Mursalah  based upon this meaning has rejected it. Those who permit the use of  Maslahah Mursalah  did not intend that it not be acceptable unrestrictedly. They only intended to state that no ruling could indicate to it as a category in itself although a ruling does indicate to its type. Therefore,  maslahah mursalah  according to those who espouse it is a species of the  maslaha mu c tabarah , which does not have any specific ruling indicating to it as a category in itself.             Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (who is a proponent of  maslahah mursalah ) states in his book  al-Mahsul : ...