Abdul-Kareem

The Khilafah's currency is based on the gold and silver standards where the coins and notes in circulation are 100% backed by gold and silver. Islam did not leave any question unanswered, especially questions concerning the complexities of economic life. The Shari'ah has therefore defined the Islamic currency as gold dinars and silver dirhams along with their corresponding weights in gold or silver. The Shari'ah rules related to money such as zakat, blood money (diyah) and hoarding all specify values in gold and silver.[1]

Adnan Khan, Economics Correspondent

"The rise of "sovereign wealth funds" signals the end of the neo-liberal model and challenges western states and financial institutions to develop a coherent and long-term response"

Free market ideologues have a new obsession - ‘sovereign wealth funds,' those state-backed investment bodies whose accumulating assets are roaming the globe in search of businesses to invest in, partner and in some cases achieve political ends.

Such funds continue to accumulate huge wealth especially with the recent skyrocketing oil prices, but they hit the headlines with the collapse of the US housing market. In January 2008 the governments of Singapore, Kuwait and South Korea provided the $21 billion lifeline to Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, two banks that have lost fortunes in America's credit crisis. It was not the first time either was bailed out by them. Since the sub-prime-mortgage fiasco unfolded in the summer of 2007, such funds have gambled almost $69 billion on acquiring the rich world's biggest investment banks (far more than usually goes the other way in an emerging-markets crisis). With as much as $2.9 trillion to invest, the funds' horizons go beyond finance to telecoms and technology companies, casino operators, even aerospace. But it is in banking where they have arrived most spectacularly. They have deftly played the role of saviour just when Western banks have been exposed as the Achilles heel of the global financial system.

The weakening US dollar is not a phenomenon restricted to its borders as its effects are being felt the world over. The fiat currency has insured that America will not suffer in isolation but rather ensure that its grip on power is firmly held in place. Allah (swt) has commanded that the Khilafah adopt the bimetallic standard. Only through the complete implementation of Islam will mankind be removed from the injustice and oppression of man-made systems.

The past few weeks have increasingly seen disturbing headlines being made by the soaring cost of basic food commodities and subsequent ‘food riots' in many countries around the world. The price of wheat alone has increased an astonishing 120% in the last year, with the price of rice increasing by 75% in the last two months alone. The World Bank has warned that these price levels will be maintained until the year 2015. Many poor people around the world who already spend most of their disposable incomes on food are suddenly finding it impossible just to feed themselves. With riots and protests seen as far as wide from Haiti to Indonesia, the lack of food has the potential to create geo-political upheaval.

Agriculture is the production of food, feed and fibre by the systematic harvesting of plants and animals. Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. Evidence points to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East as the site of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered in the wild. The history of agriculture is a central element of human history, as agricultural progress has been a crucial factor in worldwide socio-economic change. Agriculture played a key role in the development of human civilization-it is widely believed that the domestication of plants and animals allowed humans to settle and give up their previous hunter-gatherer lifestyle during the Neolithic Revolution. Until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the human population labored in agriculture. The development of agricultural techniques has steadily increased agricultural productivity, and the widespread diffusion of these techniques has led to new technologies.

The reasons for the current turmoil in International money markets such as panic selling go back to August 2007 when the Sub-prime market in the US collapsed which resulted in huge loses for the worlds investment banks, hedge funds and finance houses as all of them had placed large sums of money in the US real estate market.