Patience in Islam

Sabar or patience in Islam has significant role. It makes a muslim better muslim if he deal things with patience. Patience in dail life has several meanings such as if a person is ill then he should not scream or shout. Similay at the times of death of loved ones and some serious setbacks we need to deal situations with patience. Moreveor, dealing with younger ones we need to be patient because they are younger than us and we can say anyting to them doe snot mean we should sya it; deal it with patience.
I saw sometimes in the offices that people deal with their personal staff with so arrogance and their behavior is so snobbish that they forget that they are muslims and what Allah (SWT) has asked them to do. But their Egos at that time is more important than anything else.
I am writing all this becasue I was fasting today and I thought I'll not get annoyed at anyonne but still I screamed couple of times of some people and after screaming I thought if i would not had screamed the matter woulld have solved either way. Does that screaming or losing patience benefits me in anyway... my answer is NO. But it pleased my Ego at that time.

"A Muslim does not suffer any mental or physical anguish, or any distress, grief, pain or sorrow - even from the prick of a thorn - except that Allaah expiates his mistakes and sins." Bukhaari and Muslim

This Sabr is an extremely important virtue for a believer. The Prophet sal-Allaahu alaihi wa sallam, talking to some poor Muslims from Ansaar whom he had given whatever he had, said:

"Whoever practices Sabr, Allaah Subhanahu wa Ta'alaa gives him Sabr. And no one can be given anything better or more far-reaching (comprehensive) than Sabr." Aboo S'eed Khudri in Bukhaari and Muslim.

For more to read see http://www.muslimaccess.com/articles/misc/sabr.asp
and
http://asqfish.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/the-concept-of-sabr-patience-in-islam/

Islam and Consumerism

First of all I must confess that I do not have command on the subject but I wanted to get comments/feedback on this. Consumerism in Islam; Is it allowed or not allowed but 1.6 billion Muslims around the world are buying and selling different things as written in this article http://www.economist.com/node/21558563?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/prayersandplaythings


I was surprised to see a statement in this article "Religions rarely praise consumerism". First question arose on my mind was "What is Consumerism" Is it a law of protecting consumer rights or Is it creating a market and culture of consuming more and more whether you have money in your hand.


Therefore, I started searching some websites/webpages, Thanks to Google for making our life easier, that whether it is true in case of Islam or not. However in the end I saw a Wikipedia page on Consumerism which defines Consumerism as "The term "consumerism" was first used in 1915 to refer to "advocacy of the rights and interests of consumers" (Oxford English Dictionary) but in this article the term "consumerism" refers to the sense first used in 1960, "emphasis on or preoccupation with the acquisition of consumer goods" (Oxford English Dictionary)". Moreover it says "Consumerism has long had intentional underpinnings, rather than just developing out of capitalism". Thus it is nothing to do about capitalism.


Islam says do not spend on those things which you do not need, live simpler life, do not waste food, conserve water... In short be modest in your spending. But on the other hand it also says that give charity to others so that they can also buy good for their use. It also says that wear good clothes so that one knows that you are well off and if someone wants help (monetarily) he/she can ask you. 


Consumerism always invited innovation because more society is innovative people tend to buy newer thing, e.g., iPod, iPad etc. Islam is pro innovation and not against new technologies and if someone is working on the betterment and people are adopting those goods, then it is a increase in consumerism. 


Above short explanation shows that Islam asks people to being modest but it is not against consumerism. If we read between the lines what Islam teaches us then I do not agree with the statement that Religions rarely praise consumerism. However, I cannot say anything about Christianity or other religions.

What the west can learn from Islamic Banking

http://www.economywatch.com/economy-business-and-finance-news/what-the-west-can-learn-from-islamic-banking.16-05.html

Spain Pain by Krugman

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/zombies-on-cnbc/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

Financial Crisis under Islamic Finance

The below strategy is at evolving stage...

Interest is prohibited in Islam however, we can take profits from the investment. Who'll share the risk is the main question. In conventional interest based system the entire risk is forwarded to the customers who borrows from the bank and then bear the entire risk. In an Islamic finance framework lender and borrower both has share in profit and risk, still it depends on the agreement between the two parties. Thus Islamic finance has lesser instability than interest based finance since lender is also careful of lending to the risk seeker person.

Q & A

Q: How many classical economists you need to change a light-bulb?
A: None, the invisible hand does it

Q: How many neo-libral/austrian economists?
A: None, the market takes care of it.

Q: How many keynesian ones?
A: All of them. Because this way you create employement, increasing
demand and does multiplying employement and so on.

Q: How many marxist ones?
A: None, the lighbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.

Q:How many economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A:Eight. One to change it and seven to hold everything else constant.

Are Consumers Rational?

Are Consumers Rational?

When we start studying Microeconomics the first thing we study is that we have limited resources and we have unlimited wants. Second thing which we studies is that “Consumer is Rational” and our teachers used to explain us that the consumer will not buy a rotten tomatoes and rotten vegetables; which is true when we talk only about buying tomatoes or mangoes etc. However, if we think in a broader sense, beyond grocery items then consumer may or may not remain rational, e.g., taking stocks in stock market, doing investment, buying foreign exchange, movements of interest rate, buying a lottery ticket etc.

We’ll take this one by one:

1. People, especially the retired ones” always thing that decreasing interest rate is a bad thing and what they are getting in hand is meaningful. These people do not have an idea about real interest rate but I don’t blame them because if prices go up 3fold and interest rate initially goes up to 13 percent and they are getting good amount of money. But after inflation has declined and interest rate declines too they are getting profit or interest money on the same fixed amount and money they are getting at, say 6.5 percent, is half of what they are getting previously. In this case they do not want interest rate to decline. J According to their own view they are rational ones but if the rationality is to lower inflation and lower interest rate then they are not rational.
2. Continuing with the interest rate, if there is a recession, with high inflation and high unemployment --- increase in interest rate leads to more unemployment and inflation otherwise. Policymakers would want to reduce more at the same time but due to trade-off they cannot. Simply stating, unemployed wants to re-employ again and already employed people want inflation to be at the lowest. Who is rational then, unemployed or already employed or both are rational.
3. In the long run we are all dead, said by a biggie and people use it out of context J  most of the public (I am using here for general consumers)  has a myopic view and cannot or do not want to see what’ll happen after ten years. They want their rewards the next day. Some people do not believe my statement and they say that no we do not want our rewards the next day, “yes” they can wait for a year. But they always argue that what has happened in the last 20 years or so is not favorable for us and these are those people who do not have confidence in the government. Thus who are rational, those who do not believe in the government or those who believe in the government. Because when u don’t believe in the government then government cannot make the policies correctly because they had in mind that consumers are rational (irrational) and they believe don’t believe) us J.
4. Continuing point three from where I started, i.e., Long Run. Does general public know what is long run or this word is used just to fool general public? Or if you do not know about long run then you are not rationalJ. Medium plans are made, long term 2010, 2020, and 2030 plans were made. But is it again the question whether people have confidence in government or not. Some people want quick money and some people think that 30 year is a long period and no idea whether they’ll live till then or not. Are these people Rational?
5. There will be different points where we can ask whether consumer is rational? Trading in FOREX market when exchange rate is increasing. Buying stocks when it’s increasing. Most of the big investors do not think that it’s a good idea to buy when stocks are increasing. Thus are these people rational?

Continued…. With your comments