فصلنامه اقتصاد اسلامی
پیاپی 24 (زمستان 1385)

Although the birth and expansion of social capital debate is oftern traced back to one or two last decades of 20th century, regarding the nature of subject it could be considered a completely old and deeply-rooted phenomenon which has been present and had manifestations in thoughts, opinions, traditions, behaviors, institutions, and the set of communications and social and humane structures. This subject, regarding its moral and value aspects, has also strong ties with religious traditions and the behavior and the thoughts of the founders of divine religions. In this paper we aim to relate the issue to the age of the holy prophet of Islam (pbuh) and his behavior and thoughts. In the first and second sections we treat of the initial contexts, main pillars, and determinant factors of social capital and thereafter depict the ties between this topic and the behavior and thought of the holy prophet. Our method in compiling this article has been descriptive-analytical along with using library techniques, while historical evidences and narrations from Qur’an and tradition are plentifully utilized.

The issue of pricing for commodities has been under consideration from the early days of Islam. Jurists have also different views in the problem. Some hold that pricing by the government is not permitted absolutely. Some others maintain that the government initially does not have the right to price for the commodity, but if there is an extortionate price then the government has the right to price; and other views.Since an increase in the level of prices equals a decrease in the value of money, and price changes include both relative prices and general level of prices, in this paper first, the monetary system of early Islamic community is regarded and then monetary relationship of Dirham and Dinar (Islamic silver and gold coins) and their weighty relationship are investigated. The occurrence of changes in the relative prices and the general level of prices is proved based on narrations and historical resources. The holy prophet (pbuh) frequently was asked by the companions to price for some commodities, but he severely refrained from this action, and prevented the others as well. By citing narrations and other canonical reasons it is proved that pricing is not permitted in the following assumptions:a) normal situation, b) hoarding commodities, c) exerting an extortionate price on consumers, d) selling a commodity with a price under the market price.But pricing by the government is permitted in these three assumptions: a) the increase in the prices causes public coercion, b) there occurs some more important expediencies like a martial situation, c) the government supports producer provided that he sells the commodity with a specific price.

The advancement of Muslim countries and emergence of new needs and relative success of Islamic banking thought have driven the Muslim scholars to design Islamic financial instruments. The capabilities of Islamic contracts and the experience of financial markets caused in a short time a number of Islamic financial instruments to be created and suggested for application.Although not all of these instruments possess necessary jurisprudential, economic and managerial qualifications, and thus havent been able to show themselves successfully, but some of them as well heeding the criteria of Shariah, enjoy a high degree of operational capability and economic justifiability.This paper aims to introduce and explain one of these instruments that is designed based on ordinary leasing (Ijara) and leasing to own. In this instrument, by issuing the securities and giving up those, the financial institute collects funds of the people through a delegation contract, then by using those funds purchases the capital and durable goods needed by the government, its affiliated institutes, firms and households; and then gives them through ordinary leasing or leasing to own. Leasing papers especially leasing to own are regarded a kind of profitable financial instruments with an almost fixed yield; and we expect that be welcomed by normal and risk-averse individuals. In addition to improving public welfare, this instrument would increase the growth of investment and production and would be counted a suitable instrument for financial and monetary policies.

The elimination of Riba from banking system and financial markets of Muslim countries is not possible without identifying Riba tricks and distinguishing the religiously allowed ones from the forbidden ones. So this paper tries to explain the trick and suggest the criteria of forbidden tricks and then applying on the issue of Riba and its tricks.The author defines the trick as: an action that is done in order to change the injunction of an instance through a change in the title to which it corresponds.The criteria for permission of a trick are:The purpose should not be to escape from a forbidden act to a permitted one.The act which is done in order to change the injunction, not to be forbidden per se.The reason of the injunction of initial title implicates the forbiddance of the title of the trick.The existence of another text allows the transition from the reason of the injunction of initial title to the title of trick.The existence of an intellectual reason allows the transition from the reason of the injunction of initial title to the title of trick.In the article, the above mentioned criteria are investigated within different Riba tricks and in addition to justifying the texts, some instances of forbidden Riba tricks which exist in the Iranian non-Riba banking are demonstrated.

Nowadays, debt plays a great role in the whole economic arenas; so that one cannot imagine an economy without debt. Debts usually have a certain maturity. But since the economic condition of debtors and creditors changes during the time they may decide to lengthen or shorten the time of maturity. Postponing the maturity, which is normally requested by the debtor because of his incapability of repayment, is forbidden in Shariah. But in advance repayment of the debt is approved in Shariah.There are numerous and authentic traditions (hadiths) in Shiite resources that have explicit denotation on discount in the amount of debt for debtors in return for shortening the time of maturity. In Sunnite jurisprudence, at the other hand, although some do not see it as permissible, their arguments lack enough strength; besides, some of their jurists have permitted it. This injunction can be used in many issues, among which we can point to leasing corporations, banks, the claims of government from people, the claims of corporations.

Risk exists in all economic activities, so it is necessary to plan some artifices for controlling the risk of economic activities. The risk management is very important to control and reduce these risks. Banks as the economic institutions which are intermediates between depositors and applicants of loans, try to reduce risk and prevent transfer it to depositors on account of more motivation to keep and increase deposits. According to the fixed interest rate in the interest banking, banks transfer the risk to the applicants of loans and thus they face with lower risk, but in the interest free banking, they must act in determined frameworks which were determined by shariah, as a result they cant hold a fixed interest rate and the rate will be found after checking the act in one of the Islamic contracts. Therefore it seems the risk management is more important in the interest free banking. At the beginning of the paper, this object will be explained, then we will have a review of literature and afterwards theoretical analysis will be presented and finally summary and political advices will be mentioned.

This paper extends the literature on interest-free banking systems by modeling money demand equations for Iran which has followed the profit-sharing scheme since the mid-1980s. Using quarterly data spanning the period 1966-2001, we estimate two alternative demand equations for M 1 and profit-sharing deposits. Unlike prior research, this paper focuses on whether the estimated equations are policy invariant in addition of being temporally stable in the short- and long- run. Our empirical results persistently suggest that the two money demand models, and especially the demand for profit-sharing deposits, are structurally stable and policy invariant despite the numerous shocks that have characterized Iran in recent years. These results provide another piece of evidence supportive of the interest-free banking system, and suggest that profit-sharing monetary aggregates represent a credible instrument for monetary policy-making in Iran.