kritikvernunft
IB Veteran
- Messages
- 590
- Reaction score
- 29
- Gender
- Male
- Religion
- Other
If a practice is not halal, you can reasonably assume that it will backfire somewhere somewhere it the future, in this life, or possibly even in the next one. The corollary is obviously that when you see something badly backfiring, that you could reasonably start searching for a haram practice that may lie at the basis of what is going wrong.
In other words, the Backfiring Corollary Theorem conjectures that for everything that goes wrong, there exists a haram practice that causes it.
For example, the banking system will always end up collapsing. The Quranic text points out that charging interest ("riba") is fundamentally haram, while Riba is clearly a core feature of the banking system. This nicely explains upfront any future calamities in the banking system. No need to look any further.
If we look at a second example, we can see that even without a collapsing banking system, paper money will on the long term always collapse. Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero. Often Rather Quickly. (Voltaire, 1694-1778).
The value of paper money rests on the belief that its emitter will not debase its value by emitting more of it. Therefore, it represents the false pagan belief that the national state can be trusted. Consequently, it is a form of polytheism ("shirk"). Furthermore, Theory of Deception says that it is the aggregate belief itself in the deceptive statement (a=b) -- large numbers of people really believing it -- that fuels the growth in the total amount of deception (b-a)². This then explains Voltaire's Law. The complete destruction of the value of paper money, occurs because all false pagan beliefs ultimately and completely backfire.
Pure monotheist faith says that in the One God we trust and in nothing else. Everything else must be treated with varying degrees of suspicion. Every possible departure from pure monotheist faith will eventually always snowball into its own punishment. If you have acted upon the false belief in something else than the One God, you will have to pay. The natural corollary of this system invariant is that, on the other hand, exclusive faith in the One God ("monotheism", "tawhid") will be rewarded handsomely, later in this life, or in the next one.
The previous examples were rather simple to analyze. We could clearly see where things were wrong. The stock exchange is a much more difficult object of study. Why will the stock exchange always collapse and lose all of its value?
There is an absolutely obnoxious business model possible with stock markets.
Quite a few people have noticed that the stock markets go down, and particular shares go down very visibly, when there are bombing attacks. For example, when the airport in Brussels, Belgium, got suicide-bombed, the stock of Air France-KLM started tanking. Several tour operators started tanking too.
A put option is the right to sell stock at a particular price. If the value of the stock goes down, the value of the put option goes up. In a simple example, imagine that you buy the right to sell 100 000 shares in Air France at 15 Euro at 1.5 Euro per share. Therefore, you spend 1.5 x 100 000 = 150 000 Euro to enter this position. After the bombing attack, the spot price (current price) becomes 11 Euro. This means that these put options are now worth (15-11) x 100 000 = 400 000 Euro. Therefore, your profits, resulting from the bombing attack, are 400 000 - 150 000 Euro = 250 000 Euro.
Consequently, if you know beforehand that the bombing attack will take place, you can buy these put options before the attack, and cash out after the attack. It would be a one-way, always-money-making bet. It would not particularly be stretch to say: Why not just organize such attack by yourself? The attack would certainly fund itself.
What we can see, is something badly backfiring here. There is a fundamental flaw in the situation that allows people to make lots of money by unceremoniously killing other people. Therefore, according to the Backfiring Corollary Theorem, there is something fundamentally wrong with the stock market mechanism itself, caused by a haram practice that underlies it.
Now, investment in itself is not fundamentally haram. Trade is also not fundamentally haram. Still, strange but true, the entire stock exchange mechanism still turns out to be haram.
Furthermore, when behaviour is ultimately self-defeating, it can only be morally wrong. It is quite easy to see why this may be so. The reason why shares have value in the first place, is because they represent the profits from a business -- a group of people -- buying supplies from their suppliers and selling products or services to their customers, both of which are just other groups of people. If you kill these people, there would be no production nor sales, and therefore no profits. Therefore, it looks like the stock market has somewhere an innate propensity to destroy its own profits, by unceremoniously killing anybody involved in one way or another in the underlying business of the company whose shares are traded on the stock market.
Therefore, my questions:
Which exactly is the haram practice underlying the stock market that causes this problem? Can you pinpoint something? In my impression, it is not interest ("riba") in this case. Why is the stock market still fundamentally evil, even though it just represents behaviour that consists of otherwise possibly permissible investment and trade?
In other words, the Backfiring Corollary Theorem conjectures that for everything that goes wrong, there exists a haram practice that causes it.
For example, the banking system will always end up collapsing. The Quranic text points out that charging interest ("riba") is fundamentally haram, while Riba is clearly a core feature of the banking system. This nicely explains upfront any future calamities in the banking system. No need to look any further.
If we look at a second example, we can see that even without a collapsing banking system, paper money will on the long term always collapse. Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero. Often Rather Quickly. (Voltaire, 1694-1778).
The value of paper money rests on the belief that its emitter will not debase its value by emitting more of it. Therefore, it represents the false pagan belief that the national state can be trusted. Consequently, it is a form of polytheism ("shirk"). Furthermore, Theory of Deception says that it is the aggregate belief itself in the deceptive statement (a=b) -- large numbers of people really believing it -- that fuels the growth in the total amount of deception (b-a)². This then explains Voltaire's Law. The complete destruction of the value of paper money, occurs because all false pagan beliefs ultimately and completely backfire.
Pure monotheist faith says that in the One God we trust and in nothing else. Everything else must be treated with varying degrees of suspicion. Every possible departure from pure monotheist faith will eventually always snowball into its own punishment. If you have acted upon the false belief in something else than the One God, you will have to pay. The natural corollary of this system invariant is that, on the other hand, exclusive faith in the One God ("monotheism", "tawhid") will be rewarded handsomely, later in this life, or in the next one.
The previous examples were rather simple to analyze. We could clearly see where things were wrong. The stock exchange is a much more difficult object of study. Why will the stock exchange always collapse and lose all of its value?
There is an absolutely obnoxious business model possible with stock markets.
Quite a few people have noticed that the stock markets go down, and particular shares go down very visibly, when there are bombing attacks. For example, when the airport in Brussels, Belgium, got suicide-bombed, the stock of Air France-KLM started tanking. Several tour operators started tanking too.
A put option is the right to sell stock at a particular price. If the value of the stock goes down, the value of the put option goes up. In a simple example, imagine that you buy the right to sell 100 000 shares in Air France at 15 Euro at 1.5 Euro per share. Therefore, you spend 1.5 x 100 000 = 150 000 Euro to enter this position. After the bombing attack, the spot price (current price) becomes 11 Euro. This means that these put options are now worth (15-11) x 100 000 = 400 000 Euro. Therefore, your profits, resulting from the bombing attack, are 400 000 - 150 000 Euro = 250 000 Euro.
Consequently, if you know beforehand that the bombing attack will take place, you can buy these put options before the attack, and cash out after the attack. It would be a one-way, always-money-making bet. It would not particularly be stretch to say: Why not just organize such attack by yourself? The attack would certainly fund itself.
What we can see, is something badly backfiring here. There is a fundamental flaw in the situation that allows people to make lots of money by unceremoniously killing other people. Therefore, according to the Backfiring Corollary Theorem, there is something fundamentally wrong with the stock market mechanism itself, caused by a haram practice that underlies it.
Now, investment in itself is not fundamentally haram. Trade is also not fundamentally haram. Still, strange but true, the entire stock exchange mechanism still turns out to be haram.
Furthermore, when behaviour is ultimately self-defeating, it can only be morally wrong. It is quite easy to see why this may be so. The reason why shares have value in the first place, is because they represent the profits from a business -- a group of people -- buying supplies from their suppliers and selling products or services to their customers, both of which are just other groups of people. If you kill these people, there would be no production nor sales, and therefore no profits. Therefore, it looks like the stock market has somewhere an innate propensity to destroy its own profits, by unceremoniously killing anybody involved in one way or another in the underlying business of the company whose shares are traded on the stock market.
Therefore, my questions:
Which exactly is the haram practice underlying the stock market that causes this problem? Can you pinpoint something? In my impression, it is not interest ("riba") in this case. Why is the stock market still fundamentally evil, even though it just represents behaviour that consists of otherwise possibly permissible investment and trade?
Last edited:
eace: