Tahniah Farah Nabilah Mohd Firdaus, USIM - Cerdik Pandai Mula Jelas Perbankan "Islam"

But is it too late for many. 

It has been about 20 years since Islamic banking products were introduced in ALL local banks. It began as an 'Islamic window' before becoming full fledged Islamic banking. 

So the earliest generations of Islamic housing "loans" are only now reaching maturity (assuming housing loans usually have a tenure of 15 - 25 years.)

But as was pointed out at the recent protest seminar against 'perbankan Islam' organised by the Persatuan Pengguna Islam, many of the Islamic housing loan borrowers are now feeling cheated.

This is because the whole lot of them have been paying much, much more than other people, including the kafir people, who actually paid much less for housing loans from the conventional kafir banking systems in the country.  Depa semua rasa kena tipu.  

Today I saw this perceptive article by a young woman (a syariah law student) who has written an opinion about Islamic banking. Truncated for your easy reading. The original is at Malaysian Insider here.

Bunga bank bukan riba yang diharamkan? – Farah Nabilah Mohd Firdaus
 

skop penulisan ini kepada perbincangan mengenai hukum riba di sisi Islam

“Wahai orang-orang yang beriman! Janganlah kamu makan atau mengambil riba dengan berlipat-lipat ganda, dan hendaklah kamu bertaqwa kepada Allah supaya kamu berjaya.” (Ali-Imran: 130)
 
persoalan utama yang muncul di kalangan fuqaha  adakah bunga bank itu riba? 

Dan persoalan yang perlu dijawab terlebih dahulu ialah, apa itu sebenarnya riba?

Apa itu riba?

Ulama berbeza pendapat dalam tafsiran riba. 

Golongan pertama berpendapat riba adalah setiap tambahan yang ditetapkan pada permulaan sesuatu transaksi pinjaman yang melebihi pokok pinjaman.

golongan kedua mentafsirkan riba daripada perspektif moraliti dan etika iaitu amalan lintah darat, ceti haram dan along yang mengeksploitasi orang kaya terhadap orang miskin melalui hutang.

Beza riba dan bunga

Berhubung (interest) bank, ulama seperti Fazlur Rahman dan Yusuf Ali yang menyatakan ia sesuatu yang masih dibenarkan dalam kerangka Islam dan tidak patut disamakan dengan riba.

Syed Hussein Alatas: Kita Dengan Islam: Tumbuh Tiada Berbuah p.162:

“..Menerima bunga daripada kumpulan wang simpanan (KWSP) bukanlah satu tindakan menindas kerajaan.”

“Bunga daripada bank dan kepada bank daripada yang meminjam, jika dikawal dan ditentukan dengan adil, bukanlah sesuatu yang boleh disamakan dengan tindakan peminjam wang yang liar, yang keuntungannya berlipat-ganda, yang menghisap darah si peminjam”

Melerai persepsi negatif bunga bank

dengan penelitian dan kajian lebih mendalam, kita dapati beberapa sarjana keluar daripada kelompok majoriti dan memilih berbeza pendapat

suatu hal yang menarik untuk diperhatikan,  sistem bunga bank sebenarnya sedikit sebanyak  mempengaruhi sistem perbankan Islam itu sendri.

Anuar Saaban dan Sanep Ahmad dari Pusat Pengajian Ekonomi Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) menulis satu artikel jurnal bertajuk “Pengaruh Kadar Bunga dalam Perbankan Islam di Malaysia” mengesahkan perkara ini. 

Kajian menghasilkan kadar bunga perbankan konvensional  mempengaruhi kadar untung perbankan Islam

anggapan perbankan Islam bebas 100% daripada bunga bank kurang tepat. 

Kadar bunga bank mempengaruhi perbankan Islam

Kesimpulan

masih terdapat khilaf sama ada bunga bank  termasuk dalam kategori riba

bunga bank pula tidak semua berpendapat ia haram! 

* Penulis adalah pelajar Undang-Undang Syariah (Usim) dan ahli Mahasiswa Progresif 

My comments :  Tahniah saudari   Farah Nabilah Mohd Firdaus.

Lets get straight to the point.  These are my views.

RIBA in the Quran has nothing to do with bank interest or any type of interest calculation.

Secondly, I have said this a hundred times before, how does the so called Islamic bank determine their cost of capital, profit rate, kadar pulangan (return on investment rate) etcthat can be DIFFERENT from the regular interest rates in conventional banking ?

When I was in banking, the interest rates for Bankers Acceptances were identical with the "profit rate" for Islamic BAs.   Tukar nama saja - tipu orang.

I have mentioned the story of talking to a Chinese Muslim student doing his PhD at the IAIS here under the supervision of Dr Othman Bakar.  

His PhD was an impossibility, a non starter - to find a way to determine an "Islamic" cost of funds for the Islamic banks DIFFERENT from the conventional banking system.

I told the PhD student THERE IS NO SUCH THING.  

I met the student again about a year later and he had changed his PhD thesis to another area of research.

Another year later, the PhD student had disappeared completely. 

Here is very simple (and very effective) reasoning why there is no such thing as a separate 'Islamic cost of funds' aka 'profit rate' aka 'kadar keuntungan'.  

Imagine the Jengka area in Pahang. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of  oil palms. This is an oil palm economy.  Thousands of land settlers will spend eight hours at least tending to the pokok kelapa sawit. 

They will use roughly the same amounts of fertiliser per hectare, suffer the same costs, harvest roughly the same amount of fruits per hectare, sell it for roughly same price per tonne etc.

They will also make a certain amount of average profit per hectare.  

There will be an average return on all their inputs / investment per hectare.   

Say the settlers can make 20% on their total time costs, fertiliser costs, cost of Bangla workers, sewa lori costs, fuel costs etc.   This shall be the return on investment of the  kelapa sawit economy in that area.

If there is a bank operatring in that area (islamic, kafir, conventional, communist, capitalist, ah long, chetty etc) they can only charge so much interest or profit rate for any money they lend to the settlers.

If they charge 20%, the settlers nak makan apa?

If they charge 15% it is also too high (75% of ROI ??) Settlers akan bankrap.

Even if they charge 10%, it is still high.  The settlers work for the bank only.

If the banks charge 4% - 5% (whether Islamic or conventional) it may be of help to the settlers.   The market will determine the exact rate.  The interest rate / profit rate must be something that gives the settlers room to breathe and also space for the bank to generate some profit. Ada balance atau equilibrium.

So that shall be "cost of capital" in this kelapa sawit economy.

Whether you are Islamic, unislamic, kafir, communist, capitalist etc you cannot run away from this reality. 

The cost of capital in this kelapa sawit economy depends on the soil conditions, the sunshine, the rainfall, the fertiliser used, the settlers average efforts, etc.   

You can call it whatever you want (islamic, unislamic etc) but this is it.   There is no difference.