paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu (11/14/90)
>From Datamation, November 15, 1990, page 82 ------- Want a tough assignment? Try setting up a financial application in the Middle East. Take Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) in, no surprise, Qatar, a tiny Arab emirate bordering Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf. Early this year, QIIB bank manager Faisal al-Sulaiti decided to set up an IBM mainframe-based system to automate his bank's daily transactions - something never before done at an Islamic bank. Islamic banks don't take kindly to automation; they don't even take kindly to banking, for that matter. Islamic banks - including QIIB - are governed by religious supervisory committees that stricly impose the Islamic teachings of the Koran on the banks' dealings. Among these rules is the prohibition on payment and receipt of interest charges. All those petro-dollars, petro-yen and petro-marks have had to go somewhere, though, and most have ended up funding the rapid rise of Islamic banking and finance in the Middle East. But since they can't charge interest, Islamic banks must become their borrowers' business partners, with no profit possible until - and unless - the loan customer makes a profit. Customers pay these loans back with post-dated checks, which aren't collectible until the company turns a profit. Sound risky? It is. And in such deals, the banks hold all the risk. But it doesn't seem to bother the banks much. Says QIIB's al-Sulaiti: "Despite these restrictions, Islamic banking is expanding rapidly. To compete in this growing market, new banks such as QIIB need to automate their operations and control their higher exposure to risk." Al-Sulaiti approached several international software vendors with his unusual set of requirements before lighting on Kapiti Ltd., a large U.K.-based international-banking applications developer. Kapiti agreed to modify its existing EQUATION bank automation applications to meet Islamic banking regulations. The system Kapiti developed for QIIB includes facilities for account statements and advices in both English and Arabic, can print Hindi numerals and provides for calculation and distribution of profits to customer accounts, along with the standard generation of accounting entries - all abiding by the strict rules of Islam. From daemon@ncar.ucar.edu Tue Nov 13 14:47:09 1990 To: soc-religion-islam@rutgers.edu Path: iitmax!soudan From: soudan@iitmax.iit.edu (Bassel Soudan) Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam Subject: Re: From Quran References: <1990Nov13.162007.20281@wpi.WPI.EDU> Reply-To: soudan@iitmax.iit.edu (Bassel Soudan) Lines: 23 In article <1990Nov13.162007.20281@wpi.WPI.EDU> mughal@iago.caltech.edu writes: > >>From Quran: > >If ye did well, ye did well for yourselves; >if ye did evil, (ye did it) against yourselves; >so when the second of the warnings came to pass, (We >permitted your enemis) to disfigure your face, and >to enter your Temple, as they had entered before, >and to visit with destruction all that fell into >their power. (7) I am not quit sure how brother Ali came up with this translation. The original text in Arabic (English transleteration) says : "Wa liadkhulu al-masjida cama dakhaluhu aoula mara." Which if translated to English would mean : "and to enter THE MOUSQUE like they entered it the first time." where did "your" come from? And how did he translate masjid to "Temple"??
goer@midway.uchicago.edu (Richard L. Goerwitz) (11/15/90)
Paul@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes: >In article <1990Nov13.162007.20281@wpi.WPI.EDU> mughal@iago.caltech.edu writes: >> >>>From Quran: >> >>If ye did well, ye did well for yourselves; >>if ye did evil, (ye did it) against yourselves; >>so when the second of the warnings came to pass, (We >>permitted your enemis) to disfigure your face, and >>to enter your Temple, as they had entered before, >>and to visit with destruction all that fell into >>their power. (7) > >The original text in Arabic (English transleteration) says : > > "Wa liadkhulu al-masjida cama dakhaluhu aoula mara." > "and to enter THE MOUSQUE like they entered it the first time." > >where did "your" come from? And how did he translate masjid to "Temple"?? Okay, my Arabic isn't perfect, but can't the word _masjid_ be used of synagogues, and even Christian churches as well? Someone please refresh my memory on this. Those of you with a knowledge of other Semitic languages will at once recognize that the word _msjd_ is not a novel Arabism. It is from the root _sjd_, which means to bow down or pray. It occurs in Syriac, where a bet segdtha is a 'place of worship.' It also occurs in Hebrew. Be- cause the word is simply a common ma- prefixed formation, one suspects that it is pre-Islamic, and that its use to denote exclusively *Muslim* places of worship came about only in more recent times. I would like it if someone could confirm/deny these observations, as I'm surely not an Arabist! -Richard