Paper money was created by the Devil. At least, according to Goethe.The famous German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) wrote the two part epic of Faust, considered one of the finest works of German literature. In Faust, readers are told the story of a young scholar Faust who wagers his own soul in a deal with Mephistopheles (Shaytan) for the ability to allow him to fulfill his desires on the Earth.
In the second part of the epic, Faust and Mephistopheles attend the court of a ruler whose empire is in financial doldrums and stagnancy due to deflation. Noticing that the medium of currency is gold, the Devil convinces the ruler to adopt the use of paper money (issued as promissory notes in exchange for gold yet to be unearthed from the ground). While at first seeming to restore the kingdom to financial health, in time a paper-printing bonanza leads to excessive spending and further problems.
The scene here in Goethe's Faust was seen to be a commentary on paper money usage during the French Revolution. However, the link between money and the sacred implied during the story hints at something far more profound. What made precious metals like gold and silver so revered, so special that they functioned as money for so long, and why was a shift from them considered such a perversion?
Secular and Sacred
The term 'secular' seems to be vastly misunderstood today. Secularization is a process of demystification and desacralisation, to render something as ordinary and exclusively worldly. It is a process that can take place in politics, economics, and even in normal everyday life. Secularization is not anti-religious but irreligious. It is framed not in opposition to religion and Revelation but in complete ignorance of it altogether.
The sacred is the opposite, it is a worldview that entails that processes and items of this world are suffused with a extra-dimensional aspect of blessedness beyond the mere appearance. The spiritual and the transcendent are aspects of reality that cannot be measured or quantified but nevertheless are vitally important.
From the secular perspective, what we see is what we get, and that is that. Sacredness is sucked out of reality as if through a vacuum cleaner, and whatever is left behind is to be valued in terms of its mere utility and human convenience.
It is erroneous to assume that money has somehow escaped the secularizing process. In my previous article, I briefly explained the transition from commodity-based money to their modern paper and digital counterparts. This transition didn't take place in a vacuum, but as part of a larger secularizing change undergoing mankind where religion ceased to be an active force in public life, and in the larger political and economic spheres, including the monetary. Any analysis on monetary history that doesn't recognize the spiritual value of both gold and silver, and how they were stripped of this quality, is incomplete.
Special Metal
The natural world has always been averse to the presence of metals. A stroll through a forest or woodlands will never reveal metal objects, which tend to remain hidden in mines or underground (the 'womb of the Earth'). Exceptions to this rule were both gold and silver, which on the riverbeds and in sandy deposits would reveal themselves openly to the World, and were hence viewed as "an extra-natural state of metallic existence" in the words of Seyyed Hossein Nasr.
Until modern times, gold and silver were seen as hallowed objects with a connection to the spiritual realm. The ancient Egyptians were renowned for their decorative use of gold on their holy sarcophagus's. According to the Jewish tradition, when God gave Musa (pbuh) the Ten Commandments, He also instructed him to construct a Sanctuary and tabernacle for His worship, saying, "thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold around about" (The Power of Gold, 2000) Silver was also used as a traditional healing element, even to this day.
It is well known that the gold Dinar and silver Dirham were the standard means of currency for most Muslim history. Allah (sbt) in the Quran mentions gold and silver as items of natural value for mankind. "Beautified for people is the love of that which they desire - of women and sons, heaped-up sums of gold and silver, fine branded horses, and cattle and tilled land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, but Allah has with Him the best return." (Surah Al-Imran, 14) Beyond this, gold and silver possess Paradisiacal qualities given the numerous references to the presence of the metals in the Afterlife in the Quran and Hadith. Yet modern Muslims conveniently overlook these references and their deeper implications.
The ancients recognized the coming of an Iron Age when civilization will adopt a ubiquitous use of metal (think bridges, cars, skyscrapers, etc). This was considered as the last age of human history and a time of untold misery and immorality. Yet the predominance of this metallic state of life has led paradoxically to a devaluing of gold and silver as only anachronisms to the modern man.
Current Debate
In the Muslim world, there is a burgeoning movement to bring back the use of Dinar and Dirhams to ensure that the economy conforms to the Shari'ah, and this faces stiff resistance from Muslim defenders of paper money. Much of this debate focuses on whether money should have intrinsic value and how money should be free from the effects of inflation.
These are no doubt important points that should be brought up, but the spiritual element of money is also a dimension that needs to be emphasized to ensure that the dialogue regarding money in Islam it itself not expressed in solely secular terms. The value of gold and silver is not just gained due to scarcity and shininess, but the value is itself a gift from the Divine. To acknowledge this requires us to remove the modernist blinkers put on us by centuries of economic indoctrination.
We must come to accept that using gold and silver in the market is not just a economic transaction, but an act of worship, and paper can no longer be considered an adequate substitute.
good writing bro. Is the writer of Faust the same Goethe of the early printing era.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Yeah, the original Faust was written in the early printing era, and Goethe wrote his own version in the early 19th century.
Delete"We must come to accept that using gold and silver in the market is not just a economic transaction, but an act of worship, and paper can no longer be considered an adequate substitute."
ReplyDelete- That's a stretch!
Worship in economics is primarily about values, not gold and silver. True alchemy is in revealing man for what he is, in extinguishing the ego, loving/serving God and His creation in compliance with His laws and not in creating gold from base metal.
Praiseworthy/blessed economic values include honesty/justice, generosity, avoiding waste, seeking good relations (and not just goods), not harming the rest of creation, avoiding waste and ostentation, sufficiency, efficiency, sharing etc.
Values are important, but the means and structures we use are also important. Gold/silver had special connotations in the religion that paper money does not, hence their use as money similar to our pious predecessors is an endorsement and an act of worship.
DeleteThe use of gold/silver as money categorised explicitly as an act of worship is not justified in the article or your reply. It is in their beautiful qualities that gold/silver will be present in paradise, just as there will be non-intoxicating wine, fruit etc. Even in today's environment where gold/silver prices have been volatile and fallen significantly in recent years, the allure of gold/silver has been maintained primarily due to their aesthetic qualities. Further, this type of false categorisation is dangerous - the quality or quantity of one's worship is not enhanced by using gold/silver as money (unlike other "means and structures").
ReplyDeletePresent-day money is "paper" money in the sense that estimates put 3% of modern money to be in the form of notes and coins and 97% in the form of accounting entries. Hence, present-day money is based upon trust and the rule of law, both elements being critical in a pious society.
This is not to say that money need not be reformed, but that this reform should be focused on the de-linking of money to interest/riba. This can be achieved without re-linking it to commodities such as gold/silver, noting that re-linking money to gold/silver could also have many negative economic effects.
Economic well-being is contingent on the values mentioned in the post above, together with trust and rule of law (which includes the prohibition of interest). However, economic well-being is not contingent on the use of gold/silver as money, let alone this being an act of worship.
How can you say that modern day money is based on trust when it is almost solely the preserve of banks to issue currency, decide the money supply and value of money?
ReplyDeleteWe agree that we cannot be happy with the status quo as that is tantamount to acceptance of riba. As for paper vs gold/silver and other commodities, paper does not have intrinsic value nor is a store of value the way the latter are. I talked about this in an earlier article http://blessedstranger.blogspot.com/2014/05/just-little-bit-about-bitcoin.html
I did not say that present day global supply money should necessarily be re-linked with gold or silver. But you can have smaller markets where gold/silver/barley/rice etc. can function as money with freedom of medium of exchange, as to revive a Sunnah. Is this not preferable to using riba-based debt currency 100% of the time?
My article was merely to highlight that prior to modern times, gold and silver were considered to have a sacred dimension. Their use as money was an established Sunnah, and if done again with that intention, then indeed it is an act of worship. Not saying that owning more gold someone makes one a better Muslim.