Insuring the Ignorance of Future Generations

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No, that isn’t a typo. In a search for evidence to counteract a fatwa an acquaintance interpreted as permission to commit insurance fraud (more on that in a future post, I promise!), I found this.

These people aren’t big on paragraphs – in fact, they love impossible-to-read walls of text – so I’ve removed a lot of their trademark redundancy, as well as most of the passive-aggressive insults towards anyone who disagrees. I’ve also taken the liberty of bolding the most relevant words and phrases. 

The majority of contemporary scholars are of the view that commercial insurance is haraam and cooperative insurance is permissible. This view was adopted by most of the fatwa-issuing councils, such as the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi, the Standing Committee for Issuing Fatwas, the Islamic Fiqh Council of the Muslim World League in Makkah al-Mukarramah, the International Islamic Fiqh Council of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah, and others. That is because commercial insurance involves elements of ambiguity, gambling and consuming wealth unlawfully, unlike cooperative insurance which is based on takaaful and tadaamun (mutual support and solidarity).

I’ve never agreed with the view that insurance is gambling, mainly because I see nothing at all ambiguous about an agreement to pay X amount per month in exchange for Y benefit in the event of Z. It may be a good investment, or it may be a bad one, but that’s not how permissibility is determined in Islam. You can argue that it’s gambling based on the fact that its profitability (which depends on when and if Z occurs) hinges on acts of God, but that’s true of any number of other transactions – in fact, with regard to the Muslim belief that everything that has ever happened and will ever happen is God’s will, it’s true of every transaction imaginable.

In the case of commercial insurance, the administration of the insurance is carried out by a company which has an identity separate from that of those who are insured by it. This company is entitled to all the instalments paid in return for its commitment to pay out insurance money when it is due (i.e., when an accident or whatever happens). What is left of these instalments is not paid back to those who are insured by the company, because it is considered to be a payment in return for the company’s commitment to pay the compensation as agreed. If all the instalments collected by the company are not enough to pay all the compensation, then the company has no right to go back to the customers and ask them to pay more. This is the essence of the kind of ambiguous transaction that is forbidden in Islam, and is consuming wealth unlawfully.

An agreement to pay X amount per month, in exchange for receiving Y benefit if Z event occurs is gambling, and thus haram, because it’s impossible to know when or if Z event will take place. Well, ok; I disagree, for reasons I’ve already mentioned, but I can see how a reasonable person might reach that conclusion. Then they continue with this:

In the case of cooperative insurance, a number of people who are exposed to the same type of danger get together and each of them pays a specific contribution. These contributions are for the purpose of paying compensation to anyone who becomes entitled to it as the result of some harm that befell him. If the sum of contributions is greater than the sum paid out in compensation, the members of the scheme are entitled to take back the difference. If there is a shortfall, then the members are asked to make additional contributions to cover the deficit, or else the compensation paid is reduced in accordance with that deficit.

Instead of paying X amount per month in exchange for the guarantee of Y benefit in the event of Z, you’re now paying a completely random amount that can’t be predicted or controlled (because it depends on how many other people Z has already happened to that year), in exchange for (drumroll, please!)… a completely random benefit whose amount also can’t be predicted or controlled, because it depends not only on how many times Z has happened that year, but on how much everyone else is willing to pay!

If you’re the first person Z happens to that year, you’re probably ok – you’ll get the full benefit you paid for, because they budgeted for that. If you’re the 317th person Z happens to, though, you’re likely to be SOL – there’s a good chance you’ll get a smaller benefit than the one everyone else got (and that you paid for!), because the company is out of money. This is somehow, magically, supposed to be less ambiguous – and less like gambling – than the commercial insurance plan they deemed ‘haram’.

They go on to talk about why it’s forbidden to invest in a particular company that purports to sell cooperative insurance, but actually (according to their defintion) sells commercial insurance. That’s all well and good (though I think the whole thing is ridiculous), but what really got me was the list of names at the end:

Signed by:

1- Dr. Muhammad ibn Sa’ood al-‘Usaymi, General Director of the Shar’i Council of the National Bank

2- Dr. Yoosuf ‘Abd-Allaah al-Shubayli, Member of Faculty, Higher Institute of Judicial Matters in Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ood Islamic University

3- Prof. Dr. Sulaymaan ibn Fahd al-‘Eesa, Professor of Graduate Studies in Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ood Islamic University

4- Prof. Dr. Saalih ibn Muhammad al-Sattaan, Professor of Fiqh at the University of al-Qaseem

5- Dr. ‘Abd al-‘Azeez ibn Fawzaan al-Fawzaan, Assistant Professor at Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ood Islamic University

6- Dr. ‘Abd-Allaah ibn Moosa al-‘Ammaar, Assistant Professor at Imam Muhammad ibn Sa’ood Islamic University.

There is not one single name on that list that doesn’t have “Dr.” in front of it. All but one are professors, and the one who isn’t is in charge of a bank. (I know where I won’t be putting my money!)

I guess Saudi universities must pay pretty well, if so many professors have no understanding of what ‘budgeting’ is! Do they honestly think ‘asking people to pay more’ if there have been too many claims that year is a reasonable solution for normal households? Do they really believe that changing the benefit someone is entitled to after they’ve already paid for it is acceptable in Islam? And do you really need a Ph.D. to see the obvious problem with that logic?

We’ve already seen what happens when people who don’t understand basic biology write fatwas on medical issues. Now, we’ve also seen what happens when people with no understanding of basic economics write fatwas on business transactions! 

Oops, indeed.

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John Christopher Stevens

Ambassador John Christopher Stevens.

Unless you live in a cave, you’ve already heard that John Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya, was killed last night when his car was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Three other Americans were also killed.

A little more than a year ago, I made the following prediction here:

The US has failed to recognize that although huge numbers of Libyans may agree on their desire to overthrow Gaddhafi, they represent a number of different factions who have wildly disparate ideas about where the country should go from there… Some of them are people America would love to see in charge of Libya; others make Gaddhafi look positively warm and cuddly by comparison…

America’s unwillingness to commit its already-overstretched military to a third ground war means that they have no way of keeping track of the weapons they’ve given the rebels. Which faction will end up controlling them? Good question! I’m going to put my Miss Cleo hat on and predict that this will give them an excuse to continue mucking around in Libyan politics for several decades to come. I can’t remember an armed conflict in my lifetime that didn’t start out with America arming the enemies of an enemy, then realizing “Oh, shit! Oops!”

$100 says the RPG that killed those four Americans was a leftover from last year’s harebrained “Let’s give weapons to everyone who hates Gaddhafi!” scheme. Like I said: “Oops!”

I’m going to throw in two more anonymous quotes, for good measure.

“Those who don’t read history are destined to repeat it.”

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”

Why I don’t go to the masjid very often.

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This one gets filed under ‘Stuff I wouldn’t believe if it hadn’t happened to me.’

“Do you want me to find you a husband?”

“No.”

“I have a cousin who’s perfect for you! Are you interested?”

“No.”

“You’ll have to sponsor him for a green card. Is that ok?”

“No.”

“His family is rich…”

“No.”

“Does it matter if he can’t speak English?”

“N- wait, what? Yes, that matters!”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to be married to someone I can’t talk to!”

“You can talk to him, and he can say yes or no.”

“Like a human Magic 8-Ball? Cool!”

“So can I give him your number?”

“No.”

… and that, dear readers, is just one example of why I don’t go to the local masjid very often. Sarcasm has always been my best defense against idiocy, but it’s completely ineffective on these people.

The Rules (1)

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Rule #1 for Muslims living in the West:

The word ‘stripper’ is not a synonym for ‘immodestly dressed woman’. Using it as such is generally considered rude.

If you don't see the problem here, please stay off the internet and stop embarrassing the rest of us!

(If you don’t see the problem there, please stay off the internet and stop embarrassing the rest of us!)

Reflections on Online Idiocy

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I poked my head into Ummah Forums yesterday, and quickly remembered why I gave up on that place years ago. Here are the highlights from this past week’s topics:

“My wife doesn’t like my family and refuses to visit them, so I want to divorce her, but we just had a baby!”

Short answer: She’s your wife, not your conjoined twin. You can visit them without her! (No one got around to suggesting this until the second page of replies. One person responded that such an attitude was haram, and the rest ignored that post in favor of arguing about whose parents had what rights over whom.)

“How can I make my wife wear hijab?”

Short answer: You can’t. If you felt so strongly about having a wife who wears hijab, you should have… (wait for it)… married a woman who wears hijab! You chose to marry her as she is, and you have no right to complain about it now. (I just skimmed the first page of replies, but I can almost guarantee you no one there has that much common sense. I may go back later, just to count the number of times the word ‘fard’ is misused.)

There were also five (count ‘em, five!) threads involving secret polygamous marriages, just this week! Short answer: “Anyone who chooses to marry or stay married to those idiots deserves whatever happens.”

Ummah.com isn’t my first choice for intelligent conversation about religion or anything else, for reasons that should be obvious by now. Once in a while, though, someone brings up something interesting. It’s usually an accidental tangent to an uninformed and overly simplistic generalization, and that’s what happened here.

The point of the original post is that it’s haram, greedy, and all sorts of other uncomplimentary adjectives for a divorced woman to pursue a legal settlement in Western courts that gives her financial benefits (such as alimony or a percentage of the husband’s property) to which she’s not entitled under Islamic law. Predictably, no mention is made of the fact that men can (and do!) exploit those laws in the same manner.

The Qur’an clearly describes who’s entitled to what in the event of a divorce, and Western legal concepts like alimony and community property directly contradict those rules. However, there are circumstances where I don’t think it would be wrong for a woman (or man) to use those laws to their own benefit.

In Islam, both men and women have the right to divorce for whatever reason they choose. No one can be forced to marry against their will, and no one can be forced to remain married against their will.

In most Western countries, the law is very different. Under US law, an uncontested divorce takes a minimum of six months, and can take two years or more, depending on the state. If one spouse contests the legal divorce, it’s guaranteed to take several years, and both spouses will end up paying thousands of dollars in court costs and attorneys’ fees. If a husband uses the secular court system to violate his wife’s Islamic right to divorce in a reasonable timeframe, and she ends up owing her lawyer $10,000 as a result, would it still be haram of her to seek some financial compensation from him as part of the legal settlement? I think not – if his haram actions cost her a significant sum of money, then he owes her that amount of money, and I see nothing wrong with her using secular courts to collect it.

In Islam, each spouse is solely responsible for their own debts. Under US law in many states, one spouse can be held accountable for debts incurred by the other during the marriage. Pre-nuptial agreements can sometimes protect against this, but there are no guarantees. If a woman ends up legally responsible for 50% of her husband’s debts, is it still wrong for her to claim the 50% share of his house, car, etc. to which she’s entitled under US law? In my opinion, no; he has no right to expect her to pay off his debts, and if she’s not doing it of her own free will, then he’s essentially stealing from her. She has no Islamic obligation to allow him to do that, and she’s entitled to have the money returned to her.

Under Islamic law, if a wife has a good reason for divorcing her husband (such as abuse, adultery, or lying about something critical that she wouldn’t have married him if she’d known about beforehand), she’s not required to return the mahr. If he lies about the situation, and she’s forced to return the mahr before an imam or qadi will grant a religious divorce, is it wrong for her to get it back through a secular court settlement? Again, I think not – she’s simply taking back what’s rightfully hers.

Another point to consider is that in Western countries, there’s no need for a couple to marry legally if they don’t want to. Unlike most Muslim countries, there are no laws against living together without being legally married, and Muslim couples have the option of marrying religiously, but not legally registering the marriage. If a couple freely chooses to marry under Western law, are they agreeing to follow it? Is that any different than either of them waiving any other right as a condition in the marriage contract?

None of these issues were addressed in the six pages of discussion on the topic – it seems Western Muslims would rather argue about whether housewives deserve a salary for cleaning their own homes and caring for their own children, or whether alimony laws are the reason the divorce rate in the West is (supposedly) so much higher than in Muslim countries. Those are interesting points, but they don’t address the real issue: under what circumstances is it permissible for a Muslim to use a country’s secular legal system to secure a financial gain that they wouldn’t otherwise be entitled to under Islamic law?

It’s possible that someone, somewhere, has addressed this subject in a reasonable manner, but if they have, I don’t know about it. For all the fataawa I see about about issues like the three I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I rarely see any about practical matters like legal divorce in the West. Maybe they’re out there, and the reason I don’t see them is because Western Muslims don’t find those issues as interesting as endless arguments about a man’s ‘right’ to polygamy, obedience, etc.

What does that say about the Western Muslim community? To be honest, I’d rather not think too hard about the answer to that question.

Adventures in Hypocrisy

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There’s a fine line between ‘optimistic’ and ‘delusional’. I’ve noticed that many Muslims seem to draw that line in the wrong place. Take this guy:

He’s 48, and an American citizen. He’s divorced, and childless. He’s decided (at age 48) that he no longer wants to be childless, and is looking for a woman ‘of child-bearing age’ to rectify that condition. What’s he offering her in return? Well… read on!

Not much.

If it’s too blurry, you can click the picture to open a larger version. If you’re too lazy to do that, here are the highlights:

  • “I want a wife who has already has a green card, so I don’t have to get her one.”
  • “I won’t give her a mahr, because that’s greedy, uncivilized, and un-Islamic.”
  • “I want a wife of child-bearing age.”
  • “Women with more than one divorce need not apply.”
  • “Hypocrites need not apply.” (Yes, really, that’s the next sentence!)
  • “Marriage should be about having children.”

Not when you’re forty-eight, it shouldn’t be!

Did I mention that he’s divorced himself? (He doesn’t say how many times!) Granted, he’s looking for a woman ‘of child-bearing age,’ and if someone of either gender under 30 has divorced twice, there may well be something amiss. But you know what? If someone doesn’t get around to thinking about kids until age forty-eight, then decides the world will end if they don’t reproduce, there’s definitely something amiss!

I can understand how a woman who’s desperate for cash, or desperate to get out of rural Backwardstan, might decide that marrying someone like this guy (ignorant of her rights in Islam, old enough to be her father, and a few fries short of a Happy Meal) isn’t such a bad deal. If that’s not part of his offer, though, I don’t think he’s gonna have much luck. That’s probably just as well – men like this tend not to be very good fathers. They also have this annoying habit of dropping dead while their youngest children are still in diapers.

He’s got nothing on this next guy, though. I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff – and I mean a lot – but this one literally made my jaw drop. His stats are on the left; those of his ideal wife are on the right.

So far, he’s your run-of-the-mill hypocrite looking for a second wife with a variety of culturally desirable characteristics (including, of course, virginity and light skin!) that he himself doesn’t possess. Nothing new there, right? It wouldn’t even warrant a mention, if it weren’t for this next bit:

Yeah, you read that right. She should be either an aalima or a gynecologist. Like I said, I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff, but this is the first one that made me want to pay for an account just so I can ask him what the @#&% he’s thinking. Then again, I’m not sure I want to know the thought process behind that requirement!

He’s originally Pakistani, and I don’t know how it works in Pakistan, but in Arab countries, med school starts right after high school, and takes six years. That makes most doctors 24 when they graduate. After that, they do a one-year internship, so most of them are 25 or older before they apply for specialist residencies. In the US, it takes even longer. I doubt he’ll find many gynecologists under 25 in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else. If he’s really a doctor himself, wouldn’t he know that?

He makes himself sound all religious, but I’m not buying it. Whatever he’s smoking, it’s got to be haram!

“Where are you from?”

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It’s inevitable – every time I meet another Muslim, I get the same series of questions.

“Where are you from?”

“America.”

“Where are you originally from?”

“America.”

“Ok, you grew up here, but where are you from?“

“America.”

“Where are your parents from?”

“America.”

“Where are they originally from?”

“America.”

“Where were they born?”

“America.”

Et cetera.

If the person asking me this isn’t Muslim, I’m (usually) happy to explain that I’m a white convert to Islam. If they’re another Muslim, though, I look at them like they’re stupid and keep answering “America,” just to see how many times they make me repeat myself. (If anyone’s curious, the record is nine.) I don’t understand how someone can be a Muslim, live in America, and still have no clue that white American Muslims even exist!

Next time this happens, I’m going to say “Mars,” just to see their reaction.

I shouldn’t need to explain this.

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But apparently I do, so here goes:

A 3-month premium membership to qiran.com costs $39.99. If you can’t scrape together forty bucks, then you probably shouldn’t be looking for a wife, and you definitely shouldn’t be looking for a second, third, or fourth wife!

Take this guy:

If you can't read this clearly, click to see the full-size image.

If you can't read this clearly, click to see the full-size image.

He’s married, has several children, and wants another wife (and more kids). He’s living in the UK. He doesn’t have a paid account.

Scrolling down a little further, we see why he doesn’t have a paid account:

He makes somewhere between $20,000 and $35,000, and he has to feed God only knows how many people on that salary… in the UK. There are countries where that amount of money would allow a man and his harem to live in the lap of luxury. The UK isn’t one of them! Most likely, he doesn’t have $40 to spare.

Let’s be generous and say he’s making $35,000 – that’s about 22,000 pounds. According to these figures published by the Guardian, that puts him squarely on the poverty line for a household with three children, and well below it if he has four or more. Even if he only has two, his family is a long way from being rich. Does he think he can afford to support a second wife and a second household, complete with a second set of kids?

No, he knows he can’t, but he doesn’t care – he knows the government will pay for them. He can’t marry both wives legally, so at least one of them will be on the books as a single mother, which makes her eligible for free housing, free food, and (in the UK) cash payments. The costs of her and her kids’ living expenses will be paid by the state. Specifically, they’ll be paid for by taxpayers like you and me, who work for a living and don’t have litters of children we can’t be bothered to support.

And that, right there, is the real reason for anti-Muslim bigotry in the West. There are some people who are determined to hate anything and anyone different from themselves, but most reasonable people don’t care how we dress, what language we speak, or when and how we pray. They do care that we deliberately exploit social welfare programs, resulting in higher taxes for everyone, and leaving less for those who are truly in need through no fault of their own.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen someone answer “I want to get married, but I can’t support a family. What should I do?” with “Get a council house!” or “She can go on welfare when you have a baby!” or “Have her file for unemployment, but make sure she wears niqab to any job interviews she has to go to, so she won’t get hired!”, I’d be fabulously wealthy. I’d use that money to go to law school, and then I’d write about this stuff under my real name, because there’d be a chance that someone might take it seriously.

I can’t do that… yet. For now, all I can do is say that this is a real problem among Western Muslims, I’m embarrassed to be associated with it, and it needs to stop.

Here’s why this blog is anonymous!

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According to CNN, the UAE is in the process of deporting 30-60 Syrians who participated in a protest outside the Syrian consulate in Dubai on February 10. That’s bad, but not as bad as their spokesman’s statements on the subject.

“The decision was not to renew the residence of a few people — much less than 60. It was around 30,” said the official, who did not want to be identified.

They didn’t cancel the residency permits, they just decided not to renew them… and all 30 just so happened to expire this week. What a coincidence!

It gets better.

The official said authorities could have arrested hundreds because “the demonstration was not licensed. It was not legal. Nevertheless, nobody touched anybody, nobody was arrested.”

It’s bad enough to expel people over, but not bad enough to arrest anybody? That seems backwards. I don’t mean ‘backwards’ as a synonym for ‘third-world,’ I mean literally, legally, backwards.

He added that the Syrians who lost residency permits had been “involved in other activities” — but would not detail what those activities were.

So, they were all involved in other activities which were the actual reason for their expulsion (the implication being that the ‘other activities’ were much more serious offenses), but no one bothered doing anything about it until they committed the much lesser crime of protesting without a permit? Ri-iiiiiight…

The first source, the one close to the SNC leadership, said UAE authorities gave the Syrians a Wednesday deadline to leave the country. At least five have left the UAE in recent days, including two to Cairo, two to Jordan and one to Saudi Arabia, he said. But the UAE official said the deadline is “flexible.”

The UAE official also said:

“[The decision to cancel the residency permits] was not to deport them or to send them to Syria. It was to give them the option to go anywhere they wish.”

Anywhere other than the UAE, that is. “We don’t want to deport them… we just want to kick them out of the country!”

If the Wednesday deadline means today (February 29), and the protest was on February 10, that’s nineteen days’ notice. Allow a few days for the decision to be made and the Syrians to be notified, and we’re probably talking about two weeks or less. (The video embedded in the articles specifies ten days.) That’s not enough time for a Syrian to get a tourist visa to most countries, let alone a work permit! The one who went to Saudi Arabia must have either had an existing visa or gotten very lucky and found a job there quickly.

What bothers me the most about this isn’t the UAE’s decision to deport them; I think it’s oppressive and draconian, but Gulf countries aren’t known for their respect for human rights, particularly when foreigners are involved. It’s not even the fact that the spokesman is obviously lying; if I ever see an Arab politician tell the truth about anything, I’ll call up Hell to ask if it’s snowing. It’s the fact that his lies don’t even make sense, he has to know they don’t make sense, and he seriously expects everyone to believe them anyway!

When I move back over there, I think I’ll be investing in a good IP scrambler. Their monarchies, dictatorships, and theocracies can make whatever rules they want, and those of us who disagree will continue to find ways to get around them.

“Do you speak Egyptian?”

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Someone asked me that yesterday. Yes, really.

See, I bought a netbook to use at work during breaks, mainly so I could avoid stupid conversations like the one I’m writing about now. (I used to spend breaks sitting in my car listening to the radio, but the temptation to drive home halfway through my shift was almost overwhelming, and I’ll get fired if I do that.)

Anyway, that plan backfired, because everyone always wants to use my computer to check their email, chat with their girlfriends, or play World of Warcraft. Yesterday, I opened Facebook during my lunch break, and as I was looking at pictures a friend took of Petra, I noticed a crowd of people curiously looking over my shoulder.

“Where is that?” a co-worker asked.

“Petra. It’s in Jordan.”

“Jordan… that’s in Mississippi, right?”

“No, it’s a country.”

“Really? Where is it?”

“Between Israel and Iraq.”

“Where’s Iraq?”

“Seriously?” They nodded. Apparently, no one I work with has watched the news for at least ten years. I pointed to the east and said “About 6000 miles that way.”

“Didn’t you used to live there?”

“In Iraq? No…”

“Are you going back there?”

“I might go to Dubai or Egypt, or maybe Syria, if things calm down there.” Or maybe not. I’m not eighteen anymore, and getting shot at just isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

“Egypt… that’s where the pyramids are, right?”

“Yes!” I was so happy that someone knew something, but they ruined it with their next question.

“So… do you speak Egyptian?”

That brought back memories of my former life. The doorman of my closest friends’ apartment building was Egyptian, and he spent most of his free time at their place, for the same reasons I did – nice people, good food, and a flatscreen tv with a satellite that got La Liga and Champions League soccer games. Egyptians have a very distinctive accent in Arabic, and every time he said anything with the letter ‘jeem’ in it, we would laugh and tell him (in Arabic) “Speak Arabic! I don’t understand Egyptian!”

When my co-worker asked me if I spoke “Egyptian,” I couldn’t help myself. I answered “La, ma bahki masri!” (literally “No, I don’t speak Egyptian!”). Then I ran to the bathroom for privacy, closed the door, and laughed so hard I had tears streaming down my face.

Things like this are why they all think I’m a little strange.

I know, I know… I should have explained that the language is actually called “Arabic,” that not only Egyptians speak it, and that it’s one of the UN’s six official languages. I considered doing that, then realized I’d just have to explain what the UN is.

When I first moved here, I used to look around for the hidden camera every time I had a conversation like that one, because it had to be a joke, right? For a few months after I started this job, I tried to answer questions seriously and educate people, but that accomplished nothing other than to start arguments. (Not that arguing with idiots isn’t fun sometimes, but it’s pointless – I’ll get fired for doing it too often, they’ll still be stupid, and I’ll have no money!)

Now, I just consider the whole thing to be a joke that no one gets except me. If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.