Munich Personal RePEc Archive The Preeminence of Gold and Silver as Shariah Money Krichene, Noureddine and Ghassan, Hassan B. Umm Al-Qura University, IMF 2017 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/95445/ MPRA Paper No. 95445, posted 07 Aug 2019 03:57 UTC The Preeminence of Gold and Silver as Shariah Money Noureddine Krichene1 and Hassan Ghassan2 Published in Thunderbird International Business Review volume 61:821-835, 2019 Abstract Shariah money is gold and silver, supplied by the market on profit criterion. Everywhere, government inconvertible paper money arose from bankruptcy. A government with balanced budgets would never need it. Imposed by force, inconvertible paper is a taxation mean, highly inflationary, and causes impoverishment. Unjust and bankrupt governments will continue to force this despotic money. Islamic Monetary Economics refutes the idea of money as a policy tool. Fully convertible paper is Shariah compliant. Shariah requires a just government to balance its budgets and restore fully gold and silver as lawful money. Key words. Shariah, money, gold-silver, inconvertible paper, inflation, bankruptcy. JEL Classification. E42, E5, F33 1 Professor Noureddine Krichene is an economist, previously affiliated to the International Monetary Fund, and former advisor at the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah:
[email protected] 2 Professor Hassan Ghassan (Corresponding author) is an economist at the University of Umm Al-Qura, Department of economics, Makkah:
[email protected] 1 1. Introduction Money is defined as the cash in circulation; it is perfectly liquid, unanimously accepted in all transactions. Previously, it included gold and silver coins. Presently, it is government currency. Money substitutes may be less liquid.