ISIS and the Gold Dinar Hijack

From the Sicarius dagger-men to Fenian Brotherhood, Terrorism was never a stranger to the world. But 9/11, of course was uniquely exceptional in how it changed the whole world's outlook towards this issue. It united us all in universal condemnation, and a resolve to never tolerate it again. Pakistan, ever since, has been at the forefront of its own domestic war on terror. While the media loves to portray us as prime perpetrators, we ourselves have lost 35,000 lives to militancy (1) and terrorism since 9/11, as our forces, as of now, are fighting in the Zarb-e-Azb operation to destroy their safe havens (2).

In spite of the pscyhological trauma and the ensuring rage and fury that America went through, its response was by and large that of fortitude and strength. For the most part! In the quest for simplified answers to the complex geo-political hodgepodge that abetted such desparate acts of terror, many Americans were led by opportunistic media pundits into believing Islam as being the enemy. While I know many friends whose colleagues and managers in the workplace went out of their way to offer assistance and protection in case of any discrimination or danger, the over all hysteria that ensued against Islam and Muslims was a frankestien that could not be contained. I believe the top most objective of terrorists, to intensify the "clash of civilizations" (3), was very successfully achieved.

Gold Dinar After 9/11

A natural fallout of this attitude was to look at any and everything related to Islam with suspicion, with the mosques suddenly seeming to be terrorist cells, and all bearded guys as extremists. The decades old, economically motivated, and completely apolitical currency reform movement for the gold dinar was itself not spared in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and a prominent analyst on CNBC claimed the gold dinar to be a conspiracy of Osama bin Laden (4) to destroy the dollar. Today, when reports of ISIS launching its on gold currency are appearing in the media, I believe its important to give the American public some history and perspective of the legitimacy of this movement, along with the reasons why it is so susceptible to be both misunderstood or maliciously co-opted.

Back in 2007, when the CNBC report (4) on the gold dinar appeared, I had newly joined the movement (5) and launched the very first American Dirhams (6) and Dinars (7), so this perception of them being projected was greatly disturbing. To explain our position, I wrote an email directly to Mr. Craig Smith, whose exerpts I reproduce below, as the need for this clarification has once again resurfaced in light of the "hijacking" of this idea by the ISIS militants:

Reading my email again, I believe I had become a little too rude to Mr. Craig, but a thorough gentleman that he is, he responded kindly to my correspondence, and wrote back nothing short of what I expected of a true blood American:

Gold Dinar and ISIS

The need to publish this private corresondence is to illustrate the possibility of how the American audience can easily misunderstand the Dinar movement, and start considering it hostile and radical. This is especially true because of last two weeks' spate of articles that have appeared in the media on ISIS launching its own gold currency (13) (14) (15) (15a) (15b). The number of visitors these mainstream news reporting websites get is much larger than those who know about the legitimacy of the dinar movement. This presents a grave danger of renewing misunderstandings between our socities on this matter, and wrongly discreding the dinar movement with ISIS, when it has nothing to do with it whatsoever. We must prevent this subconcious link between ISIS militants and gold dinar from being established in the American psyche, first by showing how the dinar movement is separate from and predates both Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and second by exposing why exactly is ISIS attempting to hijack this idea.

Around the middle of 20th century, when many of the Muslim nation states gained independence from colonial rule, their soceital and political infrastructure had so completely transformed that religious scholarship had to play catchup with this colossal metamorphosis for many years to come. In the field of finance, when the new states saw themselves inheriting all the western banking institutions, three distinct Academic responses quickly gained ground in the Muslim world: A group that favoured them just as they were (secular Bankers), a group that wanted to modify their operations, (the Islamic Bankers), and a group that favoured wholesale restructuring over patchwork modification, and wanted them to be developed from the ground up on Islamic principles (the gold dinar movement). The calls for currency reform in the Muslim world had started surfacing as back as the 1960s and before, when the first Islamic Bank had not even seen the light of day. Today, when Islamic Banking has been adopted far and wide by major financial institutions (16), the Dinar movement too has seen many successes in adoption like Malaysia and Indonesia (17). Much like Ron Paul's campaign for liberty, grounded in economic thought of the Austrian School, the Dinar movement too is a peaceful campaign for reform, deriving its ideological strength from religious injunctions supporting sound money.

Muslims around the world have varying degree of passion, sympathy or apathy towards this movement, but it is particularly popular among religious groups, whose members are more conscious of the religious injunctions against usury, and consequently credit money systems. And it is this religious sentiment that ISIS wants to exploit, as part of its recruitment strategy.

Extremist groups have had a hard time selling their radical agenda to educated Muslims, which is one reason why they have traditionally survived only in war-torn countries with broken economies and education systems, like Sudan and Afghanistan. With many domestic campaigns against terrorism from eminent religious scholars (18) (19) in the Muslim world, radical groups scramble for ideological baits for getting some attention and following. And ISIS is doing exactly this: Seeing an original idea capable of evoking passionate sentiments, floundering in the hands of weak political leaders, they decided to pick it up and use it for furthering their political cause. This is nothing new for the larger Wahabi movement to which ISIS subscribes to. Not too long ago, the radical Wahabi movement of Saudi Arabia also adopted this technique of exploiting religious sentiments for tactical gains, when they married the extremist puritanical ideas of Ibn Abdul Wahab with the political ambitions of Ibne Saud, to found the Saudi Royal family, the pime exporter of radical ideology all around the world.

The Muslim world stands together in opposition to ISIS, but it is incumbent upon the West also to act discerningly and not confuse legitimate religious aspirations of the people with the pretensions of the militants. Elements of Islamic history and culture, that ISIS is badly wanting to co-opt for itself, must be kept separate from any guilt by association. The gold dinar movement is a peaceful campaign to raise awareness among Muslim leaders and public about the benefits of sound money system. We must ensure that such press coverage does not stigmatized legitimate Dinar producers like Dinar Wakala, Islamic Mint, Dinar Exchange, Wakala Nusantara, Dinar First, American Islamic Mint and E-Dinar.

Many Muslims wish to see Gold and Silver being adopted as the currency of choice in their country, and this sentiment must be respected, wether one's economic thoughts agree on the matter or not. It is only by working together that we can overcome the radical elements from with our societies, both Muslims and the West.

As Malcolm X put it, you can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom. The Muslim world yearns for this freedom, to forge our own path in the evolution of our social and financial institutions. The gold dinar, and adoption of its associated Islamic principles in our economies, is an important tenet of our faith, and western powers, as well as the people, must not confuse this with a blanket association with militancy, terrorism, or radicalization.