Page 10 - Valentino Cattelan - In the name of God: managing risk in Islamic finance

VALENTINO CATTELAN

finance that any legitimate profit (kharaj) has to derive from a liability, a
responsibility, or an accountability (daman) of the economic actor for assuming a risk,
through which he deserves God’s blessing (rizq) by following the right Path, Shari‘ah.
At this point, before interpreting how the principle al-kharaj bi-l-daman affects
risk management in Islamic finance, a more in-depth investigation is needed with
regard to Muslim anthropology. In my opinion, in fact, instead of looking at
Islamic finance in the light of (conventional?) ethical investments, a more
appropriate understanding of its logic can be derived from locating its rationales
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within the Qur’anic Creator paradigm that shapes the life of every Muslim.
Accordingly, the conceptualization of risk in Islamic finance may find better
interpretation in connecting rizq, as ‘God’s sustenance’, to what is deserved by the
human being through becoming responsible for his action (daman as source of
legitimate profit). In other terms, how God provides for human existence and how
man, by becoming responsible for his actions, deserves God’s favour in Islam?
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As is well-known, Islam means ‘submission to God’: a submission of the believer
(muslim), which is complementary to God’s absolute omnipotence. The great
theologian and legal scholar al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), in his doctrinal work al-Iqtisad
fi’l-I‘tiqad summarizes the nature of God’s creativeness in the sentence: «What He wills,
is and what He does not will, is not»: «This extends to the least, seemingly
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insignificant, occurrence: “… not even the casual glance of a spectator nor the stray
thought in the mind come to be outside the sphere of His will”. Will is also expressed
by the term mashi’ah, “volition”, and so it is that the word shay’, “thing”, deriving from
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the same root, is sometimes glossed as “what has been willed [by God] to exist” ».
God’s perpetual creative power models all the reality («To Him is due the
primal origin of the heavens and earth. When He decreeth a matter, He saith only
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“Be,” and it is’»: Q. II:117), as an element of His unquestionable perfection.
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Indeed, «There are eight names for God, among the canonical ninety-nine, which
direct our attention to Allah as the source of all that is: al-Badi’ (Absolute Cause),
al-Bari’ (Producer), al-Khaliq (Creator), al-Mubdi’ (Beginner), al-Muqtadir (All-

27 On the matter, please refer to NETTON, Allah transcendent: studies in the structure and semiotics
of Islamic philosophy, theology and cosmology, London, 1989. See also CATTELAN, Islamic finance and
ethical investments. Some points of reconsideration, in KHAN - PORZIO (eds.), Islamic banking and finance
in the European Union. A Challenge, cit., 76-87; CATTELAN, Shari‘ah economics as autonomous paradigm:
theoretical approach and operative outcomes, in Journal of Islamic Perspective on Science, Technology and
Society, 1 (1), 2013, 3-11.
28 GIMARET, Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, Paris and Leuven, 1980.
29 ORMSBY, Theodicy in Islamic thought. The dispute over al-Ghazali’s “Best of all possible worlds”,
Princeton, 1984, 192.
30 ID.
31 See also HOOVER, Perpetual creativity in the perfection of God: Ibn Taymiyya’s hadith commentary
on God’s creation of this world, in Journal of Islamic Studies, 15 (3), 2004, 287-329.
32 Corresponding texts in Q. III:47,59; VI:73; XVI:40; XXXVI:82; XL:68.

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