By IOL Staff

CAIRO, January 13 (IslamOnline) – The Pakistani government has asked the Egyptian Foreign Ministry to provide it with the text of the fatwa (Islamic ruling) issued by Al Azhar which permits banks’ fixed interest rates in addition to the discussions which took place inside the Islamic Research Center before the issuing of the fatwa to present it to the Pakistani Supreme Islamic Court.

Al Azhar received a letter from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry indicating the interest of the Pakistani government regarding the fatwa because of a problem Pakistan has been facing since the Islamic federal court in Pakistan issued December 1999 a ruling regarding the importance of finding a banking system which does not use fixed interests because it is considered as usury.

The court gave the government 18 months to carry out this task and this has been further postponed for another year in the middle of year 2001, after several appeals were filed by Pakistani banks.

The letter which was sent to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and which IslamOnline received a copy of on Sunday, January 13, said that the Pakistani press explained that despite the fact that Pakistan does not have to abide by the Al Azhar fatwa, it needs to be considered when looking at annulling or amending the ruling of the Federal Pakistani court.

The Islamic Research Center, which meets at the end of every Gregorian month will consider Pakistan’s request.

The Center issued on November 28, a fatwa allowing Bank’s interests and it has also been authorized by Dr. Tantawi, head of Al Azhar, December 4, 2002.

The fatwa stated that putting forward money and savings to banks for investments in return for a fixed profit to be given to the money’s owner is a form of permissible transaction because there is nothing in the Qur’an or Sunna (prophetic tradition) that bans this form of transaction in which the profit is determined in advance if both sides agree.

However, many Muslim scholars have repeated their opposition to the fatwa and released several fatwas prohibiting banks’ interests both before and after Al Azhar allowed it.

The charging of interest, known as riba, was declared un-Islamic by Pakistan’s top Islamic court, the Federal Shari’at Court, in 1991. But the government, led by then-premier Nawaz Sharif, appealed the verdict. Sharif later tried to withdraw his appeal but was not allowed, amid accusations by Islamic parties that he was obstructing Islamization.

“It is hereby held that any amount, big or small, over the principal in a contract of loan or debt is riba prohibited by Holy Qur’an, regardless of whether the loan is taken for the purpose of consumption or for some production activity,” the Pakistani Supreme Court’s decision said at the time.