DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 28 June) – Just a few days into the Zionist entity’s imposed war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, my phone pinged with a familiar sound—the Facebook mention that signals either drama, gossip, or, in rare cases, intellectual provocation.
I clicked.
A friend had tagged me in a post reacting to a comment that floated like a grenade in a sea of opinions:
“Hindi talaga kakayanin ng Iran militarily ang Israel dahil backed by Western powers ito. Isang nuclear weapon lang siguro ay titiklop na ang Iran. Makakatalo lang sa mga Zionists na ito ay MONEYLESS SYSTEM. Bakit hindi ito ang gamitin nila? It is not going to be bloody.”
I chuckled—not out of dismissal, but out of recognition. I’ve heard this before. In coffee shop conversations between activists in Davao City. In WhatsApp groups of crypto-enthusiasts quoting Qur’anic verses between Bitcoin charts. In Twitter spaces where Marxists, Islamists, and gold-standard advocates form temporary alliances of frustration.
There is an instinctive appeal to this idea—that the root of Zionist power, of Western hegemony, of imperialism itself—is not guns or bombs but money. Not merely the possession of money, but the very design of money.
But is the solution as simple as unplugging from it?
What’s the Islamic view of a moneyless system?
Let’s start with the basics.
In classical Islam, money wasn’t just a number on a screen, or a rectangle of paper backed by a government’s promise. It was value itself. A gold dīnār weighed 4.25 grams. A silver dirham clocked in at 2.975 grams. When you held one, you held the labor of a miner, the scarcity of the Earth’s crust, and the weight of global demand.
It was real. Tangible. Finite.
No central bank could print more of it. No quantitative easing. No speculative bubbles detached from reality.
The Qur’an warns against ribā (usury) (Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:275, 278-279; Sūrah Āl ‘Imrān 3:130; Sūrah al-Rūm 30:39) not just as a financial crime but as a metaphysical corruption of balance, fairness, and justice. Similarly, gharar (excessive uncertainty) and maysir (gambling) are forbidden (Sūrah al-Mā’idah 5:90-91; Sūrah al-Nisā’ 4:29) not because Muslims are anti-risk, but because Islam demands that wealth correspond to real economic activity—goods, labor, services.
In essence, the asset-based monetary system in Islam asserts a simple principle:
“Money should be a representation of value, not a tool for its fabrication.”
So, why can’t Iran (or anyone) just switch?
Here’s where the romanticism collides with reality.
Implementing an asset-based or “moneyless” system (meaning a system without fiat manipulation, not without medium of exchange altogether) is not like switching SIM cards or changing profile pictures.
The global economy isn’t built like a house where you can simply swap a faulty beam. It’s more like a spiderweb—tug one thread, and the tremors are felt across continents.
Here are some enduring challenges:
1. Scalability Nightmare.
A barter economy or gold-backed currency works beautifully in small, local contexts. Scale it to a nation of 90 million, embedded in a global network of supply chains, import-export dependencies, and digital transactions, and you face a logistical hydra.
2. Liquidity Crunch.
There isn’t enough gold, silver, or tangible commodities on Earth to back the sheer volume of modern transactions. Global GDP is, paradoxically, bigger than the sum of real things.
3. Storage of Value Problems.
Gold is heavy. Silver tarnishes. Livestock dies. Wheat rots. You need modern banking’s abstraction to enable trade between, say, an Iranian pistachio farmer and a software engineer in Berlin.
4. Legal and Political Handcuffs.
International law demands participation in the fiat system. Iran is already strangled by sanctions; imagine the backlash if it tries to unilaterally exit the SWIFT system or stop trading in dollars, euros, or rials.
5. Trust Deficit.
A currency, whether fiat or gold, functions because everyone agrees to pretend it does. Trust is the real currency. Convincing 8 billion humans to switch belief systems overnight? That’s harder than defeating an army.
6. Tech Dependency.
Ironically, most proposed Islamic moneyless systems today are digital—crypto, blockchain, asset-backed tokens. But these require internet access, cybersecurity, energy grids—all modern infrastructure that itself relies on fiat-driven supply chains.
So, was my friend entirely wrong? No. And yes.
He wasn’t wrong in spirit.
He correctly diagnosed that the real Zionist weapon isn’t merely military but financial colonization—the manipulation of debt, interest, currency speculation, and trade imbalances to enslave entire nations without firing a shot.
But he was wrong in the prescription.
A moneyless system isn’t a silver bullet. It’s not bloodless either—not in the transition, not in the resistance it will provoke from the very powers whose survival depends on debt and fiat.
Even Prophet Muḥammad (ṣ) didn’t abolish money; he restored its dignity. The dīnār and dirham were not utopian fantasies but functional tools embedded within broader systems of justice: zakāh, waqf (endowment), qard al-ḥasan (interest-free loan), and prohibition of ribā.
It wasn’t the coin that saved the oppressed. It was the moral architecture surrounding the coin.
What, then is to be done?
The road ahead isn’t about naive abolition but strategic disruption.
Here are some steps I can think of, among others:
- Create parallel systems: cooperative economies, waqf-based financing, halal digital currencies, and community barter networks.
- Decouple where possible: localize production, shorten supply chains, and insulate communities from the volatility of fiat economies.
- Lobby for Islamic finance reforms that stop mimicking conventional banking with Islamic lipstick and start restoring asset-backed models.
- Most crucially, restore the ethical backbone of commerce. Money is a tool; it reflects either the tyranny or the mercy of those who wield it.
Here’s a final note to my Facebook friend:
Yes, my brother, the fight against Zionism isn’t purely a military one. But neither is it a magic trick of deleting dollars and minting gold.
It is a fight for an economy of dignity.
An economy where wealth flows—not hoards. Where labor dignifies—not enslaves. Where money serves humanity—not the other way around.
And that, indeed, might not be bloody. But it will be a war, nonetheless.
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Mansoor L. Limba, PhD in International Relations and Shari‘ah Counselor-at-Law (SCL), is a publisher-writer, university professor, vlogger, chess trainer, and translator (from Persian into English and Filipino) with tens of written and translation works to his credit on such subjects as international politics, history, political philosophy, intra-faith and interfaith relations, cultural heritage, Islamic finance, jurisprudence (fiqh), theology (‘ilm al-kalam), Qur’anic sciences and exegesis (tafsir), hadith, ethics, and mysticism. He can be reached at mlimba@diplomats.com and www.youtube.com/@WayfaringWithMansoor, and his books can be purchased at www.elzistyle.com and www.amazon.com/author/mansoorlimba.]