Syariah Money - The Local Dinars (credit to Dr Ahamed Kameel Mydin Meera)

Wanie: "Jom shopping"

Bestie: "Nope. Aku nak beli dinar bulan ni"

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This is among the conversations I always have with my best friend who's in Penang, that apparently introduces me to gold investment. I heard about it quite a while before decided to start this thing. Thanks to the founder of Inspirasiemas.com, also currently a close friend of mine, who has been very supportive and inspiring in guiding me through this journey of gold investment. Yes, I am still crawling.

In my humble opinion, while we are still young, (hehe.24 is not young anymore) it is wise to start keeping what you called assets that would definitely help you to survive in this evolving world. And I also believe, it is also crucial for us, women to have our own separated physical assets, may it be house, car or even gold. Looking at the family institutions in this century, we may not know what is heading in front of us. Although men are the breadwinners but women also need to be seen as independent. =) I am so grateful that we are in Malaysia, a country with a stable politic and economic growth but do not be too secured because we have heard a lot of nuisances from other countries nowadays on their downturns of economics and etc.

Anyway, while I was reading The Edge Malaysia (a weekly economic paper), I have come across an article about our local dinars, which is currently popular nowadays. Also, based on the seminar that I have attended yesterday, I’d like to briefly share what I have learnt.

Do Understand the Basic Concept

I was quite shocked when our Deputy Finance Minister Datuk Awang Adek Hussin highlighted that gold dinar is not and will not be a legal tender in Malaysia. He challenged Kelantan government to prove that monetary system based on the gold dinar could work. But we have to admit, in reality, with the present laws in our country, the gold dinar as money in Kelantan is unlikely to succeed. Why? Do bear with me reading this article further. =)

Ahamed Kameel Mydin clarified that gold dinar and silver dirhams are understood as syariah money, although in origin they’re not from muslim countries. Their origin was to Persian gold denarius and Persian silver drachma in Rome. Our Prophet Muhammad accepted the two coins as a monetary standard for Islamic trade, business and financial transactions. It is formed in basis for syariah laws in business transactions (muamalat), capital punishments (hudud), marriage dowry (mahar) as well as the compulsory religious alms (zakat).

The first Islamic gold dinars were issued by Abd Al-Malek Marwan, where he changed the Roman inscription on the coin with those based on Quranic verses. What I adore about Abd Al-Malek Marwan is that he had managed to cause this Islamic coins to circulate wider until they could even replaced the dominant Roman coin in Christian Europe. How did he manage to do that? He minted the coins in a large quantities, imposed a strict quality control, and severe punishment for any kind of tampering of the coins. Plus, at that time, there was a freedom of choice. There wasn’t any legal tender law. Ahamed Kameel believes that when there is a freedom of choice, good money would drive out bad money.

Freedom of Choice

Thus, we can see that with the legal tender law in place, bad money (RM) would drive out good money (dinar & dirham) in circulation. This is what we called as the Gresham’s Law. Bank Negara can’t do anything because it knows with legal tender law; gold will not be circulated in as money. So how could Datuk Awang Adek Hussin challenged Kelantan in such a way when dinar and dirham are obviously can’t be circulated as money?

But Perak government was clever enough to first issue these coins as investment products instead of alternative money. Other than that, these Islamic coins can be used as Mahar, presents, medals, awards and so on. Perak knows that it can’t break any federal laws. ;) The gold dinar project is expected to boost Perak’s and later Malaysia's economy in the long run.

The Powerful Gold

There was this one time where gold can only be traded with US Dollar. It was 1/35 oz of gold per dollar. Other currencies were not required to be backed by gold, like the dollar was. Why? It was because America needed to keep their exchange rates within the US dollar stable.

Among other justifications that I could conclude are:

1. Current global monetary and economic crisis that are continuing nowadays have make people begun to realize that gold and silver are safe havens for their savings.

2. The price of silver and gold are expected to rise further, making it an excellent investment choice.

3. Hyperinflation is expecting to come in the current global economic scenario, nothing other than silver and dinar than can protect us from inflation.

4. Increasing of the vulnerability of the US dollar, political chaos in the Middle East, ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan and global climatic change are all putting severe stress on the global monetary and economic condition. Gold and silver will continue to make strides.

Government’s Initiative

Let’s just pray that our current government, together with Bank Negara would make some sort of enforcement to parallel gold-based monetary system, like what our beloved Tun Mahathir also agreed of. Looking at the unstable global economy nowadays, we need to get ourselves prepared. Bear in mind, it is not about the inscriptions on the coins that matter, but the gold content of the coins. Believe it or not, we have a lot of our Chinese friends who have also started to invest on these silver and dinar coins, and unimaginably, in terms of gold investment as a whole, they’re the leading investors Malaysia, especially in silver.

Well, I have a lot to write, but I don’t want to bore people of this blog with so many details on gold and silver. Haha. I am currently working on a page where I will share everything that I know, have read and have learnt about gold and silver from every reliable sources that I could get. The blog, InshaAllah will be in Malay writing as I only want to keep wanie-theinsider as my personal place to share random thoughts, as well as to improve and brush up my English. =)