Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
This lesson asks you to identify financial goals, including earning and saving goals, and key steps towards them, and to explain interest rates and the fees that come with accounts and loans. The museum offers the jurists' account of saving and their definition of riba; it holds no record of bank products, so your class brings those. 1
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- F1.2 identify different types of financial goals, including earning and saving goals, and outline some key steps in achieving them
- F1.4 explain the concept of interest rates, and identify types of interest rates and fees associated with different accounts and loans offered by various banks and other financial institutions
2 Before you start
A thought to carry into the lesson.
3 The lesson
What makes a goal a need?
List a saving goal and write the steps to reach it. Then explain, in your own words, what a rate or a fee adds to the amount a person owes or receives over time.
Go deeper
Your class studies interest rates, as the expectation asks. The record here reports only what the jurists wrote, and it is theirs. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence records that riba is excess in the lexical sense, and that in the jurists' usage it is an excess on one of two counter-values in an exchange, or an excess on a debt in return for delay; the schools define it in different words 2 3. It states that riba is forbidden by the Qur'an, the Sunna and consensus 4 5. It adds that the commentators give reasons, among them that riba takes a person's property without a counter-value, turns people from earning, and cuts off good lending between them 6 7.
Two views
On saving wealth beyond one's needs once its zakat is paid, the encyclopaedia records a difference in its entry on saving. The majority permit it, citing the saying of Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas that leaving one's heirs wealthy is better than leaving them dependent on people 8. Abu Dharr al-Ghifari (may God be pleased with him) held that saving surplus beyond one's needs is forbidden even when its zakat is paid 8 9. The encyclopaedia adds that saving to secure one's own needs and those of one's household is lawful saving 9. The museum gives no verdict.
Think about it
The commentators' reasons for the ban on riba, as the record gives them, are that it takes property without a counter-value, turns people from earning, and cuts off good lending. In the system your class studies, accounts and loans carry interest rates and fees. Compare the two: what does each try to protect, and why might the people who built each see it that way?
Into the museum
- Riba: how the schools define it, the kinds the jurists distinguish, and the reasons the commentators give.
- Saving (idkhar): the jurists on saving by a person and by the state, and where they differ.
- Debt (dayn): what a debt is and how, in the jurists' account, it ends.
Try this
Read the records on saving (idkhar) and on riba. Write one sentence from each that you find easy to restate, and one question you would ask a teacher.
4 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
5 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Idkhar (saving and storing wealth: the state's reserves, individuals' savings, zakat and hoarding) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Setting wealth aside for a time of need. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence defines saving (idkhar) as setting wealth aside for a time of need. What might a student save for, and what makes it a need?
In your own words: what does Riba in the rulings: the forbidden excess in exchange and in delay, its kinds, its causes and its rulings have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Excess on a debt in return for delay. The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence defines riba as excess in the lexical sense; in the jurists' usage it is an excess on one of two counter-values in an exchange, or an excess on a debt in return for delay. The encyclopaedia says the jurists hold it forbidden by the Qur'an, the Sunna and consensus. Whether this definition covers interest at a modern bank is a question the record does not answer. Which words in this definition would you compare with the way a bank describes interest on a loan?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: Mathematics
- 2. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8573
- 3. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8574
- 4. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8575
- 5. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8576
- 6. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8579
- 7. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.8580
- 8. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.1997
- 9. al-Mawsu'a al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaitiyya, Noor-Book copy (file named v3), p.1998