Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 203
Economic Peace 203 discounts to any customer(s). He is free to fix any rate he considers reasonable. 23 5. Islam forbids false competition or cartels, which create false competition. It also forbids the inflating of prices at an auction by false bids or procuring bogus offers to deceive a prospective buyer. 24 6. Likewise, Islam recommends that the purchase and sale of goods take place in the open preferably in the presence of witnesses and that the buyer be put on alert on what he purchases. 25 To cut a long story short, Islam adopts the strategy of decreasing the gap between the rich and poor by: 1. Imposing certain inhibitions as have already been mentioned before e. g. drinking, gambling, etc. 2. Prohibiting the hoarding of wealth and its accumulation by interest. 3. Encouraging private enterprise. 4. Promoting the rapid circulation of wealth. 5. The use of repeated admonition, persuasion and instruction appealing to the nobility in man to voluntarily adopt a humble, meek and simple lifestyle which is not too far removed from the reach of a poor man. The object of this exercise is to make man more sensitive to the feeling of others and to choke and kill in him the bestial and sadistic impulses. A holy war in the real sense of the words is waged against vanity, hypocrisy, superficiality, snobbishness, pride and arrogance. All that is