“Within a few centuries the Crusaders would encounter Arabian merchants and carry their new fangled ideas such as the trust law encapsulated in the Waqf and the agency concept intrinsic to the Hawala back to the Mediterranean. Not only would the techniques of commerce and finance filter through to medieval Europe, but also an entrepreneurial spirit of enterprise that had, to date, been less widespread in Europe.

Ironically, given the negative connotation that ‘capitalism’ has today with all its implications of greed and selfishness it was the Islamic world that institutionalized capitalism and brought it to the West in the form that we might be familiar with today. Somewhere along the way, ‘Islamic’ capitalism of the type that Imam Abu Hanifa (May Allah be pleased with him) legislated in favour of, and that afforded protection to the weak and the needy became diluted.”

~ Heavens Banker’s by Harris Irfan