In his office, Dr. Ali Al-Qaradaghi, Secretary General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, received Thursday morning a delegation of scholars and heads of imam councils from Kosovo and Macedonia who were accompanied by Dr. Mohamed Khalifa, Director of the Al-Qaradawi Center for Moderation. The delegation also included Sheikh Sabri Bajgora, the chief Imam in Kosovo, and head of the imams in the cities of Mitrovica, Skopje, Gnjilane and other cities in Kosovo.
The IUMS Secretary General clarified in his meeting that the core fixed rules in Shariah represent one third of its whole corpus and that, had the Shariah been constituted of only fixed values, there would have been no room for progress, development, update and renovation. In the same manner, he added, if the Shariah law was all based on presumptive texts, there would not have been any protecting umbrella for the nation. So Allah wanted the best for this nation through the benefit of definitive rules and also preserved this nation through the benefit of variable values.
Sheikh Al-Qaradaghi then proceeded to demonstrate examples of the cataclysms that were resolved and overcome through looking into texts, the prophet’s tradition (Sunnah), the scholarly traditions of Islam (Madhahib), and the scholarly jurisprudence complexes currently present. He also referred to the fact that they started by establishing an Islamic bank offering one product, Murabaha transaction, then it developed into many kinds of contracts and bonds of three hundred types. Today, he added, we are setting the basis for establishing more institutions including the zakat institution (concerned with obligatory Muslim alms), the "good loan institution” (concerned with the Muslim concept of al-qard al-hasan referring to interest-free loans), and the endowment institution.
Dr. Al-Qaradaghi also mentioned that Islamic economy is rich in theories, a fact that requires Muslims to dig into their core established values, and draw on them. This body of knowledge, he asserted, would make us needless of other useless theories although Muslims could benefit from these theories where there is use for them.
The IUMS Secretary General urged the visiting scholars to make their utmost effort to remove all elements that were barged into religion whereas in fact religion is far from them, to face extremism and misleading thought with the true moderate method.
Following his lecture, the Secretary General answered numerous questions posed by the visiting scholars, many of whom asked to join the IUMS as members.