Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Sadeq Elham

Assistant Professor of the Department of Fiqh and Islamic Law Foundations at Imam Sadiq(a.s) University

Abstract

As recorded in historical communities, a lot of stages on money evolution have passed; from commodity money up to gold-backed bill money to mere credit money. Discussing about money, most of the jurisprudents’ mentality refers to "bill money", while for a long time, the new phenomenon called "electronic money" has replaced "bill money" and transactions are being done with it generally, even in micro levels. On the other hand, according to the famous opinion of scholars, Mudharabah (sleeping partnership) -one of the most important and applicable contracts in the non-usury banking system- cannot be set on "debts".
The question about the nature of this money (electronic money) is that whether electronic money is a mean of debt settlement or itself can be considered as money, and upon this, its debt-being or objectivity is questioned. since there is no separate (discussion) argument among the jurisprudents’ researches about validity or invalidity of Mudharabah (sleeping partnership) using electronic money, and also all current transactions of banks are being done in this way, the value and importance of this discussion is clarified.
In this research, after explaining the introductory points, first we examine the objectivity of Mudharabah (sleeping partnership) capital. Therefore, after criticizing opponents’ opinions, we can conclude about the validity or invalidity of Mudharabah (sleeping partnership) by investigating about the objective or debt-being nature of electronic money. Since Mudharabah (sleeping partnership) requires objectivity of capital, and electronic money customarily is considered as an object, the Mudaraba is uncontested with electronic money.

Keywords

• Electronic money
• Mudharabah (sleeping partnership)
• banking transactions
• Debt