Originally Posted by
Nat Wilcox
I have an Arab friend who is an expert on Islamic banking and finance (which is intimately connected to Islamic legal thinking), so I asked him to help me out with the question I just asked. Here is his answer. Please note that it is one answer (he says "I have argued" which is a sure sign he means that his answer is his considered opinion and that there is some controversy here...fyi).
I'm afraid that this more or less confirms what I thought from my own reading. Different writers use these terms in varying ways, so we're stuck with paying attention to context and not expecting too much consistency of usage across authors.
Also, it sounds like we should be a little suspicious of claims that something is a matter of Shari`a, as my pal suggests that such claims are frequently little more than a rhetorical device.
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