حكم التعامل بالأسهم على ضوء الممارسة والتطبيق[Shariah stand on trading in shares in light of the current market practices]

The research presents two fundamental issues that can be identified as the most important Shariah issues for shares. These two issues have not received due attention and revision by the Shariah scholars of our time. The first issue is the very permissibility of share trading in view of the highly speculative nature of stock markets, where trading involves zero-sum games similar to gambling, due to lack of proper and sufficient regulations. The second issue is the issue of dealing with the shares of companies that engage in some prohibited activities, where some “Shariah” standards have been recently set to tolerate such activities if their volume and generated income fall below a certain limit. These standards vary in the limit they set, and some use the share market value as benchmark while others use the shares book value. This is despite the possible huge difference between the shares market value and their book value, which results in having conflicting standards in the value of the lawful activities. These standards provide for the elimination of illicit gain resulting from such activities after having determined at a different rate the maximum return on such prohibited activities. The establishment of these standards and ratios was based on a set of justifications, which the paper also subjects to discussion and criticism.