المستخلص: |
It may surprise some that Imam Malik (93-187 A.H.) said, “If a social consensus were established to have animal skins minted as the medium of exchange for transactions, I would approve it and apply the rules of rib á in exchanging them against gold and silver.” Although this ruling is about a hypothetical case, it indicates classical juristic thinking about the nature of money: that anything can become currency if it is widely or universally accepted by people. Therefore, as long as a commodity is durable and can perform the functions of money-whose most outstanding features are that is a medium of exchange, unit of account (measurement of value) and store of value-then it is accepted as a currency.
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