Owning a home is regarded as one of the important aspects of a family's financial goals. Since most people cannot buy homes with full payment in cash, the role of financing is critical. As buying and owning homes has become more common than ever, Muslims either had to turn to conventional financial institutions for mortgage financing, or forego purchasing a house and live in a rented property and come up with resources from family and friends to accomplish that goal.

Most of the times best results are based on very simple strategies. The more complicated an investment strategy the smaller usually the output. Straight and simple investments are definitively preferable over too sophisticated ones. After all it is easier to understand where your money goes in.  

Gold Dinar

Take as a counterexample all the financial investment products like Subprime Mortgage Vehicles, CDO (Collaterized Debt Obligations),... etc. These are highly complicated artificial finance products nobody really understands and that was the reason why the financial markets collapsed in September 2008. That is one of the reasons why there is discussion whether financial derivatives are really qualified for Islamic Finance. Here again the principle of simplicity applies: The easier to understand the underlying principle of investment the easier to see if it is Shariah compliant or not.

Credit cards or 'plastic money' are a substitute for cash payments. As it says it is a credit given to the customers by the issuer/bank in order to pay for goods or services. It usually involves an unsecured debt up to a predetermined limit payable over a deferred period through instalments. Moreover cash advance can be obtained with credit cards.

What´s the use of credit cards? There are basically 2 reasons. First it is safer to carry your credit card instead of pockets full of cash with you. Secondly it gives you the possibility to buy something even though you do not have the money at the time. That's one of the reasons why conservative scholars are against credit cards, as they see it as an invention by western culture of spending time and enjoying yourself with money not possessed.

GUEST POST:
After the Dubai financial desaster shocked world markets in November 2009 the emirate has undertaken some serious and important measures to regain control over its financial situation. After prolonged negotiations Dubai signed the final restructuring plan with all of its 90 investors in March 2011. That gives Dubai 8 years to work things out.

Like in almost every economy the real estate sector is responsible for a big fraction of the GDP and therefore is an essential contributor to financial wellbeing...