It's so easy to fool Pakistani Muslims!

I've often said that Pakistani Muslims consider themselves to be more knowledgeable about Islam than Muslims in Saudi Arabia and other countries. While Saudi Arabia has decided to impose a curfew during the four Eid holidays next week, in Pakistan Muslims came out in huge numbers for shopping for clothes as soon as the lock-down was eased. Obviously, they have been brainwashed by their mullahs to believe that all this talk about virus and pandemic is a conspiracy against Islam so that Muslims will stop going to mosques to pray (and thus the incomes of the mullahs will drop substantially). 

Many years back a mullah (Taqi Usmani) declared that insurance is "haram". Two of my wife's relatives stopped insuring their cars and both had their vehicles stolen, leaving them red-faced.

Taqi Usmani later launched his own version of Islamic insurance, called "takaful". I don't know how one can be haram and the other halal. The purpose of both is the same, but one is supposed to be haram because the insurance companies invest their deposits in interest-bearing instruments. I've studied this subject in detail and it is apparent to me that it is "riba" (excess interest, up to two hundred percent) which is haram, the low interest rate paid by banks is not. But I've not been able to convince any of my die-hard Muslim relatives and friends about this.

The easiest way to fool Muslims is to make them deposit their money in Islamic banks. When the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia came to Karachi in the 1960s, a man who was trying to launch an Islamic bank put up a huge banner which the king couldn't fail to see. It just said "Islamic banking". It didn't work, the king wasn't fooled and the fraudster didn't get anything out of the king.

Another way is to describe financial instruments as "halal", "sharia compliant" and "Islamic finance". Stupid Pakistanis actually pay more than they would in conventional banking instrument, but apparently they love being screwed.