DTC shined with gold award

Dinar Transaction Card won gold medal yesterday invention event (26th August)held at Invention, Innovation and Design (IID)exhibition, UiTM Johor. This is the second time for dinar based product has been recognized since its debut in the last year competition that also has taken away gold medal. Seems like a good start for dinar based product..Insya Allah the product will be contested in Shah Alam somewhere in this October.

Dinar, dirham boleh runtuhkan ekonomi Yahudi

Oleh: Wartawan Kita

KOTA BHARU, 26 Ogos: Datuk Husam Musa berkata, penggunaan sistem dinar dan dirham secara tidak langsung akan memberi pulangan ekonomi yang lebih tinggi kepada umat Islam, sedangkan golongan Yahudi semakin runtuh.

“Kerana itu mereka sedaya mungkin akan menghalang serta mengkritik dengan pelbagai dakyah untuk menakutkan umat Islam sendiri yang ingin menggunakan sistem terbabit,” ujarnya.

Justeru itu, katanya golongan Yahudi serta penentang agama Islam yang lain sehabis mungkin akan menentang umat Islam menggunakan mata wang syariat dinar dan dirham, kerana sistem itu akan merugikan mereka.

Pengerusi Jawatankuasa Perancangan Ekonomi, Kewangan dan Kebajikan Masyarakat Kelantan itu berkata, sekiranya umat Islam akan bersatu menggunakan Dinar dan Dirham dalam urusan jual beli, golongan tersebut akan mengalami kerugian yang tenat.

Beliau berkata demikian ketika meraikan rombongan Persatuan Maahad Tahfiz al-Quran Malaysia (Permata), yang diketuai pengerusinya, Ustaz Nazaruddin Jalaludin.

Permata dalam rangka pertemuannya dengan Husam untuk menyatakan sokongan pihak berkenaan terhadap penggunaan Dinar dan Dirham.

Pada masa yang sama, Permata bercadang untuk membayar gaji menggunakan kaedah itu kepada kakitangannya di seluruh negara.

Beliau seterusnya memberitahu, Dinar dan Dirham bukan mata wang, sebaliknya seumpama penukaran barang belian seperti kupon dan cek sebagai alat kewangan.

“Kalau kita boleh membeli barangan di majlis-majlis tertentu menggunakan kupon, kenapa Dinar dan Dirham tidak boleh, sedangkan ianya disebut sendiri oleh Allah dalam al-Quran,” ujarnya.

Beliau bagaimanapun berkata, kerajaan negeri akan memberi penerangan secara hikmah kepada mereka yang tidak memahami perkara itu.

Nazaruddin ketika berucap pada pertemuan itu memberitahu pihaknya akan menggunakan Dinar dan Dirham sebagai bayaran gaji kepada kakitangannya.

Jelasnya, walaupun ianya tidak dibayar sebanyak seratus peratus menggunakan sistem tersebut, namun sekurang-kurang ia akan dilaksanakan sebagai menyatakan sokongan pihak mereka terhadap usaha kerajaan negeri.

Pada masa yang sama, pihaknya juga akan turun ke bawah untuk mengadakan ‘road show’ bagi memberi penerangan kepada rakyat berhubung perkara itu.

“Ramai yang masih kabur berhubung perkara ini,” ujarnya.

Sehingga kini, sebanyak 58 buah sekolah tahfiz di seluruh negara bergabung di bawah Permata.

Dianggarkan sebanyak RM30,000 hingga RM70,000 dibelanjakan setiap bulan untuk pengurusan dan pembayaran gaji kakitangan guru di bawah Permata.

Dinar Transaction Card

After Dirham Point of Sale been invented and then presented at UiTM Melaka last week, now another commodity money system came out that called Dinar Transaction Card (DTC).The DTC will be contested and exhibited at IID exhibition UiTM Johor on this coming Wednesday and Thursday. All invited to see how this product works!

Kenapa dinar dirham ditentang bank negara di Kelantan?

Saya terbaca berita ini di harian metro.

Reaksinya boleh pelbagai.

1. Jika anda ahli ekonomi di BNM (atau seumpama dengannya), jawapannya lebih kurang begini:
Jika dinar dirham digunakan di pasaran bermakna ringgit akan jatuh nilainya kerana akan berlaku penurunan dalam permintaan ringgit. Akibatnya ekonomi negara akan runtuh.

2. Jika anda ahli politik di BNM (atau seumpama dengannya),jawapannya lebih kurang begini:
dinar dirham tidak boleh diguna pakai kerana ianya melibatkan polisi dasar sesebuah negara.

3. Jika anda ahli kewangan di BNM (atau seumpama dengannya), jawapannya lebih kurang begini:
Dinar dirham adalah tidak sesuai diperdagangkan di pasaran kewangan dan modal. Tiada mekanisme yang utuh dan jitu buat dinar dirham beroperasi dalam dunia yang praktikal.

4. Jika anda ahli pelaburan dan perniagaan, jawapannya lebih kurang begini:
Melaburlah dengan emas dan perak nescaya anda akan memperoleh untung berlipatkali ganda dan masa depan anda cerah


Ketahuilah, kesemua alasan yang diberikan itu hanyalah mind faculties' barriers tahap gaban yang sedang melanda umat masa kini. Mereka buntu dan tidak nampak jalan pulang sungguhpun mengakui kelebihan dinar dirham.

Jawapan pertama adalah golongan mereka yang tidak menggunakan otak kiri mahupun otak kanan, kemungkinan besar otak belakang kerana mereka ini tidak boleh berfikir dalam kerangka luar. memang ringgit akan mengalami penurunan nilai tapi sebagai gantinya adalah penggunaan emas dan perak secara besar-besaran dapat dilakukan dan semua orangtahu akan nilai emas sekarang yang mencanak tinggi. kalau ikut logik mana boleh ekonomi runtuh sedangkan kita mempunyai aset berlipatkali ganda nilainya!!

Jawapan kedua pula tidak perlu dijawab kerana mereka ini tidak tahu manapun kerana mereka ini bergantung kepada informer peringkat executive yang duduk dibawah mereka. kalau nak jawab juga, kita boleh jawab dengan persoalan, kenapa? polisi tak boleh diubahkah?

Jawapan ketiga pula adalah antara jawapan yang boleh diterima dan musabah kerana mereka ini adalah berkaitan logik dan mereka amat betul. Dinar dirham memang tak boleh hendak dilakukan dalam kerangka sistem yang sebegitu, so dinar dirham kena buat sistem sendiri.

Jawapan keempat pula no comment sebab dah ramai rakan-rakan terlibat. Cumanya kita semua kena ingat, bila kita memperdagangkan dinar dan dirham, kita sebenanrnya melambatkan proses pengembalian fungsi asal dinar dirham kepada fungsi mereka yang hakiki iaitu bertindak sebagai transaksi barangan dan perkhidmatan.

Tepuk dada tanya ilmu akhirat masing2.

Kelantan state launches Islamic currency

A good news about dinar today..
Excerpt from AFP news.

A Malaysian state on Thursday launched the Islamic dinar and dirham as an alternative currency, allowing the golden and silver coins to be used as legal tender alongside conventional banknotes.

Authorities in northern Kelantan state, which is ruled by the Islamic opposition party PAS, said the Islamic currencies would be used in many shops in the state in addition to the national currency, the ringgit.

"We have over 1,000 shops that have signed up to our campaign and agreed to accept the dinar and dirham for the purchase of goods," state cabinet minister Husam Musa told AFP.

He said signboards have been erected in the main market in the state capital Kota Bharu to show the conversion table between the dinar and ringgit, and participating shops will display stickers to encourage people to use the coins.

"The response has been very positive and all the coins which were worth a total of 2.0 million ringgit (629,000 dollars) have been sold out at the launch today," said Husam, who is in charge of economic and finance planning.

According to Islamic law, the dinar measures 4.25 grams of gold, while the dirham is 3.0 grams of pure silver.

A golden coin is equivalent to about 582 ringgit (183 dollars) while the silver coin is worth around 13 ringgit but their values fluctuate according to market prices.

Husam said the dinar and dirham currencies can also be used dealings with state goverment agencies, such as paying "zakat", or alms for the poor.

There has been a long debate in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country with large ethnic Chinese and Indian communities, to introduce the coins as legal tender nationally.

Former premier Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose administration promoted a moderate form of Islam that emphasised economic and scientific development, shot down the proposal to use the Islamic currencies.

But his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad, was an advocate of the dinar system and urged Muslim countries to use it as a trade instrument.

The debate has died down since current Prime Minister Najib Razak came to power last year

Hari Pahlawan: Akhirnya fatwa dipatuhi..

Kerajaan hari ini memutuskan lokasi sambutan Hari Pahlawan yang sering diadakan di Tugu Negara pada setiap 31 Julai akan dipindahkan ke Putrajaya, kata Menteri Pertahanan, Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi.

Beliau berkata, pemindahan lokasi itu adalah sebagai mematuhi garis panduan oleh Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan dan Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia (Jakim) sebelum ini yang menyatakan sambutan itu tidak boleh diadakan di kawasan yang mempunyai patung menyerupai manusia. Perkara itu diputuskan dalam mesyuarat bersama antara Kementerian Pertahanan dan Jabatan Perdana Menteri hari ini.
Perkara itu diputuskan dalam mesyuarat bersama antara Kementerian Pertahanan dan Jabatan Perdana Menteri hari ini.
"Pada tahun ini kita akan adakan sambutan di satu tempat yang tertakluk kepada Perdana Menteri tetapi dataran tetap akan dibuat atas persetujuan bersama antara Kementerian Pertahanan, Polis Diraja Malaysia dan Jakim.

"Elemen-elemen perayaan kali ini akan mengikut garis panduan yang ditetapkan oleh Jakim dan disahkan oleh Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan," katanya kepada pemberita di lobi Parlimen di sini hari ini.

Zahid berkata, perkara itu turut dipersetujui Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, malah beliau meminta permbinaan dataran yang berkeluasan dua hingga tiga ekar itu disegerakan.

Sementara itu, Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom, yang turut hadir pada sidang akhbar itu berkata pihaknya akan menimbang cadangan bagi menjadikan dataran itu sebagai tempat perhimpunan yang menepati kehendak Majlis Fatwa Kebangsaan dan pada masa yang sama dapat memberi gambaran kepada masyarakat tentang pengorbanan dan jasa pahlawan negara.

Menurut laman portal Majlis Fatwa Malaysia (http://e-fatwa.intranetportal.my), telah diwartakan dua fatwa mengenai Hari Pahlawan iaitu amalan seperti tiupan "Last Post", bertafakur dengan menundukkan kepala, meletakkan kalungan bunga, bacaan sajak, nyanyian dan tiupan "Rouse" yang dilakukan di hadapan tugu dalam upacara menyambut Hari Pahlawan adalah bercanggah dengan Islam dan boleh membawa kepada syirik.

Selain itu bacaan sajak yang boleh menimbulkan semangat kepahlawanan adalah diharuskan dengan syarat tidak dilakukan di hadapan tugu atau di tempat atau dalam suasana yang dilarang oleh syarak.

CM: Akhirnya fatwa yang telah diwartakan sebelum ini dipatuhi setelah desakan demi desakan dibuat oleh pihak-pihak tertentu dan ternyata apa yang dilakukan sebelum ini bercanggah dengan ajaran Islam sebenar.

Asians more likely to buy gold in next 6 months

Asian investors are more likely to buy gold in the next six months than their North American and European counterparts, a global survey found.

Research company Ipsos said a quarter of the 18,594 investors interviewed for its inaugural monthly survey said they were "somewhat or very likely" to invest in gold as a security or physical metal as opposed to jewelry in the next six months.

Gold's price has retreated from the all-time high it hit in late June amid fears that a European debt crisis might spread, but it remains more than 7 per cent higher year to date.

Among investors who said they would buy gold in the next six months, 47 per cent said they would invest gold to protect their wealth, and 53 per cent said they intended to profit from gold investments.

"When you have half of the people deciding to put forward their gold as speculation, and the other half deciding to put it in a defensive position, maybe that is just mirroring what's going on out there," said John Wright, Ipsos' senior vice president who wrote the report.

UTIMCO move into gold a warning

The Chronicle recently reported that The University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) invested $500 million in gold. Normally, it's not significant news when UTIMCO allocates 3 percent of its portfolio to a particular investment, but this particular investment decision was widely reported, and rightfully so.

We never know the entire reason that smart money moves into a particular investment. But one possible reason for this investment should worry all of us — a U.S. debt crisis.

From an investment perspective, UTIMCO's move could be taken as a simple reminder that when we put together a portfolio, there is a need to search for securities that not only have attractive risk/return tradeoffs, but also don't move up and down at the same time as the other securities we own.

An investment in gold does well in an inflationary environment. Inflation is the enemy of bond investors and can also hurt stock multiples. UTIMCO's CEO, Bruce Zimmerman, cited the fiscal and monetary stimulus as a potential source of inflation.

Unfortunately, there's another scenario in which gold might help to hedge UTIMCO's portfolio. That scenario is a loss of confidence in the U.S. dollar and our ability to repay our debts. In other words, while unstated by UTIMCO, we should consider the possibility that they are hedging against a U.S. meltdown.

The financial problems we face are immense. In addition to our trillion-dollar deficit, our total debt is approaching 85 percent of gross domestic product. A recent academic study by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff suggested that a debt level above 90 percent of GDP is a tipping point that results in slower growth.

In reality, I would be ecstatic if our debt level was only 90 percent of GDP. The real issue is that we have approximately $50 trillion of unfunded liabilities - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This is a daunting liability. Public investors such as mutual funds, pension funds, endowments, hedge funds, foreign governments and individuals have all combined to loan the United States approximately $8.5 trillion to fund our accumulated deficits. If we wanted to be fully funded in today's dollars, we would need to issue another $50 trillion of debt.

Of course, it would be impossible for us to issue this huge amount of debt. Our biggest creditors (China and Japan) have actually been decreasing their holdings of our debt during the past year. In other words, we need to borrow more and our creditors want to loan us less. This is a dangerous combination.

In the next 25 years, the aging of the baby boomers is going to result in our budget blowing up. The situation was best described by the Congressional Budget Office in their report "The Long-Term Budget Outlook," which was released at the end of June. The CBO report said "the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care will cause spending on the major mandatory health care programs and Social Security to grow from roughly 10 percent of GDP today to about 16 percent of GDP 25 years from now if current laws are not changed." The problem is that our tax revenues have averaged 18 percent of GDP for the past 65 years. In effect, the CBO is telling us that Social Security and health care will use virtually our entire budget within 25 years. There will be nothing left for national defense, responding to disasters or anything else.

This is an upcoming disaster. Republicans and Democrats who study the situation both see it. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said recently, "Unless we start to come to grips with the long-term outlook, we are going to have major problems. I think we misunderstand the momentum of this deficit going forward." Erskine Bowles, the chief of staff under President Clinton and the co-chairman of President Obama's Debt Commission said, "This debt is like a cancer. It is truly going to destroy the country from within."

I will speculate that UTIMCO is hedging against more than just a huge stimulus program. It's hedging against the risk that our politicians will continue to kick the can down the road and not address our structural deficit. They are hedging against the possibility that our leaders will not make the hard decisions and will continue to treat our debt crisis as a partisan issue. We should all hope that UTIMCO's hedge is unnecessary.