THE first week of Ramadhan is always the toughest. The sudden shift in daily routine throws me in a loop as I have to rise earlier in the mornings to sahur and squeeze in some time to mengaji (Quran recitation)as well, so that I may have a chance to actually complete the Quran within the blessed month.
On one such morning, I found myself lamenting at my infuriatingly slow progress, and decided to just look up what the longest verse in the Quran was. Lo and behold, I came across the “ayat al-dayn” also known as the Verse of Debt/ Loan, the Quran’s detailed blueprint on financial trust which among other things, necessitates the need to put agreed terms to writing by engaging a just scribe, bring witnesses to the transaction and to prevent any harm or coercion towards parties involved.
It is extremely technical, even laying down the exception for spot transactions and contractual capacity of the parties.
I had a good chuckle to myself, as all my life stereotypes like “the Chinese worship money” floats carelessly in conversations, as if Malay muslims are supposedly too content, nay, too humble to train their gaze on anything other than the hereafter.
It is a comforting caricature which spares us the inconvenience of examining our messy relationship with money - the personal loans never honoured, unpaid invoices between businesses, deliberately vague contracts, and quiet exploitations which gradually erode trust.
In recent times I have quietly observed our nation convulse over trivial things like whether wishing a non-Muslim “Merry Christmas” is a slippery slope to apostacy, or whether non-muslims using Arabic phrases may “confuse” Muslims.
Yet when it comes to structural injustices like unpaid wages or deposits that never get refunded, we rarely sustain the same moral fury.
On the surface, these are merely “technical issues”, often citing payment cycles and processing delays. On the ground, however, they are matters of dignity. Contracts cannot only be honoured when it is convenient.
Think of a contractor who wins a modest contract painting government-linked offices. He keeps to his end of the bargain, employs workers, buys paint from a supplier and completes the work on time. The client assures him that the payment is being “processed” every month.
However, six months later he remains unpaid, with a supplier who would have cut him off, workers who probably ignore his calls and knee deep in debt from borrowing from family to make ends meet and cover whatever shortfall possible.
This metaphor is not too far removed from the findings of Experian Malaysia’s State of Credit 2025 report, which indicate a wide payment performance gap between large corporates and SMEs, especially those in capital intensive and supply chain sensitive sectors, despite improvements in the broader economy.
When we dismiss issues like unpaid invoices as “technical problems”, we essentially default to an old trope of Islamic thinking, relegating economics to worldly administrative trivia - as if that is not exactly where Amanah (trust) is tested.
Iran comes to mind here, where despite Khomeini’s infamous misquote “economics is for donkeys”, the Revolution did make some great strides in educational and rural poverty reforms. Over time however, the Khamenei era’s political obsession with symbolic sovereignty ran more ideological than institutional, deepening an economy of exceptions.
The result? A profound collapse of institutional trust, as daily life increasingly contradicted the state’s moral claims.
This is a misstep Malaysia cannot afford. Unfortunately, both our government and opposition find it easier to stoke identity anxieties than to do the boring work of improving contractual integrity, wages and cashflow in this country.
This is where I find Dr Ahmad Samsuri Mokhtar, the Pas Vice President and new chairman of the Perikatan Nasional coalition cuts an exciting figure. An engineer turned politician, he embodies a choiceto use his technocratic credibility to push all factions towards stronger contract enforcement and improved administrative frameworks, or simply lend a more polished face to the same old culture war posturing.
It certainly would be interesting to see a shift in imagination where Malay politicians reframe their fights for a symbolic Islamic state, to one over Islamic systems.
One thing is for certain, the ayat-al-dayn definitely impressed upon me that spirituality is not just in the mosque-it is also in the paperwork, and whether our financial and contractual dealings are handled with the care we claim to have for the hereafter.
Alia Aishah Shahrir is a 30-something year old, law graduate from Kuala Lumpur.The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Sinar Daily.