A fascinating guest post at Juan Cole’s ever-interesting Informed Comment on “ISIL, Coins, and the Caliphate”.

It has been recently reported by Daesh (what most Arabs call the self-styled “Islamic State Group” or IS) that it will be producing and circulating its own coinage in an attempt to purportedly offset the popularity and usage of secular, Western currencies which they dub the “oppressor’s money” [1]. For Daesh, the issuing of its own coins will, allegedly, be an extension of a policy also aimed at preventing usury (i.e. charging interest) which is a practice forbidden under Islamic law…