[Libya Herald] Sheikh Sadek Al-Ghariani, still accepted as Grand Mufti by the Libya Dawn...aka Fajr Libya, the Islamist operation launched to counter that of General Khalifa Haftar (Operation Dignity). It is made up of the Libya Shield militia (Misrata and Moslem Brotherhood), Libya Revolutionaries Operations Room (Moslem Brotherhood), and Tripoli Brigade (close to Abdul Hakim Belhaj, head of Al-Watan party). Financing and moral support come from Turkey and Qatar...
regime in Tripoli
...a confusing city, one end of which is located in Lebanon and the other end of which is the capital of Libya. Its chief distinction is being mentioned in the Marine Hymn...
, has again ventured into the issue of Libyan credit cards, this time over the propriety of using them to withdraw cash abroad and with it buy back dinars in Libya at profit.
Saying that there had been questions asked whether it was right for Libyans to use their Libyan bank-issued credit cards abroad to draw dollars from their accounts and then, on returning, to sell them on the black market for profit, he condemned it.
In a statement issued by his fawta organization, the Dar Al-Ifta, he said that such use of credit cards and of dealing with foreign currency this way was haram.
The statement added that following his complaints to the finance committee of the General National Congress and the Central Bank of Libya, the National Commercial Bank and the Gumouriya Bank had stopped issuing international-use credit cards. The only bank still issuing them, he noted, was the Aman Bank.
Last September, Ghariani issued a fatwa against the Aman Bank credit cards saying that there were a number of concerns in the fine print of the terms and conditions of the cards and the way these related to Islamic banking rules.
The fatwa did not stop the cards being issued or Libyans using them.
In the latest pronouncement, there was no criticism of the financial system that enables such exchange practices to occur -- a system where, because the dinar is pegged artificially high against the dollar, the black market rate, reflecting the real nature of the Libyan economy, is substantially different. At present the official dollar/dinar rate 1.39. The black market rate is 2.30.
Nor was there any criticism of the money merchants who run the massive black-sector financial system that takes advantage of difficulties to access foreign currency. Nor any call for an end to currency controls which would eradicate the problems.