Fintech and Maqāsid Dichotomy under the Prism of the Non-Neutrality of Techniques

‘Fintech’ and ‘Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah’ remain rare apart from some vague expressions conveyed, for instance, in the HBKU Workshop Fintech and Islamic Finance held at the London School of Economics in London, on 23 February (Djafri, Fares. (2017). Summary Report of the ‘LSE—HBKU Workshop on Fintech and Islamic Finance’, hosted by the Center for Islamic Economics and Finance (CIEF), College of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University at the London School of Economics on February 23, 2017: 4-5; 7) and a chapter ‘Fintech and Shariah Principles in Smart Contracts’ (Rahim, N. F., Bakri, M. H., & Yahaya, S. N. (2019). Fintech and Shariah Principles in Smart Contractsm. In A. Rafay (Ed.), FinTech as a Disruptive Technology for Financial Institutions (pp. 207–220). Hershey P.A.: IGI Global: 210; 214) published in a recent book FinTech as a Disruptive Technology for Financial Institutions. The only writing devoted entirely to the subject Fintech in the light of Maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah (Mohammed, M. O., & El Amri, M. C. (2019). Fintech in the Light of Maqāsid al-Sharī‘ah. In U. A. Oseni & S. N. Ali (Eds.), Fintech in Islamic Finance: Theory and Practice (pp. 93–112). London: Routledge) was recently published in a collective book on ‘Fintech in Islamic Finance’. In spite of its interest, this writing remains very brief and has difficulties overcoming the dominant discourse on the maqāṣid in Islamic finance often associated with the five imperative necessities (al-dharūriyāt al-khams), in this case: the preservation of religion (dīn), being (nafs), understanding (‘aql), offspring (nasl), and what is beneficial to human beings (māl). The word ‘māl’, generally translated as ‘wealth’ or ‘property’, corresponds in its broadest sense to the idea of what is beneficial to human beings, as demonstrated by a recent critical study (Belabes, A. (2019). Book Review of ‘Islamic social finance’ edited by Valentino Cattelan. Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics, 33(2), 98–106; 184). This discourse does not distinguish between the general purposes (al-Maqāṣid al-’āmah), the specific purposes (al-Maqāṣid al-khāṣah) and the auxiliary purposes (al-Maqāṣid al-juziyah), knowing that this field of knowledge requires a finesse of mind and a rigor of understanding (Al-Dihlawī, S. W.-A. (1992). ḤujjatAllāh al-Bālighah [The Conclusive Argument from God]. Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Ihya al-Ulum, 1; 21) in the field of jurisprudence methodology (uṣūl al-fiqh). To refer to classical authors in the domain, such as al-Juwaynī, his best student al-Ghazālī, or al-Shātibī, is a necessary but not sufficient exercise. Yet one must read their respective writings carefully with the language of Sībawayh, rather than that of Shakespeare or Molière, and seize the real epistemological spans far from any essentialism under the effect of a constant desire for generalization, as some linguists rightly point out (Wittgenstein, [1933-1934]1965: 68).