Provisions of the Foreign Exchange Allocation Contract

Abstract

The exchange contract is one of the lawful contracts permitted by Islamic law, which has imposed a number of conditions upon it; it is a contract with many precise restrictions, and any negligence regarding its conditions will lead the party to usury, as this restriction is based on safeguarding the individual’s interests and protecting their rights in a manner that achieves the desired objectives.

Furthermore, this contract has modern forms that do not alter its nature as a foreign exchange contract subject to its provisions. Among the innovations is the sale of foreign currency allocations for heads of households; these are quotas allocated to citizens and disbursed by the Central Bank of Libya, which has a purchasing mechanism and means of collection carried out through banks leading to the sale of this allocation.

This research aims to define this allocation and how to purchase it, as well as to clarify the Sharia ruling on it. Through this, we have reached several conclusions, the most notable of which is that the opinions of scholars differ regarding the ruling on the means of collecting foreign currency, as this disagreement stems from a failure to verify the condition of simultaneous exchange, which is one of the most important conditions of a foreign exchange contract.