Psst... Here's A Secret: Muslims Understood Money Way Before The Western World Did

You're doing everything right.

You work hard. You save. You invest. You follow the advice. You track your spending, optimise your budget, plan for retirement. You're not reckless. You're not lazy. You're playing by the rules.

And somehow, you're still falling behind.

It's not dramatic. It's not sudden. It's the slow realisation that the math doesn't add up anymore. Housing costs more than it should. Groceries are quietly expensive. Your savings grow in number but shrink in power. The retirement calculator keeps pushing your freedom further into the future.

This doesn't feel like failure. It feels like the rules changed without anyone announcing it.

You look at the headlines—record stock markets, economic growth, innovation everywhere—and you look at your life. The gap between those two realities is widening. And the confusing part? You can't figure out what you're doing wrong.

Here's the uncomfortable truth: you're not doing anything wrong.

The problem isn't your discipline. It's not your strategy. It's not even your income.

The problem is what you're standing on.

The Lie We've Been Taught About Money

Let me ask you something simple: what is money?

You've been using it your entire life. You work for it, save it, spend it, stress about it. But what is it, really?

The answer most people give: it's value. It represents what you've earned, what you can buy, what you're worth.

But that's not true. Money is not intrinsic value. It never was.

Money is paper. Money is digits on a screen. Money is an agreement about tomorrow.

Think about the last time you bought something. You handed someone cash or swiped a card, and they gave you a product. Why did they accept your money? Not because the paper itself is useful. Not because the numbers have intrinsic worth. They accepted it because they believe the next person will accept it too.

That's the entire system. A chain of belief. I trust that you trust that they trust that someone else will trust this thing tomorrow.

Money doesn't collapse when it disappears. It collapses when belief disappears.

You've seen glimpses of this. Bank runs where people line up to withdraw their savings—not because the bank is broke yet, but because they're afraid it might be.

Currency panics where a nation's money loses half its value overnight because trust evaporated faster than policy could respond. Frozen accounts where your money exists on paper but you can't access it because the system stopped honouring the agreement.

The thing holding your financial life together isn't gold, it isn't government backing, it isn't even economic output. It's collective belief. And belief is fragile.

This isn't a modern problem. Someone saw it coming centuries ago.

A Warning From the Richest City on Earth

Baghdad, 11th century. The richest city on earth. Trade routes converging from three continents. Markets overflowing with silk, spices, gold, and books. Greek, Arab, Persian and Indian cultures all intermixing and producing new mind products.The Abbasid Caliphate at the height of its power, wealth pouring in faster than anyone could count it.

Into this world walked a man named Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.

He wasn't an outsider. He wasn't a rebel. He was inside the system—respected scholar, influential teacher, comfortable, well-paid, connected. He had everything medieval Baghdad could offer a man of intellect. Position, prestige, security.

And he was deeply uncomfortable.

Not because the city was poor. Because it was rich. Wealth was rising faster than wisdom. Shortcuts were becoming normal. People were getting creative with contracts, bending rules, finding loopholes that were legal but unethical. The system was working—technically. But something underneath was eroding.

Al-Ghazali saw it clearly: a society can survive being poor. It cannot survive losing its moral direction while getting rich.

He wrote extensively about economics, about trade, about money. And buried in his work is a thesis that most financial advisors today would never tell you, either because they don't know it or because it's too uncomfortable to say out loud:

Money reflects the moral health of the society using it.

When a society is just, money circulates fairly. When a society is corrupt, money consolidates, extracts, and eventually destroys the system it's supposed to serve.

He identified cracks that appear before collapse. The first one is already obvious.

When Money Stops Moving

Money has to move to work.

Think of it like blood. Blood sitting in one part of your body while the rest starves isn't health—it's a clot. It's dangerous. Money works the same way.

When money circulates through a community, it creates opportunity. A dollar spent at a local shop becomes a wage for an employee, becomes rent for a landlord, becomes groceries for a family, becomes revenue for another business. It moves. It multiplies in effect even though the amount stays the same.

But when money stops moving—when it accumulates in fewer and fewer hands—it extracts instead of circulates.

This isn't a moral judgment. It's mechanical. Hoarding money doesn't make you evil. But it does make the system unstable.

Here's what it looks like in practice: paychecks that feel smaller every year even when the number goes up. Assets that compound quietly while communities tighten their belts. Wealth that exists on paper but doesn't touch the real economy. Billionaires getting richer during a pandemic while small businesses close permanently.

The paradox is brutal: total wealth can grow while systems rot. The GDP climbs while half the country can't afford an emergency expense. The stock market hits records while homelessness becomes normal in major cities.

Velocity matters more than volume. It's not just about how much money exists—it's about how much of it moves and who it moves through.

Al-Ghazali understood this 900 years ago. He warned that when wealth concentrates without circulating, societies become brittle. They look strong—right up until they shatter.

But stagnation alone doesn't destroy a system. Incentives do.

When Doing Your Job Becomes Destructive

Here's the uncomfortable part: most economic harm isn't caused by villains. It's caused by people doing their jobs.

People respond to incentives. Systems shape behavior. And when the system rewards destruction, destruction becomes rational.

Let me give you an example: the opioid crisis.

Pharmaceutical companies didn't set out to kill people. They set out to hit sales targets. Doctors didn't set out to create addicts. They set out to manage pain and satisfy patient surveys that impacted their ratings. Pharmacists didn't set out to enable overdoses. They filled prescriptions that were technically legal. Investors didn't set out to fund death. They funded a company with strong revenue growth.

Nobody in that chain felt evil. Everyone felt justified. Sales reps were helping doctors treat pain. Doctors were responding to patient needs. Pharmacists were following protocol. Investors were doing their fiduciary duty.

And hundreds of thousands of people died.

That's how modern collapse works. It's not dramatic. It's not obvious. It's a series of rational decisions made by reasonable people responding to incentives that are misaligned with human well-being.

The 2008 financial crisis was the same pattern. Mortgage brokers were hitting quotas. Bankers were maximising profit. Rating agencies were charging for their services. Regulators were understaffed and outgunned. Investors were chasing returns.

Every individual decision made sense. The collective outcome was catastrophic.

This is what Al-Ghazali warned about: when the incentive structure breaks, people can destroy the system while genuinely believing they're doing the right thing.

The most dangerous systems are the ones where destruction feels rational.

And eventually, even governments join the pattern.

The Quiet Theft Nobody Votes On

Let me tell you about a medieval scam that's still running today.

In Al-Ghazali's time, rulers facing debt would recall coins, melt them down, mix in cheaper metals, and re-stamp them at the same face value. Technically, nothing changed. A dinar was still a dinar. But everyone knew the coins were worth less. Merchants raised prices. Workers demanded higher wages. The value drained quietly out of every transaction.

It was theft by dilution. And the brilliance of it—if you can call it that—was that nobody had to announce it. There was no tax increase to debate. No law to protest. Just coins that meant less than they used to.

We do the exact same thing today. We just call it something else.

Printing money. Quantitative easing. Expanding the money supply. The terms change, but the mechanism is identical: increase the amount of currency without increasing the value it represents, and every unit becomes worth less.

Who does this hurt? Not the people who own assets. Real estate, stocks, and gold adjust upward. If you own property, you're fine. If you own a portfolio, you're fine. The numbers on your statement keep growing.

But if you're paid in wages? If you save cash? If you're young and haven't accumulated assets yet? You're getting quietly robbed.

Housing prices that used to be three times the average salary are now ten times. Education costs that used to be manageable are now life-altering debt. Retirement savings that used to grow faster than inflation now barely keep pace.

And here's the cruellest part: there's no villain to point at. No criminal to prosecute. It's policy. It's normal. It's what central banks do to "stimulate the economy."

When money is weakened, trust weakens with it.

People feel it even if they can't articulate it. They feel like they're working harder for less. They feel like the game is rigged, but they can't explain how. They feel like their parents had it easier, and they're not wrong.

Al-Ghazali called this injustice by design. A system that looks functional while quietly transferring wealth from the many to the few.

And when trust weakens enough, systems don't fade. They snap.

Why Collapse Feels Sudden When It Finally Happens

Here's what most people misunderstand about collapse: it's not sudden. It's gradual erosion followed by sudden break.

Think of a dam. Water pressure builds slowly. Cracks form over years. Inspectors might even know about them. But the dam holds. It holds. It holds. Until one day, it doesn't. And when it goes, it goes fast.

That's how financial systems fail. Long erosion. Sudden break.

The 2008 crisis didn't start in 2008. It started years earlier with bad loans, overleveraged banks, and regulators asleep at the wheel. But it felt sudden because the psychological breaking point—the moment people stopped believing—happened fast.

One day, Lehman Brothers was too big to fail. The next day, it was gone. One day, your home was an investment. The next day, it was worth half what you paid. One day, your retirement was on track. The next day, it wasn't.

Modern collapse is even faster because information moves instantly. Bank runs used to take days—now they take hours. Currency panics used to unfold over weeks—now they unfold on Twitter in real time. Panic spreads faster than facts. Official reassurance stops working because nobody believes the officials anymore.

Systems fail psychologically before they fail mechanically.

The economy can be "fine" on paper while people are terrified. The bank can be solvent while people withdraw everything. The currency can be backed while people dump it. Because once belief is gone, the technical details don't matter.

Al-Ghazali understood this. He watched societies that looked invincible crumble because the moral foundation underneath was hollow. Wealth, power, and confidence mean nothing when the trust holding them together evaporates.

And the scariest part? The people inside the system are always the last to see it coming.

The Only Question Left

Al-Ghazali asked a question that medieval Baghdad couldn't answer: what happens when a society gets rich faster than it gets wise?

We're asking the same question now.

We have more wealth than any civilisation in history. More technology. More information. More capacity. And yet—inequality is rising, trust is falling, institutions are failing, and people are angrier and more anxious than they've been in decades.

This is pattern recognition through analysing history. We should bare this in mind, because as they say, history always repeats itself.

I'm not predicting when collapse happens. I don't know. Nobody does. Timing is impossible. But mechanism? Mechanism is predictable.

When money stops circulating, systems become brittle. When incentives reward destruction, destruction becomes normal. When currency is quietly debased, trust evaporates. When belief collapses, systems follow.

You can't see the exact moment a dam breaks. But you can see the cracks forming.

Al-Ghazali saw them in Baghdad. You can see them now if you're paying attention. Not because you're paranoid. Because you're awake.

The advantage isn't panic. Panic is useless. The advantage is awareness.

Awareness lets you prepare differently. It lets you hold assets that survive currency debasement. It lets you build skills that outlast institutional collapse. It lets you create value that doesn't depend on collective delusion.

Collapse doesn't announce itself. It feels normal until it isn't. People go to work, pay their bills, check their portfolios, and assume tomorrow will look like today.

Until it doesn't.

The question isn't whether the system will change. It's whether you'll recognise the moment before everyone else asks what happened.