When you are going to buy something, you ask the seller how much does it cost, and then you mechanically pay him and take it and go. Some times, after a minute you stop and think, at this time you realized that you have been deceived. Some times you may discover that you were a subject to some swindlers. This situation happens to all of us almost every day, and this is because there is no organized system for pricing goods. In many cases the prices are determined by the seller himself according to his abilities of deceiving. And the victim will be of course the poor customer who doesn’t know the real price of the goods he is going to buy. This problem appeared because of the absence of the institutions whose main job is to make sure of the prices of different goods and make sure that the customer is not liable to be deceived.

Another important point is that some sellers don’t know how to count their proceeds, so they make their own prices of goods, whatever they are expensive or cheap, without any considerations. This is very common in all sellers beginning with the grocers till the real estate businessmen.

Also in our community, there are no business ethics.  The merchants may keep some goods for some time to use them later when those goods are rare, then they sell them with high prices to make profits easily. The same thing also happens in the case of the real estate trade or the land trade. In this case, some one buys a piece of land and keep it, may be for years, till the prices of the land became so high; then he sells it to make great profits. I don’t know if this happens only in Egypt or is it very common in the Arab community in general! But what I’m sure of is that the trade in Egypt has its own rules. I wonder why in the time when the prices of the real estate are low, you find them so high in Egypt. Only in Egypt you may buy an apartment which costs you 300.000 pounds. Some one else may buy another apartment in the same building and pay 500.000 pounds. It only depends on your ability of bargaining without any criteria that control prices.

And as a result, the Egyptian citizen suffers from a huge pressure because of the increasing inflation and the reduction of the currency value. And this is why I think that the salaries of the Egyptian citizens are worthless comparing with the high prices of the essential goods. Even if the government increased the salaries, this increase can never cover the high cost of living.

The greedy merchant himself will be a victim one day, as he can’t avoid being himself also a consumer. Now the merchants of different goods increase the prices of their goods, then the inflation increases as well. At this time the society will turn to be exactly like an ocean where the big fishes eat the smaller ones, and the bigger fishes eat the big ones as well. “The sharks fight” is an accurate word to describe what is going on. And of course the case is not the same for the greedy rich merchant and the normal consumer who has been used on all levels.

The food security may be more important than the national one, as the national security only protect the country from the out side attacks. But the rules of the food security have been broken by the greedy merchants who are considered as the real danger on the society.

But we should admit that the fault from the very beginning is not the fault of the greedy merchants only, but it also the fault of the government whose one of the most important missions is to make sure of the food security and pricing goods, And to work hard to stop the greedy merchants. This is not as easy as what people think about the classic work routine of the government. But we really need to determine new criteria for making profits and watch the prices all the time. We need to be more serious in our action against the greedy merchants and the cheaters of them.

I don’t mean to talk mainly about greed, as the human nature may have some good and evil in the same heart, but what I really mean is that greed of making high profits from the high prices and cheating. This should be dealt with by a serious responsible government, as any business has its ethics and rules. And I guess that there are many businessmen who don’t know any thing about business ethics. They make profits by high prices randomly out of their greed.

Talking about the Islamic point of view about pricing and making profits; it differed according to the different goods and also according to the different countries and places. But in Islam there are some rules and ethics for trading. It was mentioned in the prophet’s speech that: “God may bless the honest merchant”, and in anther speech: “the honest merchant will be in the company of the martyrs and prophets in heaven”.

Although there is no definite text in Islam that determine the allowed criterion for trading and making profits, the Muslim jurists always search and work on finding the legal criterion for pricing and profits. This criterion will be determined according to the inflation and the economic status in each country. The governments of the Islamic countries should carry out the Islamic rules of production, pricing, and trading.

In Islam there is no definite percent for making profits out of trading, but there are the main rules and ethics that help us to work and develop our community in a just way. Not only in trading, but also there are many other situations in which Islam has no definite rules. For example; it wasn’t mentioned in the Islam texts the definite situation of Islam towards test-tube babies. But such things have been judged by the governments according to the general Islamic rules which stipulate that every thing in our life is allowed with the exception of things which are literally mentioned to be not allowed in the holy Quraan.

People who are against the process of determining the proceeds of trading depend on a speech of the prophet in which he was asked to price some goods but he refused.

But the most of the Muslim jurists agreed that the legal profit shouldn’t be more than one third of the real price of the goods.

The government has the responsibility and the authority to make rules and systems to protect its people. The government is responsible for the judiciary system, national defense, the national income, industry, importing, and exporting. So the government has its enough responsibilities, so pricing should be the responsibility of another institution which should be under the supervision of the Muslim jurists to make sure that prices are just. The stability of prices is very important foe insuring the food security and the general prosperity of the whole society.