This Man Shared His Thoughts on Black Friday and Whether It Has Anything to Do with Islam

The craze for Black Friday sales is on a roll. More and more people are eager to shop materials at substantial discounts. In the past, we have also discovered Black Friday carnage happening in Lahore, where women shoppers engaged in fights, beating themselves up badly.

However, what remains the highlight anticipated subject is what Islam says about it. A million perspectives have followed this topic. We are sharing one more brought up by a renowned trainer, Yameenuddin Ahmed who wrote an account on Black Friday below shared both Islamic and Economic perspective regarding it.

Here is what he once wrote on Facebook:

What is Black Friday?

This year for the first time in Pakistan we’re seeing a big promotion of Black Friday sales. Many people don’t know the history and surprised to see lot of projection and messages from different companies. I’m sharing the brief history of Black Friday below.

For millions of people in the West particularly in the US, Black Friday is the time to do some serious Christmas shopping –even before the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone! Black is the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it’s one of the major shopping days of the year in the United States -falling anywhere between November 23 and 29. While it’s not recognized as an official US holiday, many employees have the day off -except those working in retail.

The term “Black Friday” was coined in the 1960s to mark the kickoff to the Christmas shopping season. “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand and red ink indicated a loss and black a profit. Ever since the start of the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924, the Friday after Thanksgiving has been known as the unofficial start to a bustling holiday shopping season.

In the 1960’s, police in Philadelphia griped about the congested streets, clogged with motorists and pedestrians, calling it “Black Friday.” In a non-retail sense, it also describes a financial crisis of 1869: a stock market catastrophe set off by gold spectators who tried and failed to corner the gold market, causing the market to collapse and stocks to plummet.

This is just a brief background of the term.

Why Friday?

It’s because Friday generally is the last working day of the week in the United States and businesses used to close their books of accounts on Friday to mark profit or loss, that’s why the term ‘Black’ was used with Friday.

From an Islamic perspective, calling Friday ‘Black’ is permissible or not, the scholars of Islam have said enough on that.

From social/economic systems perspective, the current system is based on capitalism (System B as we term it in our visioning framework), which can only survive if consumerism is promoted as much as possible, exploit psychological weakness of people and put them into the activity of buying more and more without thinking and reflecting, even the stuff that they don’t need in they take decisions thoughtfully.

People usually believe that it’s just Black Friday we’re shopping, but don’t realize how their brain develops mental routines and spending more than what you need plus Israaf becomes your habit without you even consciously know. You want to buy more, eat more, spend more and this is how investors make money and consumers go into debts.

May Allah save us from becoming prey to this deception of consumerism. Aameen.

Your thoughts?

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