Back in those days, we were a very small team of people volunteering for BrassTacks. Khurram and Noman diligently recorded the videos, and I myself, with ommissions and delays, linked to them on the website. Zaid Hamid’s viewership was growing every day, and as it goes in Urdu, becoming “din dugni and raat chugni”, with loads of appreciation and hate mails pouring in – always more of the former. When the Eco Terror series was telecast, I must admit that “charagh tallay andhaira ke misdaaq”, even though I had uploaded them to the site, I myself kept postponing watching them for many days, as I was engaged in a lot of others things.

But the day I finally put them on, it became one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Having corresponed many times earlier with Zaid Bhai on the issues surrounding interest-free economics, I was fairly familiar with the silhouette of his argument, and yet, this series came as a surprise for me too. It was totally mesmirizing, and enlightenting, to say the least.

That was the day when I made a simple, conscienable decision, that we must not just talk. Or Complain. But Act! That was the day when eGold was born!

What followed was a prolonged effort to network with other volunteers and supporters of this concept, so I could initiate a collective, grassroots effort to develop a working model of such a true, gold-backed, Interest-free financial system: A system that would be Shariah compliant in its spirit, and not just in its form by an ingenious gimmickry of contractual arrangements, reminiscent more of the Triple Contract than the simple sincerity of our forefathers.

I realized soon however, that if something is to be done, it must be done ourselves. Fortunately, a number of similar initiatives had already sprung up, especially in Malaysia, following the lead of Dr. Mahatir Muhammad. We decided to replicate the same in Pakistan, starting out by the first minuscule step of making Gold and Silver Coins available in the market. Eventually, it would ecnourage awareness and appreciation in the people of how Gold and Silver act as stable stores of value defying inflation, so we could begin expanding into more value added financial services like bullion accounts, payment and clearing services, and eventually, gold-backed, interest free credit.

So here we are, with our first baby step of introducing the gold and silver coins in the retail market. But while I’m happy at doing this, I am also bracing quickly for a severe criticism that is definitely about to come our way from multiple quarters. Let me take a moment here to foretell what it would be, and to dispel it.

First, there will be people in the west, who would love to give this initiative political connotations, comparing it to a revoluationary movement poised to devastate the Dollar. Talk of conspiracy theories! Unless they themselves know better of any exploitation beneficial to their soceity inherent in the status quo, there is no need for any one to be alarmed by our promotion of the gold dinar. The United States economic theory and political landscape has itself has been torn between the greenbacks and the goldbugs for a long time, and a return to the gold standard has a long standing history in economic thought. Unless they want to claim that some Islamic revolutionaries seeking to “topple the dollar” were at play in the 1896 too! Even today, senator Ron Paul’s movement, and the Austrian School in europe, are torch bearers of the gold based model, and we too have our own religious and rational reasons for supporting it. Anyone who paints the adoption of the gold dinar as anything other than a genuine attempt at economic reform is grossly delusional.

Secondly, there will also be those at home, who have an obssessive compulsive disorder of branding as conspiracy theory anything remotely related to Zaid Hamid. Conspiracy theorists themselves, they will quickly churn ideas like America or CIA supporting me to subvert the Pakistani economy or that Zaid Hamid is now trying to make money by the ideas he sold earlier. A simple answer to this is that Zaid Sahib and BrassTacks are not related to eGold in any way, as can be verified by the list of board of directors and shareholders of eGold filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This is by design. Also, though admittedly we are a for-profit organization, our initial step of selling gold coins in the market is hardly a candidate for generating a windfall profit. Later on, however, we definitely hope to be profitable enough to sustain ourselves, by introducing payment and storage services. Infact, the very notion of this endeavour being profitable is extremely critical not only for the sustenance of our business, but for the over all vision of establishing the validity and practicability of this form of financial services. How else can we convince Banks and Governments to adopt this model, if we, even as a small enterprise, fail to be profitable? Incidentally, with the prices of gold rising every day, we are quite sure that the simulteneous existence of profitability coupled with true interest-free operations would not be difficult to demonstrate.

Thirdly, there will be critics hailing from the Academic, Economist and Banker communities. These are the critics whom we welcome. We look forward to a healthy and useful debate with them on the role of Commodity-Backed money in a true Islamic Economic System, and it is with our arguments and research references provided on this blog and our website, that we intend to win them over, and to convince them of why gold is the only way forward for a realization of a riba-free financial system.

Lastly, I would also like to welcome any one and everyone, who is interested in partnering with us in this initiative, to come forward and join hands with us, so we can work toegether to realize the dream of making Pakistan an Interest-Free, Islamic Welfare State.