21st Century Wire says…
ISIS maniacs are eying plans to mint their own ‘ISIS dinar’, but these will not be virtual cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or LiteCoin, they want to make a symbolic challenge to ‘American infidels’ by coining their new money in gold silver and copper.
In a statement issued from the ISIS press office, this move will deliver a blow to “the tyrant’s financial system”, and will include seven coins – two gold, three silver and two copper.
The new Islamic State coins will also be, “purely dedicated to God”, and according to its creators – designed to liberate Muslims (those who survive the purge anyway) from the “global economic system that is based on satanic usury”.
Cryptocoins News explains the monetary and symbolic roots of the Islamic Dinar:
“The gold dinar is an early Islamic coin that corresponds to and is derived from the denarius auri of the Byzantine era. The gold dinar was in use during a caliphate that was known as the Umayyad. The Umayyad caliphate lasted close to a century. The coin was minted to a carefully controlled standard of 4.25 grams.”
Critics point out that ISIS/ISIL would require access to the huge quantities of gold and silver to keep their new mint going. They would also require a secure location for minting and distributing their new money, which does not appear to be the case presently (depending on how desperate the CIA are to roll out the new currency, the New York Federal Reserve Bank might be an option).
GADDAFI’S DINAR: Plans were afoot to trade oil for gold, which were not well received in US or OPEC circles.
Before the NATO blitz which leveled the country, Libya was one of the only remaining nations in the world that still had a 100% state-owned Central Bank, and unlike ISIS, was one of the only nations which actually had the stability, the will, and the means (and the lack of private banking interference inside Libya) to float a currency backed by precious metals.
Before he was murdered by NATO-backed Islamic militants, the late Libyan leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942 – 20th October 2011), tried to enact the very same gold-backed currency project, albeit with much more stable financial backing – overall, a vastly better chance of success.
Many commentators still maintain that it was Gaddafi’s pursuit of hard money challenging to US dollar’s financial hegemony in the Middle East and Africa – in the form of a Libyan Gold Dinar – that led to the West’s decision to attack and destroy Libya in 2011.
ISIS treasury ‘administrators’ have said they will provide updates and information on their new currency’s exchange rate, as well as inform the public where it will be available for exchange.
If only the West had backed Gaddafi – instead of backing ISIS, the world might be a safer place…
Islamic State accumulating gold, silver and copper to mint its own currency
The Islamic State is not a state and not Islamic, Obama tells us. But it grounds all its actions in explicit statements of the Qur’an and Sunnah, and is busy accumulating all the ordinary features of a state. Does anyone have the will to stop it in its tracks?
An update on this story. “Islamic State reportedly buying silver, gold as it prepares to issue currency,” by Mitchell Prothero, McClatchy, November 20, 2014 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):
IRBIL, Iraq — The Islamic State is accumulating gold, silver and copper in markets throughout northern and western Iraq, dealers report, in an apparent effort to stockpile enough precious metal to follow through on a pledge to mint its own currency.
On Nov. 11, the Islamic State’s Beit al Mal, an ancient Islamic term akin to “Department of Treasury,” announced that the group would reintroduce the dinar currency of the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled an empire that stretched from modern Iran to Spain for much of the seventh and eighth centuries. The announcement – which included images of three types of coins in gold, copper and silver – drew skepticism from experts, who doubted that the Islamic State could arrange a system to mint and issue a modern currency.
But interviews with dealers in precious metals indicate that the Islamic State has begun the complex process of issuing the currency, a reminder that as the best-financed non-state actor in history – with a revenue stream from oil sales and aggressive taxation – it’s been able to install bureaucratic controls over the large swath of territory it’s claimed in Iraq and Syria.
Hajj Samir, a gold trader in the city of Fallujah who asked that his full name not be used for security reasons, said that since the announcement, foreign jihadists had been buying all of the gold and silver in the city’s markets.
He said he alone had sold more than 15 pounds of gold to foreigners who were members of the Islamic State. “They said it was for gifts for their wives, but now I know why, and all the traders say the same thing,” he said. “We’ve been making trips to Baghdad to get more, and they buy all of it.”
Osman Ahmed, a 37-year-old gold trader in Mosul, said he’d been selling large amounts of gold and silver in the city, even though he now spent most of his time in Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
“We don’t ask why they’re buying so much,” he said. “But even silver in small shops outside the city is sold out.”
The purchases have reached the point that traders like Ahmed have been traveling between Mosul and the Kurdish cities of Irbil and Suleimaniyah to renew their stocks. The Islamic State buys it all, he said.
Zakaria Ahmed, 33, a Mosul resident who’s no relation to Osman Ahmed and whose brother is an Islamic State official, said he’d been told that the currency project was encountering difficulties because U.S.-led coalition airstrikes had made moving valuables more difficult. The airstrikes also have added to worries that any minting facility could be destroyed from the air.
But he said his understanding was that planning for the currency was proceeding apace. “It is still in an ongoing process to be released,” he said by phone.
The Islamic State’s plans also may be behind a new zeal among the group’s fighters to salvage copper on the battlefield. Marwan al Obeidi, speaking by phone from the Iraqi city of al Qaim, said the need for copper for coins had led to the looting of the copper wiring used in electric transmission cables.
The gold and silver purchases are strange enough, he said. “But what is striking is how elements of the organization have seized power transmission cables and other copper components,” Obeidi said. The fighters are burning the insulation off the cables and harvesting the copper, he said.
Zakaria Ahmed said it was uncertain that residents of Islamic State-controlled areas would embrace the currency. He said residents who were tired of their sons being killed in fighting and already were facing economic uncertainty didn’t see much benefit from the reintroduction of a currency that was last in circulation more than 1,000 years ago…
READ MORE ISIS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire ISIS Files