The Muslims at the time of the Messenger of Allah (saw) had taken units of gold and silver as the basic monetary currency and used both of them simultaneously. They used the Byzantine dinars and Persian dirhams as their currency and did not forge their own currency from the time of the Messenger of Allah (saw), until ‘Abdul Malik ibn Marwan came. In his period of leadership ‘Abdul Malik issued a special Islamic currency and made it of a particular shape and type and patterned it with distinctive markings. He based it on the unit of gold and the unit of silver with the weight of the Shari‘ah dinar and dirham.
Islam has enunciated divine laws with respect to gold and silver; it considered them to be gold and silver elements and currency and coins, and the prices for things, or the wages for work, and it prohibited their hoarding and attached to them specific and unchanging laws. It prescribed zakat on them; it considered them to be two forms of money, and it assigned the nisab (minimum amount of money for zakat) in dinars of gold and dirhams of silver. And when Islam imposed diyyah (blood money), it made the payment to be by this currency and prescribed an amount in gold, that is one thousand dinars and an amount in silver, that is twelve thousand dirhams. And when Islam obliged the cutting of a hand for theft, it laid down the amount on which the thiefs hand is to be severed as one quarter of a dinar of gold, or three dirhams of silver. Similarly, when it laid down rules for exchange in currency matters, it defined them in terms of gold and silver.
The connection of Islam with these Shari‘ah rules for gold and silver as two currencies and as a means for exchange and as a price for goods is by the agreement of the Messenger of Allah (saw) who made gold and silver alone the standard unit of currency by which the prices of goods and the wages of work are estimated.
This indicates that Islam considers currency as gold and silver, because all the rules which are connected with currency have been connected with gold and silver.
Therefore, it is essential for Muslims to have their currency in gold and silver, and it is the duty of the Islamic state to make its currency gold and silver and to work on the basis of gold and silver as it was during the time of the Messenger of Allah (saw) and his Khulafa‘a after him. It is the duty of the state to mint dinars and dirhams in a shape and style unique to the Khilafah, and to fix the weight of dinars equal to the Shari‘ah dinar as the weight of one Miskal (or 4.25 grams for one dinar), and to fix the weight of one silver dirham as the “weight of seven” (i.e. every 10 dirhams has the weight of 7 Miskal).
The basis of gold and silver as currency is the only way to solve currency related economic problems and the high inflation rates that are common in the world, and to produce currency stability for rates of exchange and progress in international trade. Only by taking gold and silver as the standard, can the American control and the control of the dollar as an international currency, be demolished in international trade and world economies. By returning to gold as the basic currency, the dollar will lose its influential status in the world.