Studying Islamic Finance

السلام والازدهار العدالة المجتمعي
You are visiting a blog associated with an online noncredit course studying the topic of Islamic Finance, moderated by John Wiley Spiers. Feel free to participate in our discussion, and if you are interested in taking the course visit http://www.johnspiers.com/Islamic_Finance/Welcome.html

Monday, March 25, 2013

No Interest Loans

Interest or usury is strictly forbidden in the major religions.  It's most common occurrence is with a loan.  I am told with no interest, loans, and the lifeblood of the economy, would dry up.

The kind of loan meant here is a loan to start a business.  But what the religions demand is that the funds intended to be used as a loan instead be used as a contribution to a partnership.  Therefore, there is no less funding available, there is merely another structure under which it is offered.

This ignores a kind of loan called vendor financing, in which a vendor extends a customer time to pay, a kind of loan.  Here too interest is (usury) is forbidden.

So usury prohibition has no effect on progress, it only checks unnatural aggregation of power, a power if unchecked becomes the worst kind of check on progress.

To make the argument people can and do and would make loans is good, but there is also the example of people who extend considerable amount of money with no expectation of being repaid at all.  What argue there would be no loans if no usury when we have donation of money with zero expectation of being repaid?

This generosity is so widespread that scam artists target donations.  For example...

The organization had raised more than $631,000, but had given less than 1% to victims, state officials alleged. At the same time, roughly $13,000 in donations had been allegedly transferred to personal bank accounts, according to court documents.

And this is only one of many Hurricane help charities, not to mention the billions offered by taxpayers who will get nothing in return.

Clearly people generously give money away.  Others are happy to risk it at interest (usury).  Investing the same in a company may in fact be less risky.

The idea that no usury means no investment is not supported by reality.  Usury may be widespread, not because it is necessary, but because there is no objection.  As President Bill Clinton said, he did all of those nasty things for the simplest reason: because he could.

Getting rid of usury will be simple.  Just make it an unenforceable debt, like a gambling debt in USA.

Please feel free to share this post with three of your friends.

No comments:

Post a Comment