Abstract

The rule of Islam is simple: if you advance a loan, you are entitled to receive your capital only and nothing more. If you wish to secure profit you should enter into a partnership and become a shareholder. Prohibitions against interest are not peculiar to Islam. If we were to trace back through history, a number of examples of such prohibitions can be found in the early Greek, Roman and Rabinnical thought. With the decline of the influence of the Catholic Church interest transactions become legal and stimulated giant Western corporations which forged capitalist imperialism. The practice of charging interest (usury) now dominated Western law and ethics for over a millennium. But, the Western or capitalist economic system has proven a failure in its quest for economic justice, which serves to benefit all in society, both the rich and the poor. In particular, capitalism is currently causing a terrifying scenario of making the rich richer and the poor poorer due to interest charges. An alternative banking model, called Islamic finance and banking, is evoked in this study in order to depress financial exploitation by banking institutions.