This topic is not related to Muslims only, it is something which is also found in the Bible, in the Vedas and in Al-Qur’aan that ‘don’t deal with interest or usury money‘. But here, I will publish this post in the light of Islaam because this is MuslimFaith.
The purpose of bank as most of the people think is to store the money of people and preserve them in a safe place because there is a fear of theft and robbery in keeping it in houses, but this is not a reality indeed. People have changed and ideas and policies have been changed by some Jews who introduced the interest based monetary system where you preserve your money and some percent of money will be increased every month or year and you may feel happy over it, right? But wait, the other side of the coin is here, you take a loan from any bank and you will be charged a particular percent of money, and you will be asked to return the amount of money you have taken plus the money charged over the loan money, now you’re not happy! This is how banks make their profit and this is how they keep on growing by charging money over the money taken and this money is called in Arabic ‘Ribah’ meaning usury.
In Islaamic Sharee’ah, when you give or take interest, the least penalty that you can think of this sin is like you’re immitating a person who is committing adultery with his own mother and the highest penalty of this is sin is like you’re waging a war against Allaah and His last Messenger! There is not any sin that has this kind of likeness than this sin of engaging in interest money.
You can perform a fatwaa shopping and make excuses by saying ‘I will give this interest money in charity without having my intention of gaining any reward from that’, but these are your desires and whims, Allaah is pure from these intentions! It is like you have an alcohol shop and after you get money and profit from the alcohol shop, you distribute it among the poor and needy, does this sound logical and Islaamic? NO! This is a play and you think you are playing with the laws of Allaah but actually you’re making yourself a fool.
There are three fundamental accounts that interest bank is providing to the humanity:
2. Current Account
3. Fixed Account
One may ask, what is the way out then? The response is simple, create a “Basic Current Account” which is for every individual person man or woman, you don’t need to be a business man or business woman because ”Basic Current Account” is for individuals like other two accounts.
As Muslims we must rise back and revive the teachings of Islaam as was practised and understood by the Salaf!
Sheikh Danish Riyaz
Shopping for higher interest rates is a primary cause of our global economic crisis at the present time!