The American Spectator : Islamic Banking - The Long Run

The American Spectator : Islamic Banking - The Long RunIn the wake of the credit crisis the call was made, here and there, for the adoption of something called "Islamic banking," operated according to principles laid down in the sharia. Now the Prophet Muhammad certainly objected to taking interest. But he did not object to borrowing, and was familiar enough with the credit mechanism, since without it the long range trading across the Arabian Peninsula, in which he participated, would have been impossible. And of course the rule against interest has been circumvented from the earliest days of Islamic jurisprudence by the use of convenient legal fictions.