Usury in Scriptures: The Case of the Qur’an

The spread of Islamic financial institutions and the adoption of their practices as alternatives to traditional banking and finance systems throughout the world have drawn increased interest in the academic pursuits of economists and religious academics alike. The justification for the establishment and promotion of such institutions and practices is formulated as follows: conventional financial systems violate Islamic bounds, and as a corollary, observant Muslims are unable to benefit from traditional financial products. As a result, alternative Islamic financing systems have emerged, with products claiming to comply with Islamic religious edicts. Islamic religious prohibitions that invalidate certain economic activities can almost always be predicated on two foundational principles: ribā (loosely rendered as either financial interest and/or usury) and gharar (also loosely rendered as deception), where the former denotes unlawful and excessive gain at the expense of a party’s disadvantage in a given transaction, and the latter refers to the uncertainties that result in unbearable risks and deceptions. The current research focuses solely on the former, as Islam’s holy scripture, the Qur’ān addressed it. Despite the fact that considerable ink has been spent on the matter of financial interest in Islam, there still seems to be confusion and indifference over how differently the subject is addressed in scriptural and prophetic sources. As a result, the researchers intend to confine the scope of their study to investigating what riba practice was like during the revelation of the Qur’an and how the Qur’an presents the concept of riba.