According to wiki, Pope Sixtus V*said that charging interest is “detestable to God and man” which leads to a whole bunch of questions:
If something is “detestable to God and man” does that mean all Catholics with credit cards are going to hell, or does “detestable” only lead to purgatory?
Jews became bankers to Europe presumably because of Deuteronomy 23:20: “Thou shalt not lend upon interest to your brother”. “Cousins”, however - Christians and Muslims - were fair game. Is that correct?
At the same time, Jews got kicked around because the good Christians wanted their money. Is that essentally correct?
At some point, restrictions on charging interest in Christendom were lifted. Was this before or after all the Jews were kicked into Poland, and who lifted the restrictions when?
Europe stole all sorts of financial ideas from the Middle East. Why didn’t Europe also steal the Islamic method of getting around interest? Islamic mortgages sound exactly like western mortgages: The bank owns the house until the mortgagee makes all the payments. The only real difference seems to be that under Islamic banking systems the bank ACTUALLY owns the house.
Um…that’s all I can think of right now.
[size=1]*I love saying that out loud…Sixtus the Fifth! Sixtus the Fifth! Go ahead, try it, you’ll see.
I think it was more a matter of the powers that be forbidding Jews to hold most other jobs or own land.
Jews were kicked out of different countries (if one can use the word “country” to describe the political units then) at different times, and were allowed back into different countries at different times. There was no time in history where all the Jews in Europe were banished into Poland.
I heard that interest is forbidden to muslims-however, they have a way of getting around it-you get a share of the profits, of an investment you make.
Only it isn’t called 'interest".
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
The entire growth industry of Islamic banking revolves around this (OK, Islamic banking is not just about banking without violating the prohibition of charging interests; it’s also about banking without violating other prohibitions, such as gambling). There are several schemes to circumvent this. One of them is mudarabah - an agreement where the debtor shares his profits with the lender (AFAIK this is the common way for Islamic banks to provide credit to investors). I wouldn’t call this a mere circumvention of the prohibition of usury, however - unlike with conventional interest-based lending, the creditor will also incur the risk of losses. There are other examples which really aren’t much more than thinly disguised attempts to charge interests, though, such as sale and buy back agreements.
As for the Catholic stance on this: According to the Catholic Encylcopedia, a papal encyclical condemned usury (which was taken to be charging interest on money lent, not only charging high interest rates) as late as 1745. Later in, however, we read:
I’m not a theist, but this seems almost insulting to an omnipotent diety like Yahweh/Allah. Do they really think he/she/it’s going to buy this loophole?
I dunno. Was God fooled by the rampant abuse of casuistry in the pre-Reformation Catholic Church? No. But that didn’t stop people from doing it. Being self-serving knows no religion.
Depends on what you view as a “loophole” and what you view as legitimate circumvention… especially with regard to areas that are not practical in today’s world. But, as a simple example, the Bible says simply “Do not labor on the sabbath day.” There’s no explanation and no conditions: what is “labor”? what if not working means not feeding animals (or people)? What about doctors? police? firefighters? There are zillions of questions that the bible doesn’t address.
If that commandment is part of a moral code (as in traditional Christianity), then it’s a moral issue for each individual. However, if the commandment is meant as LAW, then it’s more than simply a moral code, it’s a legal obligation. And that’s the way it’s seen by traditional Jews and Muslims, and even in some historic Christian communities like the Puritans. If it’s LAW and not just moral guidelines, then there need to be interpretations, regulations, and clarification. (Aside: For Judaism, the prohibition against work on the sabbathhas been fairly well-defined. )
So, would you say that allowing the police to work on the sabbath is a “loophole”? Or is it simply a practical interpretation of the law. (By the way, this isn’t just true of religious law – governments pass laws all the time, and then regulations and detailed explanations get promulgated by agencies like the IRS.
Basically, the rules against usury or interest are similar to my sabbath example; they are the laws, but there needs to be regulations and explanations.
The question of whether these regulations and exceptions are “fooling God” is not the issue. God gives the basic, and it’s up to human agencies to interpret them.
How is this a “loophole”? This is exactly the same distinction as between buying stock in a corporation, and becoming a shareholder, on the one hand, and lending money to it and becoming its banker, on the other. That is, its an absolutely fundamental distinction, upon which the entire system of capital markets rests.
I assume HubZilla was referring to the sale and buy back schemes (“bai al-Inah” in Arabic) in particular, which, unlike the profit (and loss) sharing agreements you have in mind can really be seen as loopholes.
Wiki’s article on the various deals permissible under Islamic law to circumvent the prohibition of usury mentions it, but doesn’t say anything about how frequent it is and how it is regarded in the Muslim community.
This page about credit cards in the Islamic world says Muslim banks base their credit card issuance on bai al-Inah. It is said to be acceptable because God “permitted sale and prohibit [sic] usury.”
This) Islamic banking information kit (Warning: Kind of large) from the Central Bank of Malaysia expounds on the legality of various schemes under Muslim law in detail and says (p. 5) that bai al-Inah “is not acceptable by the Middle East countries” because many scholars regard it as a form of interest.