Why lending at interest is recognized as a sin
Why lending at interest is recognized as a sin (haram) by Christians and Muslims?
I am a Catholic, I know that someday profit from lending money to the percentage at times considered to be worse even than prostitution???
The church condemned the practice used to grant this loan at interest, Muslims had a similar position. To the extent that the position on the Christian church has been the gradual liberalization of so many followers of Islam still consider it to be sinful (haram)
I read once that in so far as Christians and Muslims have a moral resistance against the granting of interest-bearing loans, whereas the Jews had no such qualms for the most banks since the time of the Middle Ages is to a greater or lesser extent owned by Jews
Please not get my wrong. I wonder what is bad with doing business? What is unethical in this???
asking interest is taking advantage of someones' need: they need the money (or they'd not borrow any), and by asking interset, you'll gain more money back than you lent out in the first place
the core christian and muslim beliefs include some variation of sharing resources with the needy: see the passages about giving alms to the poor.
requesting your money back if you are dealing with a large amount is only fair, but interest is no longer altruistic help
I am a Catholic, I know that someday profit from lending money to the percentage at times considered to be worse even than prostitution???
The church condemned the practice used to grant this loan at interest, Muslims had a similar position. To the extent that the position on the Christian church has been the gradual liberalization of so many followers of Islam still consider it to be sinful (haram)
I read once that in so far as Christians and Muslims have a moral resistance against the granting of interest-bearing loans, whereas the Jews had no such qualms for the most banks since the time of the Middle Ages is to a greater or lesser extent owned by Jews
Please not get my wrong. I wonder what is bad with doing business? What is unethical in this???
the core christian and muslim beliefs include some variation of sharing resources with the needy: see the passages about giving alms to the poor.
requesting your money back if you are dealing with a large amount is only fair, but interest is no longer altruistic help
To 'get your money back' in economic systems which rely on inflation in order to function (ie all of them), you have to lend with interest. If I lend you £100 for a year when inflation is running at 4%, I need to charge 4% interest just to break even. Thus if you pay me back £104 after 12 months, you are still in real terms only repaying the sum you borrowed and are making use of my services free of charge.
I'm not sure I understand your statement. Are you implying that it's antisemitic to oppose usury?
Usury is a sleazy and predatory way to make money. And it's economically unsustainable; there's only a finite amount of wealth in the world, but debt can accumulate endlessly. Debt is a cancer that slowly overgrows a healthy economy. I say this not as a Muslim, but as a human being who has witnessed (and experienced) what debt and poverty can do to a person or community. The robber-barons of western capitalism are why there's so much conflict in the world.
This is circular logic. Usury is what causes inflation to begin with.
Totally ass-backward.
Jews became money lenders BECAUSE money lending was forbidden to Christians. Not the other way around.
The Pope forbade money lending. So Christians couldnt engage in it. But as the economy of Middle Ages Europe evolved the niche for money lenders got bigger. So Jews were free to fill the niche because they werent Christian. Thus the profession became associated with Jews. The ethnic association was the effect, not the cause, of the stricture.
The best explanation I have heard has to do with the fact that money cannot reproduce in the same way as other items (eg, chickens or grains) can. If you lend someone a chicken, you can expect them to be able to pay you back with a few eggs without any outside assistance. But if a moneylender lends someone money, the borrower will need to find the interest from somewhere outside of his control, and if he cannot, he will need to pay the lender back with something else, for example a share of his crops.
So in theory a group of money lenders can exert control over the amount of money in circulation and then get rich off the physical labour of others while doing very little productive work themselves.
This situation got even worse when goldsmiths worked out they could get away with lending out more money than they even had in their vaults. And with the modern banking system it is even worse.
I know of no Bible-based teaching that forbids receiving interest for money borrowed with a promise to repay in the future. I do know that Islam prohibits Usery but I also know that Muslims have a way to get around that prohibition.
The Catholic teaching against interest on loaned monies is a teaching imposed by the Pope, and it is not backed by the entirety of Scripture.
I think even the Jewish Rabbis can look at Mosaic Law in terms of present day society, although I don't know much about that. I think lending with interest becomes a sin when it is abused. For example we had a bank manipulating businesses they could take them over and make a nice profit. We have recently had the case of loan companies charging enormous interest and punishing inability to pay beyond anything reasonable. Our government has clamped down on the worst of these excesses.
