In a system of Riba, how do you protect yourself?

[USResident]

@psyah

Peace USResident

We’ve had discussions in the past regarding interest so I would like to reiterate my stance on it. Firstly, that it is haram. Any fatwa given for it is specific to the person who does it.

There are two issues at hand the giving of riba and the taking of riba.

Both of which are haram, the giving of it i.e. in mortgage is usually due to hardships in lifestyle for other alternatives. I may arguably reluctantly go in to a mortgage one day, believing it to be a sin and for it shall seek much forgiveness, but I will never call it an acceptable thing and will never advocate it, unless the lender is doing so on 0% interest.

Traditionally houses like consumables are considered to devalue in time, i.e. they require maintenance, whereas food rots and goes bad, etc.

However, due to inflation which is a modern phenomena the prices invariably increase (in a “healthy economy”. It could well be that interest based finance systems act as catalysts to this increase as well.

All the Arabic names given to the Islamic finance mortgage alternatives are really not Islamic at all. They are pre-Islamic methods of loan for profit.

Islamic mortgage will undoubtedly be non-profit and completely charitable in nature. So a loan is given on the basis of Karz-e-hasana. To which a return is given in due course and in the end the debtee may choose out of etiquette to add a gift for the help given.

In the so-called Islamic mortgages there is also no way a poor family can undertake it. Since the amount required for deposit is so high that only richer people can do it. Infact, high street bank mortgages are far more easier to come by in this regard.

Both systems are extortionistic and this is also not allowed in Islam … i.e. to create a false value purely because people need homes. To play on the needs of people is unIslamic. The overheads asked for regarding Islamic mortgages are so high that they equal and in some cases exceed the repayments of standard mortgages. Lastly, the deeds of the house are not divulged to the buyers until they make full payment … this is considered as the deposit … so really it is a clever game that has been developed, the sort of games that the Jews played with the fish on Saturdays - you know the story.

However, all this said if there is a need, explain this to a local mufti get ijaza and do what you need to do and seek forgiveness always and try to make it your first and last situation. That is what I advise.

Yes I know there have been discussions about this topic many a time in the past. I would be in line next to you when it comes to saying that Riba is explicitly haram in Islam.

I myself researched both conventional and Islamic alternatives available to me before I had taken a home mortgage a couple of years ago and I indulged in a conventional loan knowingly that it is a sin and I always ask forgiveness for it but my circumstances warranted the need for a house for I have parents and family under my responsibility to house, not an easy task in USA. I do not advocate interest based banking either but needs differ from person to person based on circumstances.

It appears that your concern about Islamic alternatives is the same as what I had concluded back then and still now, they are vicious and devoid of the charitable purpose of a loan in Islam. As I mentioned earlier in one of my posts, they do not provide social justice in transaction, which is part and parcel of the reasons for forbidding Riba to establish justice and equality in trade and transaction not exploit.

Yet it remains that all early jurists have allowed a portion of the price for time deferrment of payment. The question remains and there is not concensus from what I have researched thus far, when does this markup become exploitive enough to deviate from the very evil it is supposed to save us from.